LECHTANSKI.NET

Two pieces of technology I wanted to gush about for a few minutes.

First, Skype. I feel like the last guy getting on the Skype train. The last hold out. Listen. It’s not worth it. The holding out part, I mean. Skype is pretty fantastic!

We just had a baby, yadda, yadda. My Mom was in town for a few weeks to help us get settled. Having her go home was a big, big change in our little guy’s life. But check this out. Two days later, Evan got to see and hear his Grandma again. Even better, he also got to see and hear his Nanna; and his cousins Kali and Kaitlyn got to see and hear Evan for the first time.

You can only say so much about the video phone concept, and I was still on the fence until we actually tried it. I’m sold. It is intoxicating.

Second is Netflix, again. I’m an old school Netflx subscriber. I left for a while, but came back for lots of reasons. I was bummed for a while that the Watch Instantly feature wasn’t available for Macs for a long time, but they finally came around.

So, last Tuesday I got a surprise Netflix disc in the mail. When put in my Wii, I get to watch all this stuff instantly on my TV. All this content right there to browse and watch. I’m a Dish Network subscriber and have a few minor complaints. The On-Demand stuff is slow; the broadband connection has never worked right with multiple customer service calls. In general we’re happy, but the Netflix/Wii system worked flawlessly within 5 minutes of the disc being taken out of the mailbox.

The timing of these is great, what with the baby leading to us continuing our homebody trend for a bit longer.

Share this post...

Let’s start with this. I am connected. I have a Blackberry. I blog. I tweet. I’m on Facebook. I’m LinkedIn. I have my own domain. This is all for both work and personal reasons.

I’ve found myself opening my Blackberry RSS reader at red traffic lights. I’ve had my lovely wife pull the Blackberry from my hands during dinner with friends. I’ve found myself watching TV while being logged onto Facebook, clicking through emails on my Blackberry and talking on the phone.

Frankly, I’ve hit a wall. It’s OK to be connected, but I have made the decision to not live my life connected moment to moment. Two things led to this decision.

1. A few years ago I was on a whale watching boat ride. Camera in hand, and hearing the oohs and ahhs of other passengers, I would swing around trying to capture the jumping whale on a memory stick. I was not very successful. And I didn’t get to actually see many of the whales because I was too busy staring at the LCD screen of my camera. Finally, I gave up on the camera and just started watching nature.
2. More recently I went to a marketing automation seminar a couple of weeks ago. Participants were encouraged to tweet the event in real time… during presentations. This seemed like a good idea, but I noticed that in order to tweet I needed to stop paying attention to the speaker. And then to follow the Twitter event feed, I was staring at my Blackberry, not paying much attention to the event itself. And to top that, most of the tweets were simple regurgitations of some of the key points of the person currently speaking.

I’m done. It’s over. I check my email when I have a second. I’ll tweet when something comes up (usually when I’m traveling).

As a marketer, I’ve been curious how these hyper-connected tools will be monetized. There is more to think about here. I’ve had my toe dipped in this water from a business perspective for a couple of years, but still, I’ve got to marinate a bit more on this.

Share this post...

Got a Wii. It’s a pretty funny story; you’ll have to ask me about it sometime.

Anyway, I didn’t really want one. I guess I think I don’t have any time or something. Whenever I don’t think I have any time (for Wii, or exercise, or dog walking…) all I need to do is cut out a little TV time and I’m good. Not that I watch an insane amount of TV, but I certainly get my fair share.

So, we got one and it is frickin’ awesome. The remote and the nunchuck, the sensor bar… We don’t have any other games but for the Wii Sports one that comes with the unit, and now Barb and I are on our way to professional rank, playing doubles tennis. We try not to yell at each other when we miss a shot, and we totally celebrate when we make a great return.

It is virtually impossible to not get into the game, because you’re so physically involved. I heard this saying once, that if you want to find the fastest, easiest way to finish a task, get the laziest person you know to do it. They will find a way to accomplish it without breaking a sweat.

Well, there might be someone out there who can play the Wii sitting down, but not me. I have to be standing up. I’m full on swinging: backhands, lobs, overhead slams. In the boxing game, there is no other option but to actually look like your fighting for your life. By the end of a fight, I am literally sweating.

