So I’ve been using this thing for a little while now, and I’m getting to like it. I haven’t touched my personal laptop for any reason other than to use it as a media center, and I’ve done all my personal web stuff on this. I’ve tried to use the Cr48 at work with little success. Due to some rather interesting network policies, and even more interesting ways of enforcing them, the only resource I can actually reach with this thing is my personal TVersity site...cool service, but I don’t go to work to watch streaming video. There are some changes coming down the pike that are supposed to separate us from our host company in that regard, so I’ll keep trying. I may get use out of this thing in meetings yet.
With that out of the way, I’d like to complain a little about some of the little issues that will hopefully get covered when the Chrome OS finally goes prime time. Yes, I’ve complained through the requested Google channels (I hope they’ll act on them), but now I’m bored, so I’ll complain here, tweet about the complaints, and if you’ve read this far, you’re probably interested. If not, please stop reading now. I’ll not be held responsible for forcing you to read something that doesn’t interest you.
1) I’ve set up three profiles on my Cr48. I thought it was cool, I’m a geek, what ever. One for my personal gmail account, one for my Google apps account, and finally one for my employer’s Google apps account. All Google, all the time. If they had a position for a c# developer, there’s a damn good chance I’d take it. I go back and forth between these three accounts a little bit. Well, quite a bit, because switching from one user to the next really isn’t all that painful. I’ve noticed that from time to time, if I log out of one profile, in to another, out of the other, and back to the first, the first profile loads with an error stating that the browser failed to shut down property, would I like to restore it. That really ought to be fixed.
2) Logon profile names - This annoys me. As it turns out, each of my profiles are based on my name. As such, they are each very similar. The multiple profiles are a nice touch, but it would be even better if you could provide an alias for the login. Something like “My Personal Profile,” and “My Work Profile” to differentiate between profiles with very similar user names.
3) Useless without network access - I’ve mentioned this before, and yeah, I know it’s supposed to be a Web portal, and nothing more, but I was quite surprised to find that I can download and save files to the local drive. Google has been kind enough to provide offline access in the browser, and that feature would increase the usefulness of the Cr48 by many times. I’ll refer to the rather interesting network policies I mentioned earlier. With offline access, I can make use of my Cr48 in the office, in conference rooms with no network access (it seems to happen quite a bit), and other situations where Internet access is limited or not available. Yes, it has 3g, but that’s another issue. Let’s call it 3a)
3a) Wifi and 3g only. Yes, I can buy a 3g plan from Verizon, but there are a couple of problems with that. First, I’m not going to buy yet another data plan. I already have one with my Internet at home, another to power my Android, and yet a third to power my wife’s Android. I am not going to buy another data plan for my Cr48. Second, if I was going to buy a data plan, I certainly wouldn’t buy it from Verizon. I’ve been with t-mobile since they were VoiceStream, a good 10 or so years, and I’m not about to jump ship now. I’ve got my eye on a Nexus S. When I get my hands on that I’ll give it a shot and see if I can use that to get me online.
4) It seems slow since the recent update. I admit I haven’t paid much attention to speeds, and when it started to seem to slow down, but I think all of that happened around the same time. I hope that one gets cleared up next time they push out an update.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Facebook is doing weird things to my Cr48
Wanna see a dead body!?
Ok, not really, but it’s really kinda weird. My wife was setting up a facebook profile page for me on my Cr48. She wanted to know how to get pictures from one location to another, so I thought I’d show off my knowledge of my little Cr48, and show her how to download pictures locally, then upload them somewhere else. Right-click the image you want to save, give it a name, and save. Open the page you want to upload to, choose browse, and...Hey! What the hell are you doing to my computer?...She didn’t get the little file list that I was expecting to show her, she’d managed to open a file system browser. It took us a little time to find the location of the images we wanted to upload cause neither one of us is a Linux user, but when we finally did, there were the files, all ready to be uploaded. I haven’t figured out an easy way to get to this file system browser, but it is easy to reproduce. The following is the only way I’ve managed to do it.
Open your facebook profile, click on your Photos link. Click on the “Upload Photos” button. Click “Select Photos.”
What you get is a file system browser that appears to give you full access, well, as far as I, a Windows guy can tell, to your file system.
