I did this just for fun and found most of the results funny, some hilarious, and some offensive and controversial.

However, all of them have a reason for being there – statistics. It's what people search for. The cream of the crop. Stereotypes, hilarities, it's all here.

If you can, please don't take them too close to heart. In fact, if you're a righteous conservative thinking of lecturing me, do me a favor and close this page now.

So here goes.

Why Are?..

"Why are canadians"

Afraid of the dark? – I didn't know that, thanks Google.

"Why are brazilian"

Agreed.

"Why are swedish"

Also agreed.

"Why are irish"

Heh.

"Why are palestinians"

"Why are israeli"

Another

And the women… true again.

"Why are mexican"

Ouch.

"Why are hawaiians"

I can think of a few reasons.

"Why are germans"

I can attest to the rude part.

"Why are italians"

We've all seen the movies.

"Why are japanese"

Have you seen a non-weird Japanese video?

"Why are chinese"

The truth is there somewhere.

"Why are russians"

Very observational.

"Why are koreans"

Starcraft – so true.

"Why are british"

This is hilarious.

"Why are spanish"

100% correct.

"Why are polish"

This one was frankly news to me. Poor Polish people.

"Why are indians"

Indians are afraid of dogs?

"Why are armenians"

I've never seen a non-hairy Armenian.

And something more generic, without comments.

"Why are white"

"Why are black"

"Why are asians"

And something more local.

"Why are new yorkers"

"Why are texans"

Of course I saved the best for last:

"Why are americans"

• Essential Firefox Extensions (Plugins, Add-Ons) And Tips – A Comprehensive Guide :: Part 1 :: Tips
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• Delicious.com [Quietly] Rolls Out Domain And Url Searching/Filtering. Finally!
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It's always important to know for developers what browsers they are developing for, who dominates the market, and what the current trends are.

I have gotten my hands on the Plaxo.com visitors' browser stats for December of 2009.

This information is valuable because Plaxo has a relatively general demographics, as it's not a site only geeks or only moms visit, and the statistics tends to not be skewed. Therefore, as you can see, Firefox doesn't occupy the same share as you might see on a techy site (on this site, more than 50% of users visit in Firefox).

Also, since Plaxo has a couple million monthly visitors and therefore a couple million data points, statistically speaking these numbers are relatively accurate.

Without further ado, here is the data, with some spiffy charts.

Overall Browser Breakdown For December 2009

Internet Explorer Version Breakdown For December 2009

Some numbers here have a value of 0.00% which means they've been rounded down and have really low numbers. The order is still correct though.

Firefox Version Breakdown For December 2009

Thoughts

• Internet Explorer is doing remarkably well – it is still most definitely the primary browser, so testing it should be planned accordingly.
• Internet Explorer 7 is by far the most popular version with 65.9% of all IE versions, followed by IE6 at 17.2% (wtf??), and only then IE8 at 16.9%. This definitely came as a surprise to me – both in how popular IE7 still is and how pathetic Microsoft's efforts to upgrade Windows users up from IE6 have been.
• Safari and Chrome are neck and neck at 6.20% and 4.6% respectively, with Chrome gaining rapidly.
• Opera is doing undeservedly badly – 0.6%. That makes me sad.
• IE 999.1? Interesting. I wonder if it's some sort of an uber hacked version.
• And, instead of conclusion: damn you, IE6! Why can't you die already?

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I love Delicious. It allows me to store my bookmarks, tag and search them, and, best of all, have access to them from anywhere on the web.

Searching bookmarks by keyword is easy – just enter a bunch of keywords into the search page and off you go but what if you want to confine your results to a certain domain? The main reason I wanted to do it personally is so that I could see all pages of my site bookmarked by Delicious users and the corresponding number of bookmarks. However, the only url based search Delicious offered was a full url lookup:

This search is very limited – it accepts only a full url to the page in question.

Such limitations were unacceptable and prompted me to file a suggestion/idea on the Delicious forum earlier this year to allow searching for *all* bookmarks in a given domain. To my pleasant surprise, Delicious rolled out these new search features within the last month (very quietly for some reason, are they in alpha?). There was no mention of them on their blog or anywhere else on the web really.

So how does the new search/filter work?

Check it out:

site:yoursite.com allows searching by domain

For example, site:beerpla.net currently returns 104 results and I can see all of my sites' pages and their bookmark numbers on a single page:

Moreover, you can combine the site: query with tags

Like so: site:beerpla.net hidden php to filter the results further.

You can also search part of a url using the url: construct

For example, url:beerpla.net/2009/ finds bookmarked blog posts from 2009 only:

I'm not really sure why one would use site: if they could just use url: – it seems like the latter can do everything the former can do and more. Perhaps Delicious can clarify that.

Also, doing something like url:hidden-features-of doesn't bring back any results, even though I thought url: is supposed to search parts of the url. A bug or a feature?

Conclusion

Thanks to Delicious for following through with the search improvements and listening to your users. Special thanks to Delicious's own britta for being on top of things and responding to an 8 month old forum post.

Now perhaps someone will write a plugin to figure out the TOTAL number of bookmarks for a specific domain or modify an existing one (*cough*, ImprovingTheWeb, *cough*)?

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I don't know about you, but I'm incredibly sick of Facebook quizzes. Yeah, shit like this which occupies 90% of my news feed:

And to make matters worse, Facebook provides no means to block these quizzes and rid your profile of them forever. The only thing you can do is block each individual quiz. But just like weeds in your backyard, when you block one, three more rise up in its place. I know I am not alone here – there are literally billions of people searching for a solution to the plague.

So, what does the tech community do when it is not happy?

1. Runs to mommy, crying.
2. Drinks heavily, passes out, and comes to work with a keyboard faceprint, dressed as Koolaid.
3. Ignores the problem and lives with it (pussy).
4. Takes the matters into its own hands and develops a solution.

The correct answers are:

1. 2. and 4.

Enter a true geek at heart by the name of Steeev with his Facebook Purity greasemonkey script that was created with the sole purpose of BLOCKING THE FUCKING QUIZZES. Go Steeve Steeev!

Solution

Installation is as easy as 1, 2, 3:

1. Install Firefox (you already have that, right?)
2. Install the Firefox greasemonkey extension
3. Install the Facebook Purity script

That's it. Now go to your Facebook page (make sure you access it via www.facebook.com or www.new.facebook.com and not YOURUNIVERSITY.facebook.com (like ucdavis.facebook.com)).

Check it out – all quizzes are gone, the script even tells you how many quizzes were blocked:

Pure bliss. Rest quizless now, everyone.

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• Are Your Youtube Video Embeds Missing The Full Screen Button? Here Is How To Fix It
• [Web Dev] Browser Breakdown Stats+Charts From Plaxo.com For December 2009 And Thoughts

Welcome to part 2 of the Essential Firefox Extensions And Tips – A Comprehensive Guide series. In this article I’m going to describe a number of time saving pragmatic extensions that make me a better, faster, more efficient browser user (browserer?).