Other comments:

• The remotes are awesome. You use them to throw darts, pitch baseballs, swing at pitches, hit tennis balls, bowl balls. I’m really amazed at the response I get with this. Throwing sidearm in baseball. Throwing upper cuts in boxing. Awesome.
• Somebody on the packaging team went to the Apple University of packaging. Both the product and the package are clean, white, and shiny. This extends to the packaging for other accessories like extra controllers and games. There is no denying the (positive) impact of Apple on retail packaging.
• I’m looking forward to the upcoming yoga ‘game’ set for release Q1 of next year.
• My friend Joe is going to a Wii party this weekend. I totally have to get into that.
• You get to create a Mii (pronounced ‘me’) that becomes the digital version of you for Wii games. If you take you remote over to a friend’s house to geek out, your Mii automatically follows. The Mii can look like you or not. You can even make it look like a cat or a martian. And if you create multiple Miis, they start showing up in the background of other games. They might be bowling in the lane next to you, sitting in the stands at the tennis match.
• It has Internet connectivity, but I think it by way of a USB plugin that connects to the wireless network in my house. I don’t know a whole lot about this, yet, but I will get this going, so Simon and I can play Madden from our respective living rooms.

I didn’t know I wanted a Wii, but I am psyched that I have it. I only wish I had a way to publish my Mii.

Share this post...

This is the coolest story I’ve heard in a while.

I typically dig the songs from iPod commercials. Except for maybe that Eminem one. And I thought the new iPod Touch commercial followed along nicely with picking something catchy and safe. So, I clicked over to Google to see who the song was by.

What I found surprised me.

Sometime in September, an 18-year-old kid named Nick Haley put together his own iPod Touch commercial using video footage from Apple.com. He found a song he thought was perfect (it is), from Cansei de Ser Sexy named Music is my Hot, Hot Sex. He posted his project on YouTube.

Rather than send this kid a cease and desist letter, Apple emailed him to say they wanted it for their own. They re-cut it, got permission from the band and now you are seeing it five times a day.

His original cut commercial is a little rougher and doesn’t include the Foo Fighters. Check out the final cut.

Here’s what I love about this. This student has an awesome story that will get him laid for a couple of years. But also, this little known Brazilian band, CSS, now has their song featured on national TV, and is currently number 30 on the iTunes top 100 list. I think it is great that an English student has the power to help break an obscure band.

This is all, of course, hinging on whether or not this story is real. I hate being so cynical.

Share this post...

We’d been waiting a relatively long time to go HD. Almost two years ago, we bought a 37-inch Vizio LCD TV. Love, Love, Love it. But I couldn’t help but recognize we weren’t taking full advantage of its HDTV’s readiness.

We subscribe to Dish Network. We’ve had a PVR for a couple of years. And the thing I was waiting for was an affordable upgrade that would allow us to get a PVR with HD. The time came: the PVR-622 The deal was essentially for a free upgrade; of course after an understandably complex rebate involving multiple forms, copies of bills and a strange 60-day process.

The unit is great. We can record two things at once or watch one thing and record another. As much as we are huge PVR fans, this is a first in our PVR experience. It’s awesome to have this capability.

And we are finally taking advantage of the Vizio in all of its HD glory. We got it just in time for the start of the football season, and the picture is so incredible. My primary question is why the heck is FOX not broadcasting their games in HD? It is great. I don’t think I could watch Grey’s Anatomy in SD again!

But! Here’s the catch: the HD service itself.

The HD service is sketchy at best. Really, really sketchy. There are a dozen or so HD channels offered from Dish Network. These are things like Monster, HDNET and HDNMV. And then there are HD versions for channels like A&E, TNT and TBS. The consistency of reception of these channels is crap! I mean like total crap. It is out, like, 50 percent of the time. I try to record or watch the Sopranos on A&E and it’s no dice. When reception goes out, you see a screen that tells you the system is trying to acquire satellite signal, then another screen telling you service is unavailable.

Fortunately, we have really good reception for the local affiliate channels of NBC et al. I’m not sure what I would have done if I had lost reception during a tense fantasy football battle. I’m not sure if my neighbor watches football, but I would have certainly found out.

So, when it is working it is sweet. The only thing that is keeping me from throwing the Dish receiver out the window is it is a sweet unit (it’s not the PVR’s fault…) and because we’re not really paying for the HD service yet. The rebates take care of that. But after a six-month period I will see a 33 percent increase to my bill.

I call to complain and the friendly customer service people schedule a service call. The service guy comes out to my house and tells me I am getting the expected reception, and then I hear some bunk about Dish trying to get by with one satellite for all of the US, and the West coast is on the very edge of the range. I call to complain again, and the friendly customer service people schedule a service call.

I’ve not reached the point where the sketchy service on the special HD channels outweighs how totally awesome it is to watch HD Football and The Office on the HD PVR. We’ll see how this develops over the next couple of months.

Share this post...