Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Do you look at this whole Kindle thing and think that you might be interested in it but you aren’t willing to pay for a new one? I’d love to sell you my second generation Kindle along with a case. Yep, it’s old but it still works great. It’s one of the 3g models so no matter where you are, you can download new books without trying to find a wifi connection. Plus you can even check your email and surf the web for free (though it’s pretty slow and I can’t imagine anyone doing that very much.)

Why am I trying to sell it? I use my Kindle A LOT and I’m really interested in getting one of the new Kindle Paperwhites. There are so many new features since I bought that second gen Kindle four years ago (for $300… used). I really want to upgrade but I’m having a hard time justifying it since the old one still works so well.

So if you are interested in stepping foot in the Kindle waters for a cheap price, let me know what you’re willing to pay. I know it’s not going to fetch $50 but if I could even get a little money for it, it would make the upgrade easier.

When we bought our Ford Escape six months ago, it came with a free trial of SiriusXM radio. We loved not having commercials, but overall we didn’t feel like the service was worth it. I was disappointed in the sound quality and it cut out a LOT around our home in Seattle. Maybe we’re on the edge of the satellite coverage? I understand it losing a signal under a bridge sometimes, but it would lose it in the trees along 522 up to Monroe and with nothing overhead at the same spot on 405 at 124th St every single time. But even with all that, the ability to listen to music without commercials and without connecting another device was really nice. Plus it also feeds traffic data into our navigation system which is handy.

When the free trial was up, they called to try to get us to continue. They walked through a number of deals culminating in $0.99 for one month and I said no. We kind of wished that we had said yes to that last deal so clearly it did still hold some value for us.

A few days later, we got an offer in the mail for $30 for 6 months. It’s normally $15/month so that’s a pretty great deal. We decided to go for it with the intention of cancelling again unless we can get a similar good deal. $15/month seems a bit crazy considering I pay $10/month for access to Netflix streaming and $10/month for access to millions of songs on Xbox Music.

In Windows Phone 7.5, there was an option to receive group text messages and see all the other recipients. In Windows Phone 8, that was removed and it was incredibly confusing to receive a group text message. After getting the [collapse]original message you start receiving replies from people you’ve maybe never even talked to before.

That was all fixed in the latest update which I received on my HTC 8x last week. Go into Settings > Applications > Messaging and then enable Group Text all the way at the bottom. It seems crazy that it took so long for this feature to return, but I’m glad it’s back. The update also enabled the FM radio that has been lying dormant in the phone.

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While I love the design and quietness of the newer slim version of the Xbox360, the infrared receiver on it isn’t very good. You have to be pointing your remote control directly at the box to get it to register. Since we use the 360s around the house as our Media Center Extenders to watch TV, we spend a lot of time accessing them via remotes. We were having particular trouble in the living room so it was time for a little change.

I picked up an infrared extender for $17 on Amazon. It’s a very simple IR repeater. You plug the transmitter onto the receiver of the 360 and then put the new receiver somewhere that’s more visible. We stuck it onto the bottom corner of our TV. The whole thing is powered via USB which would be super convenient if our TV had USB power (it doesn’t.) The new extender works much better and it’s very rare to have trouble registering a command from the remote.

If you’re worried about Prism and the NSA, have you ever stopped to think about that device you’re carrying around in your pocket? The government doesn’t have to worry about tracking where you are because you’re doing it for them. At a minimum your cell phone is reporting which cell tower it’s connected to and sometimes it will report GPS location which is more exact. I’m fine with that, but I also feel that if info like this is being collected about me, I want to have the data! This stuff is cool!

This is where an app called Track My Life comes in. It’s available for Android, iPhone and Windows Phone and the basic app is free. It periodically records your GPS location and over time you get some interesting stats. How much time do you spend at work? At home? Somewhere else? How far have you travelled?

I don’t really know what I’ll do with the data yet, but as with most “big data” scenarios, the trick is to start collecting the data now so that when better analysis is available, you have the data to feed into it.

We’ve been doing quite a lot of grilling over the past year. While Tyla was pregnant, we were extra careful about making sure that the meat was cooked thoroughly. I got in the habit of using an instant read thermometer, but now that Elijah is here, I still find myself using it. Maybe it’s wimpy or geeky, but using that thermometer has saved me numerous times from either over or under cooking the meet. I use this Taylor thermometer and would recommend it. If you’re using Windows Phone, you can pick up a copy of GrillBuddy which will help you know the safe temperature for each type of meat. Don’t be afraid to geek out a little at the grill. You’ll know your dinner is safe and you’ll be able to pull it off at the perfect time!