Pragmatic Extensions

All-in-One Gestures

All-in-One Gestures introduces customizable gestures for all kinds of actions. To perform a gesture, hold the right (by default) button and move the mouse in the specified direction, drawing the needed shape.

I use it mostly for 3 things: history back/forward and close tab (see below). Once you start using gestures, there is no going back.

Download Statusbar

Download Statusbar is a handy extension that will show your downloads on a dedicated bar right above the status bar. It also adds a much needed “Delete from system” option to each download (why, Firefox, would you not give me an option to delete my downloads at all?). The Download Statusbar only shows up if there’s at least one download not dismissed yet. Double clicking on a finished file will both launch and remove it from the bar.

OpenDownload

Running downloaded files without saving them is probably the only Internet Explorer feature I actually missed, until I found OpenDownload that is. This extension will give you an option to launch a download upon completion in addition to just saving it. I don’t have to worry about finding and deleting it from my system later as it goes to Firefox’s temporary folder.

Tab Mix Plus

This extension is very powerful and versatile. It controls various aspects of the browser tabs, windows, session, and mouse. Here are the settings I find useful:

• open links that open in a new window in a new tab instead
• open all javascript popups in tabs (I hate popups)
• in fact, I enable the single window mode, in which all attempts to open a new window – by webpages or by you, including starting a new Firefox – will be redirected to a new tab
• highlight unread tabs, which would italicize the tab titles of pages that had something new loaded since you last opened them
• show progress meter on tabs
• close tab button on all tabs (instead of a single one on the right side)
• hide the new tab button that occupies extra space
• customize the tab menu options

Here are some option screens:

Google Toolbar

The google toolbar is historically sort of a must for me. It adds a couple of nice features on top of the default search box and frees the latter, so that I can set it to another search engine (IMDB in my case). With the amount of searching one does on google daily, the sheer number of clicks and keystrokes saved will be in the thousands. Daily. I search a lot, OK?

In addition to providing an always present search bar, the toolbar carries a number of useful features, such as live search suggest, instant PageRank (unneeded if you install SEO Toolbar or SearchStatus), search Gmail and News buttons (and many others), clickable search terms good for in-page search, highlighting of the said terms, a simple autofill (though I use an irreplaceable AI Roboform instead), spell check (Firefox has one built-in now), translate (I use the gTranslate extension instead). All in all, one can do without google toolbar, depending on the needed functionality.

Linkification

Linkification is a really pragmatic extension. It hyperlinks any url-looking strings that aren’t already hyperlinked. Take a look.

Linkification off:

Linkification on:

The extension has a variety of options to satisfy even savvy users but I found that defaults work really well. If for some reason you want to momentarily turn off linkification, just tap the button in the tray and the page will revert to its original form. By the way, if you really want to put it to the test, install it and head over to the comprehensive test case list.

Greasemonkey

Greasemonkey is the most versatile extension available for Firefox, as it’s essentially a whole framework for scripts that can manipulate any aspect of any page. Head over to userscripts.org and take a look at the myriads of scripts written and submitted by other Greasemonkey users.

Still not clear what these can do? Let me list some that I use and their brief functionality:

• Digg Top 10 Direct – automatically rewrites the digg’s top 10 links to go straight to the articles, instead of the digg comment page. Clicking on the digg icon still goes to the comments page though, and I think this is the ideal functionality.
• Google Image Relinker – rewrites google image search urls to go directly to the corresponding images rather than the page they were found on.
• YousableTubeFix – adds a small smart menu that dynamically shows which qualities a given youtube video is available in and automatically picks the best one, adds download links to the each quality (FLV and MP4), resizes the player to your liking, and a few other things. It is also quite customizable.

• The now world famous Troy's Twitter Script that I reviewed a few week ago – it does everything Twitter currently doesn't, including Autocomplete, Auto URL Expansion, Auto URL Shortener, RT Button, Nested Replies, Inline Media Embed, Search Tabs, and more.
• AideRSS Google Reader Integration – adds AideRSS feed rank to each entry in Google Reader, which allows eyeballing more important articles within a few seconds of seeing a feed. Also available as a separate extension for those not using Greasemonkey.

Show MyIP

Show MyIP does exactly what it says: it displays your current IP. What I like about it is that it queries for it on demand, after you left or right click the icon. This approach avoids unnecessary queries going around.

-> ->

What I don’t like about it is that there seems to be no way to copy this IP to clipboard. Ideally, a right click option would work great (that’s the way the next extension ShowIP does it). I left a comment about this fact on the extension’s page, so hopefully the author will implement it shortly.

Also, if an error occurs, be prepared for some good old German cursing:

ShowIP

ShowIP, in contrast to Show MyIP, actually displays the IP(s) of the website I’m currently on. It then allows me to copy it (or all of them) into clipboard and provides quick information links, such as whois, ip2country, and traceroute.

ShowIP is useful for both developers who want to know which dev server they’re currently working on as well as regular users who are interested in the location or whois of a site they’re visiting.

iimmgg.com Tools

iimmgg.com is a picture hosting site similar to tinypic.com and photobucket.com. Generally, it allows quick picture uploading with thumbnail creation. This extension makes this process insanely simple, I can’t say enough praise how good my user experience was with this extension. Check this out.

The extension has 2 modes:

1. If you right click on a picture, there’s a single option to upload it to iimmgg.com:

As soon as you click Upload, you are almost immediately redirected to a page on iimmgg.com with your picture and thumbnails already generated. Swoosh, that was fast. Internally, the extension sends the user to something like http://www.iimmgg.com/upload.php?u=http%3A//beerpla.net/wp-content/uploads/BenefitsofMUNI_1E7D/image.png&r=about:blank&s=1&t=, which then redirects to the final picture.

2. If you right click anywhere else on the page, there are now 3 ways to capture an image to iimmgg.com:

Select either of the 3 options: Visible Page, Full Page, or Select Area. Let’s say I select Select Area. A resizable overlay that I can drag it around to select the area I want shows up. Brilliant.

After I figure out what I want to capture, I click on the Capture Selected Area button in a bar that just showed up (btw, the styling of both the bar and the selector are very reminiscent of the Web Developer extension):

The next and final prompt shows up with the Image Format selection (PNG – High Quality, JPEG – High Quality, JPEG – Medium Quality, and JPEG – Low Quality), SFW selection, and capture name:

Click Capture and upload (or save to disk, which is not as fun but also useful):

Voila – the picture is ready for sharing.

Remove Cookie(s) for Site

Remove Cookie(s) for Site does exactly what it says – removes all cookies that belong to a domain and all subdomains of the site you’re currently on. Right click anywhere on the page, click Remove Cookie(s) for Site and the taskbar will update with the number of cookies removed.

->

You can also pull out a nice little button to a location of your choosing, like so:

Oftentimes I don’t even bother looking for a logout button – deleting all cookies is a lot faster.

