Tim’s Thoughts

Millions watched American Idol’s season premiere the other night, and I was one of them. I watched most of the first 6 or so episodes last season simply because it was my first Idol season with a HDTV.

This year, after bragging about how many people watched last year, and how many records the Idols have sold over the last few years, they went to Minneapolis, which apparently doesn’t have very many talented singers. The show always highlights the highs and lows of the talent search, and this year is no different.

Watching the premiere, however, was more painful this year than ever, and it wasn’t because of the talent. Before the first commercial break, Idol highlighted a girl trying out for the show. Turns out her own idol, Jewel, was a guest judge on the show, so it was even more stressful for the girl.

She wasn’t that bad of a singer…not Idol-caliber, but not William Hung quality either. What was bad was the editing of the show. Instead of a standard tryout, followed by tears with her parents, then departure and on to another contestant, Idol barely edited out anything.  For what seemed like 10 minutes (probably closer to 7), Idol kept showing the girl on the tryout stage, in the hallway, outside… It felt like watching a train wreck.  You shouldn’t be looking, but you just can’t turn your head away.

I’m all in favor of making fun of people who can’t sing very well but think they can.  They signed up for the Idol tryout, and certainly sign a waiver stating that all video of them can be used.  This, however, was pretty bad…I can’t imagine Fox earned any new viewers during that first 15 minutes.  I turned off my TV.

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I recently wanted to try out a new High-Definition tuner for my computer, and CompUSA had one on sale. The Hauppauge WinTV-HRV-950 was pretty new, but had some good reviews. Basically, all I wanted to do was see how it looked on a computer, and how many Over The Air (OTA) channels I could get.

Ended up installing it on my laptop and both of my desktops, and wasn’t too impressed. Software was very 1999-ish, and the picture quality seemed OK. Most importantly, I didn’t pick up any extra TV channels, so I was finished with it. It’ll be listed on eBay pretty soon.

Anyway, I uninstalled all of the Hauppauge software that was in the Add/Remove Programs section of my control panel. On each of my computers, I still had an item in my System Tray (down by the clock) that said BDA TV Monitor.

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Trying something educational for the blog today…you may have seen (or maybe not) the web site created to present information about Martin Luther King, called martinlutherkingdotorg (substitute the dot for a real dot!) There is a catch to the site, which I’m not going to spoil right away…ask me about it when you get a chance. Anyway, some education bloggers (and other bloggers) are trying a web experiment to GoogleBomb the martinlutherkingdotorg site off the Google first page of results. I figured I’d do my part…

Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King

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Best Buy and others are advertising a new 80-hour Tivo on sale, for free after rebate. I was considering calling my brother and suggesting we get my parents one for Christmas. I had recently read a post on PVRWire that gave 10 suggestions to enhance the Tivo experience, and was intrigued at the possibilities of a machine in your living room that could handle almost everything you have to walk back to your desktop computer to do.

Tivo officially messed that up today, announcing a HUGE rate increase, from $12.95 to $19.95 (1-year subscription). Given the option between the well-received interface of Tivo and the sub-par interface of a cable company’s DVR (with High-definition available) for somewhere around $9, who is going to pony up the hardware cost AND massive monthly charge for a Tivo?

There has to be another company to step forward and offer what Tivo offers, for much less.

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I finally did it…I moved my email over to Gmail on your Domain. Now, it’s Google Apps for Your Domain, but still, I did it. Took overnight for my email to begin showing up in the familiar Gmail interface. I can still access my old emails on my old hosting server by using the old login information, but all my new email is available on the web or via POP.

Likes:
Spam Filtering: In only 6 days, I have 141 messages in my Spam folder, and none has made it to my inbox. My old provider didn’t have any worthwhile Spam filtering. I almost miss the Spam offerings.
Speed — the Gmail interface is super-fast. Easy to use, intuitive, and quick. I am getting used to the threaded responses on emails with the same subjects (re:).
Universal location — my old email provider offered WebMail via Squirrelmail, but it was super-slow and painful to use, making me resort to using Thunderbird or Outlook for my email. That was fine, if I had my desktop or laptop. If not, I was up a creek. Now, I can access the webmail quickly and easily, and even on my cell phone!

Dislikes: No IMAP — when I access my email on Thunderbird or Outlook, I have to use POP mail, making me download everything. Oddly enough, my sent messages get downloaded as well…all my email (sent and received) is in the same folder. That’s taking some getting used to.
I’m looking forward to using the Calendar feature more with my wife…coordinating calendars should be a life-saver! I already use the Google Calendar for all sorts of things, so I’m moving over everything to my domain.

Well worth the time it took to move the MX records over. If anyone is interested, I’ll post my how-to steps online…post a comment and I’ll follow up.

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