Apple announced today the new version of Apple TV, a tiny little device for streaming HD movies to your home television.  This is very cool – the form factor looks awesome and beautiful, as we might expect of an Apple product.  It’s eschewed the HDD in favor a small amount of flash memory for programs and buffering, and otherwise is streaming only.  A bunch of cool streaming services (like Netflix, Flickr, etc.) are also embedded.  All of this is great.

What’s funny to me is that no one seems willing to call this thing what it actually is: a set-top box. (Abeit a tiny one that’s cool looking.)  Engadget, Crunchgear, Boy Genius Report, and about a zillion other blogs have all posted about Apple’s announcement.  But all of them are consistently leaving out the set-top nomenclature which has, at this point, accumulated a lot of negative mojo.  It’s also conspicuously absent from Apple’s press release.

I think this is because no one likes set-top boxes. They’re clunky, take up space on the media console, take up an HDMI input on your receiver or TV, add a remote control to your coffee table, and cost extra $$$.  Lots of companies are focusing instead on embedded devices, including Google TV and VUDU.  (Disclaimer – I’ve worked with VUDU in the past.)  Basically these folks embed their streaming services into televisions and Blu-ray players, so that instead of needing an extra device on the console, you stream content directly into the device you already own.  This is more efficient for the consumer, and adds value to the manufacturers of devices people are already planning to buy (like TV’s and BDP’s).  It sort of leaves hanging the folks who make set-top boxes, like ROKU and Apple.

It’s just strange to me that no one is willing to call this thing what it is.  One blogger refers to the new Apple TV as “streaming-focused device…” which is true by the way.  But it’s also a friggin’ set-top box.

I don’t know why this bothers me.  I’m an admitted Apple fanboi.  I’ve had three generations of iPhone, own several iPods, am on my second Macbook, and want to get an iMac. I might even get an Apple TV – it looks sexy. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s a set-top box, and I think it should be labeled (pigeonholed) as such.

If I were going to rate the new Apple TV set-top box (sight unseen) on a numeric scale from 1to10, I’d call it a 9 (until they prove me wrong.)  But if I were going to numerically rate their fishy attempt to avoid an ugly label that is nevertheless true, I’d call it a 2.  The sauce is weak.

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Tom Bihn is a boutique bag maker.  Our senior correspondent, Sol, remembers Tom Bihn from his college days in Santa Cruz in 1995, though now the company is based out of Seattle, WA.  As (both) of our steady readers are aware, I have long been on a search for the *perfect* laptop bag.  This might be a messenger bag, it might be a shoulder bag (as distinct from a “messenger bag”), or it might be a backpack with a laptop sleeve. I haven’t found the perfect bag yet, and that does include the Smart Alec (the backpack which is the subject of this review.)  But I will say that this bag that the folks at Tom Bihn sent me comes closer than anything else I’ve used so far.

That’s no faint praise.  I’ve used some good packs (back and otherwise) and I’ve used some terrible ones.  I look at size, comfort, versatility, aesthetics, materials, and a number of other categories.  On almost every level the Tom Bihn Smart Alec kicks ass.  I’ll dive into some details.

The bag is a good size.  You can fit a remarkable amount of crap inside, especially considering the clean, svelte look of the bag.  It has a narrow profile and a sparse exterior (which I like), and that appearance belies a capacious interior with just the right amount of organizational versatility (i.e., pockets.)  :)

Comfort is the (only) area where the Smart Alec falls a little short for me.  I’ve been looking for a bag that suits all purposes, which is admittedly a patently unfair criteria.  I use it for walking around conferences, for car commuting, and for commuting on my bicycle.  The bicycle commuting was the only issue for me – the backpack straps were a little thin and hurt my shoulders a bit.  This is when I’m loading the bag fairly heavily (macbook pro, charger, clothes, shoes, notebook and a cup of coffee), and riding a relatively long time (45-55 minutes.) With that load and over that length of time, I found that the bag hurt my shoulders a bit.  Not unduly, but not cushy either.

In terms of versatility, I’ve never seen a better designed townie pack.  (That’s as opposed to a mountaineering pack.)  The laptop sleeve, called a brain cell, clips into the pack with the hands down absolute best clip system I’ve ever used; one that’s easy to open and close, and that fits intuitively and easily.  The sleeve is easy to install and remove, and makes the bag useable for a variety of purposes from commuting to grocery shopping to day hikes. It appears to be pretty darn safe too, as this video demonstrates. (Wonder how many takes it took.)  It also has great pockets, intermal and external both.  The top loader style has a wide, oval-shaped main opening that’s easy to open and to use, and the two side pockets are elliptically shaped and proved an enormous amount of space without any sense of being bulbous or oversized.  (Easy to fit a Nalgene bottle in there.)

