A spy in the G.O.P.

Last night I went to the Republican caucus in Boulder county, Colorado. I've stayed Republican for the last few years mainly so I could vote in this year’s primaries, a decision I regretted as I headed towards the Chamber of Boredom.

I walked up at 7 p.m. for the 7 p.m. start time, and groaning at the 7 to 9 p.m. sign out front, but apparently I was supposed to show up early for registration. I walked up to the table and the lady said she had already closed the envelope for my precinct...which, though true, didn't mean the envelope was sealed, and she was nice enough to let me register anyway instead of having to stay late to do it. This relieved me as I had no intention of staying for the whole caucus. So I filled out my name, address, phone number (holy crap was that done with a heavy heart, though I can't wait to tell the first G.O.P. caller this year that if they don't stop calling me, I'm voting for Barack Obama), then my voter number. Oh, that's odd. What's my voter number? No problem, she said, it's on this sheet, though the A-K printout actually ended at F. I think I was supposed to take care of it afterwards. I had no motivation to, as she also gave me the official "vote for president" card, which was all I came for. I immediately circled Mitt Romney and walked into the high school auditorium.

Lots of people were gathered by the door, but I figured I could just take a seat on the wings...the room, however, was pretty full, and I took a seat in the penultimate row in the back right. After a not-so-quick rundown of the rules, each candidate could have two people speak for him. The six speakers went in random order: but it was two each for Newt, Paul, and Romney, and none at all for Santorum. Ron Paul's supporters boiled down, of course, to "Our guy's a real candidate, I swear." The Newt Gingrich people, again, expectedly, scared the living crap out of me: one said he wanted not a Boy Scout in Chief, but a Commander in Chief. Guess the G.O.P. isn't even going to pretend to be the family values party anymore, I noted dutifully. The other said the Founders went against the British without accepting the likely calculated outcome; we should do the same and vote for Newt. He talked about Newt going against a vague group of enemies he counted as the "most demonic" in American history. I think he meant The Big O's administration, but demonic? Really? We want a guy, he argued, with the "horsepower between the ears" to stand against Obama. I assume the horsepower comment was not a direct quote from the West Georgia tenure committee.

The Mitt supporters were a little different. The first, like the other four, was a male, and he spoke to Mitt's successful experience turning around a corrupt Olympic host and his success in other business ventures, like at investment firms named for Batman villains. He also said Romney would restore dignity to the White House, (wait a beat), which has been missing for the last three years. I honestly don’t know what he meant. The second was a woman, who started off by saying that she had known Romney since 1985 and that we might not know that Romney, in 1995, along with Utah senator Orrin Hatch, had...and at this point, I immediately filled in her backstory for myself, that clearly she was Mormon, and Romney had been her stake president, and that he is, in fact, a good man, right? But she talked about how Romney and the senator had helped her adopt her kid from China. Then she said she wanted to speak to what she called Romney's diversification, and that people expect him to be Mormon-centric, but that he and Hatch, both Mormon, had gone out of their way to help her, even though she's Jewish. And then she said she helped on the Salt Lake Olympic Committee when Romney asked, and how she felt she had to after all he'd done for her family. And, oh yeah, at the end, just as an aside, she mentioned when her mother was dying right before her daughter was born in China, Mitt Romney flew them out there. Okay, that was just awesome. The coolest, most personal moment of the night.

We broke up into precincts and, after we picked some precinct officials, tallied our presidential votes. I was pleased when Romney won (12 to Gingrich’s 6 to Santorum’s 9 to Paul’s 2), then later carried the whole school. We then picked some more volunteers/election judges/paying delegates, etc., in a drawn-out war of attrition.

Finally, we closed with my favorite part of any caucus...the resolutions! Thankfully, I got my hands on a printed copy this time. They were a little less nutty, but still pretty fun. Such as:

Resolution 1:

Whereas Obamacare represents the most ambitious overreach ever of the government into the lives of ordinary citizens, and

-actually, let's just stop there. Drop the ever. And most ambitious overreach? Beats Prohibition? Slavery? Or is citizens our weasel word of the day? Anyway, it ended with the idea that Obamacare must be repealed...if there's anything we need to make sure the GOP emphasizes more, it's Obamacare.

Resolution 3, which ends:

Be it resolved that the Boulder County Republicans Support an Amendment to the Constitution which requires that the budget be balanced annually such that a deficit budget cannot be approved; Secondly, we believe that the deficit should be addressed by spending reductions rather than by tax increases, and a three-fifths supermajority vote of both Houses of Congress be required for any tax increases.

The balanced budget thing sounds awesome unless you ever accidentally crack open a freshman Econ textbook; I was one of few in my precinct to have made this mistake. Secondly, I get it, you think the government is too big, quit beating me over the head with it, and third, taxes are some special law that require a more onerous burden to change in one direction but not the other? Brilliant.

Res. 4, ban bailouts, should've run that one by W.;

Res. 5 on voter ID:

Whereas Photo Identification is not required in the State of Colorado for any registered voter; and
Whereas producing a photo ID is a normal act in everyday commerce; and

...wait, where are you guys shopping that you have to show a photo ID to buy stuff? I have no real reason to be against this, other than I'm not sure what it's code for; it's just that, on my numbered list of political priorities, this occupies the spot right next to Avogadro's number.

Res. 8 and 9 were awfully similar, both on Second Amendment rights, and equally annoying as I don’t care for guns; however, I loved 8's line:

Whereas an armed citizenry correlates generally with low crime rates; therefore

because it sounded oh-so-scientific.

Then we got the last two, which weren't prescreened and therefore weren't printed. The first involved being pro-life, which is fine with me but sort of random, and the second was about United Nations Agenda 21, which was referred to as socialistic and communistic and discussed in terms of extreme environmentalism and as a threat to national sovereignty, but which I was the only precinct member (a precinct in which 29 voted for a presidential candidate) to vote against as fear tactics get old after a while. The U.N.’s gonna make us change? Aren’t we their Enforcement Division?

Then I came home and saw how well the comeback kid, Rick Santorum, is doing, and frankly, it pissed me off. I think most Mormons have an overdeveloped persecution complex, but in this case I think it fits. Other than not wanting to vote for a Mormon, why would anyone support Sanitarium over Governor Romney?  He was that memorable in his Senate terms? Is it his wealth of private sector experience? Give me a friggin' break. I know the G.O.P. is not the party of tolerance, but it still infuriates me. And it came as a surprise, too, except in Missouri, where Santorum surged after endorsing Governor Boggs' re-election campaign.

Earlier in the night, in an effort to rouse volunteers, one of the women in charge told us if we're okay with Obama, to go ahead and sit on our thumbs. If Santorum's the candidate?

Gladly.

Amazon Kindle review (2011)

 

Note: This review is of the $79, ad-supported, non-touch device named simply “Kindle”, as the Kindle 2 and 3 / Keyboard once were before it.

The new Amazon Kindle is a superb device, boiling the essence of the Kindle product line into a simpler, smaller package than any that came before it, and working so well it renders its compromises meaningless almost instantly.

This Kindle is the latest in a line of Amazon’s dedicated e-readers, which are built (save for the DX) around six-inch e-ink screens for impressive legibility and battery stamina. Each has featured wireless networking, eschewing the need for a PC and allowing book downloads directly to it. Yet the Kindle plays well with other devices, allowing its books to be shopped for (and pushed from) computers and smartphones, as well as syncing page locations from the device and back with the various Kindle apps on smartphones, tablets, computers, and, blessedly, the Web (read.amazon.com).

With each revision, the Kindle brings something minor-sounding, but important, to the table. The second Kindle promised faster page turns. The third Kindle brought a higher-contrast screen (sometimes called Pearl) that makes a world of difference, particularly in less-than-ideally lit environments. (I’d been craving a 3 for a while, just on that screen alone.) It also allowed for superior one-handed operation, with back-and-forward page buttons on both sides of the screen and a lighter weight and smaller chassis.

The latest Kindle continues the trend, shedding the keyboard (sometimes thought superfluous), dropping size and weight, and discarding even the option of 3G networking, depending alone, instead, on Wi-Fi.

In fact, in going from my Kindle 2, I gave up 3G, a keyboard, speakers and, according to some, my dignity, now that I have ads directly on the device. Here’s why those compromises were worth it for me:

3G: The Kindle’s ability to hook up to cell-phone networks is cool. You can buy a book from anywhere, they say, and have it downloaded in 60 seconds. Honestly, I might’ve thought my Kindle was broken if a purchase had ever taken sixty seconds to get to me; I can’t say, because they were always much faster. Also, if you’re using Kindle apps, it can sync up your latest location all the time, so you can always pick up on your phone or whatever. This is all cool. (And it’s easier to set up for the tech-phobic, since it’s connected out of the box.)

