Sandio 3D Mouse

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I’ve had the opportunity to play with the Sandio 3D O2 mouse for a few days and I thought I’d share my impressions of it with you.  Before I saw the mouse, I was expecting something similar to the SpaceNavigator, but it’s not very similar at all.

To start with (and I think this is its best feature), this functions as a normal mouse, suitable for e-mail, browsing, and games like USA Casinos Online at www.EasyMobileCasino.com.  The SpaceNavigator, of course, is a completely separate device.  This is a pretty big deal.  I don’t usually bring my SpaceNavigator with me when I travel (it’s certainly small enough to bring – I’m just lazy), but I always bring my mouse.  Having both in one device is great.

This mouse has the normal two buttons + a scroll wheel.  Above the scroll wheel is an analog joystick, similar to those found on game pads (Xbox, PS3, etc).  On the right and left side of the mouse are two more analog sticks, and a couple more buttons.  Those analog sticks are what you use to fly around in your 3D worlds.

This mouse is billed as a “gaming mouse” and I can’t really comment on that aspect of it.  My main use for it would be in Google Earth and Virtual Earth, so that’s what I tried.

Once inside of Google Earth, I have to say I was a bit disappointed.  Part of that can be attributed to the learning curve on any new device, but it was a slow process to learn.  I found the SpaceNavigator to be much more intuitive.   Beyond that, there were two problems that were much more serious:

  • It doesn’t support simultaneous movements. For example, if I was panning across the map and wanted to dive, I had to choose one or the other.  I really don’t understand why I couldn’t pan and dive, but I tried repeatedly without success.  Compare this to the SpaceNavigator where you can make four individual movements at a time (pan while diving while rotating while lowering the view, etc).  For an example of that, check out this entry in the Google Earth Blog where Frank flies around Denver looking at the 3D buildings.
  • The analog sticks on the device aren’t truly analog – they’re digital (as in 0/1).  They have an audible “click” when pointing in any direction.  You either go or you don’t — there is no in-between.  Again, compare this to the SpaceNavigator where you can vary the amount of pressure which then varies the speed of your movement.

I really wanted to like this mouse.  It looks awesome, with a big footprint, great colors and cool glowing lights on it.  However, I just can’t bring myself to like it that much.  It will probably become my travel mouse, with my generic Microsoft Mouse / SpaceNavigator keeping permanent residence on my desk.

If you’re a gamer and you’ve tried this mouse, please post in the comments and let us know what you thought of it.

Verizon’s math skills are deteriorating

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I have Verizon Wireless for my cell phone and I’m reasonably happy with them. However, they seem to be having a very hard time figuring out what their rates are.

First was the very amusing story of George Vaccaro, who couldn’t convince Verizon that $0.02 and $0.0002 were actually different numbers.

Now we have a guy that called Verizon 56 times and asked them two simple questions regarding their rates:

1 — What is the data overage rates for the basic 10MB data package for $29.99?
2 — If you get the Core Choice 450 minutes package with unlimited data, what is the data roaming rate in Canada?
Of the 56 reps he talked to, only one

quoted the correct price for both rates and he received a total of 22 unique responses.

Check out the video below for the whole story:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdKwRdWocco

Animoto is awesome!

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About two weeks ago, Animoto launched. It’s billed as “the end of slideshows” and they might be right.

Here’s how it works:

  • You upload a bunch of your pictures.
  • You upload a song or choose one of the songs they provide.
  • You tell it to start.

From there, it analyzes your pictures, analyzes the music, and then makes the pictures dance to the music in crazy ways. One review of the site said “It’s like tossing a bunch of steel, glass and leather into a box, shaking it up and then opening the box to find a brand new Ferrari.” That’s completely accurate.

After the video is done, you can get embed code for it and put it on your website (just like YouTube does). They have plans to allow you to download a HQ version of the movie and some other fun stuff, too.

The cost is free for “shorts”, which are videos under 30 seconds. Full length videos (with a cap well over 20 minutes) is $3/video or just $30/year for unlimited. I consider that to be a great deal. The cool part is the “shorts”, where you can try it out, build some videos and see what you really think.

