Controlling your Home Theater PC

Last year I converted one of our PCs into a Home Theater PC (HTPC). We had moved to a rural location that didn't offer cable, and I didn't want to pay a monthly subscription to Tivo just to be able to record Over The Air (OTA) television broadcasts. I purchased a Silicon Dust HDHomerun Dual Tuner unit and connected the PC to our television using an HDMI cable. This worked really well for setting up recordings of broadcast television for later viewing. One of the hurdles that limited use of the HTPC in our household was how to control the HTPC. Using a television or DVR is fairly straight forward. Most people are familiar with a remote control and will intuitively understand how to use them. What do you do when someone hands you a keyboard and mouse instead? I made several attempts at finding a good control solution that everyone could understand.

Attempt #1 - Wireless mouse + wired keyboard



Mouse - Logitech MX Revolution



Keyboard - Logitech Wave Corded Keyboard

These were already in the house, so it was the first thing to try. It worked ok, but there were some major annoyances. The range on the wireless mouse was terrible. The mouse was very touchy about detecting movement on fabric. It either wouldn't move, or it would jump all over the screen. We didn't need the keyboard often, but it was an irritation to have to get up to use it.

Attempt #2 - Wireless Multimedia Keyboard



Keyboard - BTC 9019URF

I also had this keyboard, which I'd picked up at Fry's on sale for $40 a few years back. It is a wireless keyboard that includes a joystick for moving the mouse as well as mouse buttons (right, left, click wheel). When I originally bought it, my intention was to strap it to my treadmill so I could get some exercise while doing my regular browsing, e-mail, bills, etc. It uses some custom RF protocol for communicating back to the USB dongle. It worked fairly well when sitting close to the receiver, but the range is really poor (less than 15 feet in my experience). It also chewed through batteries like mad. The mouse would tend to drift, as the joystick sometimes wouldn't right itself. Typing was painful, as it often missed or doubled keystrokes. I wouldn't recommend this keyboard.

Attempt #3 - Windows Media Center Remote + wired keyboard




Remote - Siig Vista Media Center Edition Remote



Keyboard - Logitech Wave Corded Keyboard

After the batteries died on the wireless keyboard, we ditched it and went back to the corded keyboard. Fry'shad the Siig Vista MCE remote available for $30, so I picked it up. Like the wireless keyboard, it uses a usb dongle, but is IR rather than RF. This worked really well on our Win7 HTPC. All of the buttons on the remote work as expected within Media Center, and the family felt comfortable using the HTPC this way. It was familiar, and it was a lot less like using a PC and a lot more like using a DVR. The remote also worked within the Hulu and Boxee interfaces to some extent. The only negatives were the need to get up to use the corded keyboard, and the slight ugliness of an IR dongle at the front of our media cabinet.

Attempt #4 - Logitech DiNovo Mini



HTPC Keyboard - Logitech DiNovo Mini

I received this as a Christmas gift and it is *awesome*! The DiNovo Mini is a very small form-factor wireless keyboard with a touchpad that can be toggled to either act as a trackpad for moving the mouse, or as a D-pad. The keys on the keyboard are about twice as big as on most cell phone keypads, which makes it easy to type with. The keys are also backlit, which is great when watching something in the dark. It uses a rechargeable battery, so no stocking AAs or AAAs. It has a hinged cover so that when it is not in use you can cover the keys to keep dust and other couch detritus out. The form factor is great. Traditional wireless keyboards are pretty big, and it is awkward to keep them on the couch or endtable. This little guy fits right along side my other remotes. I only have one minor quibble with it. The record button doesn't work. There is a driver hack to get it working in WMC, but by default the record button is mapped to Windows Media Player, and will launch it rather than setting the currently selected show to record. You can either use the driver hack or manually select record to work around this, but it was a point of confusion when we tried using the remote to schedule recordings. Aside from this minor issue, I can't recommend this device highly enough. The $150 MSRP is a little salty for a keyboard (you can find it for closer to $110 from Amazon) but in my opinion it is totally worth it for making the HTPC more useful.

