Author Archives: Russ Turley - Page 2

Amazon Raising Prime Service to $99/year

Posted by on March 13, 2014 Comments Off on Amazon Raising Prime Service to $99/year

It was inevitable. I received the following email today from Amazon informing me that the price of their Amazon Primewill go up from $79 to $99 per year.

Dear Russell Turley,

We are writing to provide you advance notice that the price of your Prime membership will be increasing. The annual rate will be $99 when your membership renews on August 28, 2014.

Even as fuel and transportation costs have increased, the price of Prime has remained the same for nine years. Since 2005, the number of items eligible for unlimited free Two-Day Shipping has grown from one million to over 20 million. We also added unlimited access to over 40,000 movies and TV episodes with Prime Instant Video and a selection of over 500,000 books to borrow from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.

For more information about your Prime membership, visit our Prime membership page.

Sincerely,

The Amazon Prime Team

amazonprimeIn a previous post I hinted that I may not renew the service based on the classification of items as Add-Ons.  That has not been as big a problem as I envisioned then.  I now buy enough through Amazon that when I want to purchase an item designated as an Add-on, I have more in my cart that meets the requirement.  It does still bug though.  It is nice that a full five months before my service renews that I’m getting notice. Though, I would probably forget about the increase in price by then and rail about not being notified. This post should stop that.

Their reasons for increasing the cost, their increasing costs to provide the service, is reasonable.

With the increase, Amazon Prime is now $8.25 per month. If you are only using Amazon Primefor the movie and TV service, then you are now paying more than you would be for Netflix.  For breadth of shows Amazon still pales in comparison to Netflix, except in one area, new TV shows and movies.  Shows that are currently running on cable channels, like one of my favorite cancelled shows Psych, are available to purchase the day after they air on their channel.  It’s a nice feature that Netflix doesn’t offer.  If you don’t want to wait for the latest season to be available on Prime or Netflix for no additional cost, you have that option.

Streaming video aside, we subscribe and get batteries, toilet paper, etc. delivered regularly, and I am always reading some borrowed Kindle book on the Kindle or other tablet.  I’d say that I’m getting my $8.25 worth and then some every month so the increase is not causing me to jump ship.

Are you going to dump Amazon Prime because of the price increase?

Great Gifts for the Geek in Your Life

Posted by on December 1, 2013 Comments Off on Great Gifts for the Geek in Your Life

lights

People are always asking me if this tech gift or that geek gift is right for their significant other.  The one rule that I try to follow is this, “most electronics are crap”.  This is particularly true for many of the gifts that are marketed for “the geek in your life” around the holiday season.  With that in mind, I’ve compiled a list of 5 Gifts that I’d love to get myself this year.


1. Roku 3 Streaming Media Player– It’s a set-top box that has the best interface of any similar device I’ve ever used.  These features are supposedly built into many Smart TVs, but the one thing they get all wrong is the interface.  Roku gets it right.  Netflix, check.  Amazon, check.  Every other streaming service, check.


2.Motorola Moto G – 16GB– The Moto G, due to be released on December 4th, is a great way to give a new Android smartphone to your luvva without chaining them to a two-year commitment.  It has much in common with its big brother Moto X, but for less than $200 it’s a stupendous deal.

3.Kindle Fire HDX 7″/ Google Nexus 7– Everyone wants a tablet, even if they don’t need one.  They are one of the hottest tech gifts period.  The reason for calling out both, rather than just the Nexus 7 is whether or not you are into Amazon Instant Video streaming.  If you’re a fan of that service then the tablet to get is the Fire, otherwise I would get the Nexus 7.  It is a quick tablet with a fabulous display.  I would also skip the 10″ version of any tablet.  They’re just too darn big.

4.Amazon Prime– If you are receiving a constant stream of purchase from Amazon, there’s a good chance that you are already an Amazon Prime member, but how about your father-in-law.  The impossible to buy for father-in-law.  He could use Prime as well.   Not only do you get free 2-day shipping on a significant percentage of items in the Amazon store, but you also get to stream all the available Instant Video choices that are included as part of the subscription.


5.Lenovo IdeaPad S400– The ultimate Christmas gift, a new laptop computer.  My recommendation is one of the Lenovo IdeaPad models.  They have plenty of power, plus they have touch screens.  That way when you reach out and interact with the computer with your finger, it will actually respond.

Now, you may be asking, where are all the Apple products?  Back at the store where they belong.  I can’t in good conscience ask anyone to buy Apple products where you get less for your money and are locked in with a company that only wants to extract every last cent it can out of the consumer.  If you are into Apple products, move on and God help you.

One last piece of advice, skip the extended warranty on your devices.  They are unnecessary most times and when/if it does become necessary to replace the device you won’t want to have it replaced with the same old many year-old tech.

