That’s right, I finally broke down and (in a fit of horrible tech-rationalization) bought an iPad. So I’m definitely not categorizing this under “Money Savers.” But a new position at work put me in even more meetings than I thought humanly possible. The laptop battery simply could not last through the day and dragging it around with the power brick and a full set of accoutrements just got old, so I found myself reverting to pen and paper. Then I thought about what would happen if I lost that paper. Which lead to keying my notes in at night. No fun there.
So I bought an iPad to run Evernote. And I must say, I do not regret it one bit. I have had plenty of tech-buyer’s remorse in the past, but not here. And I’m an Android guy. I did buy the wi-fi version, because my HTC Incredible phone is rooted and works as a wi-fi hotspot. A buddy asked how I use Evernote, and I figured I’d let all of you in on it. Please post your tips in the comments.
1. It is my “Everything Bucket”
There are vicious debates in the GTD world that pit the “Everything Bucket” folks against the “Everything In It’s Place” folks. Some people have too much time on their hands. If you’re an “Everything In It’s Place” kind of person, Evernote may or may not be for you. But that’s not me. What works best for me is throwing everything I need to remember or refer back to in one place. Then, I never need to know where I put something.
2. I used to use tags, but now, not so much
I used to tag everything. I’d put several tags on each note. Now, not really. In fact, I’m working on “de-tagging” notes to cut down on the number of tags I use. I’ll add tags if there are key words or phrases I’ll want to use for searching later on. Otherwise, I don’t use tags all that often because…
3. Search is the UI
I virtually never look for notes using tags. I search. Evernote’s search is wonderful.
4. Handling to-do items
The addition of rich-text functionality to the iPad app is wonderful, but we still can’t add a checkbox to a note in the iPad interface. I get by this by tagging notes with to-do items with a “todo” tag and putting empty parenthesis behind the to-do item. When I’m on my PC, I’ll go through the notes with the todo tag on them and add replace the empty parenthesis with a checkbox. I use the following saved search to find all notes with unchecked checkboxes:
Query:
todo:false
As for what I use it for, it’s all the usual suspects:
- Notes
- To-do items
- Web bookmarks
- Recipes
- Receipts
- Business Cards
- Wine
- Copies of important (but not confidential!) files
So let me know what you use it for. Tell me in the comments.
In Part 1, I discussed the thought process that led me to deciding on a full-blown Windows 7 Home Theater PC (HTPC) as our cord cutting device. So now for the gear.
Samsung QX410-J01
First off, the PC itself: We went with the Samsung QX410-J01. It’s a 2.5GHz Intel Core i5, 4GB of memory, 640GB hard drive (and a 14″ screen that never gets used). We bought this off of Woot for $534.99. Not a bad price, considering that Amazon wants about a grand for it. I was close to pulling the trigger on the second from the top of the line Dell Zino, but I really liked the Core i5 processor at this price. Plus, if the whole HTPC thing doesn’t work out, it’s a nice laptop that someone around here will get some use out of. HTPC purists will cringe, but it’s working out great for me. I’d have loved to build my own system, but that’s really not my thing (I’m a programmer, not a hardware guy). Had I waited just a little bit longer, I probably would have gone with something from the dedicated HTPC builder Assassin HTPC.
For media center software, we are using Windows Media Center. I am actually a big fan of XBMC, but I want DVR functionality and XBMC does not have this baked in yet. One crucial requirement for this is that it must work flawlessly in order to have an acceptable WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor). I’ve tried Ubuntu/MythTV/XBMC on an older PC before, and Myth kept crashing when I tried to set up the TV tuner. If the DVR branch of XBMC ever takes off, I will definitely try it. In the meantime, WMC does an adequate job. I tried the Media Browser plugin for WMC, and while the UI was gorgeous, it had huge problems playing my DVD rips. So I’m using the plain vanilla Movies library and YAMMM to automatically download movie information and images to spice things up a bit. To launch other programs straight from the Media Center interface, I followed this tutorial and use AutoIt to write tiny little programs that launch apps. If you don’t care about having icons, this tutorial shows you how to do it just by creating shortcut links.