Exercise Tracking Applications

I enjoy going out for a jog a few times each week. It is a good way to keep in shape, and it it gives me some personal time to zone out, listen to a podcast or music, or just collect my thoughts. I'm also a geek, and I love stats. I love collecting stats from my runs. I've used a number of different run tracking gadgets and applications, and I thought I would share my thoughts on each.

RunKeeper

RunKeeper is a mobile application available for both iPhone and Android that uses the GPSr built into the phone to track your run, hike, bike, or any other type of trip. It uses the GPSr information to determine your location and speed, and can provide both mapping at run statistics information.

The user interface for RunKeeper is not pretty, but the real killer for me on this product is that the GPSr accuracy is horrible. This is surprising when you consider other applications running on the same hardware gave much better results, as you will see later. I made two runs with RunKeeper, and both showed totally unrealistic pace and distance information, and the track on the map was all over the place. Other gripes include a lack of integration to music on the device and no support for voice enunciation.

The only positive thing to say about RunKeeper is that the online portal where runs are stored is actually quite nice. Oh, and the price is just right at Free.

RunStar

RunStar is a jogging application available only on the Android platform. It integrates with the music service to play your favorite playlist, or randomly play through the entire library. It has a power song feature which will play a specific track at the press of a button. RunStar tracks your run using the GPSr of your Android phone.

The user interface for RunStar is very nicely done. The UI is clean and well designed for use in an armband while you run with large buttons and text display. It even includes a custom sleep screen that displays your run stats. The GPSr tracking is actually quite good, which is surprising considering the horrible performance of the RunKeeper application on the same hardware. RunStar offers Twitter integration, allowing you to tweet the summary stats for your run, and Facebook integration is coming.

There are some nags I have with the application though. First, there is no online portal to view a summary of all runs. Instead, the only place to review your previous runs is via the app on your phone. Second, voice enunciation would be great. Voice enunciation is a feature that periodically speaks over your music to let you know your current distance, time, and pace.

RunStar is currently in beta development, and you can load the app for free. From the website and disabled features in the app, it is clear that the developers have some ambitious goals. This is definitely an app to watch.

Google My Tracks

My Tracks is another Android only application for tracking your exercise. Like the previous applications it utilizes the GPSr on your device to track your location and determine your distance traveled, speed, elevation, and other stats.

The My Tracks user interface is somewhere between RunKeeper and RunStar. It isn't a great UI for use while running, but it is easy to understand and use. There are three main views: the map, trip computer, and speed / elevation graph. Unfortunately, My Tracks does not include direct integration with the music features of the device, so you will need to manage your music / podcast playing separately from tracking your run. Also, the default accuracy setting for the GPS is pretty awful (over 600') so my first run thought I was tearing around town at speeds on par with The Flash. On my second run I dialed it down to the most accurate setting (33') and the run tracking was very good.

Your My Tracks data can be uploaded both to Google Docs and to Google Maps. This allows you to review runs online, and also to share them with friends. My Tracks does not offer Twitter, Facebook, or other social media integration, so tweeting your stats must be done manually.

One huge advantage My Tracks has over the RunStar and RunKeeper is voice enunciation. You can setup the interval at which you will be notified, and the voice over states your distance, time, and pace. I love this feature, as it lets me know if I'm dogging it or if I have attacked to hard early.

Nike+

The Nike+ system is available in stand-alone form as a USB wrist band, or integrated with your iPod Touch, iPod Nano, or iPhone. The Nike+ system is unique from the others mentioned here as it uses a pedometer placed in the shoe rather than a GPSr to track your run. This limits the use of the Nike+ system to walks, jogs, running, and hiking. It is not able to track cycling, kayaking, or other sports that lack a foot impact. On the other hand, the Nike+ system is the only one mentioned here that will work for treadmill workouts.

The Nike+ user interface is dead simple on your iPod. I place it on par with the RunStar UI, as it is easy to use during a workout, and clear how to setup a run and get started. While the pedometer can only count steps, after configuring your stride length it is quite good at providing an estimate of your distance traveled. The voice enunciation support on the iPod is superior to My Tracks in that it can be configured to announce stats based on distance intervals in addition to time intervals, and includes an on demand announcement as well. Like RunStar, the Nike+ integrates with the music on your device and allows for playing a playlist or randomly playing the entire library. The Power Song feature is also present.

