Ugliest Cars
When I saw this listing for the Top 10 Ugly Cars, I had a hunch what would be in the number one position, and I was correct.
My all time favorite to poke fun at, the Pontiac Aztek.
Review: Vudu Movie Service (Part 4: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly)
Continuing my review of the Vudu movie service, let’s look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of Vudu.
The Good
Vudu remote control. The Vudu box’s remote control has got to be one of the simplest and easiest to use of high tech gadgets. Instead of loading up on buttons, tiny LCD displays, and more complications, Vudu went the simplistic route. Like an Apple remote control, the Vudu features a minimal set of buttons in a great form factor. The curvy black remote sits nicely in your hand and the scroll wheel for up and down and left to right movements has got to be a breakthrough. Don’t know why more remotes don’t feature a clickable scroll wheel.
Bundled goodies. Vudu is including a few goodies to entice users. To introduce HD content to users, Vudu is including The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy in HD (a value of $50), and you can complete the triology by buying The Bourne Supremacy in HD for $25. To kick start your Vudu experience, customers also receive $50 in credit when buying a Vudu box until the end of January 2008.
Cost of rentals and purchases. The price structure of renting and buying movies on Vudu is reasonable. Not necessarily the cheapest prices, but well within reason. Here’s a simple price comparison for my purchase of the movie Superbad.
- Vudu $19.99
- DVD from Best Buy $19.99
- DVD from Amazon.com $16.99
- Unbox $14.99
- iTunes Store N/A
You don’t get the extras available on DVDs but don’t have to wait for the disc to arrive in the mail or drive to a store. The Unbox cost is cheap, but unless you have a Tivo, you’ll have to watch the movie on your computer.
HD available. Movies on HD are being introduced to Vudu starting with the Bourne series. But Vudu recently upgraded its hardware lineup to include the Vudu XL that can better handle HD content.
The Bad
Movies available. Okay, not necessarily bad, but available content on Vudu could be better. While the service touts over 5000 videos available, scanning the movie count on my Vudu box usually shows 4700-4800 flicks available. Still decent and recently, Vudu has started to include television shows into its lineup.
No portable content. All movies in Vudu stay with Vudu. Unfortunately, subscribers cannot move Vudu content to other devices such as computers or iPods. You have to watch Vudu videos on the Vudu box.
No other content. Vudu is a one trick pony, only able to show movies from the Vudu service. As of yet, you cannot add your own content to the Vudu box for display. So while you may have movies, videos, pictures, and other content on your computer, you cannot display them on the Vudu box. Kind of a bummer especially when family members want to relive Christmas hijinks.
Constant network activity. My broadband provider, Oceanic Cable Road Runner, hasn’t said anything about my bandwidth usage since my Vudu box went online, but there must be a significant increase. All the lights on my cable modem are more or less solid green all the time, day and night. I don’t know how much data is being transferred but the activity never stops.
The Ugly
Initial cost. The single most ugliest aspect of Vudu is the starting price of $400 for the box. While the mentioned goodies help defray the cost, it’s still steep. Fortunately, I received my test unit completely free for evaluation purposes, but if it weren’t free, I wouldn’t have purchased a Vudu on my own. And the Vudu XL I mentioned previously? That super capacity Vudu box costs $999.
No blue LED? Talking aesthetics, the black Vudu box with blue highlights is visually stunning. But why then ruin the front of the Vudu box with green and orange LED lights? Why not go with matching blue LEDs?
Previous Vudu posts:
No Coqui Killas
To help curb the coqui frog problem in Hawaii, the Hawaii Island Economic Development Board thought of a program enlisting the help of kids. By killing the coqui, kids would receive iPods and Xbox 360s.
School principals balked at this idea of vigilante kids eradicating a species, even an invading foreign one. Coqui killas!
From Honolulu magazine, January 2008.
Frank De Lima’s Tribute to UH Football and June Jones
Today’s Honolulu Advertiser mentioned that local comedian Frank De Lima recorded three songs that paid tribute to the UH Warriors football season and now departed head coach June Jones.
Go listen to Hawaii, We Did It, Hawaii Marches On, and What June Jones, You Going Leave Us Now?
Technorati Tags: Hawaii
UH Versus Nevada Men’s Basketball
Coming up on Saturday night, UH opens up a home stance with WAC opponent Nevada Wolfpack. Blogger’s privilege got four tickets to the event.
