Nothing is worse than buying a new piece of technology for it to be obsolete the next week. If you stay up on your gadget-gossip then normally you know what is and what isn’t going to becoming out soon, but sometimes its hard to track it all. With Apple it is easy, they normally release their products on one of their big days each year so predicting when new stuff will come out isn’t impossible… but mac rumors makes it even easier.

Their buyer’s guide analyzes each product line, when the last update was, the life cycle for a normal product and then tells you a recommendation on if you should buy or not . So if you are going after a new mac pro or sexy 30 inch cinema why don’t you sit back a little bit and wait it out. (Personal tip : as soon as these new products come out the old stuff doesn’t disappear, its either in clearance or the refurb section at what could be a heavily marked down price… if you are ok with slightly-less-than-cutting-edge technology.)

http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/

If you still visit a blue box store every Friday night in order to pick up and watch a movie then you, my friend, are behind the times.

As I have said before Netflix is where it at for a number of reasons, but most importantly for me is their online distribution service. While it still only works in IE (soooo… 1997) it is one of the best movie players out there, the quality is great, it is quick and it doesn’t cost you an extra sent. I actually use the online player more than I do the movies at home. Those are a nice addition to the service, not the other way around. Soon the xbox will release an update allowing you to watch all those same movies via the xbox (so on your TV) which really will push it to a new level. I’ve seen screenshots and it looks very sick.

BUT. After a certain time you use up the good movies on Netflix. They add some , but for the most part, its not the A-list talent you could be receiving via the mail. New releases are non-existent so you are stuck to TV series and older movies. This works for a while as you go through the older content but you get to the point where you want some newer, fresher, material.

Today Netflix released 2 major things. The first of which is that they signed up with Starz to have their catalog online. I got this pic from Engadget and it shows some of the movies right now Netflix is adding in conjungtion with Starz. All A movies, solid watchable flicks, not second hand-ers anymore. Awesome. I just won’t be doing any homework for the next month or two.

Also today (it was a big day) Netflix opened up their API to anyone and everyone. Black, white, red, whatever you can sign up on your own and start developing for whatever you want. So expect a plethora of new apps for your favorite device, or website to only expand the use of Netflix’s services.

If anyone has an idea for a Netflix App let me know and we can get going on one, I’m sure they will be rolling out in hours for those truly dedicated freaks of nature.

Good Day Netflix. Good Day Indeed.

Facebook was the reason I wanted to go to college. Forget about the girls, alcohol or graduation process… it was all about getting my .edu email address and being able to sign up for facebook. I even chose an early orientation week at UT so that I could get my e-mail address first and be the first of my friends on it.

And it was glorious…. for 3 years. Now, I don’t find myself checking it …. even the email updates I have turned off, and the ones I do get I have forwarded to skip my inbox in Gmail so I don’t have to deal with them. Every month or two I check it and delete all the crap I don’t want and leave… I don’t stalk anyone, or care about updates and so I have come to the conclusion facebook is dying.

How can it be dying you ask since its growing like madness and it is the host of the town?

I know its dying because compared to the normal world I am a geek. Not to toot our own horns but the technically savvy internet users normally lead the charge and if our trends are followed the validity of websites can be predicted. Web 2.0 was originally a group of websites and ideas that these internet users flocked to and from there it grew into the movement that we have today.

Facebook is still regarded as a cool tool, but its not the destination site it once was, now its another in the list of sites most people check on daily, but are becoming annoyed with some of the ‘features’ that have accompanied its growth. Among my group it is being derived as myspace 2.0 with its facebook apps, integration with ads, and most importantly the users that exist on it. Originally it was the college crowd, and not every school either, when I joined I believe the list of colleges was less than 100. Now, its any teen, pre-teen, 6-year old, company, corporation or band with a facebook page, all sending messages, infiltrating your inbox and cluttering the community.

Part of the ‘geek’ mentality is to be seperate from the masses … the flow of people into the facebook system has reduced its gleam in the eye of the geek. It also brought with it some of those apps and service-complicating features I mentioned before.

