Saturday, February 12, 2011

Roku XD|S

I have been interested in streaming content for a while. I have installed PlayOn and the tubeCore Windows Media Center plugin to view TV content. This is not an ideal experience.

With tubeCore, the user interface to browse the list of shows and episodes is pretty simple. For example, the meta data about the episodes is not shown. Also, I was never able to get reliable streaming though PlayOn and tubeCore.  Often, I would need to try to play a stream twice in order for it to play successfully.

The Roku XD|S looked like it would be a perfect way to watch content that is available on-line.  With the Roku, you have easy access to Netflix streaming, Amazon Video On Demand, Hulu and other content.  I like the hardware, as it is very quiet, and is small enough for me to use on any of our TVs.

The setup was pretty painless, and I was up and running with several of the content providers within 30 minutes of starting the setup process.  Where the content partners provided HD content, the picture quality was good.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Glympse

A while ago, I wrote about On My Way.  This application allowed you to share your location, and that person could see this location updated in real-time.  That application is not available anymore.

Glympse is a new free application that allows you to do the same thing, but it has some interesting features:

  • Ability to set a time limit, where sharing of your location is automatically stopped.

  • Ability to mark recipients as "favorites", to make it easier to initiate sharing

  • Ability to set a destination, where sharing will automatically be stopped when you reach that location.


 

Multiple Chrome profiles on Mac OS X

Sometimes I want to use two different Google Chrome instances, with different sets of Chrome extensions.

This page has instructions for setting this up on Mac OS X

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...