Aside from long distance, heavily weighted (dis)comfort, the other main issue is price.  $130 for a daypack isn’t the *most* exorbitant price I’ve ever heard of, but it’s far from the most reasonable.  If your budget is flexible (i.e. you have disposable income) this is a great buy.  Also, an argument could certainly be made that this bag will last a lifetime, and pay for itself over a period of blissful, pack-filled years.  Certainly in the course of 6 months of daily, all-weather use, I’ve seen no signs of wear or fallibility, and that’s pretty impressive considering how much I abuse my gear. This pack ain’t cheap, but in my estimation it’s giving damn good value for your money.

I’m not the first person to review this pack, and likely I won’t be the last.  They’ve been making this design for a number of years, and it doesn’t seem to have changed much.  That’s for good reason – they made it the right way.  Both MacNN and our friends at LIVEdigitally reviewed this pack in the past, as have others.  But my review is better.  Smarter.  Bigger. Longer.  Uncut.  If I were forced to give this pack a numeric rating between 1 and 10, it would get a 9.  They did it right, and aside from a minor quibble or three, I’m pretty impressed.  You can buy one here, right now, and you probably should.

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In my email today (picture below) I got an email from Apple, pushing the new Adobe Creative Suites software.  In the midst of the brouhaha over Apple trying to kill Adobe’s Flash software, they’re still pushing other Adobe products.  Is this:

• Apple being fair-minded?
• Apple making an explicit peace offering ?
• Just a random occurrence based on product availability and consumer email marketing schedules?
• Is Apple just trying to make more money on a lucrative software suite ? (likely)
• Is Apple being ironical? (That would be awesome, but not super likely methinks.)

In any case, it caught my eye, so I’m sharing it with you, satisfied reader.  You know who you are.

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It’s awesome for playing music, reading eBooks, and watching movies – the Netflix app rocks if you already have an account.  But still, is all that worth the six hundo? Probably.

But, just in case you needed one more reason to own an iPad, see the video below.

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“Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend.  Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.”

- Grouch Marx

“I don’t want the world.  I just want your half.”

- Ana Ng, TMBG

“Sweet buttery Jesus, please STOP comparing these to AK’s!”

- Random shopper on Deals.Woot.com, talking about the AK-47 vs. the AR 15 assault rifle.  :)

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For the uninitatied, Shooter Jennings is a musician, and the son of former outlaw country star Waylon Jennings.  I say “former” because Waylon sadly passed on about 8 years ago.  Nevertheless, his music continues to rock and roll me today.

But this post is really about Shooter, and his new concept album “Black Ribbons.”  SavingCountryMusic.com has a thorough and interesting review on the album, as well as some interpretations as to what Shooter was, well, shooting for in this opus. The author sort of vacillates between not really loving it and trying to acknowledge that Shooter was trying to do something big,maybe even something epic, with this effort.

I can’t do as good a job as they did in interpreting what Shooter was aiming for, why it’s important politically, socially, or to the annals of Country (and other) music.  What’s more, I don’t really care to analyze it that way.  I like Shooter’s music, particularly his 2007 album, The Wolf.  I like his voice, I like his arrangements, I like his melodies, and I like the fact that he cheerfully injects a bit of cheesiness into his rock.  He doesn’t didn’t take himself too seriously – that’s shone through his music like a ray of molten sunshine peering into the south end of a north-bound donkey.

Black Ribbons doesn’t feel like that.  According to SCM.com Shooter is intentionally leaving “Country” behind.  That’s cool – I like good music, of whatever stripe, flavor or variety.  And Black Ribbons isn’t bad music.  It just feels a little confused, a little angry, and sometimes a little boring.  I’m not trying to bash on Shooter (though I guess I kind of am bashing) or his music. Hell, I can’t make a rock album, angry or otherwise.  But I’m just not that into this one.  I’ll keep listening to it, but it’s probably not going on my iPhone. I only have 8 gigs after all.

In the end, this album (which is clearly a concept album) is a little too heavy on the concept, and  a little too lite on the album.

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Today, all most of these networks have a place.  Obviously Facebook is kicking ass. MySpace still has tens of millions of users, many some of them active. Even Friendster, for instance, is insanely popular in the Philippines.  Orkut, Google’s social network is very big in Brazil (though Facebook’s presence is growing there.) But what has become of Tagworld?  Nothing good.

Tagworld was a big deal at one point – big enough to secure $7.5 million in VC funding form Draper Fisher Jurvetson.  They differentiated via their widget platform (among other features).  Tagworld morphed into “Social Project” in 2007, and was later purchased by Viacom who also had a stake in the company.  Today, Social Project primarily focuses on a product called Flux, which “lets content creators build unique, customized, connected communities to grow their audience.”  Whatever.

What’s interesting is that some people do seem to still visit Tagworld – to me though, the site seems effectively dead.  If you visit the home page, you’re greeted with a stunning bit of verbiage (look to the right.) To me, between the lines this says: “we’re over it – if you want to keep using it, run it yourself.”  Some members do seem to visit and update their profiles – many of the public profiles on the homepage have updates newer than the last 24 hours.  One of these has a post that’s only 20 hours old.  Interestingly though, her most recent comment says: “I will never understand tag world :[ soooo confusing"  Ha!