This is particularly odd because it’s my understanding that one of the major features of the Cr48 is that it doesn’t allow the normal user access to the file system, but Facebook wanders in, shoves a java file system browser in there, and bypasses all that.
The file type filter is limiting the view to image files, but it’s probably very easy to bypass that yourself, especially if you decide to write your own page to do this. I guess the major issue is that it seems to be so easy to do it in an environment where the average user isn’t supposed to be going there.
Ok, not really, but it’s really kinda weird. My wife was setting up a facebook profile page for me on my Cr48. She wanted to know how to get pictures from one location to another, so I thought I’d show off my knowledge of my little Cr48, and show her how to download pictures locally, then upload them somewhere else. Right-click the image you want to save, give it a name, and save. Open the page you want to upload to, choose browse, and...Hey! What the hell are you doing to my computer?...She didn’t get the little file list that I was expecting to show her, she’d managed to open a file system browser. It took us a little time to find the location of the images we wanted to upload cause neither one of us is a Linux user, but when we finally did, there were the files, all ready to be uploaded. I haven’t figured out an easy way to get to this file system browser, but it is easy to reproduce. The following is the only way I’ve managed to do it.
Open your facebook profile, click on your Photos link. Click on the “Upload Photos” button. Click “Select Photos.”
What you get is a file system browser that appears to give you full access, well, as far as I, a Windows guy can tell, to your file system.
This is particularly odd because it’s my understanding that one of the major features of the Cr48 is that it doesn’t allow the normal user access to the file system, but Facebook wanders in, shoves a java file system browser in there, and bypasses all that.
The file type filter is limiting the view to image files, but it’s probably very easy to bypass that yourself, especially if you decide to write your own page to do this. I guess the major issue is that it seems to be so easy to do it in an environment where the average user isn’t supposed to be going there.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Storing files locally
Stupid Cr-48 Tricks
So, a short back story. In order to track some Android projects I’ve put together an apps account (apps.google.com) with a private google sites account (sites.google.com). I won’t post the details on that just yet because I’m in the process of shifting things around, and my sites are in a bit of disarray. Anyway, I finish publishing my first Android app (Yay!) and I suddenly realize...we’ll not suddenly, but it’s become a problem that I want to be rid of...that I’ve tied my projects google sites account to my personal gmail account. Not a huge deal, but it has resulted in some very annoying repeated log-ins and log-outs. I don’t have alot of data there, so I decided to bite the bullet and duplicate my sites data under the right account. The majority of the content in my sites account is text in pages, so it was just about a half hour of typing to move things over. There are, however, three documents stored in my sites. I’m trying to perform my data migration on the cr-48, and I thought I was going to have to go sit at my desktop to finish the migration due to the need to move 3 files from site to site. Since I’m sitting on the couch, and not much interested in moving, I figured I’d mess around and see what I could accomplish with the tools at hand. To my surprise, it was amazingly, and unexpectedly, simple.
I clicked on the file, and chose download. The file saved locally. I went to the destination page, chose upload file, chose browse, and a list of local files popped up. From this list I chose a file, and uploaded.
Now where I’m caught off guard is that it was my understanding that the normal user wouldn’t have access to data on the local drive. My mistake. The user can download, save, and upload files using the standard configuration of the Cr48. They can’t, of course, be edited, but that’s reasonable because all of your editing tools live in the cloud.
I don’t know how much local storage the Cr48 has, but I assume that it is also possible to download to an SD card.
I had no idea. Very cool.
So, a short back story. In order to track some Android projects I’ve put together an apps account (apps.google.com) with a private google sites account (sites.google.com). I won’t post the details on that just yet because I’m in the process of shifting things around, and my sites are in a bit of disarray. Anyway, I finish publishing my first Android app (Yay!) and I suddenly realize...we’ll not suddenly, but it’s become a problem that I want to be rid of...that I’ve tied my projects google sites account to my personal gmail account. Not a huge deal, but it has resulted in some very annoying repeated log-ins and log-outs. I don’t have alot of data there, so I decided to bite the bullet and duplicate my sites data under the right account. The majority of the content in my sites account is text in pages, so it was just about a half hour of typing to move things over. There are, however, three documents stored in my sites. I’m trying to perform my data migration on the cr-48, and I thought I was going to have to go sit at my desktop to finish the migration due to the need to move 3 files from site to site. Since I’m sitting on the couch, and not much interested in moving, I figured I’d mess around and see what I could accomplish with the tools at hand. To my surprise, it was amazingly, and unexpectedly, simple.