However, in a year with the Kindle 2, I’ve already built a backlog of books. If I run out, I’m almost always in Wi-Fi range, and it’s easy to plan ahead if I need to buy a new one. Also, I don’t care about the phone apps anymore, because this thing is so light and the screen so nice that I’ll take it everywhere. (It uses a similar screen to the Kindle 3, now called the Kindle Keyboard on Amazon.com; I wouldn’t be surprised if they are the same. Look at it below.)

Keyboard: I don’t take notes in paper books or electronic ones. I do, however, love the ability to search through my books I’ve read for favorite passages using the quick search built into Kindles. (It takes just a few seconds to return a sorted list of every time a word or phrase appears in a book.)

So this new Kindle doesn’t have a keyboard, per se, but rather a pop-up onscreen keyboard that you navigate with the directional button below the screen. Due to the screen’s improved refresh rate, the keyboard is not that horrible to use, and the rest of the time I get to enjoy the benefits of a smaller, lighter device. It’s an easy trade-off.

Speakers: I used my speakers all the time, if only to demonstrate to people that my Kindle can, in fact, play music. (I kept an MP3 copy of Them Crooked Vultures on it for just such occasions.) That’s because most people see it and think it’s some kind of conventional tablet. More fittingly, the text-to-speech capability can also read most books aloud to you. The speakers were louder and sounded better than you’d expect. I just pretty much never used them. This Kindle doesn’t have a headphone jack, either, so it can’t play audio at all.

Ads: Ah, the kicker: I don’t really own this thing because Amazon will send me a string of ads forever and ever. (For $109, you can buy this device sans the ads.) It’s true, I will get a lot of ads, and I can’t pay the $30 later to get rid of them, which I think is lame. [EDIT: Actually, you can do exactly that.]

That said, there are no ads in your books. They appear on the lock screen (see the first picture above) and on the bottom of your list of books when viewed on the device. (That smaller ad at the bottom corresponds to whatever ad was on your lock screen last.) See below:

I found the lock screen ads completely unobjectionable and the one at the bottom of my reading list relatively distracting. (That Amazon one is probably the most understated that I’ve seen.) But you really don’t see it that often.

Some people take a strong, principled stand against ads in their reading; I just hope they never flip through the last few pages of any of their paperbacks. I had another, more personal reason for giving the ads a shot, which I won’t get into now, but they’re fine. Not sure I’d buy the ad-supported version as a gift for a loved one, but I found it fine for personal use.

So what else am I missing on this Kindle? Well, it has only 2 gigs of storage, except that’s 1,400 books, and I’ll never need more. Its battery life is listed at a mere month compared to the two months of the new Kindle Touch. I don’t even think I’ll get a month out of it but a week is plenty for my standards. (My Kindle 2 got me maybe two days if I read a lot; I’ve read a lot the last couple days and I’m not even down a quarter yet.)

And it doesn’t have a touch screen. Everyone who picked up my Kindle 2 thought it was a touch screen, and many were disappointed when it wasn’t. (Which is weird, considering the Kindle 2 has 52 buttons on its face.) Okay, first off: touch technology has made people idiots. The reason touch is such a great feature on, say, an iPhone, is not because touch is an inherently superior way to control things, but because getting rid of physical keys and having a bigger screen allows for vast improvement in certain uses, like video playback and Web browsing. However, some people buy touch screen feature phones and find they don’t do anything better than their last phone, which just had buttons.

And anyway, I don’t want to touch/leave fingerprints on a screen I’m reading from. My laziness prefers the side-mounted page-turning buttons to having to reach all the way to the screen. Further, the device is so light and the bezel so small that sometimes I put a thumb on the screen to grip it, and I’m glad it doesn’t turn the page when I do so. That said, the touch is said to improve the usability/speed of the onscreen keyboard.

Oh, and this Kindle doesn’t come with a charger, just a USB cable to charge off your computer. This is like how iPods stopped coming with wall chargers after a few years. It’s a little annoying, though it’s a standard micro-USB port on the device and USB cable, so it may well work with other chargers you have already, or you can buy a charger from Amazon for $9.99.

Despite all this: using the thing is a breath of fresh air. Why can’t everything work this well? You think you’re going to regret getting the cheaper model, but Amazon did a very commendable thing and made their low-end product a joy to use. It’s got a beautiful screen, amazing battery life, and convenient, comfortable dimensions. Plus it still has those nice Kindle touches, like the ability to arrow over to a word and see its definition in a popup, without ever leaving the page.

If you’re thinking of getting a Kindle now, and can live with the trade-offs, my advice would be: go for it.

Samsung Captivate review

Back in February, I met a stranger at a McDonald's in a Wal-Mart for my first Craigslist purchase, completing my transition to manhood.

Only technology is worth such a dangerous risk to life and limb, and at first I was underwhelmed with my purchase: the Samsung Captivate, an Android smartphone for AT&T.

As time has passed, I've found myself liking the Captivate more and more. But the key question remained: can a phone running the Google-provided Android software replace the iPhone in my heart?

Not quite. But it's a ton of fun regardless.

* * *

To answer the question on every iPhone lover's mind—why?—embrace one simple reality: I'm a nerd, and I wanted to try Android for myself. Buying the phone off Craigslist kept my contract status with AT&T intact, meaning I'm still just a few months from freedom.

Second: the iPhone had lost a bit of its luster for me, for multiple reasons. First, I've been using one for years, and wanted to see if anything better was out there. Second, my 3GS is limping to the finish line. The headphone jack is getting loose (for now, the sound's still fine), the white plastic case is riddled with cracks, and the battery life was sinking fast. I figured I'd spring for a battery replacement, and the Captivate could hold me over for a bit while Apple took it apart and sealed it back up. (I was later told at the Apple Store that I just needed to restore my phone, and for the most part, that was right.) I've been upgrade-eligible for the iPhone 4 since it came out, but at this point I'd rather wait for the 5 before taking a punch to my soul in two-more-years-of-contract form.

So, enter the Captivate. Many of its internal specs rival the iPhone 4's: sixteen gigs of storage, 1 GHz processor, half a gig of RAM, 5-megapixel camera, and 720p video recording. It's missing the front camera and the absurdly sharp 3.5" Retina Display of the 4, but it has a 4" Super AMOLED panel of its own with unparalleled black levels. (Seriously, even a movie like Batman Begins looks detailed on it.)

The hardware was superb: the larger screen makes for a bigger footprint, but the Samsung is very thin, and at first it seemed to match the iPhone 4 in innate desire to leave my hand. I've since adjusted, for the most part, though thankfully it's impressively durable, including when a coworker dropped it several feet the first Monday I had it.

The software, however, is a different story. It's not awful, it's different, and it was particularly painful at first when I tried to use the Captivate like an iPhone. It's no iPod in terms of media playback, even though the somewhat-cheesy Samsung music player is actually an improvement on Google's default offering. Its camera is not a touch-and-go affair like the iPhone's; rather, it has a bunch of settings, similar to a digital camera. Once I got used to it, it's actually quite good, though the video recording quality can't match the iPhone 4 even if it smokes my 3GS. Here are some random shots to demonstrate:

However, Android taught my phone a few tricks the iPhone doesn't know. Free turn-by-turn navigation, with spoken directions, awaited me in a Google Maps upgrade. It works great. It's pretty annoying, too, with how much it talks, but it works. The Gmail app is fantastic, and comes very close to replicating the Gmail website on your desktop. However, the e-mail program for your other accounts is a piece of, um, garbage, so I went to the Market, where I found the competent K-9 Mail, which is plenty good for my work account.

The most impressive Google app, though, was Listen, the podcast manager/player. By default, the podcast management on an iPhone is a pain. Some iPhone users complain about having to plug their phones into their computers to sync content—personally, I like having a fresh backup of my contacts and pictures. But downloading podcasts in iTunes on your desktop, and then syncing, is by far the most straightforward way to get podcasts you like on your iPhone—while you can download individual episodes from the iTunes app on the phone, there's no sense of subscriptions on the device, nor any way to automate grabbing new podcasts.

So Listen is an app that lets you subscribe to, check for, and download or stream podcasts, even over 3G. It's really cool. I pulled down a 50-meg episode in a couple of minutes while driving, and listened to it right away. It's funny that Google beat Apple considering podcasts are, you know, named after iPods.

However, while Apple itself doesn't match Listen, the battle wasn't over. Listen was so good, you see. that I started looking for equivalents on iOS. And then Gizmodo posted about Instacast on the App Store, which was infinitely times more expensive at $1.99, but which completely smokes Listen, which has a confusing UI and imprecise navigation.

And that's the big downer on Android, coming from an iPhone: it's not the same as iOS, which is fine, but the app situation is still a bit behind. Official big-time apps, like Facebook and Twitter, are just enough behind their iOS counterparts that you notice (TweetDeck for Android is nice, though). And the selection is weaker. There's no Instacast on the Android Market, no Tiny Wings, no Instapaper, no Simplenote, and no Calvetica.