To show off, here’s one that we did:

One other tidbit. Twice now I’ve sent them e-mails — once with a small problem, the other with a few ideas for the future. In both cases, they replied in less than five minutes. This is a company that is just exploding with traffic and users, yet they still respond amazingly quickly. That’ll go a long way.

Give it a shot. You’ll love it.

Follow-up on Carmax and HP

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Reading Time: 2 minutesI thought I’d follow-up on the Carmax and HP/Compaq issues from last week

.

I called Carmax to see if I could bring the van in before we went out of town again. James wasn’t there, so I left a message for him. I know it was him, because it said something to the effect of “This is James, I can’t come to the phone right now….”. He finally called me about three days later to ask why I hadn’t called or come in yet. When I told him I left a message for him a few days ago, he was baffled. “It must have gone in the company-wide voicemail”. Not only was that bogus, but it still made CarMax look bad. Note: Don’t leave a generic message with them, because apparently it doesn’t get answered. I’m going in tomorrow at 8 to get this fixed, and it’ll only take “an hour – 90 minutes tops”, so we’ll see.

The eBay part showed up just in time, as we were heading out the door for our trip. I slapped it in there and it worked great. I’ve got to give this eBay seller a lot of credit. Not only did he sell me the part cheaper than anywhere else online, he only charged me the normal overnight rate for overnight shipping (like $16 or so). I had another place (lcdpart.com) that wanted $40

for overnight shipping an a part that was about the size and weight of a pencil. Anyhow, big props to Mr. Ascencio and his great help.

The more I think about the garbage HP was spewing to me on the phone, the more upset I get. Wow. Needless to say, I doubt I’ll ever buy an HP again. It’s a shame, because we have a house full of their PCs. Live and learn…

The good companies are letting me down.

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Reading Time: 2 minutesI’ve always been a big fan of both CarMax and Compaq/HP. They’re both losing my faith quickly.

CarMax has had a tough time fixing our broken power window. I called on a Friday to see about getting it fixed, since we were leaving on vacation early the next Thursday. They said to come in first thing Tuesday morning. So, we loaded up the kids, took both cars (so I could get home) and dropped it off. I made it very clear that I needed it back sometime on Wednesday. “no problem”.

We ended up getting it back around lunchtime on Thursday (thus making us late leaving on our trip), but the window hadn’t even been fixed! They had changed the oil and done some other things, but never had time to do the window.

The HP story is even better. Many of you know that I got a shiny new HP desktop a few months ago, only to have the hard drive die about 45 days later. HP and Circuit City handled it pretty well, and the PC has been doing well since then. This story is about my three year old Compaq laptop.

This laptop has been great. It’s been on a half-dozen youth retreats as well as various trips to south Georgia, Kentucky, Florida and Michigan, and it’s held up very well. About a week ago the screen went dark. You could still faintly see the text on there, but the backlight was shot. I did some research and determined that it was likely the inverter board that died. I pulled the laptop apart and got the inverter board out so I could order a new one. It didn’t have any info on it that would help, so I decided to call Compaq. Here are parts of that conversation:

Me: My screen has gone dark and I suspect it’s the inverter board. How can I order a new one?
Him: You mean the motherboard.
Me: No. I mean the inverter board.
Him: Oh. The inverter board? Let me talk to my technical supervisor. I”ll be right back.
…
Him: My supervisor says it might not be the inverter board.
Me: Ok, great. What else might it be?
Him: Well, it could be the USB cable for your floppy drive.
Me: What? That makes no sense, not to mention I don’t have a floppy drive.
Him: Or maybe it’s the hard drive in your monitor.

Now I had to stop and think. Did he really say that?

Me: Did you say the “hard drive in my monitor”?
Him: Yes, the hard drive in your monitor might be bad.

At this point, I let him have it. I’m not an expert on inverter boards, but I know when I’m dealing with someone that is just making things up. I asked for the technical supervisor. The conversation pretty much consisted of me asking for an inverter board and her telling me that they don’t exist and/or I can’t order one. Telling her that I was holding it in my hand didn’t help convince her that it was a real part.