The theme is Green and White Night and I think the way it’s described we’re wearing green, sitting behind the team benches.
Technorati Tags: basketball, UH basketball
The Revolution-ness of Apple’s iPhone
While I’m begging for a next generation iPhone, I got this article forwarded to me about how Apple’s iPhone revolutionized the wireless industry.
Very interesting article about the persuasiveness of Steve Jobs and the behind-the-scenes development and negotiations leading up to the iPhone. Makes you want to donate for get an iPhone, no?
Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, Steve Jobs
Anteaters Like Shiny Plants
Oh those crazy Anteaters of UCI. With all that caffeine intake boosting creativity and brainpower, geoengineering researchers at UC Irvine have come up with a way to combat climate changes. Their answer – grow shiny plants.
See, the basic idea is that by making the earth’s surface more reflective then sunlight isn’t absorbed, alleviating global warming. That’s where shiny plants come in. By growing shiny agriculture to reflect sunlight, we’d save the world.
Brilliant!
NetNewsWire Now Free
Still not convinced about the effectiveness of RSS and its time savings? Didn’t want to fork over your hard earned cash for a desktop RSS newsreader like NetNewsWire for the Mac? No worries!
Newsgator, the owners of NetNewsWire, is feeling generous in the new year and made majority of their RSS applications free. This includes NetNewsWire for the Mac, FeedDemon for Windows, NewsGator Go! for mobile devices, and NewsGator Inbox for Microsoft Outlook.
I’ve been a NetNewsWire fan for some time and don’t know how I’d keep up with all the news without it.
Technorati Tags: Macintosh, NetNewsWire, RSS
Organize with Focus or Bento?
Looking for ways to better organize, I read about the recent releases of OmniFocus and Bento. Wonder which is a better fit?
Bento seems more flexible since its built by the FileMaker guys but then again, you the user probably have to spend some time tweaking the app to do what you want.
OmniFocus is more specialized for task management, so it may be what I want.
If you’re looking for some hard core project management software, Merlin 2 has been released.
Begging for a Next Generation iPhone
It’s come to this. I’ve resisted getting the revolutionary Apple iPhone for this long and have paid a price of disbelief from others. “What? You don’t have an iPhone?” I don’t recall how many times I’ve heard that remark as more and more people jump on the iPhone bandwagon and have to rub it in.
For instance, in a recent email reply, Coco Bean signs the email with “Sent from my iPhone.” Did I mention on other occasions that she’ll whip out her iPhone in front of me “just to check her mail or her calendar.” How convenient. Did you also know she has two iPhones?
Then there’s Nejmay who keeps showing me pictures taken with and stored on her iPhone. She also keeps cleaning the face of the phone whenever I’m around, just to taunt me I think. And then she too goes and gets a second iPhone cause you never know when you need to take a picture of Shawn Kemp slam dunking Apple gear.
No, I haven’t forgotten the times I coulda used an iPhone to snap pictures of stars toodling around Oahu. Remember, I saw Guy Hagi, Kim Gennaula, and Andy Bumatai at the Kahala Mall Apple Store. There was the time I saw LOST’s Jorge Garcia at Safeway but didn’t have a camera-equipped iPhone handy.
Most recently, Kim from Cali was simply astounded that I didn’t have an iPhone since her boo was armed with one. She then gloats about gal pal Miss Marathon getting an iPhone for Christmas. See here.
Cali Kim then said she’d make a donation so I can get an iPhone, and here we are. I created a Chipin account to raise funds to buy an iPhone, and I’m now begging asking for donations. And I’m hoping for the next generation iPhone. The smaller one. The faster 3G one. The colorful one.
So if you’re feeling generous and want to contribute then please do! If or when this works out, I’ll be sure to do a review of the next generation iPhone.
Getting Things Done Video
I’ve bought David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done, to be more efficient but have yet to read it. I keep hearing about GTD (Getting Things Done) and all the positive changes it brings.
Recently David Allen spoke at Google about GTD, and here’s the 45-min video of the session to get you familiar with GTD.
If you want more information, you can read the book or listen to the audiobook version.
YOU Can be UH’s Next Head Football Coach
All you need to do is apply for the position! Check out the qualifications needed for position number 80110.
Or you could always wait for the posting for the Athletics Director position…