Other cool Android features include apps like Chrome to Phone, which let you click a button in Chrome on your computer and immediately open the same page on your phone, which is great if you have to go but want to finish that article. You can also push apps to your phone from the Android Market website. I really liked voice actions, too; the voice recognition is quite good, and phrases like, "Navigate to Coors Field" just work, which is insane.

I really missed Visual Voicemail, though, but I eventually switched to Google Voice for my voicemail with no ill effects on either phone (I switch between the two without mercy).

So if it's just a bad iPhone impression, why do I like the Captivate so much?

Because I broke it.

* * *

In a sense, the Captivate came broken. I'm not talking about the abysmal battery life (guy kept in a box for a few months before selling it; the battery has recovered, but it took forever to charge and burned out in a few hours at first). I mean that the software on the phone, as it came from Samsung and AT&T, was terrible.

Being on an iPhone, I'd almost forgotten how much carriers delight in messing with you. So of course my phone had a few non-removable AT&T apps for stuff like navigation, even though there's no way it's better than Google's free offering.

The problem, really, came down to Android itself, or rather, the way it's used. Android is free and open-source, so any manufacturer can use it. Most try to differentiate their Android phones by making their own modifications. This has two negative effects:

1) It makes your phone slower.

2) While Google updates Android frequently, you can't get the upgrades until your manufacturer and carrier re-add their speed bumps and deem it fit for public consumption.

This was particularly key for me, as the Captivate was on Android 2.1 when I got it. Though 2.3 is out, it's only on very few phones (basically just the Google-led Nexus phones), but 2.2 was a major upgrade in speed and some functions. For example, voice actions and Chrome to Phone don't work on 2.1.

In many ways, Android is like Windows, particularly before Windows 7. It competes with a more simple Apple system, and OEMs like to mess it up for some reason.

Like Windows, Android has a reputation as being for "power users"—it's had many features the iPhone hasn't, such as multitasking, from day one. Okay, fine. But I like to micromanage my wireless networks. So, for instance, I'll switch off 3G before a long phone call, especially at home. 2G uses significantly less battery, and I'm told it sounds better, at least from this here apt. You know how you switch off 3G on the Captivate? You don't! I guess you just hope to wander into an area where the 3G signal is dead, because then it will switch itself. When the official 2.2 update rolled out…nothing changed on this front. Also, the Samsung battery meter was bad enough that it's worth mentioning. It's more like a dumbphone meter with a few different stages of charge vs. uncharged, except it looks like it's trying to show a percentage, and in that it's not very precise. You can always check the percentage manually by drilling down a few stages into the Settings menu, which never gets old.

Anyway, complaint, complaint! Here's the thing. I'm not the only person annoyed by AT&T/Samsung's lame decisions, and some of those people are programmers, and some of them are quite good. Online you can find what are called ROMs, which are reworked versions of your phone's software that you can install, and there are different ones available for many Android phones. And some of them are really, really good. A coworker who'd rooted and tweaked his EVO into oblivion found one for me called Serendipity, which was, I think, on version 5.12 by the time I tried it. It was based on a 2.2.1 version of Android that let me switch off 3G, install a battery percentage meter, and which ran like butter. (It was such an improvement in smoothness over the way the phone came it's almost unbelievable.) It had a bug or two, but they were less annoying then the bug in Samsung's 2.2 that kept me from sending picture messages to certain people.

After a while, I learned what I could, then decided it was kind of weird to have two phones, so I figured I'd sell it. Using a program on my PC, I began the restore process, but when it ran long I got impatient and yanked the USB cable, and killed my phone completely. Nothing would get it to turn on again; it just kept flashing this odd phone and computer error icon.

Whoops.

Well, the community around this phone is so cool, they had a fix for that, too. What you have to do is manually force the phone into download mode. All the normal methods I'd destroyed, except some weird failsafe involving attaching resistors to the micro USB port. Seriously. A trip to Radio Shack, a sacrificed USB cable, and some software loading later, the phone worked again. It was so nerdy, but so cool. I've been attached to it ever since.

Since then, it's caution to the wind, and I tried another cool ROM based on the Galaxy S II software (the Captivate is part of the original Galaxy S line). It was great, but not quite ready for prime time, and I'm back on Serendipity, now on 6.4 and better than ever.

So I didn't get the world-class experience it would take to dethrone Apple, but it was awesome anyway.

Unsung iPhone apps

As one of my friends finally upgraded to an iPhone recently, I’ve decided to list my favorite apps you may not know about.

Some iPhone apps are famous for their little tricks, like Shazam, and official apps for services like Facebook and Twitter are indispensable. For games, everyone should download Angry Birds, of course.

But here are four I really like that you might not yet have given a try:

Bing. Yes, Bing, Microsoft’s search engine; it’s a little worse than Google on the desktop, but I love its mobile app. It’s got plenty of features, like voice recognition and social network integration (huh?), but also does cool tricks like barcode scanning and the bird’s-eye-view Bing maps. Once upon a time (New Year’s Eve 2009) this helped me find a street that Google Maps had spelled incorrectly, and thereby deliver two female friends some personal effects they’d forgotten, though in retrospect this only contributed to a long-drawn out and disappointing series of events that ultimately…you know what, Bing is solid. Its location awareness actually makes it my favorite app for checking movie times, too.

Meebo. Meebo is my favorite instant messaging app, working with multiple accounts simultaneously. It works great with iOS 4. I don’t generally stay signed in on it, but it’s nice in a pinch.

Dictionary.com. Maybe this just marks me as a huge word nerd but one of my favorite programs on the Mac is Apple’s built-in Dictionary. This app downloads a dictionary for offline viewing, and does pronunciations over a network connection. I like it cause it’s quick compared to navigating through websites.

YouTube Mobile (m.youtube.com). Google’s mobile YouTube website is so much better than Apple’s YouTube app it’s embarrassing. It allows you to select and stream “HQ” versions of videos, even over a cellular connection. They load quickly and look great over 3G, so much so that it makes you wonder why Apple’s app downscales videos so intensely. Plus, with iOS 4, this site has a cool hidden feature of sorts. If you start playing a video in Safari, you can hit the home button to go back to your homescreen. Of course, the video playback stops. But, if you bring up the multitasking menu with a home button double-tap, you can swipe to the music controls and hit play next to the Safari icon to continue streaming YouTube audio. This is nice if, like me, you use YouTube to stream music and don’t actually care to watch the video. Plus you can turn the screen off and save battery.

(Side note: if you’re Mormon, the Gospel Library, Mormon Channel (stream general conference), and LDS Tools apps totally rock, too, though I keep Lee Falin’s Scriptures app around because it still outperforms the deeper Gospel Library. Nice to see the church update its website and make some great mobile apps; now they just need to crack the nut that is MLS.)

As for other apps, I recently downloaded Calvetica and think it’s cool. Its week view seems ideal for a Retina Display, but I’m still getting used to it. What other apps do you like?

New iPod Day

New iPod Day has come and (nearly) gone, and I must say, either it was disappointing or I’m getting too old for this. Has Apple lost its ability to amaze? I doubt it, but for the second year in a row, I’m down on the holiday lineup. Here’s the blow-by-blow:

iPod touch: There has never been a year when I wasn’t disappointed by the iPod touch, and 2010 is no exception. The first iPod touch, after months of anticipation following the announcement and release of the original iPhone, came with crippled software (no Notes, no Mail) and relatively small capacities (8 and 16 GB). The second-generation one was better, sure, and was barely revamped last year. This year, somehow, I fooled myself into thinking things would be different. The iPhone got a major redesign and some cool features; isn’t it time the touch did, too?

The iPod touch is sometimes called an iPhone without the phone, and I was hoping that all the upgrades to the iPhone 4 would trickle down into the touch. (I’m upgrade-eligible for the 4, but I’m not excited about re-upping with AT&T and their new $350 early-termination fees.) The upgrade I wanted most? The camera, for sure. The iPhone 4’s shooter is great for a phone camera, and soundly beats my 3GS, which is already capable of some good shots. So today when Apple announced a new iPod touch with that high-resolution screen, video calling, and high-definition video recording, I had one question: does it take pictures? During the keynote, though, I saw a shot of the camera app and sure enough, as it does on the current iPhones, it had a slider to switch from video to still mode.

Later this afternoon I went to the Apple website in search of more details, already knowing that the camera records in 720p, just like the iPhone 4. Does it get the same five-megapixel pictures? Not quite. According to Apple’s iPod touch tech specs, the iPod takes still pictures at 960 by 720 resolution. Let me do the math for you: that’s 0.7 megapixels. Not seven, point-seven. That sucks. I haven’t seen any samples from the camera yet, but I don’t doubt they’ll underwhelm.

I wonder how much the price difference is in camera parts between the touch and the 4; as it is, it’s cost them one touch sale so far.

iPod nano: The new nano is nuts, a tiny clip-on player with a 1.5” multi-touch screen. Peculiarly, the nano has lost the abilities to record and play video. I have a fourth-gen nano with a 2” screen and while it’s not ideal for movie-watching, I have caught some stuff on it while travelling and it’s not too bad. I liked having the option. Now it’s gone.