I clicked on the file, and chose download. The file saved locally. I went to the destination page, chose upload file, chose browse, and a list of local files popped up. From this list I chose a file, and uploaded.
Now where I’m caught off guard is that it was my understanding that the normal user wouldn’t have access to data on the local drive. My mistake. The user can download, save, and upload files using the standard configuration of the Cr48. They can’t, of course, be edited, but that’s reasonable because all of your editing tools live in the cloud.
I don’t know how much local storage the Cr48 has, but I assume that it is also possible to download to an SD card.
I had no idea. Very cool.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Cr-48 and Netflix
Getting ready to do some dishes, thought I would throw on The Jerk to keep me distracted, so I pulled out my trusty Cr-48, loaded up netflix, logged in, and clicked on The Jerk. Imagine my surprise when I was brought to a page explaining the system requirements for viewing movies, and a message stating “Our apologies - streaming is not supported for your operating system.” I don’t know the technology they’re using to stream movies, but I figure if Hulu can manage secure streaming, why not netflix?
It's been brought to my attention that Netflix uses Silverlight for their streaming technology rather than flash, and the Cr-48 does not support Silverlight. Seems like an issue to me.
It's been brought to my attention that Netflix uses Silverlight for their streaming technology rather than flash, and the Cr-48 does not support Silverlight. Seems like an issue to me.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Accessing my own media on the Cr-48
This one is actually a pretty big deal to me. I’ve got a sizable music collection, nearly completely managed by iTunes...we’ll try to avoid a discussion regarding the general shittiness of iTunes just now...along with a collection of movies and tv shows, also managed by iTunes, that I like to watch regularly. My listening and viewing habits are such that having access to my own files that I’ve ripped or purchased is much more valuable to me than any of the available subscription services. I have built my collection because I enjoy what I’ve collected, and intend to consume it.
So, what am I getting at? I want to be able to listen to my music and watch my videos on my Cr-48, and Android for that matter, without paying someone (other than my ISP) for access rights to files stored on my computers. As a side note, no I will not pay money to a “locker” service to access my own stuff. That’s why I have a WHS.
Music is covered pretty well. The single server application Audiogalaxy gives me access on the Cr-48, Android, and even my iPod touch. It covers all of the file types in my library, including FLAC (although this doesn’t work in the browser yet), and it just works. You download the server app, point it at your music folders, let it scan your data, log in to the Audiogalaxy web site with your account, and there’s your music collection.
The UI is about as simple as it gets, but it is an extremely good design. It lists music in terms of Artists, Albums, or Playlists; basically how I would expect my CD collection to appear on the shelf. It also has a genre tab which is pretty cool, but not of great use to me just yet.
The problem there is video. It isn’t supported, and I don’t know if it ever will be.
My second option seems to be the Orb/Winamp remote server. I don’t like this thing. The interface is ugly and clunky, they have the guts to charge for poorly implemented mobile clients, and it doesn’t support all of the formats in my music collection. The one thing it has is video support...sort of...I can browse my video collection, load up a file, and in a little while, literally a few minutes, nothing happens. I’ve tried to work with this thing on and off for the last year or so, and I have yet to successfully watch a video of any format. I keep coming back to Orb server because it advertises itself so well as a server that will allow me to stream my own audio and video from my own server, and every time I try, I end up as disappointed as the last time I tried. In fact, the only reason I even bring this up is because I keep hoping they’ve done something to improve it.
Finally, and into an experiment here, there is TVersity. You download and install the server on the computer that has access to your media files, set up the server to share over the internet, and point your browser to your shared ip address, and there’s your media. I won’t likely be using this for music for a couple of reasons. The UI tries to be comprehensive, and ends up just being messy, my playlists are gone, and surprisingly, through the flash UI the playback was a little choppy. For video, however, this worked out pretty cool. I tried a handful of files in different formats, long movies, tv episodes, and music videos, and all played quite well. I can’t believe I haven’t tried this sooner.
