I am late with my TechParent piece for one reason, I am in love (so far) with Evernote.  It is rare that I will start with such an exclamatory, but Evernote finally managed to do something that I have been complaining about in many areas.  Take several ideas that are good on their own merits and make them better just by connecting the dots with other similar ideas.

Evernote does that in the area of becoming what I would consider (and please excuse my outdated reference) the Web 2.0 version of an actually working DayRunner.  Perhaps I should clarify that a bit for those that don’t remember or aren’t old enough to remember when you simply could not live without a DayRunner.  Day “planners” were of course around forever, but in the mid to late 80′s the “DayRunner” (and their clones) became in the analog world, the single most important “tool” a business person (or really any busy person) could have.   It has places and compartments for your Calendar, Address Book, Business Card Holder, a pad for scratching out thoughts, notes, etc and so on, all in one single easy to carry tool(and unfortunately easy to lose… a “feature” Evernote doesn’t share of course).  It is this all-in-one single and EASY TO USE metaphor that makes Evernote… uh… noteworthy.

Products like Google Notebook is good for jotting notes… so long as you are in your web browser.  Jotting a note or taking a picture as a reminder (the only thing I really consider the camera on a phone good for using), is fine for what it is, but it is separated from your other information, and the pictures and notes are separate applications, so you can not search across this information.  Evernote combines, text written files, web “clips”, audio files, pictures and combines them into a searchable repository that is available to use and retrieve from, both at your  PC through a client, any PC via the Web Client as well as on your mobile phone (assuming you have a SmartPhone.  If you are away from your own computer (and don’t have your phone handy), you can even e-mail something into Evernote.

Evernote bills iteself as your “external brain” and it is (or can be) a fairly good description.  All those tidbits stored away, regardless of the source, there ready to be tapped when you need to remember something.  Graphic laden items are run through a recognition engine, which when added to your tagging, makes it a powerful tool to remember and search through even say pictures of a book you spotted in a bookstore or coffee shop that you may want to buy later.  Or photograph the label of a bottle of wine you spotted in a restaurant, but wanted to buy later.  Even take a picture of notes you scribbled on a napkin, if your handwriting is reasonably legible… Evernote will convert it into searchable text.

You can even share certain notebooks with others.  And of course the fact that you can “share” will (justifiably) immediately bring up the one concern… privacy.   Well, to that end Evernote has a (granted somewhat limited) answer.  You can encrypt text in notes (images cannot at present be encrypted).  This can only be done presently from the Desktop client (available for both Windows and Macintosh).

It is a great way to organize everything, and more easily searchable than that stack of post-it notes cluttering your computer screen.  There is a premium pay version ($5/month or $45/year) which gives you more storage, but for many (and to check the service out) the free version which gives you 40 MB per month is more than enough.  That is enough space to store (approximately) 20,000 text messages or  400 camera phone snapshots or 270 Web Clips.  So why not give Evernote a try… think of it as an external hard drive adding to your brain capacity… and what parent couldn’t use that extra capacity with everything we try to remember day in and day out?

Tired of the slow load times of Media Player, QuickTime, and other “standard solutions” where you seem to have to spend more time waiting for the utility to load than (at least it seems) actually watching the video? Tired of needing multiple players for different video codecs? Wish you had one player that could do it all quickly (or at least a vast majority… I’m sure there is something it can’t handle, and I guess there is a person or two that still uses the RealAudio format… though I have no idea why).

The VideoLan VLC Media Player is what you just may have been wishing for all this time. It is still technically a beta weighing in with version number 0.8.6 (as of today anyway), it is cross platform (for those that care about such things), it is skinable so you can make it look any way you like, and best of all it is free (though they do accept Contributions to help fund the project). Also the entire downloads weights in at a svelt 9MB (for the Windows version).

There is no reason to be shackled to a lesser player any longer.

(Note:  Sorry about TechParent Tuesday appearing on Wednesday, apparently I sometimes can’t tell the difference between Save and Publish… opps.)

I don’t know how I missed this one coming down the road (I guess because I don’t actually have AT&T Wireless).  Starbucks and AT&T are now rolling out a new program for the highly caffeinated set that like to use Wi-Fi.