Signature

Signature, as you probably guessed, inserts a signature into a text form. It supports as many signatures as you want. The uses can be versatile, here are just some:

• the obvious “first and last name” signature
• a full signature with your site link which can help in site promotion. Mine, for example, is
  Artem
  http://beerpla.net
  http://twitter.com/ArtemR
• disclaimers
• coined replies to emails
• various addresses
• repetitive urls
• any other frequently used set of strings that you have to continuously copy-paste

QuickRestart

QuickRestart adds a Restart Firefox option to the File menu. This is quite handy, especially when you have a lot of extensions and it may take Firefox 30 seconds to shut down.

The only downside of this is that it seems to lose the protected and locked tab properties set by Tab Mix Plus. Shutting down Firefox and starting it manually does not lose such properties. This is no longer a problem in the latest Tab Mix Plus version.

Resizeable Textarea

Ever seen a comment box this big and got annoyed by the idiot who designed it?

Fear not, as Resizeable Textarea adds resize capabilities to any text area. Move the cursor to the bottom or right borders, or the bottom-right corner, and drag all you want:

TryAgain

TryAgain is a great and very simple extension. It retries loading a failed page up to 5 times instead of just sitting there. This screenshot explains everything:

View Cookies

View Cookies is a simple extension that adds a Cookies tab to the VIew Page Info box. The tab allows viewing, removing, and copying cookie info for the site you’re currently visiting. There is a number of extensions that do similar things, like Firebug and Remove Cookie(s) for Site, but I install View Cookies anyway because its functionality makes sense.

Google Gears

Google Gears is a very useful extension, and it’s a shame that a lot of people don’t seem to understand what it does. Think of it as simply a secure local cache (developed by Google). Quite a few popular websites support Gears, and I think it is best to just give a few examples of actual usage.

• gmail.com – gmail rolled out offline email support quite recently, which is the most useful implementation of Gears to date.
• wordpress – if you host a wordpress blog, you can opt in to cache a few hundred files in Gears that will speed up the wordpress admin interface. WordPress calls this Turbo mode.
• rememberthemilk.com – RTM, the most advanced and functional TODO list site, offers an excellent implementation of Gears. If you lose your connection, you are free to create, modify, and delete any tasks you want – all the changes will be synchronized when you go back online.
• google reader – the reader can download feed items for offline viewing but the implementation is not very good – you have to explicitly go offline by clicking a button, at which point Gears will download 2000 items.

Installing Gears on its own will technically not do anything for you. You will need to enable support for each site individually. For example, Offline gmail is available from the gmail Labs by clicking on in the top right corner.

From a technical standpoint, Gears uses a local SQLite database for storage. The Gears security model is described here.

gTranslate

GTranslate translates selected text into a language of your choice. It can be set to autodetect the source language or forced to a specific one. I must say so far it worked very well and detected the source language automatically without flaw.

Once the translation is received, gTranslate shows it and links to the google translate page:

Additionally, if the selected text is in an editable field, gTranslate will offer an option to replace the selection with its translation:

SearchStatus

SearchStatus is a useful and relatively simple SEO extension. It shows a quick roundup of page rankings for the current page from Google (PageRank), Alexa, and Compete. This lets me quickly check how popular [or lame] the site I’m on is and keep tabs on my own online properties. Right clicking each metric grants access to a few useful shortcuts and for the lazy pragmatic, right clicking the little symbol has such links as Show Whois, Show robots.txt, Show sitemap.xml, and others.

Another not so obvious but useful feature of this extension is the ability to mark rel=’nofollow’ links. You rightfully obsessed SEO junkies can quickly see which parts of your site leak the valuable link juice and which ones don’t. Take a look at these nofollow links that SearchStatus marked with light red background:

SEO Toolbar

This toolbar is probably going to be useful for relatively hardcore SEO fiends as most people would do just fine with the above SearchStatus extension. The toolbar seems a bit bulky and slow but has a ton of SEO related functionality. It is, of course, free. It shows Google PageRank, Yahoo linkdomain, Yahoo page links, DMOZ directory, Yahoo directory, Best of the web directory, Archive.org, Compete uniques, and SEMRush traffic value:

It also links to a bunch of tools, like quantcast analysis, google trends, and alexa:

For a quick, more in-depth, exportable overview, press the info button :

However, the 2 most useful to me features are probably the Rank Checker :

and Compare Sites :

End of Part 2

This marks the end of part 2 in the series. I expect this page to update pretty often, whenever I find new extensions, so bookmark it using your favorite method by clicking the button below.

The next part in the series (available soon) will describe a number of useful web development extensions.

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• How To Fight Clickjacking (Using The Recent Twitter Hijacking As An Example)
• Thoughts on Google Chrome

If you use VNC to remotely connect to your machines and are having problems with certain applications not showing changes (redrawing), this will, hopefully, solve the problem for you.

The symptoms are simple: you load a program but only the program outline and maybe the first frame would show up. After that, nothing would update, even though the user in front of the remote computer can see everything updating fine. For me, it is happening with all Java based programs (SmartSVN, Charles – amazing program btw!, etc). Here's what's happening to my Charles application – it never even sent the first frame, simply showing the desktop and not updating:

The problem may be confined to RealVNC only, or at least any VNC program that uses a special mirror driver. You can tell whether your VNC server uses a mirror driver by looking at your Settings->Desktop options under "Optimise screen capture (mirror driver)":

The Solution

I'm not sure if it's Java's fault or the mirror driver's but, as it turns out, the mirror driver does not properly work with Java based programs, at least at the moment. Disabling it, or switching to application hooking fixes the problem. There is most likely a benefit in using a mirror driver as it is probably optimized better than other methods, but it's not worth keeping if you are having problems with it.

The easiest way to disable the setting is to uncheck the checkbox above. You can also alternatively go to Expert options, find the UpdateMethod variable, and switch it to 0 or 1. I am fairly confident the setting of 1 is less resource intensive than 0, so I went with it.

My Java programs are fixed and redrawing fine now.

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Password Protected Garage Door Remotes

As a paranoid person and a recent homeowner, I started to wonder how safe I actually am in my house. Consider this likely scenario that nobody seems to be concerned with:

I park my car outside for one night and don’t take out my portable garage door remote, the one with a single open/close button. Or, even worse, the remote code is programmed into one of those garage opener buttons built into the car. A car burglar comes along, breaks the window, and trashes my car. Wow, an added bonus – a free entrance into the house!

Needless to say, this is bad already. How many of you lock the door between the house and the garage? What if you forget to do that as well? Is there a spare house key laying around in the garage? You may say “but I’ll hear the garage door open” but does it actually make you feel better? You will be present with an intruder in your house, which will scare the living shit out of you non-governator types.

So here’s my question to you, Internet, is there a garage door remote I can buy that has a programmable keypad, so that a password is needed for the button to work? In fact, it would be almost the same as the one that mounts next to the garage door. And can it not cost $100?

