Be Careful When Counting Stars

  I have no problem admitting it – I’m that guy. The one who, at Christmas time, already knows what he plans to purchase his wife for Christmas. Not only that, I’m also that guy who sits back and laughs at those “poor bumbling fools” fighting traffic and crowds at malls and box retailers. “Why do they do this to themselves?”, I ask. “Haven’t they ever heard of the internet!?” It’s so beautifully simple and easy: No crowds. No parking. No driving. Heck, you don’t even have to get out of your PJs!

  But they always fight it. “How do I know what I’m getting if I don’t go to a store and check it out before I buy it?”

To that, I drop some simple knowledge. Fact is, contrary to popular belief, online shopping was created by and for men. How can you tell? Simple – look at the overall shopping habits of men. We go to a store, knowing before hand what we want, grab it and leave. A majority of the time, we rely on the knowledge of at least one other man (usually a relative or trusted friend) who has some knowledge about the thing we’re going to buy when deciding our purchase. Or sometimes it’s a man who we trust in his field (and by trust in his field, I mean a guy who’s got a TV show. He has a show – he has to know what he’s talking about, right?). With that in mind, I always check the user / consumer ratings of a product being sold online to gauge whether or not I will purchase. And I encourage others to do so.

  Now keep in mind, there is a science to this. Just because a product has a 5-star rating doesn’t mean it’s worth your hard earned cash if there are only 10 people rating it. Your freshman Statistics class will alert your Spidey Senses enough to know that’s not a reliable population pool. You need enough of a pool to convince you in the same way your relative, trusted friend, or respected  TV Guru would.

  For those of you who don’t know, I love to cook. I’m mainly grill centered (no gas!!), but I love cooking all around. Fortunately for me, I was blessed with a wife who loves to cook as well. She’s gifted with the skill of custom cakes and deserts (for years, she’s been the go-to for birthday cakes for the kids in our families), and she frequently surprises me with new meal recipes. We’ve been together for quite some time – about 18 years, 14 married. We’ve seen our share of cookware throughout those years.

  For several years, we had the same cookware. Nothing too fancy. But it had had it’s time, and my wife began dropping hints about a new set. So in 2012, I made the logical decision to purchase a new set.

  But, I didn’t want to get her just any set. I wanted a set to knock her socks off. I wanted it to be beautiful stainless steel to match all of our other kitchen tools. I also wanted it to be nice enough to give the feel of professional cooking without being too overly expensive. I dove head first into my go-to online shopping source, Amazon, looking for that perfect set. I read review after review. I compared prices. I read reviews from other sources about some of the Amazon offerings. Finally, I found the perfect set.

So I thought….

  The perfect set I settled on was this beautiful 28pc 12-Element Stainless Steel Cookware Set. And, when I say beautiful, I mean this set can really class up any kitchen! The box and description informs that it’s a $1100 value (should have been a red flag for me), and upon my wife’s opening it on Christmas day 2012 I could agree. 100%! Simply stunning!

At fist…

  Soon, there was water dripping from seams after washing and subsequent cooking. And regardless of how low and slow you cook, EVERYTHING sticks the majority of uses. Ultimately, within months, we ended up with this:

  Talk about disappointment. After all, I counted the stars on Amazon –

Customer Reviews

  
   Yet I was horribly let down. My wife eventually told me, “You know, I really hate cooking with that skillet”. Sadly, so do I. This set does come with a “Lifetime Replacement Warranty”, but you can’t simply send back the item(s) you need replaced. You have to box up the entire set and send it back, and you’ll receive an over-all replacement. Why don’t I just do that? Put simply,
                                              Ain’t nobody got time for that!

   So will this be the end to my online shopping habits? No. In all actuality, this is the first time I’ve ever felt burned by it. One could also easily argue that I ignored the negative reviews that mentioned the same thing I experienced with this set. However, there will always be negative reviews about any product. So I used the approach that I normally use – I counted the stars, using the good:bad ratio. This time it just didn’t work out in my favor. As such, in less than a year, I’m purchasing new cookware. Only this time, I’ve done it the old fashioned way – I actually went to a store. 
   Have you ever “counted the stars” to make on online shopping decision, only to be disappointed later? Please feel free to share in comments!