Tagworld turned itself into Social Project, and got bought by Viacom to make a product called Flux.  Ok, cool.  Got it.  But the fact is, Tagworld is done.  Users don't know how it works. They've turned over operations to the user community.  There isn't any link to "About Us." And if you look at Compete scores, they're below 15K uniques. (Forget about Social Project [thought it wasn't intended to be a destination site seemingly.])  It’s bigger than 1to10, but not real good for a social network.  If anyone at Viacom is listening (unlikely) just close it down.  It’s done.  Stick a fork in it .

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“Hey Google!  Foster City gets a 10 out of 10.  Give us Fiber-Optic Broadband.”

Here’s a satellite view of Foster City (from Google Maps):

View Larger Map

And here’s the statement I wrote about our community, explaining why Foster City should become a test-bed community:

Foster City is a vibrant, multicultural community in the heart of Silicon Valley.  Adjacent to San Mateo, and located squarely between San Francisco and San Jose, Foster City is a family-oriented neighborhood filled with Latino, Indian, Asian and Caucasian nationalities who mingle together seamlessly and provide color and culture to the entire community.

A strong fiber optic network would in no way enhance the safety, multiculturalism or flavor of the community.  :)  However, because the population is both diverse and largely employed in the technology sector, Google would have a fantastic test-bed of users who represent different ethnic backgrounds and simultaneously understand and work in the technology sector, and are therefore equipped to provide useful feedback on the deployment and effectiveness of the service.

Come on Google.  Let’s make it happen. If you want to contact me, feel free to email me at david [at] 1to10reviews [dot] com (via Gmail on Google Apps for small businesses.)  Foster City would be a perfect test bed, and you know it.  Bring it on home.

Foster City on the 4th of July

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011110

Sweet. I’ve always liked palindromes. For the uninitiated, they’re words that spell out the same way in either direction. Simple ones are words like mom, or dad. A favorite one of mine that I learned in the 10th grade goes as follows:
“Satan oscillate my metallic sonatas”

Do you have a favorite palindrome or word game? If so, please share it in the comments so we can all enjoy. In the meantime, enjoy this great example of Nerd Rock by They Might Be Giants: “I Palindrome I” (notably not a palindrome, which is part of the fun.)

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This is our 5th CES in a row, and it’s our annual tradition to drive.  We stopped for some lunch and Sol lost his phone, which is normally a panic-inducing nightmare of an experience.  But Sol stayed pretty zen about it (he’s in a good place right now.)  As it turned it out, it wasn’t really lost, and because I’m a genius we found it in about 20 minutes. But by then the Nexus One was ordered, and it only seems right to have one. After all, we’re at CES and we love shiny new phones the way little kids love puppies, or the way gravediggers like a good exhumation.

Below is the video of our unboxing. Ours is non-exclusive, non-exhaustive, and only mildly interesting. You can find much more professional (and informative) unboxings on Into Mobile, on Engadget, and on Ubergizmo (among others.) But Sol is better looking that anyone at those other pubs, so we’ll add ours to the mix anyway.

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On a scale of 1to10, I deserve a 2. At best.

On January second of this year (about a week and ago) an amazing opportunity arose. My good friend Jeremy pointed it out to me. The date, January 2nd, 2010. Or, written another way: 1/2/10

So cool. Our blogging namesake there, right in the date. On the evening of the 2nd, Jeremy and I were hanging out, and he suggested that I blog about it, use it as an opportunity to reflect on the blog, on life, etc. I agreed, went out to sushi, drank too much sake, and forgot to write a post. And I’ve been so busy I never followed up.

That’s been the story of this publication for a while now, and it’s a bummer. I like writing, and I like 1to10. I’m at CES right now (the Consumer Electronics Show) and being around so much gadget porn and so many bloggers is making me want to write. I missed a cool opportunity on 1/2/10, but I’m going to try and make the most of 1to10 in 2010.

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We got a dog recently, and adorable Golden Retriever puppy we’ve named Cash. He’s a part of this family, and 100% awesome.  But he’s got a weak tummy (or worms) and he’s lost control of himself a couple of times, both at the office and at home in our bedroom.  Cross my fingers, we’ve so far avoided any squishy toes (thanks to Ron H. for that lovely and descriptive term.)

In deference to those incidents, and in the interest of a clean home and good relations with my co-workers, we decided to get some help with cleaning up aging diarrhea stains.  Enter the Bissell 1200A Spot Bot Pet – a portable, spot cleaning vacuum.  This sucker uses water and cleaning solutions to pull out aging (and gross) stains better than I could ever hope to with a spray bottle and a rag. We used it on three spots so far and the thing seems to be pretty darn effective.  The reviews on Amazon are pretty compelling as well.