Become a GMail Ninja

Posted by on October 9, 2013 Comments Off on Become a GMail Ninja

isinread

As a GMail user I tend to search for emails a lot. Rather than organize by labels I just use the search function. Search for a keyword from the email and up it pops in the results. You want an email from john@smith.com, searching for the email address gives you all the interactions with that person. But how about going deeper with your search?

Say you’ve been picking and choosing which email you click on and now the unread are interspersed with the read. You’d like to see all the unread mail in your inbox. GMail search to the rescue. Simply type in the search box, “is:unread in:inbox“, and the result is a list of exactly those emails and only those emails.  I need all the emails from joe@josts.com prior to 10/1/2013.  Not a problem.  Just search, “before: 2013/10/1 from:joe@josts.com“.

This just scratches the surface of what’s possible.  For the full monty on all things GMail search, check out the Advanced Search page at Google Support.

Amazon Prime Hobbled

Posted by on March 25, 2013 Comments Off on Amazon Prime Hobbled
add-on-item

What gives Amazon?

While making a purchase on Amazon today I ran into a problem that I hadn’t had before.  The thing that I wanted, the USB to Micro USB adapter pictured at the right was listed as an “Add-on Item”.  I wasn’t adding it on to anything.  I just wanted to purchase the cable and have it delivered with my Amazon Prime. However, that’s not what happened.

When trying to check out with the item in my cart, I was informed that the item would not ship unless I had purchased $25 of goods on Amazon.  I chose the appropriate option of “Prime Eligible” when searching for the item I wanted but that’s not what I got.  I got another subset of items that ship only when I spend $25 or more.

This is not an isolated “problem”.

myotape

Why is this an Add-on item only?

The Amazon policy is explained in their Shipping & Delivery section of their Help page. The policy is better explained by this Amazon Strategies blog post.

“The Add-on program allows Amazon to offer thousands of low-priced items that would be cost-prohibitive to ship on their own…”

So there it is. Amazon is getting rid one of the big benefits of Amazon Prime, effectively hobbling the service. Now, if you want that small item AND you still want to purchase through Amazon, you’ll have to buy it from one of the Amazon Partners that are willing to sell those small items one-sy, two-sy. Luckily, many of those partners will ship items for free as well. You’ll just have to wait the 3-5 days for standard shipping instead of the 2-day shipping that we were promised with Prime.

I have to wonder why I’m only seeing this now though.  I buy things on Amazon using Prime multiple times a month.  Is it a larger roll-out?  I only tend to buy larger items on Amazon?

It’s time to take a serious look at what I’m paying for with Amazon Prime.  My Prime subscription is set to auto-renew on August 28, 2013.  There is going to be some serious number crunching to decide if it’s worth it before I renew this year.   I’m guessing it’s going to be…
do not renew

The Real Eyes of Project Glass, Google-y Eyes

Posted by on February 28, 2013 1 comment

I don’t know if you’re up to date with the latest in wearable computing, so let me introduce you to Google Project Glass.  It’s what can best be described as a heads up display using a small projector over your right eye.  With Glass you are able to access information and display it right in front of you.  Pretty cool idea.  I am a huge fan of the book Daemon by Daniel Suarez in which individuals, in particular a character called Loki Stormbringer, access what’s called the Dark-net on similar fictional technology. It seems amazing, and based on the how it’s described in the book, it is absolutely a technology that I’d like to embrace.

But, there’s a problem that is only now being shown, Google Glass googly eyes, or just Google-y Eyes.

Google-y Eyes

Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, has been wearing Google Glass on a regular basis.  I heard that he was even at the Oscars and wearing Glass.  He’s become the spokes model for the product and I haven’t seen a picture of the guy without Glass since early 2012.  Every photograph of Brin looks like the photo on the left above.  He’s looking straight on and fabulous while donning Glass.  Now, I invite you to take a look at the image on the right of Joshua Topolsky of The Verge.  I was reading his article on Google Glass and was surprised by the photographs.  Almost every photo that shows him using Glass shows his eyes up and to the right.  There are more examples to be had at the article.  I encourage you to see and read it for yourself.

These kind of photos obviously bring to mind the movie The Jerk and it’s Opti-Grab and eye problems.  I’d love to have something like Google Glass for myself, but not at the risk of having Google-y eyes.

I don’t know about you, but I’ll wait until Google Glass is something that Loki Stormbringer would wear.

 

Why I’m Passing on Apple Products in the Future

Posted by on November 12, 2012 Comments Off on Why I’m Passing on Apple Products in the Future

I was recently talking to my wife about not buying any more Apple devices.  We have a few Apple computers in the house. Both of them are Mac Minis, one old G4 version, and an Intel Mini that I use as my main workstation for producing podcasts, writing, paying bills, etc.  We also have a few iOS devices in the house.  The oldest boy has a first gen iPod Touch.  The youngest has a first gen iPad, and I have a fourth gen iPod Touch.  I also had an iPhone 3G for 3 years as well, but that one is gone.

