Think we’re being brainwashed???
Do you think this campaign has degenerated into an orgy of talking points, hyperbole, and empty rhetoric? This video montage of the three debates will leave your head spinning and perhaps coming to the conclusion that it’s all about the campaign operatives, pollsters, and speechwriters. Maybe Palin has a future after all…
The 12 Best iPhone Apps in the World
Things are rough out there with stock markets crashing, banks imploding, and politicians arguing about lipsticks and pigs and 60’s radicals. It’s time for a break. And what better distraction is there than the awesome iPhone?
The iPhone 3G, the most recent iteration of the revolutionary device, has seen it’s previously closed system opened to 3rd party developers. The change enabled users to download apps from Apple’s app store and load them onto the phone. Where the original iPhone offered only a handful of applications– Google Maps, You Tube, a weather forecaster, and one or two other programs– the app choices on the 3G are in the thousands.
A perusal of the App store will display both several categories of programs and multiple takes on the same program. For example, there are at least twelve different programs to track your golf score, six programs that access the social network site Digg!, seven incarnations of Sudoku, twenty-two personal information managers, and the list goes on.
With memory precious and many of the programs costing between $.99 and $10.00, how is one to know which programs to choose? Squirmelicious has solved this problem for you by choosing the 12 best Applications for the iPhone.
There are a lot of great ones, but here are the 12 best in no particular order:
- Facebook - Addiction to the world’s most popular social network is widespread and adding this wonderful client to your iPhone will only exacerbate the problem, but how else are you going to announce to the world that you are waiting at a red light?
- AIM - You can finally chat on your iPhone with this client that offers all the same chat capabilities as Apple’s ichat.
- Pandora – This phenomenal program will literally change the way you listen to music. Pandora, along with Last/FM allow you to create your own custom radio stations as well as access the stations created by those in your network. You might want to grab this one fast as it’s not clear how much longer they will be around.
- Yelp – I use this one constantly. Yelp offers user submitted reviews of restaurants, bars, and retail outlets and by utilizing the iphones built in GPS system, the reviews are for places right where you are at the moment.
- Flipbook – this polished program lets you create frame-by-frame animations. Pointless, but oh so fun.
- Labyrinth – using the devices accelerometer, this game allows you to roll balls through a maze avoiding holes and other obstacles by tilting your phone in various directions.
- Net News Wire – This rss reader uses your news gator account. Simple and effective.
- Missile Command – My favorite game from junior high school now on the iPhone.
- Traffic - Real time traffic reports utilizing the iPhone’s built in GPS chip.
- My Delicious – Access your delicious bookmarks right from your iPhone.
- AirMe – Share Geo-Tagged photos with many different photo sites from flickr to picassa.
- Remote – Control iTunes from your iPhone.
Samsung LNT 4665F LCD HDTV - Calibration Settings
So I’ve had this TV for close to a month now and I couldn’t be happier. It has exceeded all of my expectations. My initial complaints - lack of shadow detail, overly saturated colors, too much contrast - has been solved through proper calibration. My calibration settings have evolved over the past weeks through a combination of methods (AVIA, DVD Essentials, Spyder, and consultation with AV Forum). I now believe I have the perfect calibration settings for this particular model and firmware. I would say this is as good as you can get this model looking without having and ISA profesional doing the job. Here are my settings:
mode: standard
contrast: 84
brightness: 52
Sharpness: 32
Tint: 49g 51r
Blacklight: 7
Color: 52
Color tone: cool1
Digital nr: auto
DNIE: on
DETAIL SETTINGS:
black adjust: low
Dynamic contrast: med
Gamma:0
Color space: wide
Edge Enhancement: on
WHITE BALANCE:
R off 16
G off 14
B off 14
R Gain 15
G gain 14
B gain 14
MY COLOR:
default
Energy Savings - Low
HDMI Black Level - Low
Let me know how these work out for you and post your own calibration settings. I’d like to get a dossier going.
