Harmony 900
As I have mentioned before, we like the Harmony line of remotes, and have owned several of the models. The buttons on the Harmony 890 remote that we have been using for the past several years started to fail. Even though they don’t seem to last, the Harmony remote line contains the best universal remote controls.
I decided to get the Harmony 900
The Harmony 900 uses the same web base configuration tool as the other remotes, but unfortunately I had to create a new account for this new remote as the tool wouldn’t allow me to add the new remote to my existing account. This required me to re-add all of my devices.
The IR repeater that is included in the Harmony 900 is different than the one included in the 890. The IR repeaters include with the 890, could be attached directly to the devices to be controlled. This helped improve the reliability of the remote signal reception. The Harmony 900′s IR repeaters are meant to sit on the shelf with the component itself. This is not ideal for furnature where there isn’t a door covering the equipment. In my case, I had to disable the internal IR receiver on my Media Center PC, and use an external USB IR receiver located right next to the IR repeater.
So far the remote is working pretty well for us. My wife is pleased as well, especially since pressing the buttons actually work.
Fitbit
A while ago I heard about the Fitbit on the Major Nelson podcast. The fitbit is a wearable device that you can use to track your fitness. It syncs through your computer to upload data to the Fitbit service, where you can track your progress.
The fitbit is a multi-axis accelerometer based pedometer, but it the main draw is that it wirelessly syncs data to the service when you are in range of the base station. Since it is a two way sync, data that you have entered on the website can affect the display on the fitbit itself. For example, your height or stride length entered on the website will affect the total distance value shown on the device.
In addition to helping you track your fitness, the fitbit claims to be able track how well your sleep is. Included in the fitbit package is an wristband. To track your sleep, you put the fitbit in “sleep” mode, and then place it in the wristband. I assume that the fitbit services calculates the quality of sleep from the percentage of time that the fitbit detects motion while in “sleep” mode.
There are one thing that I think that could be improved with yncing without a computer. The computers that we use most are laptops that are normally not connected to USB devices, so these will not be useful for syncing. And the desktop computers in our house are normally turned off. Using a cell phone would be a great solution. I see a few ways that this would work.
- Have the fitbit sync with a phone over bluetooth. Fitbit could write an iPhone or Android application that would send the data to the fitbit server
- Replace the fitbit device with an iPhone or Android application, assuming that the application doesn’t decrease battery life of the phone.
i.TV
i.TV is a very cool iPhone application. i.TV shows you information on movies and TV shows. i.TV also lets you see and modify your Netflix queue (Both the disc and instant queues).
i.TV relatively recently added the ability to schedule recordings on TiVo DVRs. I have used this a few times. There is one thing that I would like to see added is the ability to set the priority of the recording request. Currently, any request made through i.TV will not be scheduled if there is any conflict.
Kodak EasyShare W1020
We bought a couple of of Kodak EasyShare W1020
picture frames for gifts. These are 10″ picture frames that can, in addition to displaying photos from memory cards, can display photos from flickr and KodakGallery. We wanted to use these frames as a way to share pictures with family members.
The initial setup of the frame was pretty straight forward. Once you turned on the frame, it detected all of the wireless networks. When you select one, and enter the password, it waits for a PC or Mac that has the Kodak software installed. When you install it, you will be able to configure various channels.
The problem that I had was getting flickr to work. The firmware that was initially installed has support for rss photos feeds. I was never able to get any of the rss feeds from my sets to work. But the built in flickr feeds worked fine.
I noticed that the frame tried to update its firmware, but the upgrade failed. There isn’t a menu option to manullay upgrade the firmware, so I just tried to power cycle it. On the next boot the firmware upgrade was successful (version from 10/2008)
links for 2007-07-24
Binary marble adding machine
Now this is cool. This is a 6-bit binary wooden adding machine counts using marbles. The video is pretty amazing. A lot of work was put into this.
[via MAKE: Blog]
iPhone Walkthrough
Apple has posted an iPhone guided tour video on their web site. I like it a lot, but I am still unsure of the usability with out any tactile feedback. Also I am concerned about the screen getting scratched. In addition to those two concerns, I don’t want to switch to AT&T for cell service.
[via The Macalope]
Crystal Weather Station
This is a cool looking weather station. The Crystal Weather Station has laser engraved 3D icons in crystal. One of the coolest things about this clock is that you can switch between temperature and clock mode by waving you hand over the clock.
[via Engadget]
links for 2007-05-04
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Reclaim some disk space while saving documentation on a compresses disk image
SNL/Steve Jobs on the iPhone
This is pretty funny:
[via TUAW]