So, why no more Apple products?  In two words, planned obsolescence.

What do I mean?  My G4 Mini is useless for anything but serving up files as a network server.  It was long ago abandoned in favor of Intel based systems.  My current Intel Mini won’t run the latest version of Mac OS X.  I had purchased an iOS development course to work through at night.  I was going to attempt to learn iOS application development, but I cannot run the latest version of the development environment because the Mac Mini cannot run the latest version of OS X.  My son’s iPod Touch is stuck back on iOS 4.something.  The iPad that we purchased for my youngest son is now stuck on iOS 5.1.something.  The only device that hasn’t been left behind is my 4th gen iPod Touch.  It is still supported with the latest version of iOS, though I haven’t upgraded it yet.  I long ago sold my iPhone 3G to someone on Ebay.  After the 4.0 version of iOS came out it became obvious that I needed to get rid of the phone before it lost any more resale value.

I had been peeved at the above situations as they occurred, but time had marched on and these devices are older.  I understand that products need to get faster to enable better and more interesting applications.  I get it , but I came to this revelation when viewing an article on the new iPad Mini.  I thought to myself, “What a great thing to get the kids for Christmas”.  Right?  The article that I’m referring to over at Mobile Orchard basically states that the new iPad Mini is the best iPad yet.  I read a similar article on GDGT as well. Awesome! But, hold on.  Maybe not.  Check out the benchmarks below.

So, the new iPad Mini is just slightly faster than the year or so old iPad 2.  The current 10-ish inch iPad is over twice has fast as any other iPad produced to date, even the 6 month old “New iPad”.  We’ve already shown that Apple has no problem leaving behind its users that don’t buy the latest and greatest products that the company is producing.  So, how long before the iPad 2/Mini/”New iPad” are deemed obsolete by Apple.  One year?  By buying one of these iPad Minis you are buying two-year old tech repackaged in a smaller form, but it’s still old tech. Maybe, but I suggest that these devices are practically obsolete on purchase.

I believe the saying “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” is applicable here, except I’ve been fooled far more than twice.

Shame on me.  Apple won’t be fooling me again.

Via Mobile Orchard: REVIEW: 10 Days with the iPad Mini | Mobile Orchard

Learning to Code

Posted by on May 24, 2012 Comments Off on Learning to Code

Most of the new projects that I come up with usually need some sort of programming.  Often open source software can be used, but it almost always has to be tweaked in some way or another.  The skills to make those tweaks yourself can be invaluable.

Today, over on Reddit, I saw a post of resources/websites where you can learn to code.  They are tutorials, screencasts, projects or online books that the poster finds helpful.  Many different programming languages are represented.  I wanted to preserve this list for myself and others so here it is.

Mobile Podcast Web Apps

Posted by on May 10, 2012 Comments Off on Mobile Podcast Web Apps

Quite a few years ago I created the mobile version of the Fat 2 Fit Radio site.  I took the main functionality from the main WordPress site and translated it using some neat tools, iWebKit and Simple Pie. The main thing that I wanted listeners to do was listen to the podcast on their iPhones. This combination of technology did exactly that. It worked so well that when it came time to create an actual iPhone app for the podcast, this same mobile interface was used as part of that app as well.  Additionally, this interface also powers the Fat 2 Fit Android application.

How about an example, you say?

Visit the following sites on your smartphone to see the interface in action.

You can use these tools for other projects as well.  Visit the links above for more information on how to use them.  For the podcaster out there that wants a simple interface for listeners to hear their shows, download Your Own Mobile Podcast Web App and see how it works for you.

If you’d like help creating a more complex web app for your podcast or business, contact me and let’s talk.

Kettlebell Challenges Updated

Posted by on April 17, 2012 1 comment

My site, Kettlebell Challenges, has been updated with improved functionality.  Most of the changes are behind the scenes, but many are apparent to the users.  Among the new features are these great new profile pages.  The user has the option of making the profile public or keeping it private.  From this profile page you can start new challenges and log, change or delete your kettlebell workouts.

Kettlebell Challenges Profile Page

After you complete your challenge you’ll have the option of putting a cool badge on your website like the one below.

A Sample Kettlebell Challenges Badge

This site is an ongoing effort, but it’s coming along nicely if not quickly.

Sign up and challenge yourself!

Netflix Without Starz

Posted by on March 2, 2012 Comments Off on Netflix Without Starz

Just about the same.  Not a big deal.

Before (2/29/12):

After (3/2/12):