Walking out the door in the morning and saying goodbye to my wife and son isn’t fun. I know Tyla does a lot more work during the day than I could handle, but I feel like I’m missing so much of Elijah’s life! Thankfully Tyla agreed when I brought up the idea of buying a web cam so I could peak in during the day to see my family.

I ordered the Foscam FI8910W from Amazon and so far I’ve been very impressed with it. It has pan/tilt controls from either a web browser or via your phone and it’s visible either inside or outside of your network. The picture is 640×480 and it does have a pretty good night vision mode. It also has two way audio so the remote viewer can listen in and talk into the room.

My only concern with it is security. It’s very easy to set up, but part of that easy setup creates a web page for your camera with a default password. It’s ridiculously easy to “hack” into people’s cameras with a Bing search and the default password. Obviously I have it locked down more than that, but I still wonder if I can do more. For now it’s sitting in my guest network so there’s no access to our other resources and has some longer non-default passwords. I’ll be looking at a few other options like a reverse proxy with SSL to really encrypt it.

But other than that, I give the camera two thumbs up!

It’s pretty common these days to hear that Android is taking over, but when I saw this chart [source], I was amazed at how far Android has come. In just three years, they’ve gone from 10% market share to ~80%.

I’m not sure what Apple has planned to combat this. So far they’ve been sticking to the original model that they debuted in the very first iPhone: a grid of icons on a tiny/thin phone. And where does Windows Phone or Blackberry fit into this? They’re also-rans, making up ~5% of the market.

Seeing outside of your bias is difficult, but I do firmly believe that for Windows Phone is the best phone OS for most of the population. I seriously doubt it will ever reach those kind of market numbers, but who knows. Defeating PlayStation seemed like an impossible task for the original XBox, but XBox is now at least splitting the market and has a huge following.

Tyla’s laptop died. It was some kind of hardware failure that we worked around for a while but eventually consumed the device, and I couldn’t resurrect it. It was time to shop for a new laptop.

We get employee deals with most of the major manufacturers through work, but I also included the Microsoft Store in our search. We don’t get any special discount there, but I’ve heard good things about them. Indeed the prices were excellent, they offered free shipping, and if we had picked a model that was in stock, we could have picked it up immediately. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case, but our new HP Pavilion TouchSmart arrived in just three days via UPS for $499. I was amazed that we could get a touch screen laptop for $500. I think the only change we might make to this in the future is swapping out the 5400rpm 750GB drive for either a hybrid drive or a straight SSD.

When the Microsoft Store sells a device, they put their extra special touch on it. When it boots for the first time, you aren’t flooded with a bunch of adware for AOL or McAfee. It’s a very clean machine with up to date drivers. I always format new machines when I get them, but I didn’t see any need* on this one.

If you’re looking for a new laptop, I recommend including the Microsoft Store in your search. You can’t customize the devices like you can buying direct, but you also get a machine that is very clean and ready to go straight out of the box.

* In the end I actually did have to reformat the laptop. The drive was partitioned with GPT instead of the older MBR scheme and my backup solution (Windows Home Server 2011) only supports MBR. There’s no way that I know of to revert from GPT to MBR without killing all the partitions and starting over.

Last week our printer, a Canon MX700 all-in-one,  stopped printing black ink. It was 7 years old and my attempts to revive it were unsuccessful. Printers are super cheap (they make their money on ink) so the cost of switching to a new printer is really just the cost of whatever ink you have laying around. There wasn’t much left in the printer and I didn’t have any spares to worry about so we ordered a new printer.

We stayed in the Canon family and got a Canon MX922. It provides similar scan, fax, copy, print functionality but it adds duplex printing and wifi networking. The wifi bit is really nice because it means the printer can be located anywhere in the house and can print regardless of whether or not a computer is also turned on. It has a bunch of interesting networking features built in like the ability to scan to an email attachment, print from an email sent to the printer (for easy printing from phones), and printing from popular online photo websites.

While we generally print photos down the street at the drug store, the printer does a remarkable job printing photos. It comes with some 4×6 photo paper and the results from the printer were tough to distinguish from the drug store prints. Consumer Reports says it costs $0.50 to print a 4×6 through the printer and our drug store only charges $0.29. But it’s still a nice feature to have available.

The only knock I have on it so far is that envelope printing is tedious. The 700 had a separate feed tray for envelopes. With the new 922, I have to remove all the paper, put in an envelope, and then switch back to the paper again. That’s not a huge deal for us though. If this printer lasts another seven years like the last one did then I’ll be happy!