At first glance, the new nano appears to be the perfect exercise iPod, with its ability to clip anywhere and the adjustable screen orientation. But I don’t see the benefit of a touch screen over the ability to just hit “next” without looking at it.

When the iPhone came out, the touch interface was so obviously right for it: it gave you a huge (for the time) screen to use for videos and that computer-like web browser. When rivals copied it with products like the BlackBerry Storm, it was hilarious, because most of them didn’t have the same strengths as Apple’s platform and weren’t nearly as suited to the all-touch style. What does the nano get out of going that route?

The nano’s touch interface does allow a tiny player to have a relatively big screen. I guess that’s cool, I just would have rather had last year’s body (which, while bigger, was already impressively small) and a 32 GB capacity.

iPod shuffle: This one’s a huge win by today’s standards, with Apple giving up on the horrendous third-generation shuffle (a masterpiece of miniaturization that required headphone-cable controls) and returning almost exactly to the second-gen form factor: a small clip with a few buttons. Personally I still like the first-gen, with its built-in USB plug for easy syncing with any PC, but the new shuffle is tiny, looks durable, and at $49 for 2 gigs, might beat the nano as the exercise companion of choice. (Also, at that price, does the shuffle cost Apple more or less to make than its headphones do?)

iPod classic, or: I’m just glad they didn’t kill it. This year the iPod classic didn’t get a price cut or a storage upgrade, instead remaining at $249 for 160 gigabytes of stuff. I’ve always wanted a video iPod of this style since before they were called classics, but never quite pulled the trigger. I suspect I will continue to hold off, though it would be sweet to have all my music, pictures and videos on my person at all times.

So that’s it. If I was to buy one now, perhaps I’d get a touch, then feel, as I suspect most touch owners do, that Apple resented me for not buying an iPhone. (That’d be a weird feeling for me.) I think I’d use a shuffle and enjoy a classic. The nano? Eh. It doesn’t make sense to me. Why spend $149 for eight measly gigabytes when I could save fifty bucks and get a gorgeous fourth-gen banano?

iOS 4 impressions

Apple's iOS 4, the latest version of the company's iPhone and iPod touch operating system, is out, awesome, and, on the iPhone 3GS at least, the company's smoothest-running new operating system in years.

iOS (previously iPhone OS, and kinda/sorta OS X before that) updates should be met by users with equal parts anticipation and skepticism. iPhone OS 2.0 brought the now-legendary App Store, but was stupid buggy. That's not even mentioning what Gizmodo dubbed the iPocalypse, when the iTunes activation servers went down and my phone was useless for half a day. It took multiple updates to feel solid, but eventually the 2.family surpassed 1.1.4 on pure stability while adding sneaky-cool improvements like Google Street View. iPhone OS 3 added a ton of smaller, nice day-to-day features (copy-and-paste, MMS, more prevalent landscape keyboard) but brought with it lag on older devices. (Makes sense; the first two iPhones had half the RAM of the 3GS, though they became smoother in later iterations of version 3.)

iOS 4? Well, perhaps it's too early to say for sure, but it's very, very good. Some highlights:

• Runs like a dream. The 3GS has only half the RAM of the iPhone 4, reportedly; still, the phone is responsive and everything works just as well as you'd expect. Special attention was paid to transitions and animations and that makes the whole experience feel right.

• Home screen wallpaper. This is exactly the kind of Apple update that makes an Android user laugh in derision, but it's cool. Honestly, changing the wallpaper, icons and sounds was the coolest thing I ever did on my O.G. after jailbreaking it, which should tell you how lame jailbreaking is for the average bear. It's nice to have a little variety.

• Multitasking. Everyone calls this the must-have feature for 4.0; outside of Pandora, I didn't think I'd care. And I sort of don't, though I'm getting used to double-tapping the home button to switch between applications quickly. Pandora's great, plus it works with the lock-screen music controls, which were previously iPod-only. Those controls still bring up the back, play/pause, and skip buttons, which is kind of weird as you can't go back on a streaming Internet station (touching the button does nothing), but, quirks aside, it works great. Pandora's so smooth that I keep thinking it's the iPod app, so now I'm getting in the habit of bringing up the multitasking menu and swiping left-to-right across it to get to the music controls there, which also show which app is playing audio. The number of apps in the multitasking menu is insane. Right now I have 23 down there, and you scroll through them four at a time. It's not like I'm going to remember that I was doing something 18 apps ago and use that menu to switch to it.

• Super syncing. My 3GS syncs in a minute or two; on 3.1.3, if I went a few days, it would easily take more than twenty. That wasn't the case when the phone was new, so it could have been some sort of issue with my phone or computer, but regardless, I no longer dread adding a new song.

• SMS character count. You can turn on a counter now to see how close you are to 160 characters. I can't articulate a good reason but I really wanted this. I guess I just don't want to send my friends messages that spill into two (though one friend recently sent me a text that was a mind-blowing seven messages long).

• iBooks. I don't know if this should count, since it's technically a separate app. iBooks is cool; I haven't decided yet if I will ever use it beyond reading Winnie the Pooh someday. The built-in PDF viewing is useless for the few page-sized PDFs I put on it. But I really like the page-style reading. I've tried a few self-contained book apps before that require scrolling and, ever since I read this article, they're really annoying to use.

• Bluetooth keyboard support. I'm considering buying one of Apple's sweet Bluetooth keyboards to use for long e-mails. I'm not proud of what a huge nerd that makes me (and I'm fast enough on an iPhone keyboard that I'm told I resemble a 13-year-old), but there you go.

And here are a few other things that aren't quite highlights:

• Global inbox. This is a cool idea, seeing all your new e-mails in one place, though it makes permanently deleting my work e-mails (I get a lot that I delete quickly) kind of a pain.

• Spell check. Don't really care. The phone already corrects for typos really well; if you would have spelled a word correctly, but hit the wrong key, it'll usually get it right. That's a bigger problem for me than spelling. (You know that means there's some horribly misspelled word in here that I've missed.)

• Faces/Places in photos. I don't sync with a Mac, so I don't get to use the facial-recognition that comes with iPhoto and now syncs to iPhones and iPod touches. However, at the bottom of my list of albums there is now a big "Places" button that takes me to a Google map of the U.S. with little pins everywhere I've taken a picture. This is stupid, since my pictures are already kind of organized, and since it places three pictures I took on a drive from Boulder to Longmont in Missouri for some reason. I would rather be able to see one more album on the last line without scrolling. But I'll live.

The iPad, revisited

“By the way, what have you done that’s so great? Do you create anything, or just criticize others work and belittle their motivations?” —Steve Jobs

* * *

So said Jobs in a killer e-mail exchange with a Gawker blogger who wrote him to complain about…well, I’m not sure, exactly, but it seems the blogger was mostly upset with the the unusually harsh restrictions Apple puts on their iPhone OS platform, where they approve or disapprove every program in the App Store, and don’t support the common Web technology of Flash.

(Brief aside: Flash is lame, but the tech enables some cool stuff, like Hulu. It reminds me of the furor over Windows Vista’s built-in copy protection, which would constantly check your hardware for compliance when playing back certain kinds of copy-protected content. Well, that’s annoying, right? But now you can watch a Blu-Ray on Windows, while you can’t on OS X. Kinda the same deal. Not big enough for me to switch from an iPhone, especially since Hulu seems to want to block phones anyway, but Flash isn’t all bad.)

You should really read the exchange, because it’s hilarious how quickly the guy gets defensive about his, um, choices in entertainment. But Jobs’ quote (which I loved) about creating things struck me, because it helped me express why I was so disappointed by the iPad.

The iPad, to me, seems like a fantastic device for consuming content. Reading websites, watching videos, checking Facebook—the device was almost purpose-built for some of these functions. And it seems good for e-books, if you’re the kind of sucker who’s into them. But, particularly for someone who writes occasionally, the iPad seems horrific for content creation. I hate the typing experience, even though I love the touchscreen keyboard on the iPhone.

And in our universe there exist laptops, which are way better for some kinds of content creation with their built-in keyboards, and are only a little worse (and in some cases better) for most types of information and entertainment consumption.

But I’m rethinking for two reasons. The first was an article on Gizmodo by a writer who says he can replace his laptop with an iPad in part by typing with a Bluetooth keyboard. Fair enough. Maybe not ideal, but it’s at least an option. The second was Apple’s latest TV ad for the device, which allowed me to see the product as something with potential, rather than as a computer for morons.

It can do some cool things: like when the guy flips the iPad over to someone to show them what’s on the screen (much better than trying to huddle around a laptop), or my favorite, the sheet music application. If I were a musician, I’d kill for a device that would let me take all my sheet music everywhere. And then I guess they wouldn’t let me be a musician anymore.

