Are any of these new Google TV things coming out as STBs with CableCard support? I currently have my cable box with the DVR disabled; instead I use a DIY Windows Media box I built but it only records in SD. I have Boxee installed on the HTPC, too, which is awesome for local/network media and some streaming stuff, but the Netflix app on there doesn't work.
All I want is an all in one box to replace my crappy setup - replace the cable box, HTPC, media player, and DVR all at once. Actually what it sounds like I want is a Tivo that I can plug external storage into but with Google TV/Android. Sigh.....
Today's data hogs are tomorrow's average users. What do you expect when *every* new electronic device is coming out connected to something (watches, cars, refrigerators, you name it in addition to the usual standbys), carriers are pushing smartphones and advertising fast new networks and new apps? You have smart TVs and a half dozen connected set top boxes just in the living room. Netflix comes on everything. The industry is pushing always available all-you-can-consume content, then at the same time complaining that people are consuming too much. Sigh...and then you get "solutions" of tiered traffic and data caps and throttles. But what happens when the early adopters of today become the normal users? Is every person who watches Netflix streaming or downloads movies and TV from iTunes or Amazon or streams Pandora the 1 percent of data users?
Just want to take issue with #1 - I have an aging Windows Media Center box I put together years ago with 300GB dedicated to PVR storage. At SD quality I'm bumping against the limit all the time. Sure, I have a bunch of stuff recorded that I haven't got around to watching yet but isn't that the point? I would want at least 500GB available if I was recording in HD.
I don't see the want for PVRs to go away anytime soon as long as you still can't get everything on streaming when you want it. Streaming doesn't let me pause live TV, nor does it let me jump into a show half-way through it's live broadcast. If I'm lucky and if the network gods bless me then maybe I might be able to watch sometime streaming shortly after it initially airs. Maybe by the time the next season comes out I can catch it on Netflix.
I really wish we'd see a GoogleTV/Boxee/something-or-other standalone box that had CableCard support, external/network storage support, with both media center and PVR capabilities.
It's actually been awhile since I've installed or used OpenOffice...I've been using Google Docs myself mostly and for family they've all been running old copies of OpenOffice forever. I'd originally dismissed LibreOffice as a cumbersome-named knockoff and OO was working for me so I just ignored it. My wife does have some complaints she's run into with OO; is LO more actively maintained, faster/more efficient, or have imrpoved features over OO now? Is it worth changing over or upgrading?
Ya know what I'd really like - instead of either of these packages chasing MS Office 2003, I'd like to see something like what Firefox (and now Chrome) did to the browser product space, but for office productivity suites. Where's my small, lightweight, and fast word processor, spreadsheet app, or presentation software that is straightforward to get into but also has the pro features I might need, too. But not buried under tons of menus, nor ribbonized. Where's the innovation that we didn't know we even needed? Maybe Apple's office software does some of that, but I've never used it. But I always remembered OpenOffice feeling very bulky and dated. It worked, was better than shelling out $200 for MS Office, but didn't really improve on what it was replacing.
Third, well, the fact you have to use your phone is a major drawback. iTunes sucks, but at least you can download your app on your PC first then sync it over rather than have to leave your phone alone while it downloads hundreds of megabytes of apps. Many apps use SD cards (and full SD permissions) to get around this by having a downloader app go and download all the game assets and such.
Ugh, completely wrong. I'd much rather go to market.android.com from *any* computer, log into my google account and I can push whatever apps I want to my phone directly from there. It Just Works. Automatically and in this new "cloud" thing that is all the rage since Apple touted it. Why would I ever want to be forced to use my PC tied to a local application install to manage my phone?
I was under the impression that Google Wallet with NFC wasn't available on any US phone aside from maybe the Nexus S on Sprint? You'll still be able to hack on Wallet to a VZW Nexus just like you'll have to hack it on to any other unsupported phone with NFC. Honestly though I would expect eventually this year we'll see Wallet available in the Market to any compatible phone.
The problem with Facetime is you're locked in to Apple products. I really with Google would push Google Talk with video chat or Google+ Messenger via mobile a lot more. The tech is there and it works, across platforms, but hardly anyone knows about it it seems.
Otherwise I've found that for pretty much any mainstream app there's parity between the iOS and Android phone apps. Tablets may be a different story but I'm sure that'll get closer, too.
That's the whole point - with streaming options I mostly have to do work in order to watch what I want to watch. What a lot of the pundits and "next new thing" guys forget is maybe, just maybe, people still *do* want that passive experience, too. Sometimes I *do* just want to flip on, channel surf, and settle on whatever I might find. Sometimes I want background programming while I'm doing something else where I don't have to really pay attention. Sometimes I want reruns that I've seen before, but without having to actively pause if I go to the kitchen, or pay attention if I haven't seen it before. OK, make something like stumbleupon for web video, but make it work.