The major drawback I’ve found in about an hour of futzing around is the same issue I have with music. The UI tries to be comprehensive, and ends up generally sucking. This is one place where iTunes has really done a pretty good job. If you can get the UI to respond in a timely manner, it’s a very nice layout, and people could take a lesson from Apple’s design guys.
In short, today’s playing around can be summerized as follows:
If you’re like me, and you have a personal collection on your own server that you want to stream from anywhere,
For streaming your music to anything, including the Cr-48, you can’t beat Audiogalaxy. It’s simple, intuitive, and just works.
For streaming your video to a browser that supports flash, including the Cr-48, TVersity free edition is a cool option. It transcodes on the fly, and streams over flash to provide a comfortable viewing experience, but I am not a fan of the file system based navigation.
Most importantly, it is possible to access your personal music and video collection through the browser of the Cr-48, and if you own your own server space, you can do it for free.
So, what am I getting at? I want to be able to listen to my music and watch my videos on my Cr-48, and Android for that matter, without paying someone (other than my ISP) for access rights to files stored on my computers. As a side note, no I will not pay money to a “locker” service to access my own stuff. That’s why I have a WHS.
Music is covered pretty well. The single server application Audiogalaxy gives me access on the Cr-48, Android, and even my iPod touch. It covers all of the file types in my library, including FLAC (although this doesn’t work in the browser yet), and it just works. You download the server app, point it at your music folders, let it scan your data, log in to the Audiogalaxy web site with your account, and there’s your music collection.
The UI is about as simple as it gets, but it is an extremely good design. It lists music in terms of Artists, Albums, or Playlists; basically how I would expect my CD collection to appear on the shelf. It also has a genre tab which is pretty cool, but not of great use to me just yet.
The problem there is video. It isn’t supported, and I don’t know if it ever will be.
My second option seems to be the Orb/Winamp remote server. I don’t like this thing. The interface is ugly and clunky, they have the guts to charge for poorly implemented mobile clients, and it doesn’t support all of the formats in my music collection. The one thing it has is video support...sort of...I can browse my video collection, load up a file, and in a little while, literally a few minutes, nothing happens. I’ve tried to work with this thing on and off for the last year or so, and I have yet to successfully watch a video of any format. I keep coming back to Orb server because it advertises itself so well as a server that will allow me to stream my own audio and video from my own server, and every time I try, I end up as disappointed as the last time I tried. In fact, the only reason I even bring this up is because I keep hoping they’ve done something to improve it.
Finally, and into an experiment here, there is TVersity. You download and install the server on the computer that has access to your media files, set up the server to share over the internet, and point your browser to your shared ip address, and there’s your media. I won’t likely be using this for music for a couple of reasons. The UI tries to be comprehensive, and ends up just being messy, my playlists are gone, and surprisingly, through the flash UI the playback was a little choppy. For video, however, this worked out pretty cool. I tried a handful of files in different formats, long movies, tv episodes, and music videos, and all played quite well. I can’t believe I haven’t tried this sooner.
The major drawback I’ve found in about an hour of futzing around is the same issue I have with music. The UI tries to be comprehensive, and ends up generally sucking. This is one place where iTunes has really done a pretty good job. If you can get the UI to respond in a timely manner, it’s a very nice layout, and people could take a lesson from Apple’s design guys.
In short, today’s playing around can be summerized as follows:
If you’re like me, and you have a personal collection on your own server that you want to stream from anywhere,
For streaming your music to anything, including the Cr-48, you can’t beat Audiogalaxy. It’s simple, intuitive, and just works.
For streaming your video to a browser that supports flash, including the Cr-48, TVersity free edition is a cool option. It transcodes on the fly, and streams over flash to provide a comfortable viewing experience, but I am not a fan of the file system based navigation.
Most importantly, it is possible to access your personal music and video collection through the browser of the Cr-48, and if you own your own server space, you can do it for free.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Adventures with Google Cloud Print
Take 1:
In order to set this up, the Cr-48 chrome browser told me to go to a computer attached to a printer to set it up. First, I do not have one of those. My printer is networked. I figured I’d try it anyway, so I used LogMeIn to remote control my desktop, and went through the process of setting up Google Cloud Print. The set up was easy, and went through with no issues. Well, one issue. No printers were found. I chalked this up to the fact that I don’t have an attached printer, and decided to end my experiments until network printers are supported.