So I am beginning to come around. On the other hand, it’s not like you can set your iPad on top of a stack of sheet music at night and have it learn it all by the time you wake up. So while the technology is slick, and the form factor has much more potential than I initially recognized, I still wouldn’t spend five hundred dollars for the thing as it is today. But I think I’ll no longer be shocked if the iPad becomes a huge success—if it hasn’t already.

Dear Boulder Republicans: Maybe everyone here is a Democrat because of how much you suck.

So I went to the Republican caucus tonight, which was a nice mixture of being both depressing and disappointing. First, I walked in slightly late, then stood at this table by the very front door of a local elemiddlery school, waiting to check in. Inside the room behind the table was an impressively-sizeable group of active voters. Finally it was my turn to be helped. I went up, and they couldn’t find my name in the list. Unless, the lady asked…are you here for the Republican caucus? Um, yes, yes, I am. That one’s way down there, she said, then pointed at something too far away for me to see.

I walked down the hall, then into a mostly-empty gymnasium, where my precinct (six of us in total) had already gotten started. The precinct next to me, the one we shared the table with? Well, none of them could be bothered to show up, so the saddest packet of all time laid there, waiting to be opened. I hope I never hear you complain about Obamacare, you lazy bastards. That was the depressing part.

The disappointment? Well, that was the whole rest of it. First we picked precinct officers and election judges and all that. I’m an alternate for some kind of delegation that they’d better not call me for. This was all very boring, but at least our ringleader kept things moving at a nice clip. Really, he did great in a pretty thankless job. But the resolutions…oh, the resolutions. I don’t know what manipulative hack penned them, but I’m very disappointed that I can’t find them online so you can see them in their full glory. So I’ll just give some examples. One was to make it part of our platform—my party’s platform in my county—to eliminate automatic salary increases for Congressmen, so that they’d have to vote themselves a new pay bump every time they want one. Sounds good to me. And it even had this awesome part in the intro, about how Congressmen currently get automatic pay bumps even when their actions harm the economy, a nice little crack I loved. Except then in the last line, they threw something in about how every Congressman should also be capped at 200% of the median income in the district they represent. What? Where did that come from? (And because, well, we’re Republicans, one guy immediately decided he was going to move to Manhattan and run for Congress.) We didn’t really like the idea of creating class distinctions in Congress.

Another fun one was about laws in Congress, and how so many of them are written by lobbyists, and how we should require them to read every bill aloud before voting on it. Yeah. That’s practical.

The one that really got me was about letting the Patriot Act expire, because, you know, it’s 2010 and all. OK by me. Except it went completely off the rails at the end, where the resolution said that IF some other law had to passed in its place, it HAD to be Senator Feingold’s JUSTICE Act, which gives the government powers to spy on suspected terrorists. Seriously, it used the word spy (and the word Feingold). Like any of us were going to vote for it at that point. But for some reason, we started to discuss it. After a minute, I asked, what is up with these resolutions? I got a laugh, but then I said, “Seriously, it’s like they wrote it this way just so they wouldn’t have to support getting rid of the Patriot Act,” which got me a bunch of blank stares. But the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that's the only thing that makes sense. Elefants, I’m on to you. Cut out the grandstanding crap and focus on some issues that actually matter, like fiscal responsibility (not that I support the balanced budget amendment we were also polled on). I mean this was a friggin’ caucus in a non-presidential election year, a gathering of only the most concerned citizens (& me), and we’re still playing word games with members of our own party and making the whole process feel as undemocratic as possible from the start. Give me some individual rights, some states’ rights, some money-saving ideas and some candidates who can actually prevail in a modern-media showdown. I want winners, not excuses. And then the party can get back on track and get back to making a difference in this country. That’s all I ask. Thank you, and good night.

The iPad is a fairly ridiculous object, isn’t it?

This next line is where I’m supposed to say something like, “but I want one anyway.” But I don’t. I mean, I’d take it if someone gave it to me (and my birthday is coming soon); I’m just not sure when I’d use it.

Surely an Apple device would be ideal for home use, right? Before it was announced I pictured using an Apple tablet kicked back in my recliner, websurfing aimlessly. However, a notebook or laptop would blow it out of the water for that purpose. For one, the tablet doesn’t appear to support Flash (in the demos today it put up the same missing plugin icon the iPhone does for Flash elements), so Hulu is out right away. How am I supposed to catch up on 24? YouTube is also out, kind of: the YouTube app on Apple’s other devices does not include every video on YouTube, though it usually has most videos I want to watch. A proper computer will have much broader support for formats and web content, in any event.

Also, you better stock up on bookmarks, because you won’t want to enter a bunch of addresses onscreen: the comfortable angles for web reading and typing don’t look like they’d be close to the same. I really don’t know how anyone would write anything of length on this without the keyboard dock, which just turns your iPad into what looks like a laptop, but with added inconvenience.

What else? Ah, the iPhone OS’s famed lack of multitasking. Usually when I sit down on a computer, I fire up Pidgin, the totally awesome multi-service instant messaging app that lets me talk to my Gmail and AOL friends. I probably won’t be doing that on the iPad, which seems to run just one app at a time. (There is the workaround of background notifications on the iPhone; you can stay signed in to an IM app, for example, and you’ll get pop-ups when someone writes you. Then you can jump home, go to the IM app, write them back, and get back to your Web browsing. That works in some cases, I suppose, but my friends don’t usually have just one thing to say every fifteen minutes. I also don’t know if the iPad even supports these notifications.) Of course, on a normal Mac or Windows laptop you could just put an IM window next to your browser of choice and go from there.

Let’s see, what else…how about media consumption, a huge strength of Apple’s? Well, you can listen to music on the iPad, but in a world of mp3 players I think you’d be mad to do so for more than a few minutes if that’s all you’re doing. As on a computer, though, I would play music in the background while I perused the Internet. The picture viewing looks awesome on this thing, and it’s an area where multitouch really shines. And for video? Yeah. This thing looks like the greatest device ever invented for watching a movie on a plane, even with its 4:3 aspect ratio. But then, iPods and computers handle these tasks pretty well, too, though with a little less razzle-dazzle.

Oh, and what about books? Well…yeah. Consumers: electronic books do almost nothing for you. You can’t loan ’em, you can’t borrow ’em, and is their relatively small digital file size, i.e. the ability to carry a ton at once, really all that helpful? Do you often find yourself wanting to carry even three books at once? It would be a pretty sweet deal for students if they could put all their textbooks on it, but that probably won’t happen for a while. Instead you can buy restricted-rights versions of some books and read them off a bright LCD screen on one specific device. But hey, at least Apple won’t delete stuff you bought the way Amazon did. (I really wish Apple had demoed their iBooks store today with a copy of 1984.) I’ll stick with paperbacks, thanks.

Speaking of students, this would be great for them, right? Well…not really. I’ve taken notes several times on an iPhone, and it’s not a bad experience for text. I feel like typing on an iPhone is a bit easier than typing on an iPad will be, though perhaps I should reserve judgment. Sometimes you do want to copy a picture or diagram; Apple’s Notes program makes no allowance for on-screen drawing, though other apps do. So if you don’t mind quitting out and drawing the picture, I guess you’re good. Of course, on an iPhone you can just take a photo of the diagram or whatever, but the iPad has no camera, so good luck finger-scrawling quickly. A convertible tablet with pen input seems like a much more useful device for digital note-taking, and paper notebooks still handle the job with ease.

But Apple surely brings a sense of class and taste to the table, don’t they, which normal PC manufacturers just can’t match? Indeed they do. The calendar and e-mail apps just look outstanding. Maps is pretty sweet, too. If I was a hotshot trying to look important I would only check my e-mail around the office on an iPad.

Many of the other minor annoyances with this device stem from Apple’s decision to build the software on the iPhone OS, rather than Mac OS X. The iPhone OS devices have been hugely successful, and the software offers an ease-of-use that even the Mac can’t match. Plus, it’ll run all those apps from the commercials. On the downside, the application icons look like they’re spread comically far apart on the home screens, the unlock slider just looks weird, and the lock screen is still just your wallpaper and a clock. Wouldn’t it be cooler if it was like a touch iGoogle, and you could see your e-mail and the weather and some headlines or whatever just by tapping the button to wake it up? Personally, I’m more excited for the possibilities of slates based on the multitouch-capable Windows 7, because they’ll be full-blown computers. HP already announced one that is kind of lame (no webcam), but I hope it’s only a matter of time. Since the iPad runs iPhone OS anyway, I think for the most part you’d be happier with an iPhone or cheaper iPod touch that does the same stuff in a pocketable size.