It may be 2011 I'm betting it's because the DVR GUI is at least as old as 2005. I've had the same model of shitty Motorola digital cable box for both Comcast and now a local cable company, and it's the exact same interface, style, and GUI mechanics as when we signed up in 2005. And it seemed dated then.
I might argue that the Google/Motorola partnership could make inroads to the cablebox problem with some sort of slick GoogleTV DVR thing, but you still have to rely on the cable companies to update their hardware. Why would they do that if their 10 year old digital boxes are still working and people can't get an alternative?
I can't look it up for specifics right now but your list looks like it would probably match pretty close for the US, too. I'm pretty sure we have all of Family Guy available, though, or at least it was awhile back. But that's one of the other joys of Netflix streaming - just because something is there at one point doesn't mean it'll be there the next time you look. But all in all, yeah - Netflix rarely has but a few recent hits, and rarely has 5+ year old any first runs. Oh, it'll have the 5 sequels that went straight to video, but good luck having the actual real movie available.
Maybe they should instead focus on fixing their piece of crap existing mobile apps first. I can only really speak to the Android app although I've read in the past that the iPhone version has lots of complaints, too. To say the Android Facebook app is completely awful in every way is putting it too nicely. A few revisions back they did away with the native feel altogether; now the feed appears to be some sort of embedded web view into the mobile website. It is slow to scroll, doesn't always register clicks correctly (because you're clicking on hyperlinks instead of click areas), and will randomly change at Facebook's whim. There's a weird refresh/scrolling glitch where you scroll down and suddenly the "updating" graphic shows at the top and the screen clips and jumps. Other times there's a refresh bug where it will just constantly refresh - you'll scroll down through the feed and it will jump to the top repeatedly until you exit out and back in.
There are UI inconsistencies all over the place. There's the main newsfeed which is the crappy web view. Going to a profile brings up the old native UI. Sometimes clicking through something (still within the Facebook realm) drops you to the mobile site instead. Tagging people works sometimes, sometimes it doesn't. It's always been slow in general - half the time images won't load correctly, or start loading and then stop, and they are always slow to work with anyway. It's a mess.
I really just want to be able to follow the newsfeed in a fast reliable manner and have the same basic features as the main site. But in a native app - HTML5 may be the future but it doesn't give the same experience as the native UIs. As big as Facebook is and I assume a lot of people use their mobile apps, but it completely falls down compared to what Google has done with their Google+ app. I think the mobile app space will be the downfall of Facebook - the harder it becomes to use their mobile apps the less I'm likely to use it and instead focus on other social networks.
On top of that probably 80% of the stuff I buy isn't available locally anyway. Sure, Best Buy or Walmart might have something close to what I'm looking for, but at least with tech stuff I usually am looking for a specific model or something.
Where can I sign up for that? Anecdotal-ly I think quite a lot of people begrudgingly do their jobs because it provides money to pay the bills, not because they'd do it for free.
I've left a couple companies, one of them twice, where I enjoyed working with the people was immediately around but due to acquisitions or change in corporate management I felt the overall company wasn't a good fit anymore. In all of these cases, and even now when I'm looking at what is out there, I ask myself a simple question: are they loyal to me? Unless it's a small company that is still small I have no doubts that they would get rid of me at any point it made business sense. So why should I not look out for #1, too? Plus, there's the bus situation. As much as we'd like to think we're indispensable, if something were to happen to someone things will be a mess for awhile but everyone left will find a way to make it work. If it's a better deal for me then business will go on.
I admit, that part is cool. And I *can* listen to entire albums on there. But it seems very limited unless I want to pay, and I don't want to pay. I can't use it on my work PC (two strikes against since FB is blocked along with no streaming allowed!) and there's not a mobile free version. I could see it as a testing ground for new albums but if I really like the music then I'll purchase that, and I still have to search about specific artists or songs to "discover" anything.
I've checked out Spotify and still don't get it. What does Spotify offer me that a million other streaming services don't already provide, for free? If I'm looking for random background streaming music that I can use for music discovery or just don't want to think about making a playlist I can use Pandora or Shoutcast or any other Internet radio stream. If I want to listen to a song and have it available on any device then I want to "own" it so I can buy that from Amazon or iTunes or rip the CD.