The thing is pretty brain-dead simple to use too.   Fill up the reservoir with cleaning solution and water, place over the stain in question, plug it in, and hit “go.”  ”Go” = one of two choices, either a “fresh stain” setting that runs for 3 minutes, or a “set stains” setting that runs for 6.  I opted for the 6 minute clean.

And it works.  At $130 it isn’t super cheap, but not excessively expensive either, especially compared with a couple of visits by Stanley Steamer. Of course, I need to keep buying cleaning fluid too, but hey, Bissell’s gotta eat too.  And this vacuum is reassuringly heavy and solid – doesn’t feel like a cheap piece o’ crap.  And it’s kind of fun to watch it washing, rinsing, gurgling and scrubbing away in the magic viewing window.

Seriously, if you have (or anticipate acquiring) a number of small, contained stains on the carpet, this thing might be a darn handy tool to have around.  Here’s a video of the Spot Bot Pet in action at the office, working on week-old diarrhea stains:

Poop Be Gone. on 12seconds.tv

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When I first joined MySpace in 2005, it was relatively new, and allowed me to connect with a lot of people I hadn’t seen a long time.  Facebook was only available for college students.  Social networking was still a young-ish enterprise, and no one had ever tweeted. Ever.  Hard to believe.

MySpace quickly became less fun as more and more profiles turned janky, and more and more fake profiles started asking me to be their friend.  You it’s relatively easy to tell when a fake profile wants to friend you, because it will have a profile picture  that looks like a model’s head shot, and they have only 3 friends.  The same thing happens on Twitter – same kind of profile pic, and though they’re following 3,000 people, they in turn have only 7 followers (hapless schmucks who most likely have auto-follow turned on.)

Now, for the first time since I’ve been using Facebook (~3 years) I got a MySpace-style spam friend request.  See picture on the right.  I’m pretty sure I don’t know that person – I’d remember a stunningly hot woman named Miles Michaels.  And I notice that the fan pages “she” is following are both for clubs in Las Vegas.  Huh.  What do you know.

I was surprised to get this request, and kinda bummed.  I don’t spend as much time on Facebook as I used, but as it becomes pervasive enough for even my Dad to to have a profile, it’s increasingly useful as a way to share information (like pictures of my new dog, Cash.)

If I had to give this a rating between 1 and 10, I’d call it a 2.  Spam is lame in all it’s varieties, and Facebook is no exception.

Post Script:

If anyone believes that I’m wrong, and Miles is actually a sensitive, passionate woman who deserves friendship like anyone else, here’s her info.  Have at it:

Basic Information:

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The Best Buy Kiosk is a great idea.  People like to make awesome, spur of the moment gadget and electronics purchases.  Those not least when traveling and on vacation.  Doubtless Japan has been doing this for many years.  Damn they’re on the ball.

Essentially (in case you live in 29 Palms, CA and you’ve never seen one) these kiosks are like a self-serve gizmo vending machine.  iPods, camcorders, headphones, and other fun items are ready to hand for spontaneous shopper.   They are un-manned, which is obviously a huge costs savings in labor.  Right up until Windows goes into a tail-spin spiral of death, and/or DELL chokes on the BIOS screen.

At the airport I ran into a Best Buy Kiosk that was in excessive FAIL mode.  On a scale of 1to10, this scores a 1 on the “success” meter.  (It looked like this for at least 25 minutes, FYI.)

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On a scale from 1 to 10, Time Machine can really save your bacon.

Mac has a very cool program that fits seamlessly into September’s theme on data backup and protection. Not September anymore you say? Well, things have been busy. Nevertheless, for those who haven’t heard of it (both of you) this software merits a little blog love: Time Machine.

From their website:

“Never again worry about losing your digital files. Time Machine automatically saves up-to-date copies of everything on your Mac — photos, music, videos, documents, applications, and settings. If you ever have the need, you can easily go back in time to recover anything.”

As with many Apple products, Time Machine is built well and built smart.  It will regularly remind you if you haven’t backed up recently.  And it’s simplicity itself to open the program, pick a day / time that you want to restore, and it will revert your computer to the state it was in at that time.  Cool?  But it gets better.

I might lose a file, delete a photo, or even corrupt my iTunes library so that it shows only gibberish instead of my meticulously labeled and organized music.  Any of these issues are incredibly frustrating, but I might not want to revert my entire computer back to two weeks ago, cause I’ve gotten new emails or shot new pictures since then, or who knows what.  Time Machine will let you restore an individual file or an individual program, without affecting anything else on the computer.  Now that’s cool.

So how do you use Time Machine?

- Well, to start with you need an Apple computer – Time Machine only comes with Mac OS X.

- Second, you need an external HDD – I use my Seagate FreeAgent Desk as my dedicated Time Machine backup drive.  You can use a variety of different external storage devices, including setting aside a partition on a RAID or in your NAS box, or even in your DROBO, but I decided to have a dedicated disk for TM.

