Sunday, October 24, 2010

PlayOn on Roku

I have mentioned PlayOn before, as the way that we are getting a lot of our television content.  We use PlayOn to view content from Hulu and SyFy channel. Since PlayOn is a UPnP server , we are able to play this content on our Xbox or on our Media Center PC.

It looks like Roku is getting access to PlayOn content.  The addition of the content that Roku already had, the addition of  PlayOn, makes Roku a credible solution for cancelling cable or satellite service.

I am not sure if once you set the Roku up to access PlayOn content, if you need to leave the PC running to access the content.

my6sense

I subscribe to a lot of content feeds.  I have over 700 subscribed feeds in Google Reader, and follow about 500 people in Twitter (I mainly use twitter to find interesting content).  I has gotten hard for me to sift through the content feed to find things that I am interested in.  my6sense is an interesting app/web service to read content.  It's goal it to make content that is relevant for you easier to find.  So far, I am impressed with how well it presents content that I am interested in.

When you first install the application, you either log into your my6sense account.  Then you can associate your Twitter, Google Buzz, and Facebook accounts with the application.  In addition to the social network feeds, you can also your Google Reader subscriptions into the applicaiton.  At that point, you are able to view the content from those various feeds, like any feed reader.

As you start to read & interact with the content, my6sense starts to build up an idea of what interests you.  It looks like the application take several things into account when determining what you are interested in:

  • Which articles you read vs which ones you skip over

  • Which ones you share with others.  (Since my6sense is a Twitter, Google Buzz, and Facebook client, you can share directly from the application.

  • Since the my6sense android application implements the ACTION_SEND intent, for the various social network services, I assume that sharing content though my6sense from other applications will affect my "interests".


Sunday, October 17, 2010

Uninstalled SqueezeCenter from Windows Home Server

A while ago Logitech released a version of SqueezeCenter for Windows Home Server.  It was nice to install it on our server, and not have to worry about keeping another computer running, just for access to our music.  I have been having a problem with the installation though.  If the server is restarted, the SqueezeCenter is not able to successfully startup.  It appeared that the SqueezeSQL service wasn't starting fast enough so SqueezeCenter service wasn't able to connect to the database.

Since we are using Window Media Center, we have a faster computer that is always running, that can be used to run the SqueezeCenter software. The music is still on the server, so there is more network traffic when playing local content, but things are working pretty well.

Seamless Local Control: Integrating WeatherFlow with Home Assistant Across VLANs

I've been pleased with my Home Assistant setup for some time now. One of my main focuses has been achieving local control. This ensures...