Spotify just doesn't make sense. For the free version I have crappier ads than the other streaming services. I can't use it on a mobile device. And I have to *work* to think of songs I want to hear and build playlists. And theres a number of things that just aren't there unless it's a Top 40 song or album. Why do I want to use Spotify?
I used to use Thunderbird with Lightning....waaayyyyy back. Honestly I think the non-Microsoft collaborative calendaring and email solution is going to be won by web technologies like Google Apps, not by something like Thunderbird. But way back I remember using something called Chandler (http://chandlerproject.org/) which I thought had a much better task and calendaring solution than Lightning. I wondered why no one had tried merging Thunderbird and Chandler into a single Outlook competitor.
Additionally, where does Starz go otherwise? I understand them wanting more money, sure, who doesn't? But completely walking away? What am I missing, because the way I see it with Netflix they would get X amount of additional revenue, and without Netflix they get 0 amount of additional revenue.
This. I could probably convince a number of friends and family to check it out but they don't want to sign up for a gmail.com specific account when they already have Google Apps accounts. If they added profiles to Google Apps accounts (or whatever is holding this back) and API features so I can cross-post (a la the Twitter app on Facebook) then I'd be set. The mobile app for G+ is light years better than Facebook's, and I especially like the "nearby" stream and the instant upload features. But as it is now, G+ is mainly yet another social network I jump skim through in the morning to see if there's anything interesting but rarely participate because no one I know personally is on there.
Sort of a tangent, but there was an article awhile back about how Google was going to move a large number of their own users to using their Chromebook OS 100%. It made me wonder - if it's similar to using the Chrome browser what kind of development would they be doing and how? I've actually gotten used to the developer tools in Chrome...is there a solid Chrome-based or web-based IDE that's out there or being worked on?
This. I "host" email on Google Apps accounts for friends and family. Granted it's the free version but all the same, they aren't able to create Google profiles attached to the hosted accounts. They can make account profiles separate from the Google Apps domain accounts, but then they'll have to manage multiple accounts and it's a mess. Multiple people have said when I've sent invites that they don't want to mess with creating a new one, especially if *eventually* Google will allow them to use it with their existing Apps account. As soon as they turn that on I'll get a number of additional friends and family on there, but until then I'm stuck.
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Are any of these new Google TV things coming out as STBs with CableCard support? I currently have my cable box with the DVR disabled; instead I use a DIY Windows Media box I built but it only records in SD. I have Boxee installed on the HTPC, too, which is awesome for local/network media and some streaming stuff, but the Netflix app on there doesn't work.
All I want is an all in one box to replace my crappy setup - replace the cable box, HTPC, media player, and DVR all at once. Actually what it sounds like I want is a Tivo that I can plug external storage into but with Google TV/Android. Sigh.....
Today's data hogs are tomorrow's average users. What do you expect when *every* new electronic device is coming out connected to something (watches, cars, refrigerators, you name it in addition to the usual standbys), carriers are pushing smartphones and advertising fast new networks and new apps? You have smart TVs and a half dozen connected set top boxes just in the living room. Netflix comes on everything. The industry is pushing always available all-you-can-consume content, then at the same time complaining that people are consuming too much. Sigh...and then you get "solutions" of tiered traffic and data caps and throttles. But what happens when the early adopters of today become the normal users? Is every person who watches Netflix streaming or downloads movies and TV from iTunes or Amazon or streams Pandora the 1 percent of data users?
Just want to take issue with #1 - I have an aging Windows Media Center box I put together years ago with 300GB dedicated to PVR storage. At SD quality I'm bumping against the limit all the time. Sure, I have a bunch of stuff recorded that I haven't got around to watching yet but isn't that the point? I would want at least 500GB available if I was recording in HD.
I don't see the want for PVRs to go away anytime soon as long as you still can't get everything on streaming when you want it. Streaming doesn't let me pause live TV, nor does it let me jump into a show half-way through it's live broadcast. If I'm lucky and if the network gods bless me then maybe I might be able to watch sometime streaming shortly after it initially airs. Maybe by the time the next season comes out I can catch it on Netflix.
I really wish we'd see a GoogleTV/Boxee/something-or-other standalone box that had CableCard support, external/network storage support, with both media center and PVR capabilities.
It's actually been awhile since I've installed or used OpenOffice...I've been using Google Docs myself mostly and for family they've all been running old copies of OpenOffice forever. I'd originally dismissed LibreOffice as a cumbersome-named knockoff and OO was working for me so I just ignored it. My wife does have some complaints she's run into with OO; is LO more actively maintained, faster/more efficient, or have imrpoved features over OO now? Is it worth changing over or upgrading?