8 Best Web Apps for Iphone
With apples latest upgrade to the iphone firmware bringing web clips (the ability to bookmark websites to the iphone webpage) to the user, third party web apps for the iphone have finally come of age. Prior to release 1.13 of the iphone firmware getting to a specific web app was a bit of a pain, the process serving as a deterrrant to those without broadband access. Â Jailbreaking the software had gotten so simple (a 1 touch web app itself) that it became the preferred method for adding apps to the iphone, much to Apple’s dismay. Â With Web Clips this has changed. Â Users can access their favorite web apps, blogs, portals, etc. off an icon on the iphones home page, significantly improving the user experience. Read more
Apple TV Take 2 - This time Apple Means Business
The initial incarnation of Apple TV was a monumental dud and when Apple creates a dud they are quite adept at it. (see Apple Newton).  There were so many things wrong with the system  - no HD, didn’t truely link online content to television - that it make you wonder what Apple was thinking.  So big was the failure that Steve Jobs had to humbly suggest that the system was nothing more than an Apple “hobby” at current.  Well it seem that all that has changed with the newest version of the Apple TV, the Take 2.With a vastly improved software interface and an impressive featureset including the ability to purchase media right off the device without a computer, HD playback, interactive slideshows through .mac and flickr, and support for Dolby Digiital 5.1, Apple certainly seems to mean business this time around.  The most significant of these features are the inbuilt movie rentals and with all the major movie studios on board this could truly prove to make this a transformative device.  The plan is to charge $3.99 for new releases (offered at 720p) and the ability to view them within 30 seconds of purchase over broadband.  With Netflix having announced days ago that they would be offering unlimited online movies as part of their $16.99 plan and Vudu offering a similar type set top box, the online movie category appears to be the setting for a major battle in 2008.The Apple TV Take 2 is also quite affordable with the price having been dropped to $229 for the 40 GB model and $329 for the 160 GB version.  It remains to be seen whether 160 GB is sufficient considering this is designed to be an HD device.  Other criticisms include no DVR features, and the lack of VLC compatibility, although with the latter it is just a matter of time before hackers fix that. I haven’t tested the unit personally yet, but you can be assurred that I will have one in hand within the next few weeks and will aprise you immediately of my thoughts. Â
Apple announces upgrades to Iphone, IPod Touch, and Itunes Movie Rentals.
Apple this morning announced a new feature for the iphone called webclips, which will allow users to place website bookmarks on the home screen.  The clips will remember where you zoomed to.  The user can create up to 9 of these.  The feature will be available for free begining today to all existing iphone users.  Apple also announced 5 new apps for the ipod touch:  Mail, stocks, notes, maps, and weather.  This upgrade will be available for $20. Apple also announced Itunes Movie Rentals.  Of major significance, it appears that all the major studios are onboard including Touchstone, Miramax, MGM Lionsgate, Newline, Fox, Warner, Disney, Paramount, Universal, and Sony.  The user will have 30 days from the time of purchase to start watching and 24 hours to finish.  Library titles will be $2.99 and New Releases $3.99
Apple announces new Airport Extreme with Server Grade Hard Drive
At this mornings keynote address in San Francisco, Apple made a series of announcements, both software and hardware related. Â One of the new products mentioned was a new version of Airport Extreme base station with a server grade internal hard drive. Â The system will come in two versions: Â 500 GB for $299 and 1TB for $499. Â information on other announcements will be forthcoming….
Review of Samsung LNT 4665F LCD HDTV
With my Panasonic PT40LC12 nearting the end of it’s useful life I began eyeing a replacement last summer. After exhaustively pouring over blogs, videophile websites, trade journals, and countless visits to Best Buy and Circuit City, I narrowed the prospective field down to a handful of prospects, evenly split between LCD and Plasma.I had always preferred that “pop” garnered by plasma sets coupled with the overall coolness factor, but many of the newer LCDs seem to “pop” as much, if not more than their plasma counterparts and are as impressively adorned, making the debate about individual rather than categories.
