Category: product endorsements

TV – Top Gear – BBC

On By Rick McIn humour, product endorsements, TVLeave a comment

On the way up to skiing last weekend, George played us a 1hr TV show where comedians got to drive (and make fun of) high performance vehicles. It’s unscripted, light hearted, great!

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Top Gear is an Emmy Award and BAFTA winning BBC television series about motor vehicles particularly cars. The programme is estimated to have over 350 million viewers worldwide …

Top Gear is currently presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. …

official website

Click PLAY to see the opening credits, or see them on YouTube.

Apple or PC laptop?

On By Rick McIn Apple, product endorsementsLeave a comment

PC Magazine have never been known as Apple-Fanboi-types.

But the gap in price and features between Apple and Dell has shrunk so close, it’s almost a toss-up for them on which to recommend.

They go with the Dell Inspiron E1505 (Core 2 Duo) … by a slight margin.

Among budget laptops, the Apple MacBook 13-inch White (Core 2 Duo) is one of the best. It’s ideal for novice users, college students, and frequent travelers who are looking for something that’s easy on the wallet and looks absolutely fabulous. With the move to the Intel Core 2 Duos all finished, the Apple laptop line is now complete—and poised to give Windows-based laptops a real big run for their money.

Apple MacBook 13-inch White (Core 2 Duo) review by PC Magazine: Full Review

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switching from hotmail to Gmail

On By Rick McIn internet, product endorsementsLeave a comment

I’ve been wanting to get out of hotmail for years. But I won’t do it unless I can redirect all the hotmail I have now (and future email to come to that address) directly into the new software.

Looks like my time has (almost) come.

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Google quietly added a small feature to Gmail this week called Mail Fetcher. When that feature launched, Gmail became perfect.

Mail Fetcher allows users to access non-Gmail email accounts from within the Gmail interface. If you have a Yahoo email account, and a work email account, etc., you can simply access that email from within Gmail, using POP settings. Gmail will now work in a very similar way as Outlook does on the PC desktop.

This new service is being phased in and has not yet come to my Gmail account.

Every other webmail service is now inferior to Gmail. Gmail offers more storage than any other free service. They offer free POP access to Gmail from other email applications like Outlook (Yahoo and Microsoft charge for that). They offer access to other email accounts within Gmail (only Yahoo offers that). Gmail’s mobile client is killer (although not yet available for most phones). And only Gmail allows tagging of emails for categorization under multiple topics (I just wish it was a quicker feature).

I am seriously considering switching from using my desktop email client to Gmail. Since I work from multiple computers, using web mail eliminates the syncing problem. If Google implements an offline version of Gmail, in a similar way as Scrybe or via Adobe’s Apollo platform, it will become even more compelling.

Kudos to Google for finally implementing this. It’s just awesome.

Techcrunch » Blog Archive » Uh Oh, Gmail Just Got Perfect

I just switched from desktop software to Google Reader. I already use Google Calendar. A switch to Google’s Gmail would tie things together and put it all online.

internet speed – Shaw cable vs Telus

On By Rick McIn internet, product complaints, product endorsementsLeave a comment

George Novak works in cabling and computing at University of Alberta.

Turns out these speed tests are highly inaccurate. The better way to check is with a stopwatch. Upload or download a large file and see how many minutes it takes.


I am attaching my internet speed test for my University connection. Internally we’re all on 1 gig switches and have a 100+ Mb pipe to the outside world, no firewall. As you can see it shows that we’re only about 3x faster than your Shaw connection, in reality it’s so much faster that you would hardly believe it.

Capture

I think the problem is that it does not indicate the route that is being taken when the test is done, the number of hops, the physical routing etc. Unless you can always test from the front end of your ISP you will always be at the mercy of the physical path taken to whatever destination you’re testing to and from. I would say that these kinds of test tend to be rather inconclusive as to your real speed capability.

In my own personal experience, I have never experienced better throughput on a Telus connection as I have on Shaw, even though they always claim it’s faster.

Stephen Neal who works for Telus would disagree. According to him, “Telus Rules, Shaw Drools!”

It’s time for a speed test with a stopwatch.

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shop Amazon.ca, not Chapters/Indigo

On By Rick McIn books, music, product complaints, product endorsementsLeave a comment

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Amazon is the big boy in on-line retail. I love just about everything they do.

But last year I shopped Chapters / Indigo as they are Canadian and finally matched prices and service with Amazon. It’s good for Amazon to have some competition.

This year … Amazon.

Lonely Planet Australia CDN$ 25.17
Love by the Beatles (Dlx Ed) (Digi) (W/Dvd) CDN$ 23.99

Free shipping. Hassle free shopping. Great prices.

Chapters / Indigo matched Amazon — but I had to join their loyalty card program to do so.

They should know that I am loyal only to companies that don’t require loyalty cards.

Travelistic – online video

On By Rick McIn product endorsements, travelLeave a comment

Those who feel YouTube is crappy should check Travelistic. It’s by far the best interface for online video I’ve seen.

It happens to be a travel site. But the format could be used for any specialty channel.

Top ranked series include The Thirsty Traveller and the scantily dressed GetOut Girls.

For a sample, try Travelistic: Switzerland: Jungfraujoch — a tour of the cog railway to the highest train station in Europe.

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Penn Jillette is one smart dude

On By Rick McIn government, health & fitness, product endorsementsLeave a comment

Penn Jillette is an eloquent spokesman for libertarianism (people should be free to do whatever they wish with their person or property, as long as they do not infringe on the same liberty of others).

By eloquent, I should caution, I mean clear and emphatic. Penn is very profane, as well. If you don’t believe that “profanity is part of a good vocabulary”, you may be offended by the Penn and Teller Bullsh*t video series.

To see a sample — making the argument that the war on drugs is bullsh*t — click PLAY, or watch the 30min video on Google Video.

Penn & Teller - Bullsh*t - The Complete Third Season

Penn & Teller – Bullsh*t – The Complete Third Season

Ecto – blogging software

On By Rick McIn blogs, product endorsementsLeave a comment

Just testing highly regarded Ecto.

Normally I blog on-line. But Ecto allowed me to draft this post on my computer, do advanced formatting. And then send it to the internet when finished.

It’s certainly faster to stay off the internet while drafting a post.
And the formatting tools are much more powerful.

It supports drag and drop images. That’s a big improvement!

Ecto log

Announcements

Lets try inputting from iPhoto, my database of pictures. This is a thumbnail linking to the larger original.

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Looks good. I like Ecto.

Cost is US$18. Details – Ecto.

great deal on flight to Australia

On By Rick McIn product endorsements, travelLeave a comment

Qantas is heavily promoting their “Aussie AirPass” starting from US$1099 for a return flight from North America including 3 domestic flights!

I’ve been tracking best fares since I lived in New Zealand. This is an insanely good deal.

(there must be some kind of catch)

Details – Quantas Aussie AirPass

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online video quality comparison – test on your computer

On By Rick McIn miscellaneous, product complaints, product endorsementsLeave a comment

Warren sent me a page where you can compare 8 different free video platforms.

Life Goggles online video sharing quality comparison

Quality of streamed video is not good. More important to me is that it WORKS on all computers, all the time.

I normally use YouTube which streams even over some dial-up lines. Google Video is similar but with slightly inferior interface and fewer videos to choose from.

I actually first posted video to Vimeo. But it still has a weird progress bar obscuring my vision on my computer.

I expected not to like the Microsoft product — SoapBox — and didn’t. It was worst of the eight on my Mac Powerbook G4. Sound and video choppy.

Unless I find a compelling reason to switch, I’ll stick with YouTube.