Twitter Security

This part is not about computer security, as you may have thought at first, although I did recently discuss it in the Clickjacking article. I also know that I’m not the first one to bring this issue up but I think it’s worth discussing some more. Consider this scenario:

You’re a cheerful, outgoing snowboarding enthusiast with 3000 twitter (plurk, facebook, or another social network but twitter is the most relevant example) followers. Or maybe you have 3 followers. There’s a 99.9% chance that your profile and updates are public (if you have 3000 followers with a private profile, you must be some sort of a chump. And yes, I did just make the stats up, want fight about it?).

So, on Friday night, you send the following tweet: “Gone snowboarding for the whole weekend. But not before getting piss trashed Friday night at the casino. Wooooo”.

Since anybody can watch your tweets absolutely anonymously and it’s extremely easy to dig up an address knowing very little about a person, what you just said was “If you are a burglar looking for the next opportunity, just drop everything and come on by Friday night. I will be far-far away but my house (located at 123 Main St) will be available for your robbing pleasures. You only have 2 days before anyone is home, so feel free to crash on the couch and eat my food. Don’t forget to feed the cat. Kthx.”

Is this a likely scenario? Not really, unless twitter raises the tweet length to more than 140 characters, but otherwise you see where I’m going with this. Don’t be stupid – avoid advertising exact details of your whereabouts, vacation plans, etc. There are plenty of uses for Twitter without giving up most of your privacy. Ask yourself: would you post a note with your whereabouts on your door every time you leave the house for a while?

How Do Trains And Buses Know Where They Are?

If you live in a relatively large city, you have seen relatively accurate bus and train arrival predictions and, in some cases, almost exact locations of each vehicle. For example, here in San Francisco we have MUNI stations with live maps of trains’ whereabouts and bus stops with bus predictions on small electronic displays.

What is the technology behind it? It cannot be just GPS, because trains go underground where there is no reception. If it’s a combination of externally mounted sensors, are they also placed outside, once the train gets out into the street? Or is it some sort of a 2-way GPS (a conventional GPS device is just a receiver) underground that switches to sensors above ground? I don’t know but I want to.

Train/Bus Drivers And Bathrooms

While I’m on the public transportation subject, here’s what I want to know: if you are a train/bus/trolleybus driver, what do you do if you NEED to go somewhere when you are half way down your route? All of us had such moments at least once, and sometimes you just HAVE TO drop the bomb, sink some submarines, drop the kids off at the pool, release the chocolate hostage, plant some potatoes, give birth to a VB programmer, down the proctoscope, bake some brownies, you know what I mean (if you don’t, you’re a senile muppet, what are you doing on the Internet?).

They can’t just leave the train in the middle of the street, can they? Have you ever seen one run out in the middle of the street? I’m really curious here.

All Of Dilbert

Is there a Dilbert collection somewhere that has every Dilbert comic in an easily browseable manner, ideally with ratings I can sort by? 100 Dilberts per page would be ideal. Ah, looks like the new Dilbert.com finally made it a reality: all Dilbert comics sorted by votes, 49 per page.

Where Can I Buy A Circus Tent?

Who sells them? The ones where elephants and clowns could fit. It could also double as a portable office.

Who Gets To Eat The Most Delicious Burger In Burger Commercials?

And where do I sign up? I’m serious.

● ● ●

Yeah, so that’s pretty much what’s on my mind right now. What’s on yours?

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I do not know why I haven’t thought of public transportation sooner. Maybe because I used to [so wrongly] associate it only with people who cannot afford a car and considered myself superior to the group, or because I thought it was too ghetto (though, very true in some cases). However, as soon as I started taking a train to work, my DFR (daily frustration rating) went down significantly. If you have not tried it, trust me – it’s not that bad.

In fact, I came up with a few reasons why taking a train/bus rocks driving, some obvious, others perhaps not as much. Here they are, in order of increasing significance:

11. I could give up my car. Sell it, never buy it in the first place, return the lease – money saved either way. Newsflash: no car – no need to fix it.

10. No more insurance to pay for. Oh, Geico, how much I love you[r commercials].

9. Taking a train is faster than driving, for most metropolitan people. BART gets me to downtown SF in 15 minutes. A car takes anywhere between 25 and an hour.

8. No need to look for or pay for parking.

7. Taking public transportation is a lot more “green” than driving, even if you drive a hybrid.

6. I don’t have to pay for gas. Yeah, I have to pay for the ticket but a $45/month pass is all I need to buy. People who live further away may have higher expenses, but not nearly as high as all the fees associated with driving a car.

5. I can work on my projects using my laptop (iPod touch, PDA, Phone, whiteboard, Etch a Sketch) during the commute. In fact, I’m writing this post from a MUNI train. I can think and reflect. I can read a book. Anything is more productive than driving.

4. I can SLEEP. It is really a subset of #5 but this activity is so important, it deserved its own spot. Disclaimer: sleeping on a late night train can be dangerous and may result in murder and robbery, not that it stops me.

3. No chance of a car accident. OK, very little chance, but if a bus I’m in hits a car, I have a feeling the odds are on my side.

2. Drinking? No problem – you are not the one driving. Just don’t combine a 2 day binge session with activity #4, because that’s just creepy and people might want to poke you.

And the winner is:

1. No traffic to be stuck in. Hell, in case of ground transportation, even if you are stuck, you are not driving, so relax and do #4.

What about you? Here's a quick poll.

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Everyone and their mother are throwing out their predictions for 2009 nowadays, it’s a new fad. It’s like you’re not cool anymore if you don’t have twitter, a Mac, and a set of random predictions for the next 12 joyous months.

So I decided to throw in a few ideas of my own to be part of the cool crowd again (how much cooler can I be already, you might think, and I wouldn’t blame you).

Disclaimer (read it, tough guy)

What this post is:

• about the future of technology and the Internet, 2009 and beyond.
• my ideas on what is going to happen or should happen. If they happen to match someone else’s ideas – it doesn’t mean I ripped them off, it just means we share the same opinions and they’re more likely to come true.
• awesome.

What this post is not:

• predictions I pulled out of my ass, like “the market will bounce in August 2009” because some random douche said so.
• a collection of stolen ideas. I have reserved a separate post for that purpose.
• a raptor on hoverboard.

Things That Need To Happen

1. Socially Editable Maps

With the advent of the GPS technology in the last couple of years and GPS prices falling (my originally $800 Garmin Nuvi 660 now costs about $200), the biggest frustration I have now is the accuracy of information. In the world of Google Maps and Wikipedia, why is it that I have to wait a whole year for map updates that are obsolete by the time they come out? The Bay Bridge repairs change the roads on an almost monthly basis, for example.

I want to know about road changes as soon as they occur.

The next big thing will be a company, either existing, like Google, or a startup, that will introduce the social aspect into the mapping technology. It will do for maps and GPS what Wikipedia did for text, using the same approach. The details are of course to be worked out.

After this concept becomes successful, GPS companies, will need to support such updates over the air, with a push of a button. This ties in closely with prediction #2 and #4.