The Nike+ website is vastly superior to the others mentioned here. When you dock your iPod your run is uploaded to the Nike+ site where you can review it along with all of your other runs. You can add friends through the site and compare runs and total progress. You can set goals and share maps with other runners for nice running routes. Nike+ offers integration to both Twitter and Facebook, allowing you to automatically post your run stats to either service.

The only thing missing from the Nike+ system is a GPSr to track the route of your run (note: this might be either under development or available on the iPhone version, I have only used the iPod Nano version). Another potential drawback to the Nike+ system is that it requires the pebble pedometer in your shoe. While you can use the pebble in any pair of shoes, it is most comfortable with Nike+ branded shoes. If you happen to forget either the pebble or your shoes when you want to go for a run, you won't be able to track your run.

My Pick

I love the Nike+ system, and feel that of the systems mentioned here it is the clear winner. Unfortunately, I packed away my Nike+ dongle for my iPod Nano when we prepared to move, so I haven't been able to use it. Of the apps available on my Android phone, the My Tracks service is the one I will be using for now, but I'm keeping an eye on RunStar as I feel it has great potential.

Google Sync

After I gave up my BlackBerry, I switched back to using my Dell Axim PDA. I'm very happy with it, and I'm having great luck with Windows Mobile 6.1 One thing that I have struggled with is to find a way to synchronize my mobile calendar, contacts, and e-mail with my Google calendar, contacts, and e-mail. Actually, I should not include e-mail, as that was always easy to do. You can synchronize either via POP or IMAP, whichever you prefer.

So next up was calendar synchronization. My goal was to find a solution that would synchronize my work calendar with my google calendar, and both my Google and work calendars onto my PDA. The first app I tried for this was Google Calendar Sync for Mobile Devices (GCSfMD). This is an application that runs on a Windows Mobile 5.0 or later device and synchronizes the calendar data on the PDA with the Google Calendar. The advantage here is that my work calendar would sync to my device, and then GCSfMD would modify the calendar to also include my Google Calendar appointments. Unfortunately GCSfMD is a one way sync. If I change an appointment on my Google Calendar my device is updated, but if I change an appointment on my device, the Google Calendar is unaltered. So my next attempt was to use Google Calendar Sync. Although the two have very similar names, they behave in very different ways. Google Calendar Sync synchronizes your Outlook calendar directly with your Google Calendar. It is a two-way sync, so if you update either your Outlook Calendar or your Google Calendar, the updates are synchronized between both. This is a great app, and I have gotten great use out of it the last few weeks.

This left contact synchronization. There simply is no good solution for synchronizing Outlook Contacts and Google Contacts. Likewise, the only application that I found that will synchronize my mobile contacts with Google Contacts is OggSync.

Fortunately, today Google released Google Sync. Google Sync works with Windows Mobile and iPhone devices to synchronize both the Calendar and Contacts with your Google data. Best of all, it required no installation on my PDA! I simply modified my ActiveSync setup to point to the Google Mobile server, and everything synced up perfectly.

A couple of questions you might have:

• Why not just use the device web browser to check the Google sites directly?

That would be perfectly acceptable...if my device were a phone. It isn't, and I don't want to pay the extraordinary rates carriers are asking for all you can eat data service. By synchronizing my device, the data is available offline. So even if I'm in the car I still have access to all my calendar, contact, and e-mail data.

• How do you merge the data?

I still need Google Calendar Sync. Google Sync will sync your device data with your Google data, but it will not merge with your Outlook data. I still use Google Calendar Sync to merge my Google Calendar with my Outlook calendar. There is still no solution for merging my contact data, but I'm okay with this because I can live with only having my personal contacts on my device.

• Can I sync my device with both Google and Outlook?

At this time, no. Windows Mobile and iPhone both restrict you to a single synchronization source. You'll need to decide how you want to approach it. For me, I've chosen to make Google my primary data provider, and I sync all of the other data with Google. You may prefer to sync with your Outlook data, in which case you will need to find alternative applications to sync up.

