The guys from the App Show had Kevin on for another interview. Check it out.
Kevin talks about the development and rationale behind the Black Swan edition of VoiceCentral, and where we are going in the future.
Archive for the ‘Things We Like’ Category
Kevin on the App Show
Thursday, January 14th, 2010The Countdown Has Begun!
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009This holiday season, we would like to give something back. So here’s more about Voice Central Black Swan Edition.
We feel it is ready for beta testing which will be starting very soon and we’re counting on the patient iPhone user, Google Voice lover community to help us put the finishing touches for the 1.0 release. Enough said, go check it out.
Happy holidays!
Pogue is on the Mark
Thursday, August 6th, 2009As usual David Pogue has summed the entire situation very eloquently. Thanks for keeping the fire on David! Hopefully the next couple of weeks will shed some more light on what has really occurred and what the future will hold. Will Apple also censor or block your right to get to certain websites? Uh, oh. Can open. Worms everywhere. Net neutrality worms that is.
Nice to see that Phil Schiller has spoken up on the Ninjawords story that Gruber wrote. It’s good to see that someone at Apple is at least paying attention. Of course he couldn’t comment on the Google Voice situation because I’m sure the Apple legal team has everyone under lock and key given the FCC investigation.
Also there was news today that yet another high profile profile app has been removed from the store. What makes this interesting is that this is another app that had a lengthy and successful stay in the store. So the touchy refund issue will rear it’s head again. Hopefully the refund issue gets looked at again. Once again a developer could be on the hook retroactively for potentially a lot of money.
Finally, one of the commenters on Techcrunch had an absolutely hilarious take on the app review process.
Amen Steven Frank, Amen.
Friday, July 31st, 2009This post is short and sweet because I can not say it any better than Steven Frank. Amen brother.
Special thank you to Techcrunch and MG Siegler for shining a light on this. Love you guys, keep up the good work.
Kevin
VoiceCentral Makes Users Affluent!
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009We noticed a blog entry last night that listed features of VoiceCentral that we didn’t know we had:
- Pause, rewind, or go hungry
- Create a fresh contact from the intimation info
- Call in a backward direction.
and my favorite:
- the bodily substance
It appears that supersoftssytems.net has some code that is grabbing blog entries and, uh, translating them via thesaurus.
Makes for some funny reading. Check it out here.
Anyway, for VoiceCentral, More accusation is to be availed of at http://www.riverturn.com/iphone/VoiceCentral.php.
Life in the Remote Lane: Let me tell you about my Generator.
Monday, April 20th, 2009I love my Generator.
When I moved up here to the rural woods of New Hampshire, my biggest concern was electricity. Closer to Canada than Boston, it’s pretty rural, and the wind and ice and snow take the power lines down, more frequently than in a more urban area.
I planned my new house with a GenTran switch (It’s basically plug near the circuit breaker, that allows you use an alternate power source/generator), tried to calculate the house requirements. These switches are wired into the circuit breaker, and typically cover the essential power needs — well pump, boiler, refrigerator, and maybe a bedroom.
Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance.
We had rented a similar house, and guestimated we were using about 1000 KWh a month. So i figured that was 33 KWh a day or 1.4KWh an hour. I recognized the math trap here, realizing that it’s not equally distributed over the day. So I used 33/8h or 4.1KWh/hour. Connected to 6 circuits — well pump, boiler, refrigerator, 2 bedrooms and my Office — I figured I was well within the 5 KW of my Honda EB5000 gas generator.
Read the complete article…
Easter Lights
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009I drove up this weekend to Jay Peak Resort to visit with friends and get in some early spring skiing. This required a trip over the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and crossing narrow and cell-coverage-free Franconia Notch.
Easter Sunrise Services at Jay happen at the top of the mountain, at 4000′. Which means boarding the tram with sleepy kids at 5:30am. A long day later, and off to home.
So when my son said: “I don’t get what Easter is all about,” I, of course, let my wife handle it.
Climbing back over the White Mountains, the gusty winds were taking most of my attention, and most everything my Jeep Grand Cherokee could give. It had been running roughly since we left Jay an hour earlier, and I figured it was the change in altitude that the fuel injection/computer was adjusting. I shifted focus from the road to the rpms to the gas-mileage computer to the road.
And I distinctly heard my wife say “… and then he rose from the dead…,” and my son saying “Like a Zombie?!?” That momentarily had me divert my attention.
When I looked back, I saw that the dreaded Check Engine light was on. And I remember thinking that light has got to be the stupidest thing still installed in a car. A remnant from the 80’s when sensors started to appear in cars and computers were still the size of cars. A dual state device that is telling you either everything I’m checking is A-OK or whatever the opposite of that is.
Read the complete article…
Things we like: I will teach you to be rich, Mint, Pandora
Monday, March 23rd, 2009I have followed Ramit’s site (I will teach you to be rich) for awhile and there are always some good tidbits. I have checked out his chapters he posted for his book and there is some good information sprinkled here and there. All in all it is a good way to prune out things you don’t need and effectively control your expenses. His book launched today and he is throwing in a bunch of free stuff if you order it (Free Kindles every hour, gift certificates, etc). You can buy it from Amazon today 
One of the tools he mentions is Mint which is a great, easy way to keep track of expenses, investments, etc. Its free and a good way to stay on top of your finances. I use it all the time and the email reports it sends every week make it super easy to keep track of where you money is going.
Things We Like : Samsung Blu-Ray BD-P2550
Thursday, March 12th, 2009I am starting a new section today talking about different products and services we use/see out there. This is the first post in this direction and hopefully it will generate some discussions around products and services people like/dislike. I would love to hear your comments on these items and your personal experiences with them.
I have spent a number of years helping consumers and businesses pick out Audio/Video devices to integrate into their homes/business. A number of people have been asking about Blu-Ray players and what I recommend. I have been reticent to offer any suggestions because so many different services and devices are going online (Apple TV, Roku, Hulu, etc) . It’s hard to justify jumping to a new platform for video when more content is finding itself legally online. However, I did find one that blends a lot of what we like into a solid device.
The Samsung Blu-Ray BD-P2550 is your normal every day Blu-Ray player that can support 1080p, etc for playback. What makes this one different is it also integrates Netflix streaming and Pandora in one device. You would not need another device for Netflix, wait for DVDs to arrive in the mail or to allow you to stream audio throughout your house. It also supports firmware upggrades so we may see things like support for Hulu or other online services in the future. It just makes it a lot more flexible than other players out there and is a big differentiator. It is just one of those devices that makes a better case to upgrade than a stand alone player and it gives more options than others out there.
If you are looking at upgrading then it is definitely worth a look over the rest of the standalone players. I am picking one up for a friend now and will update this if I have any specific feedback about it in the future. If you want to pick one up it is available at Best Buy or Amazon