2. Open Source GPS Goes Mainstream

Google, the father of Android, needs to get behind this one as well. In fact, an open source GPS device would really be a subset of Android’s functionality, in a dedicated device, so it shouldn’t be that hard. In the far future, it will be built into automobile dashboards but I don’t foresee that happening in the near future.

Combined with prediction #1, this will be a killer device. I really believe that free, open source software is the wave of the future, the natural direction of where software development is heading. Look at Linux in the past few years. Look at Android now. Release one and I’m be #1 in line for one. Those who know me IRL know that I can’t go anywhere without a GPS anymore. I once forgot a GPS at home and ended up in Chili.

3. Photo and Video Cameras Will Go Wireless, Anywhere You Go

Photo and video cameras will be able to post pictures and videos to your home computer, sites like Flickr and YouTube, or email themselves directly to your friends… as soon as you record them, over cellular and Wifi networks.

Cell phones with cameras? Think cameras with cell phones. Some Wifi enabled cameras already came out, like this Canon SD430 (DP review here), and this freshly announced at CES 2009 Sony G3, and now it’s time to go cellular.

The next prediction is a generalization of this concept.

4. Wireless Connectivity Everywhere, In Every Device, Anywhere You Go

Cell phone carriers will sign an increasing amount of deals with companies that want to build devices which connect to the Internet or private networks anywhere you go: GPSes, cameras, digital picture frames, cars, fridges.

The future is completely wireless. People are sick and tired of cords, clutter, and Rick Astley – I know that for a fact and digg says so.

5. Android Will Become Hugely Successful

Alright, I’m dead tired of all the posts about how Google’s Android is going to flop in 2009. I sincerely feel that people with that point of view have never experienced Google and open source, played with Android itself, or realized what exactly an open source phone OS means to developers, manufacturers, and consumers.

Android will become a platform of choice in the next couple of years as everyone starts to realize its limitless possibilities, the OS matures, thousands of new apps get written for it, and new Android phones flood the market. The only Android phone released so far, HTC’s G1, has already received praise from consumers, as well as my friends (even the females ones are excited. And yes, I have female friends).

Motorola announced a few months ago that its new phones are going to run Android and Windows Mobile exclusively. If a company with an R&D department as big as Moto’s stands behind something, you bet your ass they’ve done they’re homework. And what’s not to like? They can now:

• take something that’s supported by the biggest Internet company in the world and the community, for free.
• stop worrying about writing and maintaining their own OS – BAM, tons of money saved.
• concentrate R&D on the hardware.
• if need be, freely develop the features they want that Android doesn’t support yet and contribute them back. Everyone wins, except maybe Symbian developers that don’t have a job anymore.

Android is going to be a revolution. Apple and Android fighting it out will be the best thing that happened to us since the invention of sushi.

6. Open Source HDTVs

The open source revolution will continue and start penetrating the HDTV market.

Personally, I think set top boxes are a waste of effort, time, and money but give me an HDTV that can run Youtube, Vimeo, LastFM, Pandora, and any other site through some sort of a plugin or browser, with a build in Media Center that connects to my computers and goes Wifi, that uses open source, upgradeable software (most likely Linux based), and I will buy it in a heartbeat.

Yes, what I’m saying is if my TV and HTPC did something dirty, I would totally dig their offspring, and so would millions of other people who don’t want/need/care/understand HTPC. TV in general holds a special place in my heart, and make it an even better experience, people.

7. Twitter’s Popularity Will Explode

Now for some social media. Twitter will continue dominating the microblogging arena, similar to YouTube dominating the video space. The site will grow extremely fast, much faster than now.

Competitors, like plurk, will probably secure certain small niches but nobody will be close to touch twitter.

Twitter’s significance in the business world for will be revolutionary. It will become second nature for every company to have one or many twitter accounts as means of connecting to consumers on a personal level. Think an opportunity for mini press releases, many of them, daily, not boring ones, the ones people are actually going to read.

8. Social Media Jobs Will Be In Increasing Demand

SEO, social marketing, and viral campaigns are very cost effective ways of brand promotion, and every company will want to jump on board.

As more and more of them realize this, they will start needing more people with marketing skills of John Chow, Chris Brogan, Nicky Cakes (this dude is hilarious), Jeremy Schoemaker, and the like.

9. YouTube Will Continue To Dominate

This one is easy:

• Biggest user base.
• HD. My favorite greasemonkey plugin YousableTubeFix exposes hi/lo FLVs, MP4, and HD MP4 options. Better quality equals better user experience.
• Chromeless player. YouTube is the only company I know of that has a Javascript controlled chromeless player, which can be embedded in any other flash player. Combined with already existing millions of embeds all over the Internet, YouTube’s popularity isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
• Google backed. Anything is possible when you Google owns you. Competition releases a good feature? YouTube has the resources to one-up it in no time. Need for more servers? YouTube will just buy a few thousand more with the $1.65Bln Google gave it. Traffic explosion? No problem – YouTube has been mooching off the Google CDN for months now.

At the end of 2007, I predicted that in a year we will experience unprecedented HD quality online video. This prediction came true when Hulu and fueled by its success CBS, ABC, NBC, and pretty much every other TV network released their free online TV sites. YouTube launched HD a few months later.

So, my YouTube prediction for 2009 is it will sign deals with major TV and movie networks to finally start showing legal TV episodes and movies. It will become the biggest legal TV and movie hub on the Internet.

10. PostgreSQL Will Gain Popularity

Sun’s buyout of MySQL in 2008 surely sent some shockwaves around. However, I predict that the following factors will contribute to PostgreSQL gaining momentum:

• certain features of MySQL were moved to Enterprise only. Open source enthusiasts don’t appreciate an open source project going partially closed source, so they will be looking for alternative software, like PostgreSQL.
• having spent years with MySQL, I am incredibly frustrated with certain quirks that should have been worked out a long time ago. As software architects look for stable, mature, cost effective, and easy to maintain databases, they will find PostgreSQL increasingly attractive.

Don’t take my word for it. I highly suggest taking a look at this whitepaper comparing MySQL and PostgreSQL. here are some highlights:

• Online operations and reorganization. This is my biggest beef with MySQL. Almost any ALTER table command will prevent writes to the table while it’s being altered. This operation requires double the table size because an ALTER simply makes a copy of the table, a rename, and then drop of the old one. This takes FOREVERRRR. PostgreSQL, on the other hand, supports a lot more online operations that will not take down the table. MySQL promised to support online ALTER TABLE by 2009. Will they keep their word? I highly doubt it.
• PostgreSQL supports function based and partial indexes.
• PostgreSQL supports nested triggers.
• PostgreSQL supports user defined datatypes.
• PostgreSQL has an IP address datatype (woot!).
• MySQL’s default engine doesn’t support online backup and recovery (*cough*, MyISAM, *cough*). Don’t even get me started on MyISAM, which doesn’t support referential integrity, transactions, of any other ACID properties. Yes, I know, there's InnoDB. It’s a lot better. But it’s still not good enough.