In an ideal world, my device would sync and store all of my various calendars, contacts, e-mail, and data from as many sources as I wanted. Until then, the combination of Google Sync and Google Calendar Sync will fill the void.

Windows 7 Beta Gadgets and User Account Control

If you are running the Windows 7 Beta and have turned User Account Control (UAC) completely off, you may have noticed that the desktop gadgets no longer work. Turn UAC back on, even at a minimum level, and they start working again. Want to have them work all the time? Just add this little registry hack:

[hkey_local_machine\software\microsoft\windows\curentversion\sidebar\settings]
"sidebardockedpartsorder"="0x1,0x2,0x3,0x4"
"allowelevatedprocess"=dword:00000001

No need to restart your machine, just run the desktop gadget gallery and your gadgets will magically reappear.

Twitter on Windows Mobile

I've been playing around with Twitter the last couple of days. I can see the allure: short form updates. It is much easier to send a 140 character or less tweet than it is to compose a blog entry. I think the two forms (blog and tweet) don't necessarily compete head to head, as a tweet is more useful for a status update and a blog is a better venue for elaboration.

Since I'm back to using my PDA (Dell Axim x50v running Windows Mobile 5), I was looking for something that would allow me to track and post updates from it. I first tried Quakk. It certainly looked pretty, and it was able to pull in my friends timeline. A couple of things made me continue looking though. First, the Quakk interface looks great on the QVGA (320x240) screen of most PDAs, but on the true VGA (640x480) of my Axim all of the offsets were messed up. The bottom text was layered on top of the update text. Add to that the second issue: it wasn't able to send a tweet. Every attempt received the same error message, regardless of the update type.

In searching for an alternative I tried PockeTwit. The screenshots really don't do this app justice. It has a very "iPhone" feel in that you can use your finger to scroll through updates. This app correctly pulls in my friend timeline and allows me to post updates. The interface is formatted beautifully on the VGA screen. The application is compatible with Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices.

If you are a twitterer and have a Windows Mobile device, I highly recommend it. You can follow me at http://twitter.com/JadeMason.

Google Calendar Sync

I am giving up my BlackBerry in at work and reverting back to the use of my PDA (thus the previous posts looking for a cell phone).  As part of this process, I've been looking into different ways of keeping sync'ed, both with my work items and home items.  I tried an open source product called GMobileSync from RareEdge.  On paper it had everything I wanted - it would pull appointments from my Google Calendar and put them on my PDA calendar, and would also push appointments on my PDA to my Google Calendar.  This would allow me to use my PDA as a single source for all of my home and office appointments (and would allow my wife to easily check my availability for doctor's appointments or schedule me as away for any family related things).  Unfortunately, the execution is quite there.  The code is at version 1.3.6, and while it will update my PDA with appointments from my GCal, it won't go the other way (NullReferenceError).  I considered grabbing the code and debugging it, but I'd rather have a solution that just works out of the box.

Enter Google Calendar Sync from Google.  This application runs on the desktop rather than on the PDA, but it does 2-way synchronization between your Outlook calendar and your Google Calendar.  This is perfect, because my PDA syncs with my Outlook calendar anyway.  Now all of my work appointments show up on my Google Calendar, and all of my personal appointments show up on my Outlook calendar.

Pidgin

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was getting irritated with GoogleTalk.  I decided to go back to my old friend GAIM to give it another try.  GAIM was the name of an open source instant messaging application that allowed you to communicate on a variety of messaging networks at once.  GAIM has since changed it's name to Pidgin.  The concept is still the same though.  If you find yourself running multiple instant messaging clients (such as GoogleTalk, AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, etc.) this single client can eliminate a lot of clutter for you.  

Pidgin doesn't expose the full feature set of all of the IM clients.  Instead, it focuses on the messaging portion.  So while you can't play games, share a white board, voice chat, or use any of the other sophisticated features that each individual client might supply, you can write text back and forth.  And really, this is 99% of what I'm looking for out of an instant messenger.