The Sony KDS55A3000 received excellent reviews with pundits lauding the sets color accuracy, contrast, and build quality. The price was certainly attractive-$1600 for 55 inches of 1080p brilliance-but I couldn’t escape the fact that it was a rear projection set, a soon to be extinct technology. But with all its plaudits, the set just didn’t seem to impress when viewed alongside other well-regarded sets. Granted, a bright floodlight was shining down on it-a death knell for rear projection sets-but without actually seeing for myself that which tantalized everyone else, I had to pass
The newer plasmas from Panasonic and Samsung were nice, but ultimately it came down to the Samsung LNT 4665F LCD and the Sony 46XBR4. Both seemed to outclass the competition with a pleasing combination of intense blacks, saturated primary colors, and that all-important “pop”. Ultimately I opted for the Samsung as the colors, while slightly less intense, seemed more accurate. My main concern regarding the Samsung was the shadow detail. While the blacks were rich and velvety, I wondered how the set would handle night and low light scenes in my own darkened room, which as you’ll see turned out to be a viable concern.We hooked the set up to a DirecTV HR20 via HDMI. Watching true 1080i content was literally mind blowing as we shuffled between HDnet, Discovery Theater, HBO, and PPV. The standard def channels looked pretty good too, but who are we kidding? You buy a set like this and you’re not going to be watching much SD.
One note about the SD channels: The 4665 does not transmit 480P over its HDMI. This was puzzling to me at first as I couldn’t figure out why I kept getting a source not found error each time I switched to an SD channel. I eventually went into the settings and opted for native resolution instead of 480p and all was fine, but it took a few minutes and a good deal of worry before I stumbled on that.
As for calibration, I initially stuck with the factory defaults, the only change being a swap into movie mode, which seemed to temper the brightness a bit and warm the colors. We watched Mission Impossible III and Live Free Die Hard. The difference between this and our previous set was profound. My wife, who thought the purchase frivolous and decadent, was now on board, shaking her head in awe at depth of the image. The sound was ok, but lacking in bass and certainly not up to the standard that such an impressive set requires, thus I went to Best Buy the next day for a SONY HTIB (review forthcoming). I could have left the picture settings where they were and lived a perfectly happy life, feeling quite satisfied with this purchase. The factory defaults look great, albeit not terribly accurate-the picture is too punchy, the colors a bit heavy in the yellows, and the sharpness too high. An initial calibration with the DVD Essentials disc improved things-the color balance was improved and the noise from the high sharpness setting was diminished.
After watching a few more movies-Godfather II, Mission Impossible III again, and Millers Crossing-I realized my fears regarding shadow detail were fulfilled. One scene in GFII where Robert DeNiro and Bruno Kirby sat in a darkened room discussing business bothered me in particular. DeNiro’s face while in shadow was almost completely black. You couldn’t see his expression or read anything going on in his eyes. I ran into the other room to compare the scene on a non-HD tube set and believe it or not it was noticeably improved. So those great, deep blacks on the Sammy came at a steep price and one I wasn’t sure I was willing to pay.I did a second calibration with the AVIA A/V Calibration DVD, getting a different although not necessarily better result. Then I culled the AVSForum where several 4665 owners posted their own calibration settings. I tried several, getting closer each time to the holy grail-deep blacks, prodigious shadow and highlight detail, accurate, well saturated colors, and pop. After several tries I found a combination that delivered exactly what I was looking for. It meant turning down black enhancement, tweaking gamma, jacking up the backlighting, and utilizing the energy saving mode, but when I was done the set looked fantastic. It wasn’t nearly as punchy as the default settings and that took a bit of getting used to, but the picture was much more accurate.
Salesmen tend to describe the new LCDs and Plasmas as good to go and requiring little to no calibration, a silly notion in my opinion. Don’t fall into that trap, as the PQ difference following a good calibration is stunning. Yes, they look great out of the box, but it isn’t until you get the settings just so that you come to the realization of what great really is. Right now, and like I said this is a preliminary review, my only complaint with the set is the sound, but you figure most people who go this route have no intention of using the built in sound anyway. I chose the Sony Bravia DAV-HDX267W, which seemed to be a great complement for my purposes. As I get more acclimated with the set I will provide a more in-depth review along with one on the Sony Audio system, but for now I am exceedingly pleased with my Samsung LNT4665F HDTV. This is one hell of a television and an incredible bargain for $1600.