So, I got her supervisor. He simply said he’d transfer me to their parts department and I could order it there.

Sometime during the transfer I got disconnected. I found one on eBay instead. It should be here tomorrow and we’ll see if it solves the problem.

Target did well with the Wii launch

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Reading Time: 2 minutesI forgot to give Target credit for how well they handled the launch of the Nintendo Wii. I had heard online that our local Target would be getting 51 units and would open at 8am that Sunday. I also knew that Wal-Mart would be opening at Midnight, but the rumor was that they wouldn’t have as many units – maybe 30 or so.

I weighed my options and decided to go with Target. I called to see what the plan was, and was given pretty exact instructions – a line could form overnight, vouchers would be passed out around 7:00, doors would open at 8.

I figured with 51 units, my odds were pretty good. I had planned on getting there around 6:45 or so, but the night before I got nervous about that and decided to get there just before 6. Smart move. I got there at about 5:55 and was 43rd in line. They had a nice big sign out from that said something like “The Wii line starts here” – very slick. By a couple minutes after 6, the 51st person was there. A Target employee came outside shortly after to confirm that they had 51 units in the store, which was a nice touch.

After that, we got our vouchers at 7 and got in at 8. It was a bit slow, since they only took 10 people at a time (their electronics department would get overwhelmed by everyone at once), but overall they did a very nice job.

This reminds me of my visit to EB on black Friday this year, but with the opposite experience. Myself and a few people lined up early at the Target in Albany, GA to try to score a PS3. (my sister-in-law got one, but I came up empty). After that, we noticed that the line at the EB next door was pretty short (maybe 10-15 people) so we figured we’d try to get a Wii when they opened up an hour later.

The EB employee showed up for work about 30 minutes early and went inside without saying a word. Then they opened on time and let everyone in the store. Once everyone was inside, they made the announcement that they had exactly two Wiis. What? I don’t mind that they only had two units – I’m sure they did their best to get as many as they could. The problem was that:

  • He didn’t tell any of us on his way inside.
  • They didn’t post that on the window.
  • They didn’t tell us as we were coming in.

It was quite obvious that they wanted to get everyone inside first so they could try to rope us into buying something else. It was chaos in there and people were mad. It’s far sad how far EB has fallen…

Sprint doesn’t like old customers – just new ones. So we switched to Verizon.

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Reading Time: 2 minutesMy wife had been with Sprint for about six years, and I’d been with them for the last two. We thought they had great service, fair prices, and we had every intention of staying with them. Our two year contract had expired a couple months ago, so we went to Radio Shack in search of new phones (and a new contract to go with them).

In a move that I thought was eliminated a few years ago, the price for a phone with a new two-year contract was $100 less than the price for a two-year contract renewal. What? I thought everyone said your biggest expense was to get new customers. If that was the case, wouldn’t you work hard to keep your existing ones?

The folks at Radio Shack were understanding and somewhat apologetic. I told them flat out that it was stupid, and asked if they could do anything about it. Long story short – we could cancel our Sprint account (since we were out of contract), sign a new contract (with new numbers) and get the deal. We decided to hold off and left the store.

I remembered passing a Verizon store on the way to Radio Shack, so we decided to look around there. I won’t ever use Cingular (for reasons I’ll get into some other day), I’m scared to use the perpetually “new” AT&T, and T-mobile lost my business a few years ago. That essentially left Sprint and Verizon.

The Verizon store was impressive. Like most stores, it took a few minutes to get help from an employee, but once we got her she was great. We snuck in just before they closed, and even after they had locked the doors (and probably were anxious to get home), she took her time, found us some very cool cheap phones (LG VX9800) and we were good to go.

Note to phone companies: you want our business! We have two phones, a bunch of minutes, we pay extra for internet, we pay extra for text messaging, we buy some ringtones, etc – all of that garbage that is way overpriced that we can’t live without. 🙂

Over the next two years, we’ll probably spend around $2400 on our phones. Sprint needed to save $200 since we weren’t “new”.