-  Third, you’ll have to plug the drive into your Mac (or connect over your wireless network) and open Time Machine – it’ll walk you through the steps of how to format the drive correctly.  They do a good job of holding your hand through it.

And that’s pretty much it.  If you always leave your drive connected (or you’re always connected to your Wifi network) it’ll keep backing you up automatically.  If not, then you’ll get regular reminders that you need to backup your machine.  Plug in and it will back up without any fuss or muss.

One note of caution – if you set it to backup too frequently (like, say, hourly) then you will quickly fill up even a very large HDD.  The Time Machine is smart enough to only note the changes to your computer since you last backup (as opposed to making a complete copy of everything – overkill considering that 90% of your files don’t change much from day to day.)  But still, even those relatively small changes can start to add up quickly, and you will discover that your HDD is full before long.

If I were forced to give Time Machine a numeric rating between 1 and 10, I’d call it a 9.  It’s a great piece of software, it comes free with your Mac (as long as you buy one with OS X or above) and it works perfectly. Huzzah!  Huzzah!  Huzzah for Apple.  :)  (Like they need more kudos, self-inflated as they are.)

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Today 12seconds launched a new app in the iTunes app store. It’s called 12mail, and you can download it from iTunes here.

I know that I’m biased, being that I work with the company and all, but I do believe that this app has incredible potential – it offers a new medium for communication. It’s like video visual voicemail.  It leverages all of your friends in Twitter and Facebook to build your list of “contacts.”   You can then send short videos (twelve seconds long) to those people.  If they also have the 12mail app, they’ll be able to watch the video right there on the phone.  If not, they’ll either a.) receive a DM on Twitter with a link to the video (private) or b.) a wall post on their Facebook profile (public)

Combining the ability to record and send video with the social networks you’ve built up on services like Twitter and Facebook is an excellent move.  And the twelve second limitation on the length of videos works to your advantage on a mobile device.  It’s quick to upload when you’re sending, even over clunky old EDGE.  And it’s very fast to buffer and stream when you’re on the receiving end.

Sol, Jakey, Ethan and the rest of the team have worked really hard to put this app together, and I think the effort was well spent.  A number of different folks in the press and blogosphere have covered the app today, including Cult of Mac, AppleTell, Techcrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Download Squad, and a bunch of others. I have no qualms giving this app a 10 out of 10.  If you think I’m biased, well, you’re right.  Don’t care.

A sample video I shot is below, as is a SRIBD doc that walks through the entire app.  Check ‘em out.

You should get 12mail for your iPhone. on 12seconds.tv

12mail Overview

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On a scale from 1to10, I’m a strong believer in redundancy.

It keeps you alive when you’re setting rock climbing anchors, and it’s extremely valuable when it comes to digitally stored data. I have 2 hard drives inside my PC. The two are mirrored (RAID 1 – see the Wikipedia link above).  Briefly, what this means is that every time I create a file or add a new program on my computer, that data is stored to both HDDs.  Both of the drives in my PC reflect the exact same data (hence the term “mirror.”)  This protects me against mechanical failure (i.e. one hard drive melting down.)  It does not protect against something like, say, a virus or worm.  This is because if it affects one drive, it will also affect the other.   The two are exact mirrors of one another, and reflect the exact same operating system, data, software, etc. So if I fubar one (by installing a corrupt file or a virus) both will be messed up.  But, if one of the disks stops turning, the other one can remain active and continue to run the computer.  This is a type of redundancy which I am very fond of.

Now, if the computer itself catches fire, or if I do somehow install a virus, the redundancy in the RAID is no protection at all.  It’s strictly a backup against mechanical failure of a single drive.   That’s why I also use an  external HDD to store independent backups of important data.  Again, redundancy.  Get it?

Spencer Boerup, a wedding photographer in Phoenix, AZ has a nice post with exhaustive detail on his beliefs in redundancy, and the steps he uses.  If you’ve got 10 minutes, it’s a good read.

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On a scale of 1to10, Google Chrome just got cooler.

This post is off-topic.  Meaning, it’s outside the scope of “storage” month. But I’m excited about a new feature of Google Chrome, and that’s inspired me to write.  M.G. Siegler at Techcrunch wrote a post today about Google Chrome’s latest update to version 3.0.  Chrome is also a little more than a year old – I’ve been using it consistently pretty much that whole time.  I like it a lot.

Chrome 3.0 has made all kinds of performance and benchmarking improvements and upgrades – javascript thingamajigs load waaaay faster than they did before, blah blah blah.  That’s all cool, and I’m glad the browser is better-performing and more reliable now.  But to be truthful I don’t know that much about the technical side of web-browsing, and I don’t want to pretend that I do.  I take it at face value that the performance is now better than it was (seems great to me.)

