August 21, 2010

There were 4 posts published on August 21, 2010 (this is page 1 of 1).

Roku player

Roku player

Our geek-owned beach house includes a Roku Digital Video Player. Formerly known as the Roku Netflix Player, this player has branched out beyond Netflix. It now has dozens of video and podcast streams that can be delivered straight to your television.

I admit I had my doubts about this modest little box, but after seeing it in action I’m convinced. We already enjoy Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” video streaming through the built-in capability of our Samsung Blu-Ray player. To my surprise, the Roku blows our Samsung away. The Roku user interface is far better than our Samsung player’s.
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Raleigh’s media sites can’t search, either

Before our area media start feeling high and mighty, I was amused to find it nearly impossible to track down today’s story on Russ’s comments about the city’s website on the News and Observer website. After searching in vain using the N&O’s own search engine, it took me some thoughtful Google searches to turn it up.

With each iteration of its website, the paper’s search engine has become less useful. What’s even worse, with each redesign all the web links to online stories have changed completely, breaking not only any links any outside sites made to stories but also any links indexed by search engines. Thus if you couldn’t find what you’re looking for after the N&O redesign, God help you because Google certainly won’t. I’m no web professional, but even I know to create forwards from old links to new ones whenever humble MT.Net makes changes. That’s Webmastering 101.
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Raleigh’s website woes

The City of Raleigh’s new website was in the news again today. City Councilor Russ Stephenson picked it apart in an email to City Manager Russell Allen. Russ’s experience is the same as most folks’: he tried using the search engine to find something and failed utterly. When I critiqued it myself, I faulted it for simply relying on the search engine as heavily as it does. That wasn’t even considering that the search engine seems so completely broken.

My buddy Scott has built many a website in his many years of geekdom. He’s a professional. He tells me that he had seen many $500,000 websites, and what Raleigh got is not one of them.
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High-altitude balloon launch

A group of friends is launching a helium balloon to the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Josh Shaffer of the News and Observer wrote a story on it in this morning’s paper.

I am not involved in the project (I’m at the beach now), which kills me because I’ve wanted to do this for a long time. The best I can do is what everyone else can do, which is track the balloon online. Those in Raleigh can see the launch at Horseshoe Farm Park at 8 AM Sunday.

Update 23 August: Success! See the results!