Disney FastPlay isn’t so fast

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Reading Time: < 1 minuteDisney movies are great, but the DVDs (and VHS tapes, for that matter) annoy me a lot. They always have a TON of previews, and they’re hard to skip.

Recently, they came out with “FastPlay” to help people get the movie started more quickly. Of course, it doesn’t work.

I saw that to point out a great article that Rob Griffith has written about “FastPlay”. It’s worth a read.

Wireless is much easier than you think

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Reading Time: 3 minutesNot only is wireless networking easier to set-up than you think, it’s probably cheaper too. In the last few weeks I’ve had a few interesting conversations with people.

The first was a fellow youth minister. We were talking about buildings and space, and I mentioned that since they all have laptops, some wireless areas in the church would be very useful. His reaction was “Whoa! We’re not ready for that! Maybe in a few years”.

The second was a family that was trying to get wireless going at their house and they were having problems. I went over to help and sadly, I couldn’t make it work either. It was some low-cost stuff they got off eBay, and I just couldn’t make it work. The reason I mention this is that it should

be easy to set-up, and it is if you use the right stuff. (not that their equipment was “wrong”, but I’ll mention other equipment that is more reliable).

Here’s how we have it set-up at our church and how you can do the same at yours. In our cafe we have a 4 port wireless router. We have a couple computers plugged directly into the router, and the router has enough juice to wirelessly connect our entire youth area. I also have a second router that I use in various places around the church. It’s as simple as this – if I want wireless access in say, the Fellowship Hall, I:
– Find the nearest network jack.
– Plug the router into it.
– Plug the router into a power outlet.
– Done!

The Fellowship Hall now has wireless access for as long as I need it. If I need access in the conference room instead, I unplug the router, walk down there, and plug it in! These routers are $89, and they’re the most expensive piece you’ll need to buy.

Other than that, you just need something wireless to receive the signal. On my laptop, I just have one of these little cards. The first time you boot up your machine with the card in it it’ll ask for the drivers (which come on a CD). After that, it’s nothing. There’s really no set-up to deal with unless you’re overly concerned about security. In our case, we want people to easily be able to connect their laptops to the ‘net in the cafe, so it’s not a big deal. Plus, as long as they can’t log-in to your server, having them connect wirelessly will only give them access to the internet (and not to your files), so it’s pretty safe. If you have strange vans sitting outside the church that you think might be trying to “tap in” to your wireless, you may have bigger problems on your hands anyhow…

That’s really about it. If you have a desktop PC that you’d like to connect, you can get this card and be done with it. A single router can support a good number of computers (32 to 128, depending on the router) so that will never be much of a worry for most of us.

The advantages to being wireless are huge. When you take attendance in Bible Study, what do you do? Write it down. The next morning you key it into your youth tracking software. Now you can just bring your laptop with you and enter it directly into there. Your battery will last longer than the class (in most cases), so you are truly wireless! Having network/internet access more often will allow you to do things like taking attendance in one step instead of two, which can save you some time.

Another advantage, at least in my case, is that I can be the answer-man during Bible study, since Lee Ann usually teaches. This means when a youth has a question that we don’t know the answer to (“How much in today’s money was Judas’ 30 silver pieces worth?”), I can look it up online while she continues with the lesson (fyi, $10,000 seems to be the answer).

The bottom line is that wireless can be done easily, cheaply and a little bit at a time. You’ll want to talk to whoever is in charge of your network before you start hooking up routers and stuff, but it’s pretty simple. Here’s the full quick rundown:
– Take an existing network port (like where your computer is plugged in right now), plug in a router. You can plug your computer into the router if you wish. Cost: $90
– Insert a wireless network card into your laptop. Cost: $70

Um…that’s it. 🙂

I should mention – the items I linked to I linked to for a reason. First, every wireless device needs to be the same kind (802.11g or 802.11b in most cases). “g” is a little faster and becoming more popular, so that’s what we use. Second, I’ve found Linksys to be the best brand of wireless equipment. It’s reasonably priced, easy to use and very reliable. I linked everything to BestBuy.com because that’s where we ordered our stuff from and it got to us as quickly as expected.

Enjoy your new wireless freedom!

Mickey