What does impress and please me is a feature I hadn’t noticed previously – the ability to create application shortcuts out of a webpage.  This is very similar to what Fluid does on the Mac OS, and this is nothing really new.  But it’s cool.  Basically, you can take a website of your choosing, and using the “Control the current page” dropdown at the top right, you can create a shortcut for that website on either the desktop, the start menu, or the quick launch bar.  For instance, I turned Pandora into a shortcut.  This does a couple things:

1. You can launch said webpage as a standalone app, as opposed to a browser tab or browser window

2. The page looks like an app, with not URL bar or other navigation tools

3. If you close your browser, that application stays open

Again, this is very similar to what Fluid does.  And Google did a nice job of incorporating the site’s own iconography and favicons to make the shortcuts look decent.  I like using the quick launch personally, cause I dislike a cluttered desktop.  Oh lord, my OCD is showing.

Fluid rocks, and this little feature is a nice move in a similar direction.  If I gave it a numeric rating, it would be an 8 out 10.

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That might be a little confusing – let me back up.  I own an XBOX 360.  In my opinion, it’s one of (if not the) very best home media devices ever made.  I enjoy playing video games, but the XBOX Live has a lot of cool functions, including the very best implementation of Netflix I’ve ever see (blows the TIVO interface out of the water.)  And one of the other things it lets you do is plug in external media.

Basically, here’s the deal.  I rip all of my movies and TV series (from The Big Lebowski to Entourage) into digital files, generally MPEG 4 files (either .MP4 to .M4V) with AAC audio encoding.  To do this I use either DVD Fab Platinum (a paid software available only for PC) or Handbrake (a free software that works best on the Mac, though it does have a PC version.) I then store these files in multiple locations (a future post on redundancy will elaborate on this point.)  One of those locations is a Maxtor OneTouch HDD (pictured right) – I bought a 750 GB drive at Costco a while back.  I transfer ripped movies and shows, and plug it into my XBOX.  This gives me a backup of those files, and a medium to deliver them to my big screen.  The files, ripped into 720p quality, play beautifully on my plasma.  I have a large library of content, accessible through an awesome UI, and totally independent of things like an Internet connection or a solid WiFi signal.

Don’t get me wrong.  I still watch DVDs.  And I still stream shows through Netflix (30 Rock in HD is awesome.)  But I am a hoarder (OK not that bad), and I like having the files themselves, locally, and the XBOX is perfect delivery device for watching those local shows.  Now I can see each and every episode of Arrested Development as often as I like, on the big screen, right off my HDD.  That makes me happy.  10 happy.

I’m a big fan of using an external HDD as both a storage device and a delivery mechanism.  You’ll need to rip your DVD collection, but it’s satisfying to have it at your fingertips and not have to fuddle with disks.  Yeah, I said fuddle.  Sue me.

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I’m a strong believer in the KISS principal: keep it simple, stupid. There’s lots of complex and confusing ways to backup your data, including a Network-attached storage (NAS) box, a redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID), and beyond.  The deeper you dig into these solutions, the more complex they become. Do you want a RAID 0, a RAID 1, a RAID 10…? Do you want to mirror your drives, or stripe them? Does any of this make sense?

If you’re like 95% of the world, the answer is no, it does not make sense.  It is most certainly not simple.  Well, you know what is simple?  An external hard drive.  That’s what.

An external hard drive is precisely what it sounds like.  It’s a hard disk drive (HDD) that sits outside your computer case.  Generally they have a plastic or metal enclosure, and connect to your computer via USB cable (or sometime Firewire.)  Larger capacity HDD’s will generally also have a power source.  Smaller capacity (under 250 GB) can frequently run off power drawn from the USB port.  Many different storage and CE (consumer electronics) companies make these drives, including Seagate, Western Digital, HItachi, Buffalo, and Simple Tech and many others.

The beauty of the external HDD is the guiding light behind the title of this post.  Its simplicity.  You plug the drive into your computer, and boom another hard drive appears on your desktop.  You can drag files onto it, or drag them off.  That’s it.  If you have a bunch of photos, music, movie files, or work documents you can make a quick, simple backup of all that data with just a click and a drag.  You can get a high quality drive for around (or under) $100 depending on the features you’re looking for and the capacity you need.

I have several of these devices that I use for a variety of purposes – I will touch on those here, and may expand upon them in future posts.  One drive that I use specifically for backup is the FreeAgent XTreme from Seagate. It has both USB and Firewire ports for connecting to your PC or Mac, and a separate power supply.  The Freeagents are (in my opinion) some of the best looking drives on the market, which makes some level of difference if you’re keeping it on your desk all the time.  It looks like a neat gizmo with artistic flair, rather than a janky box.  I have an Extreme in 1 TB capacity, and I use it to backup my data on a regular basis.  Most storage companies offer a software suite to do “automatic backups” which sync your data and update the external drive with only new files, or files that have changed.  This can be really handy, and Seagate’s works as advertised.  The other option is to manually drag over new files from time to time, or to overwrite old files by simply dragging the whole folder (with new additions) over to the external.  Salt to taste.