HD Homerun Tuner
Next, the TV tuner: My mother-in-law gave me a Newegg.com gift card that bought the HD Homerun dual tuner model (the older white HDHR2 model, not the new HDHR3). I’ve actually had this since Christmas, hooked up to another PC. This goes on sale frequently at Newegg; we picked it up for $89.99. Unlike tuner cards and USB tuners, this does not actually connect directly to your PC. Instead, this device sits on your network. It seems pretty odd, but it actually has advantages over a traditional tuner card (although it’s not without its challenges).
RCA ANT111 Antenna
And for the antenna: Right now, we’re using a pair of super-cheap rabbit ears, the RCA ANT111. $10.99 at Best Buy (and they’re actually selling it for $8.99 right this second). We may step up to something nicer, but this is actually doing fine right now.
Because of the way our house is set up and the trees in the yard, I haven’t found an antenna that will work in the family room with the TV. We get our best reception with the rabbit ears in our bedroom, right above the router. That’s where the HDHR is really nice. A networked tuner makes it easy to move around the house for the best reception; it doesn’t need to be anywhere near the PC. I am very lucky that it gets good reception right above the router.
We tried using wireless networking to get the tuner to talk to the PC, but wireless just isn’t reliable enough. We have a wireless N network which is plenty fast, but tests showed that network packets are being dropped. When you’re watching YouTube, Hulu or Netflix, they solve this problem with a combination of buffering the feed and using a networking protocol (TCP) that will resend dropped packets. That’s not how the HDHR works. It uses a different networking protocol (UDP) that is faster and better for sending data in real-time, but it cannot tolerate dropped packets. That’s why Silicon Dust (the makers of the HDHR) strongly recommend that you not use wireless networking. The way I saw it, I had three choices:
1. Tear up the walls with a long run of coaxial cable from the antenna to the TV.
2. Tear up the walls with a long run of network cable from the router to the TV.
3. Powerline networking.
Rocketfish Powerline Adapter
Doing either 1 or 2 myself really weren’t options. I’m not a networking guy just like I’m not a hardware guy. Having someone else run the cabling would have been fairly expensive, plus that would have forced me to permanently lock in the position of the antenna or the router. So I figured I’d go with the powerline networking option and give it a shot.
For those that aren’t familiar, powerline networking turns the electrical wiring in your house into an ethernet network. Most powerline networking kits come with one adapter that connects your router with a wall socket and another adapter that connects a second wall socket to your PC/game console/etc. We chose the Rocketfish powerline adapter kit from Best Buy. It’s $89.99, which is about the going rate for powerline kits. The picture has improved immeasurably. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but it’s definitely watchable now where it was infuriating before.
Logitech MK320
Because you’re using a PC to drive the TV, a keyboard and mouse really come in handy. I had an old wireless keyboard and mouse that I’d hoped to use, but to no avail. The keyboard worked fine, but the mouse did not cut it. I tried a few other cheap wireless mice, but no dice there either. I stood in Office Depot with a $42 bluetooth mouse and a $30 bluetooth adapter (no bluetooth in the QX410-J01, something I didn’t think about when I bought it) ready to pull the trigger, but the employee helping me out (also an HTPC user) pointed out the Logitech MK320 keyboard/mouse combination. It’s rated at a 10 meter range. Our family room isn’t 30 feet wide, so if it was even half as good as its rating, it would work for us. And it was on sale for $30. It has a fairly long USB dongle, and I get the feeling that they’re pushing devices like these out the door to make way for the ones with the little dongles. I’m happy to say that both devices are working beautifully. Our HTPC setup actually works now. So let’s total up the damage:
PC: $534.99
Tuner: $89.99
Antenna: $10.99
Powerline networking kit: $89.99
Wireless keyboard/mouse: $30.00
That’s a grand total of $755.96. Now Comcast’s bill is pretty tough to decipher, but it looks like internet service will be $44.95/month for the 12Mbps service and $44.95 for the phone service, which is $88.90 after I drop the TV. That doesn’t include taxes and fees, so let’s bump that up to an even $100/month. I’m paying $144/month on my current promotional rate. I was at $168/month before that. Assuming I could get the promotion continued, I should be saving about $44/month. At that somewhat conservative number, I get back my $755.96 back in 17 months. And if I could not get the promotion continued, the $68/month I’m saving would pay off our investment in 11 months.