There Is One Thing I Hate About Android

   As much as I love Android, and all things Google-related in general, there is actually one thing that I hate. And for the life of me, I’m nut sure why it has never really changed.

   To begin with, I use Google Calendar for everything. And, I mean everything – keeping track of due dates for bills, appointments, meetings, special events. You name it – it’s on my calendar. In fact, I don’t use to-do list apps because my calendar is my to-do list.

   When I look at my calendar, I like to be able to see what’s coming up at a glance, in Month View. Whenever I’m on my Chromebook or my Nexus 7 tablet, I check my calendar in month view especially if someone tells me of an upcoming event, meeting, etc. I need to be able to quickly glance to see what’s coming up. As I mentioned, I keep track of bills with it as well – those that have been paid and those that are pending.

   So, what is it that I hate? Simply put, this –

   This, for those of you who may not know, is the stock Google Calendar on an Android mobile phone (in my case, my Moto X), in Month View. This, in my opinion, is completely useless. Granted, you change views to Week, Day, or Agenda and see the actual words that all the colorful dashes and dots represent. But that begs the question – what’s the point of Month View if you can’t read anything?
   What escapes me is the fact that the stock Google Calendar doesn’t display this way on a tablet. On my Nexus 7, it’s perfect. What also baffles me is that, with all the updates and changes Google has made, this has remained the same.
   I like simple. I like not having to install an app to accomplish something that a preexisting app should already accomplish. I love and use many Google services – they all integrate so well together and I have access from anywhere to things I may need. Unfortunately in this case, I’ve had to install and use a different calendar on my Android phones. A couple years ago, I searched for one that could provide the Month View I like, found  Business Calendar, and have used it since. 
   At first I tried to convince myself that maybe it simply wasn’t possible to include words in Month View on a mobile phone calendar, perhaps due to screen space. But once I found alternatives, I quickly learned that wasn’t the case at all.
   Maybe I’m being too picky. Maybe this really isn’t very important (obviously not to Google). But I find it hard to believe that I’m the only person who’s found this to be horrible. I would love to stick to as much all-stock Android as possible. Sadly, I hate the stock calendar app.
   Do you have a favorite calendar app? Please feel free to share in the comments!

Roku Moves On To The Next Level

   As a Roku enthusiast, I am always excited about any new updates and/or news from them. As such, it was great to see this January 5th entry on the Roku blog. 
   There has been some negative chatter regarding this announcement – primarily aimed at Smart TVs in general. Most people gripe about how many Smart TVs can only operate using the OS installed on them with no other or very limited inputs allowed. So these people argue that they feel it’s better to simply purchase a “dumb” TV and hook up any external devices they want while still maintaining normal TV functionality. However, I personally like to take the “wait and see” approach to any new tech such as this. Maybe Roku has listened to some of this negative chatter and will take these concerns to the designers and manufacturers of the new sets. 
   Be sure to check out the full announcement, and feel free to share what you think about this move by Roku.

Roku Channel Review – PlayOn

 
 In The Truth About Cutting The Cord – Part 3: Suggested Software, I explained – “One final server I will mention that you may want to download onto your dedicated PC to access via your Roku is called PlayOn. But, I only want to MENTION it and not necessarily SUGGEST it.http://www.playon.tv/playon


 The reason being is that as of date, I have not found PlayOn to be living up to the claims found on their website. Many of the “live” channels they claim to have simply don’t work, or are in fact NOT “live” at all. In fact, the only “live” channel I can get to work on it is HBO Comedy This in itself may be worth it to you (I paid the $24.99 per year fee – may drop it at the end of the term). But hey – that’s YOUR call!”

