Category Archives: Technology

Just weird tech stuff.

Oh TiVo, how you’ve failed me, but that’s okay.

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Oh TiVo, how you’ve failed me…

I’ve been a pretty loyal TiVo customer for over 10 years. I originally got a Direct TV TiVo back in 2003-ish days, then later got a Series 3 TiVo HD in 2008 when I got married. My wife also became a big fan of TiVo, and we ended up being filmed for some commercials for TiVo in 2009 (just talking about different features. The videos were originally used internally and on YouTube).

When TiVo decided to release a new “Series 4” box, the TiVo Premiere (aka “The One Box”), we were asked again to see if we would be able to help out and do another shoot. Working with the same group as before (and the ever awesome, Shanan Carney), we had to go back through or own wardrobe to find what we wore as it was sort of a “continuation” shoot with some of the same families. We got to know
about the great new features of the TiVo Premiere, and how they were really looking for it to be an all-in-one box for consuming media.

As a thanks and a great parting gift from Shanan as she left TiVo, she was able to get us participants a TiVo Premiere with the coveted Lifetime Subscription service (a $499.99 value in just the subscription). We used this TiVo as we moved into our new place, and it’s been a staple of our TV watching lives most evenings.

Fast forward 3 years, and it appears that the hard drive on this little guy went out.
Continue reading Oh TiVo, how you’ve failed me, but that’s okay.

Update: Kickstarter / CustomSLR & The Power of Social Media

So I posted my last blog entry “Kickstarter: Great idea, bad experience” today at around 1pm.

I also send out a tweet to my followers highlighting this blog entry.

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By now, we all know the power of social media, and just some of the stories that were picked up by the media in which customer’s posted to media outlets in order to receive coverage and attention to what was going on. There was the AirBNB scandal where a customer trashed and robbed a home-owner in San Francisco. There’s also the Ocean Marketing blunder where the PR representative/”CEO” went off on not only the customer, but also Mike, the co-creator of Penny-Arcade and received tons of backlash from the gaming community.

No, my story was not covered like that, but it did gain a response from CustomSLR today. Around 3 hours ago, CustomSLR posted this to the comments section of the M-Plate project.

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This is a great move by CustomSLR as it helps for those of us who funded the higher tiered package for the extras. It’s great that CustomSLR is listening to their customers and want to make things right for those who need the equipment sooner than later. Being part of a marketing team for company that sells mainly online, I know it was a hard decision to offer early shipments (due to finances), but it is the right decision.

For Kickstarter and the case of other projects by other companies, what are they doing to help those with vapor-ware projects that get funded? According to their HELP section on their website, not much.

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No where else in their HELP section do they offer a way to receive a refund once the project is funded. Sure, they point out that you should trust companies that have a better track record, etc, but who’s to stop a renegade company from doing one last swansong of a project, offering something really cool, getting people to back their project, then run away with the money once the funds are released?

I hope that there doesn’t end up being a company like this to smear the Kickstarter name, as they do have some great companies with some neat products (Case in point, there’s the “Elevation Dock” for iPhone by Casey Hopkins that has raised an astounding $767, 803 as of today, with 9 days left to funding), but I feel it’s almost inevitable for some bad apple of a company to come along and break this system. Perhaps Kickstarter will take heart, read posts like these of the community and make some changes to the way accountability is held.

Kickstarter: Great Idea, but a bad experience

UPDATE: CustomSLR will now ship out $125 backer’s C-Loop and Glide Strap products!

So here I am in November 2011. I’ve been traveling and shooting photography quite a bit for my new job as a Community Manager at ASTRO Gaming. Taking shots of Pro Gamers, company booths, and just the interactions between the gaming audience at major events like Penny-Arcade Expo, E3, and MLG tournaments. I hear about a new product launching from a new start-up company that I became familiar with through a local “SJ Made” / “SJ Eats” food festival.

CustomSLR was started by two brothers, Ben Wong and Ivan Wong, who desired to make a product that would allow DSLR cameras to be used in an easy gripping motion, but not held by the typical strap locations. They produced their C-Loop, which is similar to various other products on the market, where it moves the strap process to the tripod mount area of the camera. This allows for the DSLR also to be positioned upside down for a little easier grip. At the same time, they introduced their Split Strap system and Glide Strap system which helps with the weight distribution of items held across your shoulder and the ability to “glide” just the attached item up and down the strap system, while the strap maintains around your body.

I had been following them on Twitter and Facebook for a few months, and they announced their new project, the M-Plate. This was their next phase of camera mounting gear, which essentially is a tripod mount that fits both the ACRA Swiss and Manfroto type tripod mounts. They announced their Kickstarter project to fund the M-Plate back in October.

Kickstarter is a funding company of sorts. It allows for entrepreneurs to host their projects/ideas for a product online, gauge interest from their respective communities, all in hopes that they will pledge their money towards the project, and in return, receive one of the product packages upon completion. This is helpful for those budding creators who don’t have the means to raise capital themselves, but perhaps have some great ideas for products that they can actually implement.