In addition, we are getting:
A DVR with much more capacity than the Comcast.
A DVR with the ability to archive shows off to other media.
A DVR with the ability to play shows on other Windows 7 computers.
The ability to watch web streaming sites like YouTube on the big TV. We just watched Arcade Fire at Bonnaroo this past weekend; it was fantastic.
The ability for the kids to play casual games (my oldest daughter loves sites like GirlsGamesGo.com) on the big TV.
The satisfaction of giving Comcast far less of my money each month.
I’ve been looking to get rid of cable television (Comcast) for quite some time. We’re at a point in our lives where we really do not watch all that much TV in our family anymore. Certainly not nearly enough to warrant what we are spending on our monthly cable bill. Sites like Cord Cutters are making it very enticing to ditch the cable company and giving great information on how to continue to receive the content you want legally and inexpensively.
The number of great devices and services out there to help bring video content to your television are just staggering, making it easy to undergo paralysis by analysis. I love to read about technology, so that made it easy to do hours and hours of research without making a decision. Mix in a daughter newly diagnosed with diabetes and I caved in an signed up for another six month promotion with Comcast. So I’m stuck with them until August. But that gave me more time to think about how I wanted to attack the problem.
After grinding on this for a while, I found that the easiest approach was to survey the family to see what they watch. Once I did that, I could look into how we can get that content. Here’s what I found:
Dad:
PGA Tour Golf. Third and fourth rounds (the important ones) of all the important tournaments are shown on network television. The Golf Channel covers first and second rounds of the important tournaments and all rounds of some of the lesser tournaments (like the ones during NFL football season). And I prefer watching this on DVR (digital video recorder) so I can fast forward through commercials and anyone that is out of contention.
NFL Football. Networks carry most games. I’m a NY Giants fan living in the Washington Redskins market, so I don’t get to see them that often anyway. It’s not uncommon that the only game I get to watch on a weekend is the Sunday night game on NBC. Ever since ESPN took over the Monday night game, it seems that it’s rarely worth watching. I prefer watching this on DVR as well to fast forward through commercials.
College Basketball. ESPN is really best for this, but they’re frequently showing games on ESPN3.com, so that’s an alternative. If I were a big ACC fan, I’d get to see plenty of that on the local networks, as they actually preempt other programming to show it. The only way I get to see my beloved William and Mary Tribe is on Comcast’s own channel, but they’re on so rarely that I can hardly justify keeping cable for it.
Big Break. Only on the Golf Channel. But honestly, do I need to be watching that crap?
HGTV home shows. Plenty are readily available on Hulu.
Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. Clips are available on Hulu. Honestly, I can live with that.
The Daily Show. Readily available on Hulu and at the Daily Show web site.
Mom:
Today Show. Readily available over the air.
Evening news. Readily available over the air.
Weather Channel. The Weather Channel itself is only available via cable, but all of our local networks have a 24 hour weather sub-channel that’s available over the air.
Mad Men. We are so far behind on this show (still haven’t even finished season 2) that we need to watch it on DVD. I hear that season 3 will be available on Netflix Watch Instantly soon.
Glee. Available over the air, but my wife actually prefers buying the DVDs to have a commercial-free marathon.
Saturday Night Live. Available over the air.
Daughter #1 (age 10):
Most of the time, she’s watching tween shows (iCarly, House of Anubis) on Nick.com on her laptop.
Daughter #2 (age 3):
Kids cartoons and movies. We are extremely fortunate to live in an area with a wonderful public library system that has a great selection of kids DVDs.
So after this little exercise, I came to realize that:
1. There’s very little that any of us really want to watch that we can’t get. I’m going to be giving up a few things, but to be honest, it’s not an issue.