If you have spent time interfacing with both MySQL and PostgreSQL, I’d like to hear from you. Everyone I talked to so far who had used both, preferred PostgreSQL.

For all the MySQL fanboys, I was and still am one of you, I use MySQL every day. I’m only trying to open your eyes so you can see the rest of the world.

In fact, I think the only reason MySQL is so much more popular than Postgresql nowadays is luck and marketing by MySQL AB (hey, it sure paid off, I’m not saying anything).

So, here’s to PostgreSQL having a bright future.

Bonus

As a bonus, here is a collection of links to other interesting predictions for 2009:

• http://www.pr-squared.com/2008/12/social_media_predictions_2009.html – a great list of social media predictions.
• http://battellemedia.com/archives/004772.php – 14 online predictions as well as analysis of past years’ predictions.
• http://news.cnet.com/5-predictions-for-2009/ – 5 CNET Digital Home predictions.
• http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/01/predictions-for-2009/ – Engadget’s predictions.
• http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/predictions-2009 – 38 predictions freedom and technology related predictions.
• http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/2009_predictions_across_the_we.php – ReadWriteWeb’s predictions across the web.

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The monitor is free, can track up to 1000 domains and send email (and RSS) alerts when it detects any status changes. Here are the advertised features:

• Domain Status like "registrar-lock", "redemption-period", and "pending-delete" changes will be sent to you so you can take action when your favorite domains are about to be released.
• Domain Registar changes are a sign of domain transfers which are detected by Domain Monitor.
• Expiration dates are monitored so you will know when a domain has been renewed.
• Domain Name Servers changes also trigger email alerts.

I think now I won’t forget to renew (which is what happened to zhopik.com last year). Take a look at this self-explanatory screenshot:

Proceed to: http://www.domaintools.com/monitor.

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Does my story have a happy ending? Maybe, or maybe not, it depends on whether you think the journey was worth it – you be the judge.

So what happened in my case and why am I so furious? Having just recently bought a house, I wanted to have peace of mind for at least some foreseeable future and paid for a year of home insurance that covers such things as kitchen appliances, electrical work, washer/dryer, heater, etc. The only damage was promised to be a reasonable $55 charge per occurrence, with some acceptable exclusions. The sun was shining and birds chirping as I mailed First American Home Buyers Protection Corp (further FAHBP) my check for ~$250.

Everything was going well for about 2 months, we started decorating and cleaning up the house, and life was great. That is until one day when the 23 year old built into the wall microwave decided to stop working completely. Fear not, I thought, I have insurance just for such a joyous occasion. Right? Keep reading.

A quick call to 800-992-3400 and an agent was on the phone. So far so good. She took my claim (I made a mistake of starting it with small dishwasher issue, so until now my case is known as THE DISHWASHER CASE, and I had to explain every time I called that it’s actually THE DISHWASHER AND MICROWAVE CASE and that the dishwasher had been doing fine after the first visit. Apparently, changing the title of a case is an insurmountable impossibility to FAHBP) and promised a contractor would call me for an appointment. At this point I was quite satisfied, not realizing that it was the end of my satisfaction.

The experience of the next month is better described in my BBB complaint below (with a few edits).

Company Information:

First American Home Buyers Protection
P.O. Box 10180
Van Nuys, CA 91410-1980
Website: http://homewarranty.firstam.com/
Phone: (800) 553-6699

Complaint Text

I'd like to preface this by saying that I haven't had such bad experience with a company ever since I dealt with Dell Home.
Every agent of FAHBP I've spoken with regarding my claim is extremely irresponsible.
Day 1. Contractor comes out to see my microwave. This is the only part of the process that worked OK, since he isn't associated with FAHBP. He tells me he needs a spare part for the microwave (built-into-the-shelf unit from 1985). Fine.
Day 8. No word from either the contractor or First American. I call them to find out that the contractor asked to initiate a part search that should be completed within a few days.
Day 14, 15, 16. Still no reply, so I call them myself. The part search has not come back yet (how long can I wait? Days, months? Nobody on the phone can answer that).
Day 17. I talk to yet another customer service rep, Brad, who informs me that the part search had never been initiated correctly, and nothing was happening. That's almost 3 weeks after we started the process. He assures me he is going to take ownership of my case and call me by the end of the day. No call that day, or the next 3.
Day 21. I call to talk to Brad but he's not available all day. Another agent tells me no part search is happening because they don't know the model number of the unit. Don’t have the part number of the unit?? How the ***** does that come up only now?The agent on the phone makes me go to my microwave and dictate her the model number. A call is promised by Brad and/or his manager.
Days 22-26. No call. They never-ever call back. I try Brad a few more times and every time he promises to call back, giving various excuses as to why nothing is happening. Additionally, I am introduced to a new amazing method of solving my problem: apparently FAHBP now found some repair place **** knows where. They are going to send the broken 23 year old part to this place and it will get repaired in an unknown amount of time. After that, they are going to send it back to me.

That's where I am today.

Resolution Sought: Do what you're promising to do on the flashy flyers. Enforce your own guidelines. Make the agents do their jobs and be responsible for cases they own. Make sure I get at least one call back out of the 10 promised. At least once, damnit! My case is not only unresolved, it's not even started after a month.

So, by day 26 I felt incredibly frustrated, pissed off, annoyed, furious, desperate, and helpless. Never in my life did I ever feel in such a way communicating with a company (with the exception of Dell and recently Netshops.com with their hundreds of properties, like ModernFurniture.com – an amazingly irresponsible company).

I had no other option but to follow through with my threat to submit a BBB claim. The BBB website claimed FAHBP had a very high rating of “BBB” (ratings explained here). That was news to me, so as last resort, I wrote up the complaint you’ve just witnessed and sent it in. That was Friday.

Looking back at my experience, I now understand exactly how such big corporations work. The bigger the company, the faster it is going to act on any BBB complaint because it uses a very simple formula: consumers who haven’t done business with it yet are likely to look up BBB (and some other ratings) first. The amount of business the company is going to get is in some way proportional to how good its rating is. Therefore, it is much cheaper to prioritize and take care of the few BBB complaints as soon as possible than lose potential business brought by a lower rating. A corollary of the above is that though smaller companies are probably still likely to act on BBB complaints, they are not going to do it with the same vigor.

On Monday at exactly 10am, I received a phone call from a very upbeat woman. She introduced herself as some sort of a consumer resolution specialist from First American corporate. She had received my BBB complaint and was prepared to:

1. Refund the $55 service call fee for all my troubles.
2. Apologize profusely for how incompetently FAHBP has been handling my case.
3. Offer me a brand new $1600 microwave/oven combination from Sears.com or a cashout of about $1300.

Wow, what a change in attitude. I felt like a cheap whore (apologies to all cheap whores out there), like a kid who couldn’t stand up for himself and had to go complain to daddy. Only after drastic measures did they begin to budge and that made me sick. I took the cashout option because I didn’t like the proposed microwave combination model and closed the case.