Take 2:
About a day later I was messing around with my Cr-48, typing up something or another, and clicked “Print” from inside of google docs. To my surprise, all of my printers were found. This includes the two instances of my network printer (I don’t know why there are two, there just are), PDF writer from MS Office, print to OneNote, print to file. So, I figured I’d try to print something. I don’t care about those Microsoft “Printers,” and I may never get around to testing them. Maybe I will, we’ll see. The box popped up, it had all the standard printer settings, I looked those over, and clicked print. The print box told me it had added the print job, and it just sat there staring at me. I had to click cancel to get it to go away. I tried again, same thing. Just so that you are aware, I was expecting the box to go away after the print job was added. Again, I figured it just didn’t work due to the fact that I was trying to print to a networked printer, and decided to end my experiments until network printers are supported.
Take 3:
Working part of the day from home a day later. I go down to my office, log in, and I get a notice that I have two print jobs in queue. My print jobs from before are sitting in the queue and doing absolutely nothing. After clicking on them and looking at the properties, I decided to cancel and re-setup Cloud Printing on my desktop computer. I browsed to the web site and spent a half hour of trying to open the cloud print setup page and getting prompted to install the google chrome beta. After about three installs of the beta, I browsed around a bit more to see if I could just set it up and get passed that page that thought I still needed to update to the Chrome Beta. Found the setting, saw that my printers were still set up from Take 1, and proceeded to try to print a test page. After about 5 minutes of print buttons refusing to respond as I expected, I read the documentation stating that Cloud Printing wasn’t supported there yet, and I’d have to use a device like my Cr-48 to print. Refer to Take 1. I still don’t know if this works, doesn’t work, or is just messing with me, but I will be logging a bug about my print jobs going to the queue and staying there without errors or completion of the print job...after making sure I can actually print from my desktop. If I don’t follow up, assume that I can print from my desktop, and the bug has been logged.
Take 4:
Fine, so there is a print error when printing from my desktop, but there is still an issue. When trying to print directly from my desktop, I get a failure to print due to a communication error. I expect the print jobs submitted by Cloud Print to give me the same info.
In order to set this up, the Cr-48 chrome browser told me to go to a computer attached to a printer to set it up. First, I do not have one of those. My printer is networked. I figured I’d try it anyway, so I used LogMeIn to remote control my desktop, and went through the process of setting up Google Cloud Print. The set up was easy, and went through with no issues. Well, one issue. No printers were found. I chalked this up to the fact that I don’t have an attached printer, and decided to end my experiments until network printers are supported.
Take 2:
About a day later I was messing around with my Cr-48, typing up something or another, and clicked “Print” from inside of google docs. To my surprise, all of my printers were found. This includes the two instances of my network printer (I don’t know why there are two, there just are), PDF writer from MS Office, print to OneNote, print to file. So, I figured I’d try to print something. I don’t care about those Microsoft “Printers,” and I may never get around to testing them. Maybe I will, we’ll see. The box popped up, it had all the standard printer settings, I looked those over, and clicked print. The print box told me it had added the print job, and it just sat there staring at me. I had to click cancel to get it to go away. I tried again, same thing. Just so that you are aware, I was expecting the box to go away after the print job was added. Again, I figured it just didn’t work due to the fact that I was trying to print to a networked printer, and decided to end my experiments until network printers are supported.
Take 3:
Working part of the day from home a day later. I go down to my office, log in, and I get a notice that I have two print jobs in queue. My print jobs from before are sitting in the queue and doing absolutely nothing. After clicking on them and looking at the properties, I decided to cancel and re-setup Cloud Printing on my desktop computer. I browsed to the web site and spent a half hour of trying to open the cloud print setup page and getting prompted to install the google chrome beta. After about three installs of the beta, I browsed around a bit more to see if I could just set it up and get passed that page that thought I still needed to update to the Chrome Beta. Found the setting, saw that my printers were still set up from Take 1, and proceeded to try to print a test page. After about 5 minutes of print buttons refusing to respond as I expected, I read the documentation stating that Cloud Printing wasn’t supported there yet, and I’d have to use a device like my Cr-48 to print. Refer to Take 1. I still don’t know if this works, doesn’t work, or is just messing with me, but I will be logging a bug about my print jobs going to the queue and staying there without errors or completion of the print job...after making sure I can actually print from my desktop. If I don’t follow up, assume that I can print from my desktop, and the bug has been logged.