2. Over the air (OTA) TV will give us a great deal of what we want, but I really want a DVR to make it work.
3. There are a few key things that we are going to want to watch on Hulu, but that we don’t need Hulu plus for.
I looked at several interesting devices, including:
Roku
Boxee Box
WD TV
Google TV
Apple TV
They’re all very interesting and will do a great job for certain people, but none of them will give you live network TV or DVR functionality. I’m in a bit of an odd situation, in that my TV is extremely old and does not have a digital tuner. So I cannot just hook an OTA antenna up to it.
So with all of that in mind, the winner is…
A full-blown PC, running Windows 7 and Windows Media Center, with a TV tuner adapter, hooked up to the TV. In Part 2, I’ll review the gear we bought and how it’s all hooked together.
Upon reading this, your first question may be why would anyone do this? Why would I want to use GMail to check another mailbox? Off the top of my head, I can think of a few reasons:
- I just got an Android phone, and I had to set up a GMail account. I might as well use it for everything.
- My ISP doesn’t provide web mail.
- The web mail provided by my ISP stinks.
- I want Google to know more about me; I’m afraid they don’t have enough information on me already.
Whatever the reason, it’s fairly easy to get GMail to check another mail account for you. If you can use a program like Outlook to access that mailbox, you can use GMail as well. Here’s how:
1. Log in to GMail.
2. Click the Settings link in the upper right hand corner of the page.
GMail Settings Link
3. Click on the Accounts and Import tab.
GMail - Accounts and Import Tab
4. In the Check Mail using POP3 section, click the Add POP3 email account button.
Add POP3 Email Account
5. In the box that pops up, enter the email address you want to check and click the Next Step button.
Add Mail Account Form
6. On the next form, enter in your password for your mailbox. If you want to leave copies of your mail in your other mailbox, check that box. Be sure to click the learn more link next to that option. GMail will tell your other mail server to leave copies there, but there’s no guarantee that your server will listen. The other options are up to you. You probably won’t need to change the port or use SSL unless your mail provider has given you special instructions to do so.
POP3 Password Form
And that’s all there is to it. Now you can keep your GMail and your other mail together in your GMail inbox.
To check a non-GMail email account, you can use the EMail app that comes with Android. Here’s how you set it up.
1. Hit the menu button at the bottom of the phone.
Android Menu Button
2. Open the EMail application.
Android Application List
3. Hit the menu button again to bring up the menu for the EMail app.
4. Select accounts.
Menu inside Android Email App
5. Hit the menu button again.
6. Select add account.
Android EMail Accounts Menu
7. Fill in the your email address and password and click the Next button. If your email provider uses standard settings, the EMail app should be able to read them and configure your account.
Android EMail App - Address and Password Form
8. Give the account a name (it’s optional, but you’ll want to do it if you think you’ll set up more than one email account) and enter you’re name. Then click Done and you’re all set!
Android EMail App - Account Name Form
First of all, let me welcome you to the revolution. I don’t know where you came from (BlackBerry, iPhone or plain old cell phone), but I think you’ll enjoy your new Android phone.
You’ll find there are tons of things you can do to get the most out of your new device. If you’ve already welcomed our new Google overlords by using GMail, Google Calendar and Google Contacts, then no problem. Most of your life is now on your phone, put there as soon as you first booted it up and plugged in your GMail user name and password. Some of you (like my blogging partner Tom) may have your digital life set up somewhat differently. Like in Outlook.
Microsoft Exchange:
If you use Outlook at work, chances are good that your company uses a mail system called Microsoft Exchange. Lucky for you, Android plays very nicely with MS Exchange. Rather than going through this in great detail, I encourage you to talk with your mail system admin. Chances are good that you’ll need some help from them in getting this set up (if they allow external access). If you can get this working, this will also take care of your contacts and email, so you’ll be all set. The Android applications for Email and Calendar are pretty good, but for more functionality you may want to try TouchDown from NitroDesk. It provides the ability to search the server and create events with privacy settings. It’s not free, but it has quite a following and NitroDesk gives you a free trial.