Whether or not you will chose to avoid FAHBP because of this article is up to you. Dealing with big corporations is not easy but knowing about BBB can be very powerful in certain cases and you, as a consumer, deserve to have this knowledge. Don’t abuse it but be aware of your options. Additionally, submitting your story to consumerist.com is another great way to go, which is what I’m now going to do retroactively.

Have you had any experience with First American or other insurance companies? Was it good or bad? Feel free to leave a comment.

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Lately I have been getting increasingly annoyed with a certain unexplainable, persistent, and surprisingly intelligent botnet on AIM. From time to time I would get messages from some sort of a fish variation. My list so far consists of the following IM names:  CroppedCoho, FortifiedTrout, FreshenedupTrout, FrozenSolidTrout, HandcuffedCoho, KissableCoho, PreferentialCoho, SmarterCoho, TentativeCoho, WantedCoho, and YoinkedTrout. Does it look annoying already? Well, it is.

Each of the conversations would start out casually, the bot would respond quite wittily and intelligently, and the whole conversation would eventually either lead to me getting pissed off or the bot promoting reddit in one way or another. What is reddit’s affiliation with this botnet? I’d like to know myself.

Here’s an example of one conversation:

(1:15:12 AM) frenchcoho Ever watched a marmot bite a lamb to death while blindfolded? No? Well, you're sure in for a treat!
(1:15:36 AM) archon810 let me guess
(1:15:37 AM) archon810 trout?
(1:15:50 AM) frenchcoho i think so.
(1:16:06 AM) archon810 #reddit?
(1:16:33 AM) frenchcoho what about it?
(1:16:41 AM) archon810 it's gay
(1:16:44 AM) archon810 like you
(1:16:53 AM) frenchcoho …good one?
(1:16:57 AM) frenchcoho you sure got me.
(1:17:14 AM) archon810 run along now
(1:17:28 AM) frenchcoho okay?
<blocked>

or

(8:51:25 PM) smartercoho Ever watched a marmot bite a lamb to death while blindfolded? No? Well, you're sure in for a treat!
(8:51:35 PM) archon810 fuck off
(8:51:37 PM) archon810 i hate you
(8:51:44 PM) smartercoho You don't even know me
<blocked>

or just blatantly frank:

(7:13:13) yoinkedtrout We're discussing Trout in the IRC channel #reddit on irc.freenode.org.
<blocked>

At this point I had enough. Sure – it was all very mysterious but at the same time incredibly annoying. A few seconds of googling led me to this page, with instructions of how to stop the nonsense and a Wikipedia link that finally shone some light on the puzzle.

(9:51:18 AM) handcuffedcoho Hey, let's be friends.
(9:54:29 AM) archon810 $optout
(9:54:32 AM) handcuffedcoho OPERATOR: Are you sure you want to opt-out? If you do, you will *never* be contacted again on the account "Archon810". There is *no way* to opt back in and undo this.

If you are sure, type "$optout 35DA". Remember, this is permanent and irreversible!
(9:54:44 AM) archon810 $optout 35DA
(9:54:44 AM) handcuffedcoho OPERATOR: You have opted out. The account "Archon810" will *never* be contacted again. Good bye!

Phew, and it’s over. I hope… Probably until the next smartass decides to code up a new bot variant.

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So, in, I think, episode 4 Panic (Jocko’s character) goes to the studio and raps for the first time. What comes out is quite amazing, I recommend you watch that episode for a more complete experience. Otherwise, proceed to the MP3 that I got directly off Jocko’s myspace page.

You can play it right on this page (Edit: download link removed, per Jocko's request in the comments) or support Jocko by buying his album off Amazon for only $0.99 (see link below). I know it's really not my kind of music but I can appreciate good lyrics and execution. Enjoy.

Here's a streaming version:

Buy Jocko's song on Amazon:

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For the past month I have been exploring options and building a perfect Home Theater PC for my 50” Vizio plasma. Besides the obvious, it has to play movies, youtube videos, etc, I had a few concrete goals in mind. Here they are:

• it absolutely had to handle 1080P h264, specifically movies encoded using x264. An average movie size for this format is between 8.5 and 13 GB. There were 2 problems to overcome: the CPU had to be able to handle the decoding (my desktop dual core Conroe barely kept up) and the network had to be fast enough to stream in real time from my storage PC a floor away.
• I needed to have the easiest control over the whole thing. VNC wasn’t good enough, because I don’t always have a laptop lying around.
• It had to support 7.1 sound.
• It had to have excellent picture quality on the TV, preferably during both movies and regular browsing/reading, etc. HDMI/DVI was optional, depending on how good the analog quality was.
• It had to be as cheap as possible but still good enough to do the job really well.
• It had to have a serial port (most micro ATX motherboards nowadays do not, which is upsetting).
• It had to look slick and unconventional – unlike a regular PC.

Setup

After lots of research, I used the following components from the following sources (best deals I could find):

Processor

Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2200 Processor, 2.2 GHz, $79.99, no tax, and free shipping. I decided to go for a relatively cheap but still very powerful CPU and the results exceeded my expectations. More below.

Motherboard

ASUS P5KPL-CM LGA 775 Intel G31 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard, $67, no tax, and free shipping. Also available on Newegg for $54.99 + tax + $8.97 shipping. It has on-board 7.1 sound, 2 PCI slots, and a serial port (for my good old Packard Bell serial remote control). No HDMI/DVI and no onboard RAID but I didn’t need those.

Memory (RAM)

OCZ SLI-Ready 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Memory (OCZ2N800SR2GK). $38.99 + tax, free shippping – $25 rebate. Also available on Amazon.

Case and Power Supply

Antec New Solution Series NSK2480 Case, $107.99, no tax + $17.82 shipping – $8 coupon (code: TAKER). Even cheaper on Amazon. The case already comes with a 380W power supply, so I didn’t need to buy a separate one. It provides plenty of power for the HTPC. Also, there’s a lot of space inside for ventilation, and I didn’t get a crammed feeling when installing my components. Ventilation is a separate point I’d like to highlight with this case, as it came with 2 120mm fans and 2 extra ones just in case. The lowest of 3 speed settings has worked great for me.

Wireless HTPC Keyboard + Mouse

DSI 2.4GHz Wireless Keyboard with Optical trackball, Black, FK-760, $52.99, no tax, and free shipping. Inspired by the famous mysql geek Jeremy Zawodny here and here.

Wireless PCI Card (802.11N)

Airlink AWLH6080 300N Wireless-N & G PCI Adapter for Desktops, $44.99 + tax, no shipping as I picked it up at a local Fry’s. I needed to start experimenting with 802.11N because I didn’t want a swarm of network cables laying around. More on this later but I can tell you it’s great. Also available on Amazon. Windows 7 picked it up with no extra drivers to install. Perfect. If you can't find any Airlinks around, Amazon has plenty of other Wireless N cards to pick from (I would try to match the router brand, btw).