Personally, I do not backup every file, only those that are most important to me.  This includes some older documents, my photos, my music, and my movies.  And my books.  That’s right, I listen to audio books, ripped from CD into MP3 format.  Running sprints or swimming to the spoken word is good for you.

I also have a Maxtor 750 GB external HDD.  This one is connected to my XBOX 360.  I will elaborate on this in a separate post.  Lastly, I have a Seagate Freeagent Desk which I use with my Mac.  Again, watch for an upcoming post for more details.

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On a scale of 1 to 10, more people should really be backing up their hard drives.

You know you should.  We all know we should, but most of us rarely do.  If you go into a room of 10 people and ask: “Do any of you back up your hard drives?”, usually only 2 or 3 people will raise their hands.  If you ask a followup question: “Have any of you ever lost data or had a catastrophic hard drive failure?”  I’ll lay down a bet that the same 2-3 people raise their hands.  My friend Jeremy likes to say that “people don’t like to think about loss – it’s depressing, and our minds just don’t want to go that direction.”  I agree.  Most of the time it takes a severe loss of data to make someone a true believer when it comes to data backup and redundancy.

To fight that apathy, I am making September “Back It Up” month on 1to10reviews.  This month’s posts will all be related to storage solutions, data backup, and other related topics.  This will cover the gamut from:

- cloud-based storage solutions like Box.net

-to external HDD (Hard Disk Drives) from companies like Seagate and Maxtor

- and heavy-duty solutions like RAID, NAS (network attached storage) boxes and DROBO

Many people in September will be thinking about back to school.  Folks in Quahog are starting to worry about those damn leafers from New York.  But here on 1to10, we’re going to explore the depths and variegated folds of that tortured terrain called data backup and storage. If you have comments, objections, personal horror stories or other ideas to contribute (things you’d like us to review) let us know.  You can comment on a post, or email us at: david [AT] 1to10reviews [DOT] com

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It’s been frustrating recently, because I finally decided to pull the trigger, and I’ve had a hard time locating one.  I found a great price on one website, and they actually charged me for the knife, but then sent me an email saying they were back ordered for about 2 weeks.  I called a couple days later to check in, and was informed that their “backorder email” is actually a form letter, and in fact has no actual bearing on the expected delivery time.  They have no idea when Emerson will send them more, and they are not willing to call Emerson to find out.  Davey no likely.

Fortunately, EDCKnives.com came through like champions and not only got me the knife I wanted, but in the exact model and finish I wanted and for a great price.  They’re worth a visit.

So, now I’ve finally got one.  I love it.  The handles are black G10 with an exceptionally rough, textured grip.  Some people may find the handles a little too abrasive, but I actually like the degree of friction it adds to the grip.  The blade has a gorgeous, mottled finish (in the satin) that’s relatively recent.  Obviously it features a tanto point (some people call it a chisel tip.)  Emerson boasts that this knife was the inspiration for the modern tactical folder.  I don’t have a really hard time believing it – it’s an amazing blade.  Details and material below.

I know this has been a relatively gushy review.  And I am obviously grateful for the cogent and well-thought-out warning, courtesy of Emerson (see right.)  Obviously, if I were to give this a numeric rating from 1to10, it would be a 10.  I have only one qualm thus far.  The blade sits a little too close to the right handle scale, and it rubs when I close the knife.  I don’t know if this is intentional, or if this one is off spec.  Anyone out there with a working knowledge of the CQC-7B have a suggestion on this?   Video explanation below.

The Emerson CQC-7B SFS on 12seconds.tv

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Cautionary note: this post contains profanity. A 28 year-old guy named Justin is writing down the things his 73 year old Dad says and sharing them on Twitter. His feed is titled “Shit My Dad Says.”  The tweets are awesome.  Justin’s Dad is awesome.  I can only surmise that Justin must be awesome as well, despite Dad’s frequent and colorful critiques. As of the time of this post, he has 129, 825 followers (Yes, that’s more than pictured below.  Since I took the screenshot below, he’s gotten 429 new followers. Dude.)

This is my favorite tweet.  It has a personal connection to me, to Sol, and to our buddy Joel.  If I were forced to give this a numeric rating from 1to10, it would be a 10.  No holds barred.  Justin is the man right now, and so is his Dad.

Update:

Techcrunch picked up this story on August 28th, and graciously gave a link back.  Following that, the LA Times also covered this phenomenon on September 2nd.  According to Mark Milian at the Times, Justin’s in coversation for a book deal.  Mazel Tov!

Also, at the time of this update, Justin has more than doubled his Twitter followers since my original post.  He’s currently at 308,955 followers.  Egad.

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I got the red rings of death about a month ago.  It’s a well documented (and sucky) phenomenon that afflicts older XBOX 360’s.  Basically, if three red lights come on around the power switch you know that you are well and truly fuct.

