What Happened To Down Time?
So PSN is down for maintenance today between, get this, 8am and 10pm. For those with a time telling deficiency thats slightly more than half a day through the middle of the day time and in to the evening.
Now I’ve been doing IT work for approx 14 years and never have I heard any one make the statement that it’s “ok” to take a network down during business hours or during peak times. NEVER. In this case I wager during the middle of the day probably isn’t peak but I’d guess 5pm-11pm when every one is off work and home from school is probably peak. I guess I give them credit for doing it closer to the middle of the week but wouldn’t 3am-5pm have been a better time?
Yet lately both in this instance, and where I work, it seems to be increasingly more acceptable to take something down when ever you darn well feel like it. Did I miss something? Are we becoming so reliant on our network 24×7 that it no longer matters when it becomes unavailable because it has to happen some time eventually any way? Or is it that we’re increasingly bowing to what management wants? The symptom is obvious but what do you think the cause is?
Twitter Horizontal
As of late I’ve been working on bringing up my social network status. This of course requires a ton of tweeting and Facebook posting and playing Empire Avenue. During all this I’ve been working on my social relationships. After all thats the key to social networking right? The relationships? I hope. So one thing I want to do is follow all the tweets from individual people. This has led me to what I feel is a giant over looked UI problem in most, if not all, twitter applications. I’m going to try to break this idea down for you.
Netflix On Android First Look
The long expected has finally happened. The gods of streaming video have finally seen fit to bestow uppon us lowely Android users the full fledged Netflix experience on Android devices. Well some of them at least. The following devices are the first to be supported:
- HTC Incredible with Android 2.2
- HTC Nexus One with Android 2.2, 2.3
- HTC Evo 4G with Android 2.2
- HTC G2 with Android 2.2
- Samsung Nexus S with Android 2.3
Luckily I just swapped out my Droid 1 for a Droid Incredible and I’m able to take advantage of the experience. So lets get in to it.
All is not silky smooth but still functional. The bumps in the road started immediately when my search for Netflix on the Android Market turned up 20-30 apps and the official app wasn’t at the top of the heap. At first I thought I couldn’t get the app for some reason but after making two or three swipes worth of scrolling I spotted the app. The download was reasonably fast as the content required is mostly text. The app is nicely laid out and functional but for some reason the UI seems slow and a little unresponsive. Once you get down the point of the app which is watching video you’ll find its a pretty pleasant experience.
I’m at work as I write this so I am unable to test on Wifi but I think most of us are really interested in how well it works while you’re out and about. Video over 3G seems to buffer fairly quickly. 15-20 seconds from hitting play to video playing. Video starts off fairly low quality and as your buffer grows and it adjusts to your connection speed it quickly focuses to a crystal clear image. As expected your quality adjusts as the video plays so if your signal starts to drop you’ll notice the quality go down. Over all it runs great on the go with no hitches noticeable during the two entire episodes of “The IT Crowd” I managed to squeeze in before having to shout to the world how awesome finally having Netflix on Android is!!!!
I speculate that the hackers and devs out there will have this APK working on other devices quite quickly. With in 24 hours if I have to guess. Hopefully Netflix is quick to push this to more devices bringing Android in line with the Apple products.
How Do You Respond When Your Password Becomes Public?
I heard the tale of this event and just had to have some evidence. Thank goodness for chat logs. Which is the opposite of what this guy was thinking.
ooops!
The funniest part is less the mistake and more the response to the password becoming public. Gotta give the user an A+ for coming up with at least some form of action. It would have worked too if it weren’t for those meddling chat logs!
When We Left Earth: I Didn’t, Other People Did.
Image via Wikipedia“Space! The final frontier…” If you are a geek like me those words give you a little tingle up your spine. You’ve probably also contemplated, for at least a moment, becoming an astronaut and exploring the vast universe that awaits us. While thats still really expensive and only a few humans get to do it you can at least see how far we’ve come by getting your hands on an HD source of “When We Left Earth”. A multi part documentary of our trek in to space with tons of rarely seen video inside NASA and outside the atmosphere.
They kind of down play the level of risk that the Apollo 13 astronauts were under and they highlight some other instances of sketchy space hijinks early on in the Apollo program. This I think was one of the most striking aspects of this video compilation. Additionally there is a ton of video that I had never seen before that was extremely insightful in to what Astronauts see and go through. All of it is spectacular!
Netflix has most of it in HD streaming but they cut you short minus the last couple of disks. So you’ll have to order it up through the mail if you want the full experience. That or if you would rather own you nab the DVD from Amazon here: When We Left Earth – The NASA Missions (Limited Edition)
