Variable Speed iPhone Scrubbing Coming Soon

Next to my ongoing desire for a podcast delete function, the next-most glaring problem I have had with the iPhone and iPod Touch’s iPod playback functionality is its janky fast-forwarding and rewinding (also known as ‘scrubbing’). The two most common scrubbing issues I have with my iPhone are when I want: (i) to skip back … Read more

CE Green Guide Just in Time for Earth Day

I have to admit that I have a love/hate relationship with the green movement. I passionately believe in trying to improve the state of our environment. On the other hand, I find it remarkably depressing that just by living and breathing in a modern world I’m having a negative impact on the Earth. So what … Read more

Bandwidth Caps: Round 27

Get used to it. We’re going to be talking about bandwidth caps for a long time to come. To sum up the latest happenings, Time Warner Cable sparked fresh outrage with the recent news that it would be testing consumption-based billing beyond Beaumont Texas. Then lots of other cable operator folks jumped in with their … Read more

The Three Tenets of New Advertising

I’ve been following the evolution of advertising on TV and the Web and have come up with three tenets that seem to fit the new model for companies looking to promote and sell their wares using a video platform. Make it easy to impulse buy Give away content Get viewers involved, or “engaged” Now that … Read more

SageTV 6.5.13 Beta Brings Closed Captioning

The team at SageTV continues their constant stream of new beta releases for version 6.5.  A little over a week ago they released 6.5.13 which added closed captioning to its list of treasured features along with several additional new features and bug fixes. CC support has been one of the more requested features along with … Read more

Digital Media Bytes: Last100 Edition

A periodic roundup of relevant news… from our friends at Last100: Netflix prepping PlayStation 3 and Wii support suggests job ad Proof that Netflix is serious about widening support beyond the XBox 360 emerged after a recent job advertisement on Monster.com was spotted seeking a lead engineer responsible for the company’s “gaming platforms” – plural. … Read more

HP MediaSmart Server: Time Machine Fine Print

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I had pretty high hopes for my recent HP MediaSmart (EX485, ~$500) acquisition but, after a fun-filled day of disaster recovery, I’m second guessing my purchase. This Macworld Best of Show award winner supposedly offers multi-OS backup, including Time Machine support. It can also act as a central iTunes server, stream media to your Xbox 360 (Twonky), run SageTV, and even permit remote access. The EX485 sure looked like a good start in fulfilling my desire for a ‘personal cloud’.

To configure the Windows Home Server (based on Windows 2003), I went for convenience and used my Vista Ultimate (thanks, Ivan!) Boot Camp partition. Later, I hopped on over to OS X and installed the HP software. My first task was a full Time Machine backup, which went smoothly – taking only a couple hours over WiFi. That was Saturday. Yesterday (Sunday) is when it all unraveled.

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Dave’s New GPS: TomTom ONE 140-S

The PND market ain’t dead yet. Garmin’s got new models in the pipeline and TomTom just launched several navigators, including the US debut of their Internet-connected GO 740 Live GPS. ZNF regulars know I’m a minimalist, preferring convergent devices. However, true turn-by-turn iPhone nav is at least a few months away and the Palm Pre … Read more