There is no specific movement by the facebook team, or data I can point to showing an exodus of a certain group of people from the website, but a warning that I believe it has peaked, or will soon in the same way myspace did. The addition of users will continue for years as it continues to expand its base in markets where the name ‘facebook’ is still an untarnished cool thing-to-do, but the ebb of geek users fortells a future where they will have to do some re-invention to keep it going.

If you have a 360 or PS3 you need to grab this program. PlayOn Beta is out and lets you stream hulu, youtube (soon netflix) and a host of other media options to your device. Very cool for hulu, and a great out for the PS3 fans out there who are upset that Microsoft was first to integrate with Netflix.

I set it up on my computer, nothing to set-up it ran out of the box, and my 360 and Ps3 picked it up . Then I started browsing all the tv shows on hulu in seconds, quick with no loading times that I have experienced.

This is a 60 day trial, after that it costs 30 bucks, but for now, use it for free. After that make your pick between this and the new 360 dashboard (if you have those options).

I just spent a couple hours reading up on the tech news I missed while on a vacation back to the city of McKinney, so here is a wrapup of some of the goings-on I found.

Pandora Might Be Closing Up. This sucks. Pandora is a pretty cool online music player with a twist. You put in some of your favorite songs / artists and it spits out other stuff you might like based on a number of variables. It actually does an in-depth analysis of the type of songs you like and gets you very good results. Its not only a tool to use occasionaly it is my player of choice at work, or school, or wherever I don’t have my mp3 player. I know they have been in trouble for a while, but this is not cool.

How will men die in 2008? If you guys know Nate, you will probably agree with me that he is going to be the one jumping into the shallow water. (47 deaths, WOW)

Just loaded up ESPN.com which already wins for most annoying website change when it added auto-play to its flash videos. They just added one of those pre-index page full screen ads where you have to click to continue. Your not gonna get it every time, and this is the first time I saw it tonight…. but what a waste. I now remember why I frequent the sports blogs like deadspin, or the local stuff.

Last thing to note from this week is NBC’s coverage of the Olympics. Overall I give them props. Much better than last time around when we didn’t see the events we wanted, and there wasn’t any access at all to the smaller sports. Their internet push is decent, and I have seen a good range of sports during primetime and in the AM. Later I will comment on the design aspects of it, they have done some cool things involving technology and overall branding, but two things I want to comment about that have cheapened it for me.

1) The non-stop (seriously every commercial break) push for either a) the soundtrack to download online or b) the opening ceremony dvd / michael phelps dvd . Apparently even though they have this great internet delivery device they still want that extra buck so the push this seriously non-stop.

2) From Pops : The close-up of Michael Phelps after his epic 8th medal win. During the national anthem instead of giving the whole team some TV time, you got a huge picture of his face for the length of the song. Eh. Focus on the other three that contributed to a gold.

Like I said in the last post I am a big Hulu fan. This summer has really changed the way I watch TV. I’m a little late to the party because I don’t have a TIVO, but I don’t watch normal television unless for a very specific show I want to see live.

Hulu has the best quality short of torrenting the files, and is only improving that with the addition of the HD gallery. This tech is new (its hard to throw that much data across crappy DSL lines) so the gallery is very small , 5 or 6 shows now, and just for testing purposes I do believe. I am watching ‘24′ right now on a 24 inch wide screen monitor and it looks great, I would really love to test this out on a large tv and just see what kind of image it gives off, its hard for me to tell from here. However if you are watching on a desktop, be assured it looks damn good. I am using a 6mbps connection so I am above average for most people, Hulu suggests 2.5 mbps but even with 6 I get a few artifacts in the buffering process it seems. They are few and far between, but exist, so I can only imagine it being unwatchable at basic cable speeds.

Mark Cuban is famous for being one of the largest tv-via-internet critics and is quoted many a times for saying HD TV will never happen via the internet. I think he should take a second to think about that after watching Hulu. I’m sure its not the same type of resolution ,its not gonna be 1080p, but even a year ago this much would not have been deemed possible on a large scale, I think it shows that maybe in a few years we could see the internet being the main content provider for many consumers. At least among my age group this sort of technology is taking off even among the less tech-inclined. Hulu makes it easy to find the shows you want, and watch them, without all the in-between steps.