The final problem with this device, to me, is the price. Apple bragged that they got it down to $499 today, which indeed surprised me. But that’s for a 16-gig model with no 3G (hallelujah, I say: 3G is awesome but shouldn’t be required on a product like this). That’s 16 gigs of flash memory, meaning it’ll survive a fall a lot better than a netbook hard drive would…but I wonder if that screen would last if you dropped it very far anyway. And a netbook with an HDD is going to hold at least, what, ten times that much stuff? I can’t decide if sixteen gigs is enough or not, but with the device’s stellar photo and video capabilities, you have to be tempted to bump up to the 32-gig model at least, right?

Of course, at the $499-$829 range, you’re not just looking at netbooks, but a huge variety of laptops from many manufacturers. Many of those are also wicked stupid: 15-inch screens with crappy resolutions, etc., but there are some real gems out there. I haven’t seen anything that would convince me I’d want an iPad more than, say, an 11.6-inch Acer Timeline. The iPad looks futuristic and fun, but I plan to pass easily. Am I missing something?

Best of 2009

Now that 2009 has mercifully drawn to a close, it’s time for the first annual HPE Awards. I can’t say I’ll miss 2009 at all, but some pretty sweet stuff happened nonetheless.

Song of the Year: Unthought Known (Pearl Jam, Backspacer): As a Pearl Jam addict I happen to think all of their songs are about me or apply to my life in some way. This one took me a while to decipher, but once I listened to it enough it made the perfect anthem for my 2009. Plus it’s just awesome, and I love the way the music steps down right before my favorite lines:

See the path cut by the moon, for you to walk on

See the waves on distant shores, awaiting your arrival

Team of the Year: Denver Nuggets. Yeah, I know, they lost to the Lakers in the conference finals, but their playoff run was my favorite event in sports in years. Even the Broncos’ equivalent run after the 2005 season wasn’t nearly this much fun. They crushed the Hornets, smacked around the Mavs, and then gave the Lakers a brief-but-fun fight. Waving balloons at the free-throw shooters in the Western Conference Finals was about as cool as it gets, though the clutch touch of Chauncey Billups and the superstar emergence of Carmelo Anthony were just a little bit sweeter. This season the Nuggets are a killer 13-2 at home, tied for the best mark in the NBA.

Video Game of the Year: Batman: Arkham Asylum. It’s true, Call of Duty 6: Modern Warfare 2 and Halo 3: Oh, Dreadfully Short in Total were awesome shooters with great online multiplayer in addition to fun main campaigns. But Batman! It’s just the baddest, most fun time I’ve had playing a superhero since 2004’s Spider-Man 2, and a terrific balance of feeling between superior skill and outnumbered vulnerability. My only wish is to play it more.

Movie of the Year: Sherlock Holmes. In middle school I took a class about mystery stories where we talked about Sherlock quite a bit, and for Christmas soon thereafter I got The Complete Sherlock Holmes, though I never read it. Plus it turns out Sherlock was the inspiration behind my favorite TV character, Dr. House. So I might have been destined to love this movie, but it’s a blast, with a great setting and cool action. I saw it in a packed house on Christmas night, sitting in the front row, which sucks at that particular theater, but I liked it a lot and will see it again soon for sure. And, oh yeah, I’m finally reading Sherlock now.

Although I think it’s like the nerdiest IP in history, before the last month or so this award would have gone hands-down to Star Trek, by the way, which was fun and the only good movie I saw for months. But recently I’ve seen The Blind Side and Invictus, which were also fantastic in their own ways.

Worst Movie of the Year: Transformers 2. Yeah, there were some cool fights, but even Megan Fox and that smoking Decepti-chick couldn’t save this script, plot, or poorly manufactured sense of tension.

Software of the Year: Windows 7. It’s stable, fast, works with everything, looks great, and puts XP and Vista to shame.

Non-Pearl Jam Album of the Year: The Resistance, Muse. This is just sick, and the start of my current favorite track, Guiding Light, simply can not be played loudly enough.

Suspiciously Good Customer Service of the Year: Apple. I took my iPod nano into the Apple Store down the street after a bunch of white specks (dust?) got behind the screen. The Genius told me he’d never seen that, and a few days later the store swapped me for a new one, which I wasn’t expecting. Sweet. Similarly, my iPhone 3GS became completely unresponsive (at a Windows 7 launch party, natch) and was replaced by someone who told me she almost never sees that happen. Only weird thing? My replacement Nano has the same white stuff under the screen now, and the guy who sat next to me while I was getting my phone swapped also had a completely dead iPhone. It’s always annoying when your gear has problems, but dealing with Apple is a million times better than trying to get an Xbox 360 fixed.

2009 was definitely a rebuilding year, but looking back it was pretty strong. If you think I missed anything, toss it in the comments.

Dear Microsoft, Thanks for the customer. Love, Comcast

I am perpetually ready to get rid of cable but have, as of yet, been unable to convince myself to wave goodbye to it. It’s fifty bucks a month for something I barely use. My best bet would be the summer months, when I convince myself I will watch Rockies games starting any day now, but never do. In the winter I want it to watch the NBA. I don’t really watch that many Nuggets games, to be honest, but I really like to be able to and find it worth paying for the all the other channels I’ll never turn to. But I’ve felt like I should ditch it, because I barely watch TV, and almost all the shows I do watch (House, The Office, etc.) are on networks anyway.

The problem with cable (or satellite or whatever) is that everything that people try to use to convince me to like it more just costs me more. Like, oh, HD: you have to get HD, it’s so much better. I’m sure that’s true, and I already have an HDTV (albeit one of the cheapest ever made), but I don’t quite see how spending more is a solution. Or I could buy some extra sports package, and then I could watch all of CU’s football games, even the ones that take place a few miles from my apartment. No thanks.

The biggest gotta-have-it TV supplement, of course, is the DVR. Everyone who has a TiVo or one of its competitors will die before they stop trying to convince you to get one. Why, I don’t know. Yes, it’s cool technology. Yes, it frees you up to watch a show you love at a more convenient time. And yes, it turns you into a whiny fool who’s terrified of spoilers and always wants to talk about shows you love, just not the last three episodes, which you haven’t seen yet. (This was particularly annoying when I started watching 24 again last year, which a bunch of my friends watch, but never keep up on. Why did they want me to watch it in the first place?) Anyway, DVRs are pretty awesome, but are they worth the hype?

I had to find out for myself, which was easier and possibly cheaper than you’d expect. One of the coolest but least-known new features of Windows 7 (named for John Elway) is that almost every version comes with software for recording TV. The software, called Windows Media Center, has been around for a while, but it comes with every version of Windows 7 from Home Premium on up, including business editions (which means it's on almost every PC but netbooks now). It’s a totally killer feature.

You also need hardware to record TV, in the form of a TV tuner. I bought an ASUS card that I had to install in my computer, but you can also buy a USB tuner. Putting the card in was the hardest part, and even that was pretty easy. After that I opened Windows Media Center. It found the tuner, asked for my zip code and cable company, and spent a few minutes configuring itself. That was it. Crazy easy.

So now I record, pause, and all that other stuff you’d do with a DVR on my computer. I love it, and I highly recommend it.

There’s just one problem. If you’re recording TV on your computer, you have to watch TV on your computer, right? Not exactly. You’ve got a few options.

1. Yes, watching it on your PC is one of them. My TV’s only two inches bigger than my monitor so this ain’t bad at all. What’s also nice is that I can watch it in a window on my PC while I do other stuff, which is great for blogging about sports.

2. You can plug your computer into your TV.

3. You can stream Media Center stuff from your computer over a network to what’s called a Media Center Extender, which plugs into your TV. I probably never would’ve considered buying one of these, except that one of them plays Halo: the Xbox 360. What’s cool about Extenders is that they replicate the PC experience on your TV, which means they have the exact same menus, so it’s easy to switch between the two. Once you know one, you know them both, and the Media Center menus are simple and designed to be used with a remote anyway. Also, if I start something on my computer and pause it, and resume it later on my Xbox, it’ll pick up right where I left off, and vice versa.

4. You can also stream Media Center TV recordings to a PlayStation 3. This is less optimal because the PS3 can read and play the file, but isn’t going to stay in sync with your computer. On the other hand, with built-in WiFi, which the 360 lacks, you can put a PS3 wherever you have a TV and still get stuff to it if you have a wireless network.

5. The Zune software will transcode TV recordings and let you put them on a Zune. If I was taking the bullet train every day I think I’d be watching my TV almost exclusively on a Zune. (It’s probably possible to convert the videos for an iPod, but I haven’t really looked into this.)

I’ve tried 1, 3, and 4, and they all work great. Actually, number three is surprisingly awesome. Cable has always looked kinda bad on my Insignia-brand TV, which apparently has a really low-quality tuner. Now if I record TV on my PC and stream it through network cables and a router to my Xbox 360, which then sends it to my TV, it looks way better than a cable line straight into my TV ever did. Seriously. The colors, etc., have always looked okay, but things like the score display during a game have always been fuzzy. Now it’s a lot more sharp. Weird, I know.