Ya know what I'd really like - instead of either of these packages chasing MS Office 2003, I'd like to see something like what Firefox (and now Chrome) did to the browser product space, but for office productivity suites. Where's my small, lightweight, and fast word processor, spreadsheet app, or presentation software that is straightforward to get into but also has the pro features I might need, too. But not buried under tons of menus, nor ribbonized. Where's the innovation that we didn't know we even needed? Maybe Apple's office software does some of that, but I've never used it. But I always remembered OpenOffice feeling very bulky and dated. It worked, was better than shelling out $200 for MS Office, but didn't really improve on what it was replacing.
Third, well, the fact you have to use your phone is a major drawback. iTunes sucks, but at least you can download your app on your PC first then sync it over rather than have to leave your phone alone while it downloads hundreds of megabytes of apps. Many apps use SD cards (and full SD permissions) to get around this by having a downloader app go and download all the game assets and such.
Ugh, completely wrong. I'd much rather go to market.android.com from *any* computer, log into my google account and I can push whatever apps I want to my phone directly from there. It Just Works. Automatically and in this new "cloud" thing that is all the rage since Apple touted it. Why would I ever want to be forced to use my PC tied to a local application install to manage my phone?
I was under the impression that Google Wallet with NFC wasn't available on any US phone aside from maybe the Nexus S on Sprint? You'll still be able to hack on Wallet to a VZW Nexus just like you'll have to hack it on to any other unsupported phone with NFC. Honestly though I would expect eventually this year we'll see Wallet available in the Market to any compatible phone.
If you're not doing anything wrong you don't have anything to worry about!
Hah I envision a feed like in the movie Speed. Look! His hand jumped back across the keyboard suddenly!
The problem with Facetime is you're locked in to Apple products. I really with Google would push Google Talk with video chat or Google+ Messenger via mobile a lot more. The tech is there and it works, across platforms, but hardly anyone knows about it it seems.
Otherwise I've found that for pretty much any mainstream app there's parity between the iOS and Android phone apps. Tablets may be a different story but I'm sure that'll get closer, too.
That's the whole point - with streaming options I mostly have to do work in order to watch what I want to watch. What a lot of the pundits and "next new thing" guys forget is maybe, just maybe, people still *do* want that passive experience, too. Sometimes I *do* just want to flip on, channel surf, and settle on whatever I might find. Sometimes I want background programming while I'm doing something else where I don't have to really pay attention. Sometimes I want reruns that I've seen before, but without having to actively pause if I go to the kitchen, or pay attention if I haven't seen it before. OK, make something like stumbleupon for web video, but make it work.
It may be 2011 I'm betting it's because the DVR GUI is at least as old as 2005. I've had the same model of shitty Motorola digital cable box for both Comcast and now a local cable company, and it's the exact same interface, style, and GUI mechanics as when we signed up in 2005. And it seemed dated then.
I might argue that the Google/Motorola partnership could make inroads to the cablebox problem with some sort of slick GoogleTV DVR thing, but you still have to rely on the cable companies to update their hardware. Why would they do that if their 10 year old digital boxes are still working and people can't get an alternative?
I can't look it up for specifics right now but your list looks like it would probably match pretty close for the US, too. I'm pretty sure we have all of Family Guy available, though, or at least it was awhile back. But that's one of the other joys of Netflix streaming - just because something is there at one point doesn't mean it'll be there the next time you look. But all in all, yeah - Netflix rarely has but a few recent hits, and rarely has 5+ year old any first runs. Oh, it'll have the 5 sequels that went straight to video, but good luck having the actual real movie available.
Maybe they should instead focus on fixing their piece of crap existing mobile apps first. I can only really speak to the Android app although I've read in the past that the iPhone version has lots of complaints, too. To say the Android Facebook app is completely awful in every way is putting it too nicely. A few revisions back they did away with the native feel altogether; now the feed appears to be some sort of embedded web view into the mobile website. It is slow to scroll, doesn't always register clicks correctly (because you're clicking on hyperlinks instead of click areas), and will randomly change at Facebook's whim. There's a weird refresh/scrolling glitch where you scroll down and suddenly the "updating" graphic shows at the top and the screen clips and jumps. Other times there's a refresh bug where it will just constantly refresh - you'll scroll down through the feed and it will jump to the top repeatedly until you exit out and back in.
There are UI inconsistencies all over the place. There's the main newsfeed which is the crappy web view. Going to a profile brings up the old native UI. Sometimes clicking through something (still within the Facebook realm) drops you to the mobile site instead. Tagging people works sometimes, sometimes it doesn't. It's always been slow in general - half the time images won't load correctly, or start loading and then stop, and they are always slow to work with anyway. It's a mess.