Take 4:
Fine, so there is a print error when printing from my desktop, but there is still an issue. When trying to print directly from my desktop, I get a failure to print due to a communication error. I expect the print jobs submitted by Cloud Print to give me the same info.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Cr-48 as my only computer?
As my only computer?
I’m getting ready to go back to work after a little over a week off for the holidays. Being the geek that I am, I haven’t been a day away from the computer. I thought I’d take a minute and throw out some thoughts on my computing away from work.
First, it is pretty clear that for me, this platform will not be my only computing device. I am a programmer professionally, but it turns out that I also like to do a little coding for fun...damn, I used to be so cool...when did I become a geek? Anyway, coding for me, on this, simply isn’t possible. Next, I had to do a little ripping and burning and converting of old cassettes of some of my dad’s old bands. This, I don’t do often, but it’s also something that simply is not possible. I need an analog in to get the sound, a converter to convert the wav to mp3 or flac or what ever format I’m using, and then I need to copy the ripped files to an ipod. None of that can be done on this platform. I also had to make CD copies of those same tapes, and of course that’s not possible either.
The fact of the matter, however, is that these activities were in the minority of my computing. Most of what I did was a little video watching, hulu, netflix, that sort of thing; a little music listening while cooking, done by way of Audiogalaxy, cooking using recipes that I have stored in evernote, facebook, twitter, and a little of this document writing. All of these things worked without a hitch, and of course they did. All of these activities are web/browser based.
Hulu/netflix, I’ll be frank. I did these just to see how well it would work. I was a bit disappointed. The cr-48 just does not have the hardware power to do video in full screen. It’s ok if I drop the bit rate to the lowest possible, but if you have any of the other many devices for web based video viewing, use those for your movies.
Music through AudioGalaxy (www.AudioGalaxy.com) - This is just awesome. Go to their website for details on what they are, but for listening, point your browser to their web site, log in to get your collection, and you have reasonable quality streaming music. Over the built in speakers, it’s not bad sound quality, it doesn’t skip, you have music. It rocks. Of course, this won’t replace your stereo system, but my good system is in the basement, nowhere near my computer, and with the open layout of my house, cranking up another stereo while my daughter is watching a DVD just isn’t a good option.
Cooking - No, the Cr-48 will not make you a better cook. If you suck, you suck, but what it does nicely, is give you access to Evernote (www.Evernote.com). And for now, Evernote is where I keep most of my recipes. Is this unique to a Cr-48, no, but it is just one more thing that makes this device a very attractive option for those who do not need to be able to create “speciality” content. Plus, it has great battery life, so you don’t need to keep the charger near by.
Of course we also have facebook and twitter, web based, works well, and google docs for creating content.
All of this is very boring stuff, and it’s stuff that fits what most people do with their computers. The most interesting thing that hit me over the holidays was the concept of what this device really is. My wife and I spent several hours with my brother-in-law who managed to get himself in to a rather nasty spot with his netbook. Lack of computer knowledge mixed with a little paranoid web page clicking that enabled him to install a couple of rather nasty viruses, coupled with the irrational fear that trying to install my recommended virus protection would somehow delete all his files made for a very long afternoon. This computer is perfect for him. He has the ability to do literally everything he could possibly want with a computer, with no maintenance needs and no ability to allow some scareware page to get him to install malware on his own computer. I also took the opportunity to talk up the chrome OS to some of the other older family members that I came across. From conversations, the Cr-48 filled their needs as well. Email, document writing, facebook, none of those conversations brought up anything that could not be accomplished through the web.
The last cool little thing that I came across was the login to the Cr-48. Just like the standard android world, you log in to the device by supplying google account credentials. This logs you in, and gives you access to your stuff. I also have a free google apps account. With the google apps updates, you can also use an apps account login to log in to the Cr48. So, I have my personal messing around stuff, and I have my apps account profile. I have not been able to log in with my work credentials yet (they’ve recently migrated to google apps), but I expect that to be coming soon, and I’m looking forward to that. I should be able to log in with my work credentials, giving me access to a work profile on a computer that is much more portable than my dev box. No, I can’t code on this, but the sad reality is that my job consists of quite a bit of crap in addition to sitting at my favorite IDE and developing.