Another nice going-on at Hulu is the Days of Summer additions to the catalog. Every day this summer they add another feature to the collection (mostly movies but some tv shows) and the list is pretty nice. Not everything is a hit but I’ll take what I can get. That still is the one detraction is the catalog selection movie wise. As far as tv shows gp I haven’t worked my way through my list of want-to-watch shows yet, but can also see that barrier in the not too distant future.

SOOOO… you now have HD AND a bigger collection. I completely and fully suggest you get your Hulu on before you resort to any illegal tactics to grab your shows. (Coming from the guy who got contacted by NBC, its just a wise move)

I have said how much I love hulu in the past. I wanted to bring it back up on this new blog, and a few months down the road, because it has only improved. For people who know about Hulu just skip to the next post for a review of some new updates.

If you don’t know what Hulu is its an online video service brought together by Fox, NBC and a few other companies to combat online tv watching that was unregulated by them. At first I was very wary of this offer, most of these companies aren’t known for doing things right online, and locking things down or just executing them horribly. Hulu is different since it really plays to the user experience and excels in that area past most of the other alternatives out there. Its always on, its quick, the quality is good and the design is nice, easy to navigate etc…

There are in-show ads, but 3 or 4 for an hour long episode is fantastic and they are very short. The only other possible complaint would be the show back catalog but its growing along with the movie list. There are some very good movies on it. I have currently been obsessed with watching all of arrested development’s 3 seasons over again, completely for free.

It is my job to keep you abreast of all things Magento so you should know that v. 1.1 has been released to the masses. http://www.magentocommerce.com/download

I will caution you I had some upgrade issues with my theme. The magento wiki has fixes for them here but don’t expect an upgrade without touching the code, and if your using a live site your gonna need to take it down. Changes didn’t take long, 10 minutes, but they are most likely going to hit you if you have a custom theme.

Still a magento fan, be ready for my first full site with it coming soon.

I don’t have alot of experience with google gears, but I installed it yesterday and since then have been asked by a couple google services if I want to use it. Here is the text from google :

Google Gears is an open source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline. Gears provides three key features:

• A local server, to cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) without needing to contact a server
• A database, to store and access data from within the browser
• A worker thread pool, to make web applications more responsive by performing expensive operations in the background

Google Gears is currently an early-access developers’ release. It is not yet intended for use by real users in production applications at this time.

So, in essence, this is the kick in the pants online web services have been needing. I love google docs and the other tools out there to get stuff done online that would normally be reserved for desktop programs, but they always have that one key feature missing of being able to access your data when you aren’t online. Gears could fix that. My main use for it right now isn’t anything desktop-replacing, however, my google reader now has a little download button that I can download all the new stories and take with me offline. Thats pretty cool IMO.

As you read above this is just a developers release so not everyone is using it but I can’t wait to see what they do with it. Something to watch definitely.

For the less obsessed with the geek blogs out there I’m gonna give you a run down of what has occurred recently. This way you don’t go out and do something stupid like buy a macbook right now with new sub $1000 models on the horizon.

If you do however buy a macbook, get it coated with golden shellback, a new substance that when properly applied coats the inside and outside of electronics to make them impervious to water. Follow the link to watch an IPhone playing a movie while underwater. A boon for all those who find it impossible to keep their phones out of the toilet or other water-retaining vessels.

In news for queers : The Iphone has been jailbreaked but more importantly also supposedly unlocked.

Someone still needs to tell me why I should buy a TV with a ‘touch of color’ bezel that matches the predominant color of whatever your watching. I don’t think a strip of color around my tv is going to increase my enjoyment of the program very much. But thats just me.

In other news, Do not tell me about The Dark Knight until Sunday when I will finally be seeing it as it was meant to…. via IMAX. I have somehow made it this far without losing too much, but I don’t want to miss out on experiencing anymore of it. Also, on the horizon I definitely want to see Step Brothers, Pineapple Express and The X Files. Not excited about the mummy because Brendan Frasier stopped making me laugh when I stopped being an 11 year old girl.

Personal Update : I am not dying. I was working out when my brain exploded so I had to get a cat scan but they say I don’t have a tumor or aneurysm. Damn. I had already decided.. If I got to Make A Wish, I was going to wish to see Jackie Chan… and then I was going to kill him for making horrible horrible movies.