Pidgin is not the easiest software to use.  It does attempt to simplify the process of setting up accounts and getting connected, but if you are behind a firewall you'll need to do some experimenting to get each client setup.  If this doesn't frighten you, Pidgin is a pretty useful app for condensing all of those IM clients into a single interface.  Pidgin isn't the only player in this space.  Another popular app is Trillian is also quite popular.  Just like Pidgin, it permits you to communicate to folks on your buddy list from a variety of IM networks.  Trillian has a free client, and pay-for Pro client as well.  I used Trillian a few years back, and it was a good tool.  I may give it another try to see how it compares with Pidgin.

For you typing social butterflies, Pidgin can be a pretty useful tool.

Del.icio.us

Some time ago I started hearing chatter about a service called Del.icio.us. I wasn't really clear on what it was...something to do with bookmarks. I've never really been in the habit of using bookmarks. Most of the sites I visit I just type the address in for, and everything else I Google. On a lark I visited the site and signed up for an account, and now I get it.

There are two things that make Delicious really useful. First, if you store your bookmarks on Delicious you can get to them from anywhere that has access to the Delicious website. This is a pretty nice feature when you move from PC to PC each day, or if you have ever upgraded PC's and lost your bookmarks. The second great feature is that you can choose to share your bookmarks. Now that may not sound all that fantastic at first, but here's the benefit. Let's say that you bookmarked something you are interested in, like this video of a Tonkinese cat playing fetch. When you visit your bookmarks on Delicious you see your bookmark to the video, as well as the count of the other folks who bookmarked the same link. You can then click on that number and get a list of the people with that link, and then click their account to see what other bookmarks they are sharing. In addition, you can supply tags for your links. So you might tag that bookmark with cats or tonkinese. You could then click on those tags to see what other bookmarks have been tagged with the same label. Of course, if there are any links you would prefer to keep private (such as to your bank or something else sensitive) you can mark those bookmarks as private. The bookmarks will show up for you when you are logged in, but will not appear in your shared list of bookmarks.

This makes bookmarking a lot more appealing for me. There are a lot of times at work that I'll be in the middle of a particularly gnarly problem, and I'll go googling around and finally find some obscure article on the web with a nicely written solution. In the past, I would use the page to solve my problem, then promptly forget it. Now I'm tempted to add it to my Delicious bookmarks and see who else bookmarked the page. If someone else bookmarked the page, they probably have the same interests as I do, so they may have some interesting links I would like to read. In addition, if I'm doing research on a particular subject, it makes sense to search the Delicious database of bookmarks to see what the most popular bookmarks are on my particular subject.

I've included a link to my Delicious bookmarks on the side bar. If you've got a Delicious account and don't mind sharing, post it in the comments.

Google Talk

I'm a big fan of most of the apps that Google has put forth. When Google Talk was first introduced, I immediately tried to get as many people as I could to switch over. It was such an improvement over my existing IM tools (Yahoo and MSN). The biggest thing for me was that it didn't pollute the interface with ads, gadgets, tools, and other crap. It let you instant message, and that was it. There were no ads. The built-in voice chat was actually easy to use out of the box. It was great!

But that was almost four years ago. Google has since released three additional versions of the chat client, while not making any significant improvements to the original Google Talk desktop app. Your choices now are:

The Google Talk Desktop App
The Google Talk Desktop App, Labs Edition
The Google Talk Gadget (Web Version)
Google Talk in GMail

As well as customized versions for the iPhone and BlackBerry. To further confuse the issue, the various versions to do not have complementary features. The original desktop version does not have group chat, but does have voice chat. The new Labs version has group chat, but no voice chat. The GMail version permits communicating with your AOL IM contacts, but not in the original desktop App. The web gadget and the Labs addition appear identical to me so far, but I haven't dug that deeply. And they are all labeled "beta". So which am I supposed to use?

For a while I used Pidgin, which allowed me to run one application and connect to all of my instant messaging services. I stopped because it was not very reliable at staying connected. I haven't used it for over a year now, and several new releases have been issued. If you use a lot of different clients, I highly recommend it.

Getting back to my point, the Google Talk situation is a mess. Google really needs to have a sit down with the product manager for Google Talk and get his mind right. There are too many versions with too many variations of features.