Ben and Ivan had used the Kickstarter website before, for their original product launch of the C-Loop. In this new Kickstarter project, they listed the estimated shipping date to be December 2011. The date sounded good, as the time period between the last MLG event in November, and my next event wouldn’t be until around March, so I decided to help fund their project by pledging my amount of $125, which brought me to their second tier package. This included their C-Loop, Glide Strap, and the new M-Plate.

A few days before I pledged in November, their M-Plate project had reached their original funding goal of $15,000, so I’m already promised the product as all Kickstarter projects that are fully funded should actually be produced. Time passes, and December 9th comes around, which was their funding date, meaning all of the money pledge and ran through the Amazon “holding process” (All Kickstarter projects have their funds authorized by Amazon, and held until their funding date) was now given to CustomSLR.

Now this is where it gets bad. The M-Plate has apparently been going through all types of design changes to make it accessible to both tripod mount types. This is understandable as it’s a new product that is still in it’s finalization period before being mass assembled/produced. Where the problem lies, is that CustomSLR offered these other Tiers of their Kickstarter M-Plate project offering their other products (Glide Straps + C-Loop combo, limited edition C-Loop HD combo, etc.). All of these products have previously been on Kickstarter, funded, and now produced and sold on their website with no delay.

There are a growing number of people concerned over this project and the shipping times. They’ve already missed their original shipping date by an entire month, but then posted information on January 24 that they have yet to confirm their production samples yet, and that it would production would take place 30 days after that. So realistically all backers are looking at a March time frame at a bare minimum for delivery.

For the backers who pledged $125 or $250, their Tiered packages offered those other products that are readily available. Why not send those ahead of time, as they already know their project is delayed. (Would make for a good gesture for the company. A way of saying thanks, and we’re sorry for the delay)

Kickstarter offers no “buyer’s protection.” Simply if the funded company is not communicating, we’re suggested to post to their comments board, which we have. There’s no way to report to Kickstarter of our complaints or issues, so instead, we have to take to the web to create these long drawn out blog posts. Once the money is drawn and the project is funded, it’s done, and seems out of Kickstarter’s hands. There’s definitely some issues with the system Kickstarter has running. Good idea in concept, but could use some refinement…

The Story of My (Video Game) Youth

Someone recently posted on the ASTRO Gaming Forums informing us that he was licking his controller cable before inserting it into his MixAmp for a better connection… It so reminded me of the weird “viral” happenstance of my youth.

It’s the classic example of how my fellow youth of the 80s ruined their Nintendo Entertainment Systems.

Backstory: The NES had some inherit fault with it, where after about 2-3 years of usage, it wouldn’t always read games. Once it powered on, it would produce a black screen and a blinking red light.

Some where, some kid came up with the idea that if he breathed hot air on the metal connection port of his 8Bit NES cartridge game, that it would help the console read it better (I guess water + electricity?). This spread like wildfire (even without the internet) and basically every kid who had a NES that was bad did this. We believed it. It still seldom worked, but we did it anyway. Breathing our hot, stinky, nacho cheese breath over the connectors. I’m sure if those cartridges were still around now they’d be corroded.

The reason? Well the NES was a front-loading cartridge, much like those old VCR’s. When you inserted the cartridge you had to press it down on the spring loaded surface to power the unit on, this actually caused a friction on both the male portion of the cartridge, and the female portion of the console (this is now sounding kinda sexual as I type it, LOL). Over time, and years of using the NES, the prongs that read the cartridge would get bent out of place, and wouldn’t be able to read the game data.

Nintendo all along knew this was the case (as they made their own Japanese Famicon with an upright, vertically inserted cartridge, and also followed up with the next gen Super Famicon and SNES in the same vertical cartridge setup), but still, saw an opportunity for more sales and released a “Nintendo Official Cleaning Kit” which my brother actually bought. It had some padding type material which you would dose with some rubbing alcohol and it would clean off any dirt and debris (probably from our nacho cheese breath) that accumulated on the cartridge pins. They also made repair centers where you could send your NES to be cleaned of dirt and debris for a fee.

It’s nice that after 25 years, Nintendo finally admitted to the public that you actually shouldn’t breath on the cartridges.

And that’s my story.

Uh Oh! Running out of room in Gmail?

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So I got my Gmail account back in 2004 (6/23/2004) when it was still in the Invite only Beta stages. It’s been close to 7 years with a total of over 100,000 emails in my “All” folder. Google’s been constantly giving more and more room to Gmail users (Starting at 1Gb, jumping to 2Gb, and has still blossomed to the 7.569Gb I have today), yet I’m already using 61% of that space!

I looked back to some older entries where I discussed the amount of space and got these stats:

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So it really looks like I only have 2 1/2 years until my Gmail box will be full. Sadness.