Outlook Calendar:
So if you’re not using Exchange, synchronizing your Outlook calendar with your phone is still easy enough. Google provides you the tool you’ll need to get the job done here, for free. It’s Google Calendar Sync, and you can find it here. As long as you’re using a supported version of Windows and a supported version of Outlook, it should do the job. Bear in mind that this will synchronize our Outlook calendar with your online Google calendar that was created when you created your GMail account. The nice thing about this is that there’s no plugging in required. Anything in your online Google calendar is immediately synced to the Calendar application on your Android phone.
If you are using a 64-bit version of Windows and Outlook, you may find that GCS doesn’t work. If that’s the case, you will need to find another method. If you know of any free tools to do the job, please let me know. In the meantime, I can recommend CompanionLink for Android. It’s 39.95, but they have a free 14 day trial, so you can try before you buy. I haven’t personally used this particular product, but I do use a similar product from CompanionLink (which I’ll write about later) and it works like a charm. And it will synchronize contacts as well as calendar, all in one shot.
Outlook Contacts:
Unlike syncing your calendar, Google does not seem to have a tool for syncing contacts. WebGear has a free application for keeping your contacts synchronized, GO Contact Sync. It looks to be getting favorable reviews, though I have no experience with it myself.
Outlook Mail:
At this point, I’m guessing that you’re using your phone to connect to your personal, non-GMail email account. For mail provided by your internet service provider (or Windows Live/Hotmail), you can use the bundled EMail application. You’ll want to have the configuration particulars for your mail server (you should have gotten them when you set up Outlook). Once you have them, set up is pretty simple.
So now you’ve set up your new Android phone to work with Outlook. I think this is a good time to ask yourself why you’re still using Outlook. Most of the time I ask people about this, they tell me that they don’t want to change their email address. This is understandable, but GMail makes it pretty darn easy to switch (how else could they assimilate you?). You had to set up a GMail account to activate your phone, so I know you have one now.
Switching to GMail from a your-user-name@your-isp-domain.com email address:
Using the same mail server settings you used to set up the EMail application on your phone, you can make your GMail account check your other email account. So rather than dealing with both GMail and your other email account, you can use GMail to handle both. So while you’re gently reminding people to use your GMail address, they can still reach you at your old email address, but the messages will show up in GMail. And if you really need to send email out from that old email address for some reason, you can do this from GMail in the browser, but not from the GMail app on your Android phone (if you know of a way to change the sender address in the GMail Android app, please let us know).
Switching to GMail with your own domain name.
If your have your own domain and an email address there (like mike@dreamshappennow.com), you can use the GMail app for this as well. It takes a little more work, but it’s definitely worth it. You’ll need to sign up for a free Google Apps account. Google does a good job of hiding the fact that they still offer free accounts, but the sign up link is still out there. I created a couple of GA accounts in the last few days. Spend a few minutes setting up an account for your domain (you may want a geeky friend to help you out with things like DNS changes), then come back to your Android phone and follow these steps:
- Hit the menu button
- Select Settings
- Select Accounts & sync
- Hit the Add account button
- Select Google from the list of accounts
- Hit the Next button
- Hit the Sign in button under Already have a Google Account?
- Enter the user name and password for your new Google Apps account
- Hit the Sign in button
When you open the GMail app now, hit the menu button and select Accounts. You’ll now see your personal GMail account and your Google Apps account. You can easily switch between the two, and you will receive push notifications on both accounts. This beats the heck out of using the EMail app (the best you can do with EMail is set it to check your accounts every five minutes). When you compose a new message, you can select from any of the Google accounts you’ve configured as the sender (it doesn’t matter which account you are currently looking at). I don’t know if there’s a limit to the number of Google Apps accounts you can set up. I currently have my personal GMail account and one GA account set up. I plan on setting up a few more GA accounts, so I’ll report back if I run into any limitations.
