Monday, December 14, 2009 9:10 PM Central Time
Posted by Justin
I've been very loyal to NetNewsWire for a long time. Whether it be NewsGator (a RSS plugin for Outlook), FeedDamon (an RSS feedreader app for Windows, NetNewsWire on the iPhone, or NetNewsWire on the Mac.
In the fall, NetNewsWire was switched to synchronize with Google Reader accounts. I just can't take the inconsistencies in synchronization that occur when using NetNewsWire on my Mac. I spend an hour or two going through a couple hundred or more news items all for them to reappear as unread items next sync period - sometimes, other times they stay unread.
NetNewsWire is a desktop RSS application for the Mac. You can use it for free with embedded advertising, or you can buy it for $20. I'm all about supporting developers who write apps - but I can't do that for NetNewsWire.
The best alternative that I could find for now is an app called
Gruml.
Gruml also allows you to view and manage your feed subscriptions of your Google Reader account on Mac OS X.
It is in the beta stage, so there are some quirks, but the developer was releasing updates pretty regularly until the middle of November. Hopefully there is a final release or something big up his sleeve.
Nonetheless, Gruml at least gets it write when it comes to the synchronization, so for now, it's my choice for a desktop RSS reader.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 5:29 PM Central Time
Posted by Justin
I was at Costco this last weekend and saw the Sony BDP-N460 Network Blu-ray Disc Player on sale for $199. It usually sells for $249, but most places have it on sale right now. As a side note, I wasn’t able to locate it on their website, but it was on an end-cap in one of their stores.
A while back, right after Blu-ray was initially introduced, I purchased the Best Buy “Insignia” brand Blu-ray player. I think I paid $250 for it. Back then, if you wanted network capabilities, you had to pay a premium, now this type of functionality is pretty standard.
The Insignia model that I owned was slow to start up. It took 30-45 seconds for it to power up before I could even insert a disc. You can’t upgrade the firmware on it, and there are no network capabilities.
That’s why the Sony was appealing. The BDP-N460 has full HD 1080p, Dolby True HD and DTS-MA audio decoding, BRAVIA Internet Video streaming,
BD-Live 2.0 support, DVD playback and upscaling. It has built-in applications for
Netflix,
Amazon Video On-Demand, and
Slacker, just to name a few.
I hooked it up to my system, plugged in a network cable and powered it up. It immediately determined that there was a firmware update available and within a couple minutes it had applied it and rebooted the player. That’s cool.
I also activated the Netflix application on the player. I was able to see my queue and I played three different movies over the weekend. It worked very slick. No glitches as far as I could tell. No skipping, very good video and sounds quality. I also tried Slacker, a free Internet radio service, which I had never heard of.
One other nicety of this product is that they include an HDMI cable in the box. Overall, I am very happy with the player. Historically, I have always had good luck with Sony components.