I’m getting ready to go back to work after a little over a week off for the holidays. Being the geek that I am, I haven’t been a day away from the computer. I thought I’d take a minute and throw out some thoughts on my computing away from work.
First, it is pretty clear that for me, this platform will not be my only computing device. I am a programmer professionally, but it turns out that I also like to do a little coding for fun...damn, I used to be so cool...when did I become a geek? Anyway, coding for me, on this, simply isn’t possible. Next, I had to do a little ripping and burning and converting of old cassettes of some of my dad’s old bands. This, I don’t do often, but it’s also something that simply is not possible. I need an analog in to get the sound, a converter to convert the wav to mp3 or flac or what ever format I’m using, and then I need to copy the ripped files to an ipod. None of that can be done on this platform. I also had to make CD copies of those same tapes, and of course that’s not possible either.
The fact of the matter, however, is that these activities were in the minority of my computing. Most of what I did was a little video watching, hulu, netflix, that sort of thing; a little music listening while cooking, done by way of Audiogalaxy, cooking using recipes that I have stored in evernote, facebook, twitter, and a little of this document writing. All of these things worked without a hitch, and of course they did. All of these activities are web/browser based.
Hulu/netflix, I’ll be frank. I did these just to see how well it would work. I was a bit disappointed. The cr-48 just does not have the hardware power to do video in full screen. It’s ok if I drop the bit rate to the lowest possible, but if you have any of the other many devices for web based video viewing, use those for your movies.
Music through AudioGalaxy (www.AudioGalaxy.com) - This is just awesome. Go to their website for details on what they are, but for listening, point your browser to their web site, log in to get your collection, and you have reasonable quality streaming music. Over the built in speakers, it’s not bad sound quality, it doesn’t skip, you have music. It rocks. Of course, this won’t replace your stereo system, but my good system is in the basement, nowhere near my computer, and with the open layout of my house, cranking up another stereo while my daughter is watching a DVD just isn’t a good option.
Cooking - No, the Cr-48 will not make you a better cook. If you suck, you suck, but what it does nicely, is give you access to Evernote (www.Evernote.com). And for now, Evernote is where I keep most of my recipes. Is this unique to a Cr-48, no, but it is just one more thing that makes this device a very attractive option for those who do not need to be able to create “speciality” content. Plus, it has great battery life, so you don’t need to keep the charger near by.
Of course we also have facebook and twitter, web based, works well, and google docs for creating content.
All of this is very boring stuff, and it’s stuff that fits what most people do with their computers. The most interesting thing that hit me over the holidays was the concept of what this device really is. My wife and I spent several hours with my brother-in-law who managed to get himself in to a rather nasty spot with his netbook. Lack of computer knowledge mixed with a little paranoid web page clicking that enabled him to install a couple of rather nasty viruses, coupled with the irrational fear that trying to install my recommended virus protection would somehow delete all his files made for a very long afternoon. This computer is perfect for him. He has the ability to do literally everything he could possibly want with a computer, with no maintenance needs and no ability to allow some scareware page to get him to install malware on his own computer. I also took the opportunity to talk up the chrome OS to some of the other older family members that I came across. From conversations, the Cr-48 filled their needs as well. Email, document writing, facebook, none of those conversations brought up anything that could not be accomplished through the web.
The last cool little thing that I came across was the login to the Cr-48. Just like the standard android world, you log in to the device by supplying google account credentials. This logs you in, and gives you access to your stuff. I also have a free google apps account. With the google apps updates, you can also use an apps account login to log in to the Cr48. So, I have my personal messing around stuff, and I have my apps account profile. I have not been able to log in with my work credentials yet (they’ve recently migrated to google apps), but I expect that to be coming soon, and I’m looking forward to that. I should be able to log in with my work credentials, giving me access to a work profile on a computer that is much more portable than my dev box. No, I can’t code on this, but the sad reality is that my job consists of quite a bit of crap in addition to sitting at my favorite IDE and developing.
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