Lotus Notes/Domino:
At my 8-5 job, we use IBM’s Lotus Notes and the Lotus Domino server. At this time, official support for Lotus in Android is not what I’d like it to be. Right now, I use the Lotus Notes Ultralite web mail client to check my work email. It’s better than nothing, but just barely. And if you don’t have web mail access, you’ll need to get your Domino admins and your network admins to make it available to you. Let me know how that works out for you.
You can also use the the Android EMail app and connect to your Lotus Domino server using a method known as IMAP. Instructions are the same as the ones I wrote for setting up the EMail app to access mail from your internet service provider. Get with your server admins on this one as well. We keep IMAP support turned off on our server, and your admins probably do as well.
IBM has made iPhone integration easier with the new Lotus Traveler product, and they are planning to support Android with Traveler by the end of the year. We’ve signed up to be a beta testing site and hope to have it up within a month or so. I’ll report back when we have it up and running. Our iPhone users love it, so I’m hoping we’ll have good luck with it as well.
There are other products out there that will help you get your Lotus mail on your Android phone, but all of them that I’ve seen will require work from your admins. Save up your favors with them (I’ve found that donuts work well) and just wait for offical Traveler support or get yourself on the beta.
For calendar and contact synchronization, I use CompanionLink Express. At $69.95, it’s a little spendy, but it works great. That being said, I’m looking forward to getting rid of it when we get on Traveler.
So now what?
So now you are getting your mail, calendar and contacts onto your phone. That’s not all there is to this thing. Otherwise, I’d suggest you get a BlackBerry. Stay tuned for future articles on essential apps and other tips and tricks for your Android phone.
Replacing a two year-old phone because on a contract extension deal? It being 2010 and all, that means your old phone is probably a pretty capable piece of equipment. It would not be at all surprising if it has a somewhat serviceable camera and a usable music player. So what are you going to do with it? Trash it? Stick it in a drawer somewhere? Donate it (definitely not a bad idea)? Well, you may want to hang on to it. Here’s why:
What You Want: Sonos
Why You Want It: You want digital audio in multiple rooms in your house.
But It Costs: $990.00
What You’ll Need: Powered Speakers (like the ones you plug into your PC), Portable Music Players
For those of you who don’t know, Sonos is a product that hooks up to your home’s wireless network to broadcast music stored on your PC or internet radio stations to wireless receivers stationed in rooms throughout your house. I want Sonos. Sonos is cool. Sonos is beautiful. Sonos is elegant. Sonos is also ridiculously expensive. $990 for music in two rooms? Are you kidding me? That puts this product in squarely in the more-money-than-brains category (my apologies if you own Sonos — I envy your bank account). But wouldn’t it be nice to have music throughout your house? Sure it would be. But it shouldn’t cost you $1,000. And it doesn’t.
What do you love to do?
(This is a continuation of Thinking of new ways to make a living)
If you love what you are doing for a living, then it isn’t “work”. Work isn’t work if you love doing it. When we love doing what we are doing, it is called “play”. Wouldn’t it be nice to be paid for playing instead of working?
Think about it. Make a list of all of the things you love to do. Then ask yourself a couple questions about your list.
1) Does anybody have to make you do the things you love to do?
2) Do you just dread the thought of having to get up in the morning to do all of the things you love to do?
Of course not. No one has to threaten you to get you out of bed on the mornings when you get to do only those things you really want to do. You wake up excited about the day. You look forward to it. After spending the entire day doing what you love, you’re renewed, and refreshed, and you’re generally a healthier person than you were when the day started.
Thinking of new ways to make a living
Someone once told me that the jobs our children will have when they grow up haven’t even been invented yet. He was commenting on how quickly technology, the workplace, and the world at large are changing. The advice we got from our parents, “Go to college. Work for a big company. Retire with a pension,” doesn’t really apply any longer. Now that my kids are actually growing up – I’m reminded that they will have to rethink how they view work, and how their careers will unfold.
I think that we might learn something from this as well. I found myself having to redefine what I did for a living last year when the industry I worked for was hammered by the economy and by government regulations. The Department of Labor Statistics says that the US lost over 2.6 million jobs since 2008! That’s a lot of jobs. That’s a lot of people. That’s a lot of sleepless nights.