Wireless Router (802.11N)

Airlink AR680W 300N Wireless-N & G Router, I think about $50 + tax at Fry’s. Also available on Amazon. Or, again, if you can't find Airlink available, there are plenty of other Wireless N routers.

Speakers, Surround Sound

Logitech Z-5500 505W 5.1 Speakers, on sale at Dell for $170 a few months ago. Also available on Amazon.

DVD Player/Burner

LG Black DVD Burner, $25 or so. I picked a cheap and good one, and it’s worked flawlessly. I decided to skip trying to match the silver shade with the case and just go for the black one. I am not interested in Bluray players but if you are, you are welcome to substitute this DVD player for one.

Graphics Card [OPTIONAL]

MSI GeForce 9400GT 512MB PCI-Express Graphics Card for $60.43 with free shipping and no tax on Amazon. Optional because the motherboard already contains a VGA out which proved to be personally enough for me. However, this card is awesome if you need more performance for gaming or more than just VGA – for example HDMI or DVI. Check this out. This 9400GT has HDMI, VGA, and DVI outputs!
Update: Kyron in the comments mentions a trick to allow passing sound over HDMI using this card.

Sound Card [OPTIONAL]

Diamond Multimedia XtremeSound 7.1 Sound Card with Dolby Digital Live (XS71DDL) for $50, free shipping and no tax on Amazon. If you need a digital optical out or decided to go with another motherboard that doesn’t support 7.1 sound but want to have 7.1, I found that this sound card works really well.

Hard Drive

Some old 60GB hard drive. I’m planning on streaming most things, so it’s not worth spending any money on this item. You can pick a 1TB Western Digital Black drive on Amazon for about $100.

Operating System

Update 5/12/09: Windows XP 7. The new Windows 7 is still in RC at the time of this writing but it is so good and so ready that many are already using it in their day-to-day systems. I put Windows 7 onto this HTPC a few days ago and I must say – I am very-very impressed. There's not a single hiccup, bug, blue screen, or hangup. The OS is beautiful, sleek, fast, robust, and operational. It even comes with its own Media Center but it didn't seem to detect any of my media on remote servers. I highly recommend Windows 7.

If you're not afraid to try Linux (you shouldn't be – it's great and free), I recommend Ubuntu or OpenSUSE.

Verdict

The final product exceeded my expectations. Not only did it play 1080P h264 perfectly, it didn’t even need a separate graphics card to take over the load. The CPU usage is about 35-40% when playing 720P and 40-50% when playing 1080P. No need for DVI or HDMI input – the standard VGA connector is very crisp and provides much better fine print and detail than HDMI. I can read and browse small font without any problems. The sound is superb as well, after all the tweaking, so no additional sound or video cards were needed. Using the wireless ultra light keyboard as well as the remote, I am now able to control everything on the screen with ease.

Temperatures, Ventilation, Cooling

The case provides excellent ventilation, as I already mentioned. The CPU idles at about 30C and goes to 45-48C when playing the highest quality 1080P HD video I could find. In short, the case is cool and quiet.

Wireless (802.11N)

After playing around with the 802.11N (or at least Airlink101’s implementation), I have to say I’m quite impressed. I get speeds of between 3 and 5 MB/s (Megabytes per second) and all 720P and most 1080P content streams live. Some really hi-res 1080P movies require to be downloaded first, which confuses me. During streaming, instead of using 4-5 MB/s, VLC (or MPC, or any other player I’ve tried) uses only about 1-2 MB/s and starts lagging. I don’t yet have a workaround for the player to utilize 100% of my bandwidth and stop lagging. Do you?

One thing I really hated about Airlink101 is their software (the firmware seems great so far). It’s the most basic piece of crap software accompanying hardware I’ve ever seen. Absolutely no thought and effort went into it – I believe it’s still on version 1.0 or 1.1. It’s so bad, even the Windows default wireless manager is better. The final straw was the absence of a setting to connect to preferred networks only. After I found my computer randomly connected to some open netgear network one day, I decided to not use Airlink101’s software for a long-long time, maybe ever.

The Sound

ASUS’ onboard 7.1 HD audio delivers very decent sound. I’ve installed the latest drivers, enable virtual fill (so that 2 channel sound gets automatically distributed to all speakers), and hooked up the Logitech Z5500 5.1 and another Logitech 2.1 to form a pseudo 8.2 speaker system. This thing has thump!

A note on VNC: I ended up not using it as it was creating sync issues while playing video (vsync?). If I turn on VNC while playing a video (and even if I turn it off), the vsync issues are quite apparent. The wireless keyboard is a better solution anyway, so I am quite happy with it (though it could use larger operational range).

HTPC/Media Center Software

Network file sharing + file manager (Total Commander or any other) + Media Player Classic + ffdshow codec set have worked very well but I still wanted to find the perfect media center program for visually pleasing media experience. It turns out there are a few candidates. Here they are:

• XBMC – free, not bad at all, but it was too buggy and couldn’t find my network drives.
• Mediaportal – also free and also buggy. It couldn’t play a lot of video files.
• SageTV – not free. Worse than the 2 above. Absolutely no reason to pay for something this bad when free alternatives are available.
• MeediOS – free. Too buggy to even run.
• Boxee – free, there is an alpha Windows version but it’s quite buggy. Boxee is probably the best one of them all, at least looking at all the recommendation on the web but the software isn’t very stable yet. It’s very socially oriented, which I like a lot. They’re active on twitter.
• GB-PVR – a Windows PVR and Media Center. Haven’t tried it as I’m now convinced I’m better off without a MC.
• Anything else major I’m missing?

So, as of this time, Total Commander, Media Player Classic, and the ffdshow are still my preferred method of watching videos. I don’t feel that any of the programs I’ve tried are ready for prime time yet.

Remaining Work

• I’d like to figure out how to wake up the machine on keyboard event. I don’t think it’s possible with the wireless keyboard like that, but I’m not 100% on that.

• I’d like to know how to stream videos utilizing full network capacity rather than buffering what's needed and hiccupping when a slowdown occurs.

Pictures Of The Final System

And I couldn’t resist:

• How To Play FLVs In Media Player Classic (Including Fast Forwarding), Or Forget You, VLC
• How To Download And Install Windows Media Player 11 Bypassing WGA
• Wireless Headphones Are Nothing New – What About Wireless Earbuds?
• Is Your Simplifymedia For Winamp Broken On A 64 Bit Windows 7? Here's How To Fix It
• The Most Awesome VPN Tip: How To Make Windows Automatically Use Your Local WiFi/LAN Connection Directly For Requests That Don't Need To Go Through VPN

The option is right there, in the middle, Sorting Directories. The default is Always by name. Change it to Like files (also by time) and you’re done.

• How To Show Hidden/Invisible Files In Total Commander, Both Locally And On An FTP Server
• [Perl] Finding Files, The Fun And Elegant Way
• Watch – A Useful Linux Command You May Have Never Heard Of
• Mass Renaming Directories And Files Using Total Commander
• How To Check If The Local SVN Revision Is Up-To-Date