I really just want to be able to follow the newsfeed in a fast reliable manner and have the same basic features as the main site. But in a native app - HTML5 may be the future but it doesn't give the same experience as the native UIs. As big as Facebook is and I assume a lot of people use their mobile apps, but it completely falls down compared to what Google has done with their Google+ app. I think the mobile app space will be the downfall of Facebook - the harder it becomes to use their mobile apps the less I'm likely to use it and instead focus on other social networks.
On top of that probably 80% of the stuff I buy isn't available locally anyway. Sure, Best Buy or Walmart might have something close to what I'm looking for, but at least with tech stuff I usually am looking for a specific model or something.
Where can I sign up for that? Anecdotal-ly I think quite a lot of people begrudgingly do their jobs because it provides money to pay the bills, not because they'd do it for free.
More and more it sounds like whiners don't want there to be a situation where some parties are faster and better than others.
I've left a couple companies, one of them twice, where I enjoyed working with the people was immediately around but due to acquisitions or change in corporate management I felt the overall company wasn't a good fit anymore. In all of these cases, and even now when I'm looking at what is out there, I ask myself a simple question: are they loyal to me? Unless it's a small company that is still small I have no doubts that they would get rid of me at any point it made business sense. So why should I not look out for #1, too? Plus, there's the bus situation. As much as we'd like to think we're indispensable, if something were to happen to someone things will be a mess for awhile but everyone left will find a way to make it work. If it's a better deal for me then business will go on.
I admit, that part is cool. And I *can* listen to entire albums on there. But it seems very limited unless I want to pay, and I don't want to pay. I can't use it on my work PC (two strikes against since FB is blocked along with no streaming allowed!) and there's not a mobile free version. I could see it as a testing ground for new albums but if I really like the music then I'll purchase that, and I still have to search about specific artists or songs to "discover" anything.
I've checked out Spotify and still don't get it. What does Spotify offer me that a million other streaming services don't already provide, for free? If I'm looking for random background streaming music that I can use for music discovery or just don't want to think about making a playlist I can use Pandora or Shoutcast or any other Internet radio stream. If I want to listen to a song and have it available on any device then I want to "own" it so I can buy that from Amazon or iTunes or rip the CD.
Spotify just doesn't make sense. For the free version I have crappier ads than the other streaming services. I can't use it on a mobile device. And I have to *work* to think of songs I want to hear and build playlists. And theres a number of things that just aren't there unless it's a Top 40 song or album. Why do I want to use Spotify?
I used to use Thunderbird with Lightning....waaayyyyy back. Honestly I think the non-Microsoft collaborative calendaring and email solution is going to be won by web technologies like Google Apps, not by something like Thunderbird. But way back I remember using something called Chandler (http://chandlerproject.org/) which I thought had a much better task and calendaring solution than Lightning. I wondered why no one had tried merging Thunderbird and Chandler into a single Outlook competitor.
Additionally, where does Starz go otherwise? I understand them wanting more money, sure, who doesn't? But completely walking away? What am I missing, because the way I see it with Netflix they would get X amount of additional revenue, and without Netflix they get 0 amount of additional revenue.
This. I could probably convince a number of friends and family to check it out but they don't want to sign up for a gmail.com specific account when they already have Google Apps accounts. If they added profiles to Google Apps accounts (or whatever is holding this back) and API features so I can cross-post (a la the Twitter app on Facebook) then I'd be set. The mobile app for G+ is light years better than Facebook's, and I especially like the "nearby" stream and the instant upload features. But as it is now, G+ is mainly yet another social network I jump skim through in the morning to see if there's anything interesting but rarely participate because no one I know personally is on there.
I'd be OK if Google somehow ended up acquiring Flickr...
Sort of a tangent, but there was an article awhile back about how Google was going to move a large number of their own users to using their Chromebook OS 100%. It made me wonder - if it's similar to using the Chrome browser what kind of development would they be doing and how? I've actually gotten used to the developer tools in Chrome...is there a solid Chrome-based or web-based IDE that's out there or being worked on?
This. I "host" email on Google Apps accounts for friends and family. Granted it's the free version but all the same, they aren't able to create Google profiles attached to the hosted accounts. They can make account profiles separate from the Google Apps domain accounts, but then they'll have to manage multiple accounts and it's a mess. Multiple people have said when I've sent invites that they don't want to mess with creating a new one, especially if *eventually* Google will allow them to use it with their existing Apps account. As soon as they turn that on I'll get a number of additional friends and family on there, but until then I'm stuck.