Recording TV on my computer works great. It’s made my PC, my Xbox, my TV, and my cable subscription all better. The funny thing is, Microsoft doesn’t get a dime from me (other than what I paid for Windows). Whoever’s providing the program guide for Windows Media Center is doing it for free, so while I had to pay a bit upfront for the tuner, I’ll never have to pay for it again. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me.

I could throw my Xbox through a friggin' window right now

AS SEEN ON HPS: Friday I picked up the exceptional Call of Duty 6, a.k.a. Modern Warfare 2, for the Xbox 360 on the way home from work. I brought it home, put it in the Xbox...and it didn’t work. Tried it again, it didn’t work. Tried it again, it didn’t work. You get the picture.

Since I picked up Tiger 10 my Xbox has had a progressively harder time reading discs, to the point that I considered buying MW2 for the PlayStation 3, which is a well-made not-piece-of-crap. Also, it's quieter. Also, playing online is free. But most of my friends have Xboxes, and Xbox Live is just so good that I had to get it for Xbox. (And though I used to devote hours to the pursuit, I have a hard time just playing games by myself these days.)

Anyway, after several reboots, wiping down the brand-new disc (which didn't make any sense but hey, the machine told me to) and quickly slamming the drive door shut, the thing finally loaded, and I played some coop missions for a few hours. They're so awesome. The snowmobile races are sweet, but overall, the game just has this great intense pacing. It's so much fun. The first Modern Warfare was outstanding but I love this one quite a bit more.

My Internet has also been out for most of the weekend, so when I tried to play again Saturday night, I was already resigned to single player. It took even longer this time to get the stupid game to load, and several times it got to the initial Infinity Ward logo, which is progress, before quitting back to the dashboard anyway. It's obnoxious. I stuck with it because the game is that awesome, but come on. I mean, my Xbox has already been in for repairs once; why does something so awesome have to suck so badly?

A friend asked me over the weekend which is better, the Xbox or the PS3, and let me say: the PlayStation 3 hardware is so much better, it's not even funny. Not that it's all that superior graphically or anything; it just doesn't break constantly. Unfortunately, you can't play Halo on it. So you're kind of screwed either way. I just checked online and Microsoft is willing to fix my DVD drive for a mere $99.99, which is awful. The alternative is to drop $200 on a replacement. I'll probably try to fix it and then drop two bills on a new one.

I gotta say it now, better loud than too late

Pearl Jam’s ninth album, Backspacer, has been out for a month now but seems to get better every day. It’s a little under thirty-seven minutes of the band at its best.

Turns out the abbreviated running time, my biggest concern before hearing it, is a huge plus. The constraint seems to focus their efforts into a tight and wonderful whole. As on their last album, the entire disc feels coherent, but in this case it feels especially complete, too.

I love the energy of the album, which really takes on two tones: the sharp defiant rock of the first four songs, and the thoughtful persistence that starts with “Just Breathe”. Somehow the two styles complement one another: if you start cranking the first few songs, you won’t feel the need to turn it down when you hit the slower stuff, but if you jump straight into the second half, the same songs somehow feel much calmer. Personally I think I love the second half a little bit more. “Unthought Known” and “Speed of Sound” are the two songs with the highest play counts in my iTunes, if you don’t count “The Fixer”, which I got before the album came out. I really like “Amongst the Waves”, too.

The other awesome part of any Pearl Jam album is hearing it live. I missed their concerts (they finish their U.S. tour in Philly this week) but picked up the CDs of their first night in Seattle. It’s predictably incredible. You can catch a lot of it on YouTube. Really (music starts just before two minutes in). This album is great and I want to listen to it more the more I listen to it. People mock me some times for loving such an old band, but Backspacer proves Pearl Jam is as good as ever.

Why Transformers 2 was so horrible (Spoiler Alert!)

I’ve had two conversations lately about Transformers 2, easily the worst Transformers movie since the animated original. The DVD just came out and one of my friends saw it, and the other discussion took place when a girl complimented my Autobots T-shirt the other day. That’s right, baby! Instead of proposing, I launched into this diatribe.

Transformers: The Movie, not to be confused with Transformers, was the animated film that, in 1986, destroyed my childhood. Why? Because they killed all the freaking Autobots to make way for a new line of toys. (They killed a bunch of Decepticons, too, but honestly, who cares? The Decepticon logo is cool. The concept of Decepticons is cool. But they’re either whiny (Starscream), weak leaders (Megatron) or really unoriginal (Thundercracker, Skywarp, etc.). Soundwave is awesome and I still try to do his voice, but overall it’s a weak crop.)

Anyway, the worst death was Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots and a red-white-and-blue symbol of all that was good in the Cold War ’80s. Optimus Prime was like the John Elway of my childhood. Actually John Elway was the John Elway of my childhood, so call him more of a Robot John Elway, which sounds awesome and like he could probably play forever. Like I was saying, anyway, they just up and killed Prime and broke my heart but good. Well, actually it didn’t break my heart at all, I just thought it made the movie suck. When you’re a kid, no one cares if you spoil the movie, and by the time we got around to renting it I already knew a) Optimus was gonna die and b) Ultra Magnus was gonna cuss. But why kill O-Prime? He’s the hero. Does Peter Parker die during the opening scene of Spider-Man 3? Lots of people in my generation look back on this movie fondly and all of them are, without exception, complete idiots. The movie’s garbage, I hate the kids’ movie storyline about some brash young pup (Hot Rod) becoming the next leader, and anyone who disagrees with me is a communist.

Well, I’m already tired of building up to this pile of suck, so for those of you I warned never to see 2, here’s the problem with it: they killed Optimus again. Seriously. Halfway through the movie he finds himself in a huge forest battle with a bunch of Decepticons, and he’s rocking, and beating the crap out of evil space robots left and right. And then one of them stabs him through the back and he’s dead. That’s it.

Well, that’s not it, because they keep dropping hints that only a Prime can defeat this enemy, and for some reason they keep alluding to the location of Optimus’ body, and eventually you’re like, hmmm, I wonder if he comes back to life. Well, I’d really love to spoil it for you, and he does come back. Stupid! Stupid! Don’t make me sit there shaking in rage for several minutes, wondering how I could have been so foolish as to waste my money on a ticket.

Also, like how Mike Shanahan would script the first fifteen plays of any Broncos game, it feels like Michael Bay scripts the first fifteen minutes of the movie and then lets his cast of wunderkinds take over. There are tons of lame scenes and characters, but really the death of Optimus is all you need to know about to avoid this forever.

Notes on earlier posts

I thought it might be worth following up on a few things.

1. Microsoft’s browser ballot screen proposal still isn’t enough for Opera, who complained in July that having icons on the ballot screen (specifically Internet Explorer’s familiar blue “e”) would be too much of an advantage for Microsoft. That’s right, icons. They also suggested Microsoft offer the ballot screen (which is Europe-only) to Windows users across the world, which ain’t gonna happen.

I’m starting to think Microsoft bent over so far backwards just to show the world what a whiny bunch of babies their competition can be.

2. I said in my iPhone post that AT&T had not given me a discount on my first bill; I’ve since corrected the post, but it took me a while to get to it. They did give me my discount on the first month, it’s just that they also charged me an upgrade fee of eighteen bucks that I had no idea was coming. Oh, well. Just got another bill and it’s all good.

The one time I needed my phone to last a whole day, it let me down, running down to seven percent after 3:21 of usage. This was a day when my sister made a surprise visit to town and I drove down to my parents’ house late that evening. Something weird was going on because even while just listening to the iPod app that day I could practically watch the battery life drop in real time. (Seriously, every minute or two I’d look and a percentage point was gone.) Before that day and since that day it’s been fine, and overall despite my concerns the battery has been good enough, but I figured this warrants mentioning.

3. Microsoft told a reporter that the Zune HD will be the only model of Zune going forward. This means that the 16 and 32-gig models of the slick new touchscreen device will soon be the only options for Zune buyers, though the older models are still available while supplies last.

While I said I was looking forward to the Zune HD, I was also hoping to get a refreshed hard drive model. The current 120-gig Zune has a large 3.2-inch display and plenty of capacity. I figure if I’m ever going to spring for a music subscription, I’ll want as much space as I can get, right? Unfortunately I’m not blown away by the battery life (30 hours of music is solid, but four hours of video isn’t great). The iPod classic, on the other hand, is listed at 36/6, but iLounge got an amazing 42:29/7:59 out of it last year. So I was hoping a new Zune 160 or something would provide space and last longer.

Am I ever going to watch four hours of video in one day on an mp3 player? Probably not. Still, it seems that the device I was hoping for is not going to exist.

4. I was playing Batman: Arkham Asylum the other night and some parts were getting pretty tedious. I can’t really say what they were without giving away plot points. I still think it’s an awesome game and highliy recommend it, it’s just not as perfect as I was gushing earlier.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is awesome

I’m only 36% of the way in, but so far, Batman: Arkham Asylum is the best single-player video game I’ve played in years. It’s brilliant, it’s fun, and it’s creepy. The game has excellent pacing, good graphics, and awesome sound, and it makes for an incredibly immersive and addictive game. And I’ve been losing sleep because I can’t stop playing it.