   Sad to say, my view of PlayOn has not changed months later. In all fairness, I’ve tried to give PlayOn a fighting chance – I truly have. But the fact that most of the “channels” that PlayOn offers tend to return errors, or only contain clips of shows under folders marked “Full Episodes”, really makes it pretty much impossible to recommend.
   The idea behind PlayOn (and what sells it) is that it aggregates live channel streams into one. Unfortunately this is inconsistent at best, more often simply non-existent. On the occasion that I have gotten a live stream to work (as mentioned above, I seem to have the best luck with HBO Comedy), I was left with the feeling that the stream was coming from some 12-year-old kid who figured out how to live stream his parent’s cable – this after waiting for about 5 minutes for the stream to actually load. This lack of true content alone is horrible to say the least because the channel line up that PlayOn presents on the main screen is quite impressive – from your typical CBS stations all the way up to the NFL Network.
   Want to add more channels? PlayOn’s website offers a list of official channels, as well as it’s own underbelly of channels created by freelance developers. Again, this approach is somewhat awesome. But the fact of the matter is that many of these developers create a PlayOn channel, stream to it or maintain the link for the respective channel’s stream for a while, and the channel eventually becomes useless (which usually means they simply get sick of maintaining the channel).
   On the bright side, the PlayOn Server itself is actually very well developed. PlayOn is upfront about system requirements – I’m impressed by the fact that they basically flat out tell you that if you don’t have at least a dual-core processor, don’t even bother. Adding channels is a breeze – even those developer community created channels. The server interface is clutter free and intuitive, with tabbed categories that make sense. But sadly a great server is for not without being the great tool it claims to be.
   I will also give PlayOn credit for continuing to try to develop and evolve – with added features like Play Mark, Play Later, and the recent addition of HD. However, PlayOn team, what good are all the bells and whistles if the train itself isn’t even moving?

Roku Channel Review – AOL On

   There was a time when AOL seemed to rule the internet. In fact, from time to time, I still hear the old familiar notification “You’ve got mail” from someone. And who hasn’t seen at least a joke or two about those good old FREE TRIAL CDs that AOL used to send to us in the mail almost weekly back in the ’90s? (Tech Crunch posted an article about how much the company spent on sending those out. It’s here for your reading pleasure!).

   I personally don’t have anything good or bad to say about AOL as a company or service because I quite frankly never used anything of theirs that I can recall. But I always knew about them – they just seemed to always “be there”. And then, not so much. From time to time, I would read an article in which AOL would be mentioned, and I would actually be surprised to hear the name.

   Then their Roku channel was announced – On.

   In order to correctly review this Roku channel, I think it’s only fair to AOL to explain what On actually is – it’s a network of content, from Tech Crunch, to Huffpost Live and Moviefone. AOL has been busy expanding this network of content, and I for one applaud their effort. I think this is definitely a great direction they have chosen to take, and they even have On apps for both Android and IOS devices.

   On’s Roku channel home screen is a familiar grid layout broken into the usual categories – news, entertainment, tech, etc. Navigation is simple and familiar as well – simply choose your story of interest and play starts. And that, for me, is where the trouble starts. Upon launch of a news story or two it becomes immediately clear what the AOL On channel for Roku is – an online news video aggregator. For some, this may not be an issue because On truly is grabbing stories from multiple sources – primarily Newsy, Huffpost and Tech Crunch. However, the issue I have found is that with some clips I actually only got a partial report that ended with “for more, visit [insert news website].com”. This, to say the least, is extremely annoying especially when you’re engrossed in a story, only to be told to go to your computer to visit a website to see the rest. If I wanted to do that I would have already been at my computer, after all.
   And then there are the commercials. I understand that ad revenue is the best way for companies to develop and provide their streaming channels for free, but considering the afore mentioned partial clip situation, throwing in commercials only feels like salt in the wound.
   Lastly, there is the issue of the actual content that On is delivering. On grabs a huge percentage of its content from Huffpost (which actually makes sense, seeing as they own it), which puts an obviously huge slant on much of the reporting. While researching for this entry, I found several other reviewers voice this same concern, as well as a couple On mobile app users say the same. Having a slant isn’t something I’m necessarily criticizing AOL for. After all, the “big guys” like Fox and NBC do so as well with their streaming channels. But with On seemingly attempting to position itself as a true, all around news aggregator, having such a slant quickly makes that position null and void. 
Tonight on HuffPost Live, Ahmed Shihab-Eldin phonetically pronounced the River Thames as “thames”.
  In the end, I can recommend AOL On if you enjoy primarily Huffpost and Tech Crunch content, though the more special interest type categories such as Food, Travel and Autos offer a bit more variety.The commercials aren’t a huge negative factor, especially in today’s world where they are pretty much everywhere anyway. But the partial clips can get really aggravating. 
   Have you checked out AOL On? Please share your thoughts in the comments!