Pretty cool idea - instead of exploring officially approved photos on the travel agent’s Web site, see what the hotel looks like in a short video. TVTrip is founded by Expedia alumni, and has videos of the hotels from around the world. They claim 3,825 videos so far, and include a variety of destinations including some motel in Palo Alto as well as Radisson SAS in Paris, France.
Hulu.com today expanded their userbase by sending out a bunch of invites to those who signed up for beta, which this time included me. Generally it’s pretty hard to get excited about visiting media company sites due to small video size and a bunch of DRM they put in (such as displaying video only if you use RealPlayer 9 on Windows XP Service Pack 2), but Hulu.com presently surprises - the videos work well, the site is easy to browse, the quality of videos is quite nice, and they still look reasonable when expanded fullscreen on a 24″ monitor.
The list of available network shows is available here. I watched a few episodes of Family Guy, American Dad, and Simpsons. They do not have a comprehensive collection of all the episodes, but they do have the latest stuff (including episodes that were on TV this past Sunday), and they seem to be filling up their content starting from Season 1. The site is easy to browse, has direct URLs to each episode ( such as http://www.hulu.com/watch/2991/keeping-up-with-the-kardashians-helping-out). The ads are inserted on a regular schedule - before and after the episode, as well as 2 insertions for a 30 minute episode. The commercials I got were those annoying eSurance.com ads, which I tolerate on TV and can tolerate online. All the videos are pausable and viewable later.
I don’t see setting the site up to be my homepage, but as far as number of episodes of good network shows, the quality and selection is generally better than any other video sharing site out there.
A pretty helpful breakdown of the parking costs.
Pardon me, where’s the restroom? Oh, forget it, where’s more restrooms?
The sign is behind the protective glass, which makes me think it was intentional, or installed by a quite disgruntled [ex-]employee.
I liked Hell’s Kitchen, but Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares seems to follow the same exact scenario each episode:
There’s a huge price difference between 22″ LCD monitors and 24″ LCD monitors, so Information Week reviews 5 of the more affordable 22″ monitors - Dell E228WFP, NEC MultiSync LCD225WXM, Planar PX2210MW, Samsung SyncMaster 2232GW, and Viewsonic VG2230wm. There’s a chart comparing features of each, and it’s obvious that the price varies depending on the level of the contrast ratio that you want, and at $269 Dell’s 22″ model delivers approximately the best bang for the buck.
At work and at home I have identical Dell 24″ monitors, but I think a switch back to 22″ would not be that big of the deal - most of the time a sidebar from Google Desktop or Trillian is taking spare two or three inches anyway. At Facebook 30″ monitors recently became a standard issue, and I had an offer to have mine replaced, but, alas, it looks like my Thinkpad T34 does not support the awesome resolution that a 30-incher offers. Plus, even now most of my applications never run maximized, and I usually stick to 1000-pixelish width anyway, so the productivity gains for me would be questionable.
For anyone considering replacing an HDTV set with a projector and a blank wall at some point, there’s good news - Panasonic is coming up with a high-definition (that is 1920 x 1200) projector.
The PT-AE2000U projector reproduces Hollywood movies, independent films and other entertainment with exceptional color accuracy. Its enhanced unique Pure Color Filter Pro uses optical adjustment to achieve a higher purity level of the three primary colors; it also helps displays deeper, purer blacks. The color space has been extended even more to match the approximate level specified in the digital cinema industry. The new projector also incorporates Panasonic’s well-known Smooth Screen technology that reduces the black lines between pixels that mar picture quality. The technology has been tuned together with the new full-HD optical unit, allowing consumers to enjoy vibrant, smooth images found in commercial movie theaters. In addition, Panasonic’s original Dynamic Iris has also been improved for further stability and response by controlling the iris speed at finer increments to help reproduce darker blacks and brighter whites. The image processing system has been improved dramatically, with a maximum of 16 bit digital signal processing making it possible to reproduce subtle hues and brightness variations faithfully with greater smoothness.
CNet explains the reasons behind Vizio’s successful rise on the US TV market:
“Say (consumers) have a budget to spend $1,000 on a TV. They could probably buy a premium brand 32- or 37-inch, or they could buy a Vizio 47-inch for the same amount,” Patel said. “The low-price strategy is what’s driving consumers to them.”
You don’t say.
The Globe and Mail is reporting on a feud between two members of a picture-sharing site that motivated one of the opponents to drive down to Texas from Virginia, meanwhile taking photos of his trip and sharing them on aforementioned picture-sharing site, to burn the victim’s house down:
Investigators say Tavares boiled over when Anderson called him a nerd and posted a digitally altered photo making Tavares look like a skinny boy in high-water pants, holding a gun and a laptop under a “Revenge of the Nerds” sign. Tavares obtained Anderson’s real name and hometown from Anderson’s Web page about his Museum of Horrors Haunted House. Tavares took leave from his post as a weapons systems operator at the AEGIS Training and Readiness Center in Dahlgren, Va., and started driving. Investigators say he told them he planned to point a shotgun at Anderson and shoot his computer.
Today USA Today brightened my day with the news that new semantic search from Xerox will make finding information easier and faster. So that’s super, even though it will launch next year. So what kind of improvements can I expect?
For example, common searches using keywords “Lincoln” and “vice president” likely won’t reveal President Abraham Lincoln’s first vice president. A semantic search should yield the answer: Hannibal Hamlin.
Mmm, that sounds good, so let’s see how sucky my experience is nowadays:
Say what? Not only the first three links point to the documents that contain the Vice President’s name, the second description actually provides the name right on the search engine results page. What was the problem FactSpotter was solving again? I am sure their technology is all cool, but perhaps someone could come up with a better illustration.