The game takes place, predictably, at Arkham Aslyum, which in this game is located on an island. This simple design decision gives the game focus: while you acquire plenty of gadgets, you’re never driving the Batmobile or flying the Batwing (so far, at least). Instead you’re usually moving through a bunch of rooms and a limited set of outdoor areas, trying to sneak around and, when necessary, kick a ton of butt. I love stealth-action games, like Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell, and I’m really enjoying the Batman twist on one. You don’t merely sneak around; you can also break up a party of Joker henchmen and take them all out with brute force. You are Batman, after all. The game’s combat system is very fun; it’s just complicated enough that there’s variety, but not so hard that the learning curve hurts the game. It captures the enviable feeling of being Batman. When in rooms full of enemies, a view toggle lets you see their heart rates and emotional states. It is so much fun to go into a room and take guys out, one by one, as the rest of their group becomes progressively more terrified. Nothing beats it. The fighting is so much fun that I’m almost disappointed when I head into a room or hallway and no one is in there waiting for me, because I want the challenge. I haven’t felt that way about a game in years.

Of course, it’s a bit tougher when the bad guys are carrying machine guns; only a couple hits then and you’re out. (And then the Joker or some other villian comes on screen and taunts you.) Fortunately you don’t have to replay large sections of the game over and over; you usually come back in the same room (or just about to enter it) so you can immediately try again. It’s excellent. One nitpick: I played through a tough area one night with a ton of guys you have to fight in it, as well as occasionally-electrified floors. Took me a few tries to figure it out. I waited for what I thought was the Autosave icon before turning off the system, then returned the next day to find my game saved right before the room, meaning I’d lost that victory. I didn’t mind playing it again because the game is a blast, but that shouldn’t have happened.

Seriously, it’s great. I am a big fan of the Metal Gear Solid series and have been looking forward to playing Metal Gear Solid 4 literally for years. MGS4 came in the mail last week the day before Batman did. I still haven’t played it.

Batman has a Teen rating sort of similar to The Dark Knight’s PG-13; it sounds tame, perhaps, but it’s not for kids or even some teenagers. You’ll find and hear recordings of interviews with asylum inmates (Batman villians), and hearing the Joker talk trash can be kind of disturbing. It’s fun when he starts cracking on his own goons when they’re afraid of you, though.

The game is out for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and if you own either system, you owe it to yourself to get this game. The PS3 version lets you play as the Joker, rather than just Batman, in a challenge/practice mode, which I didn’t find to be all that compelling in a few minutes of trying it. The game also comes out for PCs later this month. I love it. Go buy it.

How I choose to feel is how I am: September is going to rock

September 2009 should feel like one giant party. At least for me. Check out all the awesome stuff to be excited about:

The new, slim PlayStation 3 is officially launched.

Let there be choice! Last week Sony announced a new, slimmer model of the PlayStation 3, which comes with a 120 GB hard drive and retails for $300. It’s already in some stores, but should be out everywhere on the first of the month.

This is fabulous news for anyone who likes video games as much as I do. So far this generation, there has been exactly one choice for the “adult” gamer: the Xbox 360. The PS3, which launched at an unfathomable $600, was just too expensive, and the Wii…well, we all know what happens to Wii players when they turn fourteen. The 360 has a ridiculously good online system (Xbox Live) which is worth every penny of the five thousand they charge you a year for it and, of course, it’s the only system with Halo. It’s awesome. Too bad the hardware is an unreliable piece of crap. Mine, already sent in and repaired once by Microsoft, is starting to give me error messages while starting games, and I fear it’s not long for this world.

The new slim PS3 and its price-cut predecessor change the balance of power. While Microsoft is dropping the price of its 120-gig system to match Sony’s, the PS3 plays many of the same games, but adds  an awesome Blu-Ray player and free online play. Plus it’s built up a solid list of exclusives, like Metal Gear Solid 4. As much as I love the Xbox, if you’re not a Halo nut, it’s now much harder to recommend. As for the Wii, its $250 price tag has now gone from “kind of shocking” to “priced by a supervillian”, and its two-piece controllers cost an insane sixty bucks. It’s totally a unique experience, for sure, but it’s a ripoff. You can’t even watch a DVD on it. Sony’s powerhouse system, which they were losing money on even when it was six hundo, does so much more.

Football’s back!

I’m most excited for the NFL, which kicks off on Thursday the 10th with the Tennessee Titans on the road against the Pittsburgh Steelers. My beloved Denver Broncos will be awful this year, but at least they were considerate enough to end the suspense months ago. I’ll consider every win this year a gift and a blessing.

It’s fine, though, because I’m ready to go back to being a fan of the whole league. I’d been slipping out of the League’s loving embrace for a few years, and last year, after I “quit” Hole Punch Sports, I was completely burned out on sports in general. But something about this year has me excited. I don’t know if it’s the familiar faces in new places, like Brett Favre and Michael Vick, or the return of Tom Brady, or just the hole in my heart every time the sport has been out of my life too long, but I can’t wait to go nuts on the NFL this year.

There’s a hidden upside, too: last weekend, while choosing Madden teams with an older brother (this year’s Madden is great fun, by the way), we realized how many teams there are in the league we hate. It’s great to see your team win. But it’s almost as fun to see your enemies lose. And I don’t just mean the Raiders, but the Chiefs, the Chargers, the Manning brothers, the Cowboys, the other team from New York, the Jaguars, the unwilling ingestion of so many NFC East games, the Ravens…the list goes on and on. Maybe one of them will win the title this year, but I’ll rejoice when all the others falter.

And oh, by the way, there’s this little thing called college football, too. And this year, they’ve got Labor Day weekend all to themselves. What Mormon isn’t looking forward, one way or the other, to the opening week BYU-Oklahoma matchup?

New iPod Day, plus the Zune HD

Every September Apple announces its new iPod lineup for the holiday season. I love iPods and I love the day they come out. But this year I’m most excited that they’re getting some awesome-looking competition, namely Microsoft’s Zune HD.

The Zune HD is Microsoft’s answer to the iPod touch, which I don’t think all that highly of. So why am I excited? Well, the screen’s supposed to be great, it’s got a web browser, and the Zune platform actually has some cool features the iPod doesn’t, like the ability to sync wirelessly. The biggest reason I want a Zune, though, is the Zune Pass: a $14.99 monthly subscription service that lets you download all the songs you want from the Zune Marketplace. This is so cool. Think of a band you like; instantly start downloading their entire catalog. Like all music subscription services, if you stop playing the monthly fee, you can’t play your music anymore. Except the Zune Pass also lets you keep ten MP3s every month. So if you buy that much music anyway (especially if you buy exactly ten songs a month now), it’s an awesome bargain: only a few bucks more for unlimited songs. I really want to try this out.

New Pearl Jam album, Backspacer, comes out

September is already guaranteed to be awesome but I’m not close to done. Pearl Jam, my favorite band, is coming out with a new album, too, slated for release on Sunday the 20th. Target is their exclusive major retail partner, but the music will also be available in smaller stores and on iTunes. The promotion of the upcoming release has, to me, been executed perfectly. Slowly but surely they’ve been releasing things, like videos on YouTube, pictures from their concert tour, and their incredible first single, “The Fixer”. I’ve learned a lot of this from their feed on Twitter, which is perfect for stuff like this. If you like the group, you may enjoy a cool making-of video a friend steered me towards.

House (or your favorite show) returns

I can’t wait for House to come back on the air. If you like the show and watched last year, you might find this preview intriguing. If you don’t like spoilers (of last year), don’t watch it. I’m stoked to see how the new direction of the show works out.

But maybe you prefer, say, The Office. No worries; that’ll be back, too, on Thursday the 17th.

New Halo game!

The new Halo game, Halo 3: ODST, comes out Tuesday the 22nd, and it looks awesome. Originally conceived as an expansion of the original Halo 3, ODST adds a cool new multiplayer mode to the original Halo 3’s excellent online game, as well as a new campaign, where you play as a Marine, rather than the Master Chief. I am so excited for this. Halo games are usually good enough to last even if they were the only game you owned. Even if this one’s sort of a supplement, I can’t wait to spend a few more hours fighting through the Halo universe.

The Rockies’ stretch run

The Colorado Rockies have already had a pretty remarkable season since switching to new manager Jim Tracy. They’ve just lost their second in a row to the Dodgers, but look like a playoff team that could be heading for a 2007-like run.

My biggest regret in 2007 was not following the Rockies earlier, though I’m not sure I would have wanted to. This year’s team has been getting better and better for months and is revving up the bandwagon at a more palatable pace. I don’t know what will happen in the playoffs, but even if they miss out or lose in the first round, it’s great to have an awesome baseball team again.

So, see? September is going to rule.