I am not technical and geeked out enough to try the “rip it open and tinker” method that Doug demonstrates on Crunchgear, so I tried the anti-intuitive but briefly successful method of superheating:

I was shocked that this actually did fix my XBOX… for about 3 days.  Then it crapped out again.   Fortunately for me, I shop at Costco.  From all reports Microsoft has actually been very good about fixing or replacing these consoles, and I did print out a free UPS shipping label.  But then I decided I was better off to simply purchase a new console at Costco and return the old one.  Their outstanding return policy is, after all, part of the reason I shop there.

So now I have a new XBOX 360, and one with a 60GB HDD instead of a lowly 10GB HDD.  Hooray.  Except, all my data is still on the 10GB.  This includes saved games, unlocked songs on Guitar Hero, downloaded content (DLC) like map packs for Call of Duty and more.  In aggregate that represents a large investment in time and energy.  But I don’t know how to get my data off the old HDD and onto the new one.

I’m aware that there is a transfer kit, with a special cable and a disc.  But XBOX doesn’t sell it.  And neither does any other reputable retailer.  I found and bought one on Ebay, but it turned out to be a complete POS.  The disc does not work at all – the XBOX 360 reads it as a “mixed media disc” and won’t effect the transfer.  This leaves me with very limited options.  I’ve emailed Microsoft asking for help, but I am not sure what their response will be.  I’ll update this post when I find out.  If you have other suggestions, I’m listening.

If I were forced to give this entire experience (the red rings of death and the difficulty in making a data transfer) a numeric score between one and ten… Well you can probably guess what my ranking would be.

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I just got a Benchmade Griptilian knife.  On a scale of 1 to 10, this knife is hot.

This blade from Benchmade features a lightweight molded handle, ambidextrous thumbhole, a combo edge and a sheepsfoot blade shape.  The blade shape is gorgeous, with a gentle belly and and a good cutting front edge that’s easy to control.

This knife has swiftly become a favorite of mine for everyday carry. It’s extremely lightweight and comfortable, and the black clip actually fades against pants or jeans making it less noticeable than bright stainless clips.  The edge retention is outstanding, despite lots of rough cutting and use, from carpentry pencils to box opening to cutting rope.  I’m extremely pleased thus far.

I did have one big problem with it.  I took a spill off my bicycle on my morning commute to work, landing on my right hip and sliding a bit.  My body was largely undamaged except for a good scrape on the knee, but the knife took a bad hit.  The clip and part of the Black Glass Fill Noryl GTX®/Color Valox® Handle Scale broke off, exposing the blade tip on one side.  I was very surprised to see this break occur.  I wouldn’t have expected the handle scales to be that brittle, especially since the knife was padded on one side against my hip.

I was also a little surprised when my email to Benchmade went totally un-answered.  I visited their website and in the “contact us” section was a web-form to fill out and send an email.  I received no reply to my request for service, and after 5 days I called them directly.  The customer service rep I spoke restored some of my faith in the legendary Benchmade service reputation.  She was courteous, solicitous, and concerned not only about the quality of the product they had made, but also about my condition post-accident.  I thought that was very sweet.  :)

I’ve sent in the knife, and been assured that they will repair or replace it.  I haven’t heard any communication from the repairs department (it’s been about a week) but I expect everything to turn out all right.  I will update this post when I get the knife back.

In regards to customer service, I am reserving judgment on Benchmade. Their rep was outstanding on the phone – but communication has been slow and needed to be initiated by me each time, and I like to know what’s going on.

As far as the blade is concerned, I think this is a fantastic knife. At a price point of $100, the Griptilian isn’t cheap exactly, but you’re getting a lot of knife for your money.  Light, sturdy, beautifully designed and with an outstanding 154CM Stainless Steel blade, this is a knife that should last a lifetime.  So long as you don’t fall on it.

If I were forced to give it a numeric rating between 1 and 10, I’d call it a 7.  (Would have been a 9 without the handle failure and slow communication.)  If you’re looking for one to pick up yourself, I’d look at The Blade Shop – they have it available for $75 right now, $25 less than the recommended MSRP.

UPDATE:

The knife arrived today (8/18.) It looks brand new – not sure if they replaced the handle scale only, or if they actually replaced the whole knife.  If they just refurbished it, they did a hell of a job making it look new. 

Note: Dylan Tweney from WIRED had a nice roundup of a couple different folders, including the Griptilian this past June.

Knife Details (from the Benchmade website):

Blade Length: 3.45” Blade Thickness: 0.115” Blade Material: 154CM Stainless Steel (550T: 440C) Blade Hardness: 58-61HRC Blade Style: Hollowground Modified Sheepsfoot; Ambidextrous Thumb-Holes Weight: 3.25oz.

Clip: Tip Up, Reversible, Black Lock Mechanism: AXIS Overall Length: 8.07” Closed Length: 4.62” Sheath Material: Sold Separately Class: Blue

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