If you buy (or recharge) a Starbuckscard for your coffee purchases you get up to 2 hours a day of free Wi-Fi at all Starbucks location (for up to 30 days, you will need to recharge your card again within 30 days to continue to get the free wi-fi).

The only real potential drawback is that you must use your “up to 2 hours” in one session.  You can’t log in, leave and come back later (they say they may offer that later).  But for free… the price is certainly right, and can be good in a pinch, especially for somebody like me that spends entirely too much money in Starbucks anyway.

You can sign up at the at&t website or get more details from Starbucks.

As I noted in Friday’s report, even those that think they are protecting their kids sometimes need to take another look.  Well, I was doing just that when I found Glubble.  Glubble is a sort of hybrid social network like front end tied in with a Parental Control product like NetNanny. It seems to run the idea that “the family” all uses one computer, and wants Glubble to act as its private Social Network, with “family messages” available through the front end, and a Family Home Page.

Glubble sets its heights very high, and expects that everybody in the family will want to live with this kiddie front end.  Of course, that is also its greatest downfall.  It contains its own version of Bookmarks (Warning: It wipes out yours in the process), it has a predefined whitelist of products that it has predetermined are OK for your child.  While changing these aren’t difficult (it is only basically a whitelist), it is a bit tedious and more work that it should be.

If you and your children have different profiles, then this Firefox addon need to be installed and configured in each profile.  This in therory can  save the parent from being stuck with Glubble, but then it blows the whole point of the “social” and “family” aspects of the program.

The final nail in the coffin is that the program has reports of breaking (and/or removing) other addons as well as slowing Firefox itself.  Finally it modifies Google results, and doesn’t allow you to use other search engines (yet, but the company claims to be working on that). Glaxstar, the company behind Glubble has published several other very popular and sucessful Add-ons for Firefox… And given enough time, there is certainly some potential for it as a unique child friendly front end and Parental Control product.

If you are not using Firefox yet… why not?  You should be… just not with Glubble.  It just isn’t there quite yet.  Hopefully, there will be a version 2.0 with better control for the user over how it takes over your browser.

I am not a big television viewer myself. If not for CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, I don’t know that I would be watching anything (other than Disney Channel with LatteGirl). But between blogs and Twitter, I know many of you do, and seemingly live and die by the schedules. Well, this week have I got a neat little tool for you. It is called mytvrss, and it is so simple, it is one of those things that I am sure many will bang their heads against the wall thinking, “Why didn’t I come up with that?”

The great thing about it, is the shear simplicity of it. You go to the sight (no registration required), check off the boxes on the shows you want to be kept up to date on, and click “Create Feed” It will generate a custom URL that you can use in your rss reader of your choice, and be kept up to date, on airing dates of the shows. Never miss a new episode again. It is like have a customized version of the TV Guide made just for you.

LocalCooling is a free Windows utility that can help you configure power saving settings on Windows (Vista and XP anyway). Now granted, there is nothing in local cooling application that you can’t do yourself through various parts of Control Panel in Windows, but it puts them all in a single easy to use interface.

Through, its extensive database of computer components, the application is able to estimate what your PC’s full usage of electricity is on a variety of components, including the monitor, the hard drive, CPU, Graphics Card and more, and tell you (approximately) how much you save when you implement some of the power saving features.

Of course, the neat feature for those trying to be more green, is you get to see in terms of trees, oil and Electricity how much you saved by turning on some of these power saving features. For those that perhaps are quite so worried about the green aspect per se, there is another cool thing you get to see, and that is the green you will save on your electricity bill. I don’t know anybody that doesn’t want to at least save that sort of green.

Best of all.  It is free.

One of the things that despite solid offering for e-mail, and Calendar kept me locked into Microsoft Outlook was Tasks (or To-dos).  Yes there are a few different offerings out there of a Web 2.0 nature, but nothing that integrated with other offerings very well.  That was until I discovered RememberTheMilk.com.  Remember the Milk is brilliant in its simplicity and ease of use.  But, that is not the end of it.  It can integrate into your Google Calendar, it has features called SmartLists (basically pre-sets like “all tasks due in next 2 weeks, 1 month, etc”), you can share tasks with others.. all for free.  And if you go for a Pro Account, you will be able to sync Remember The Milk with your Windows Mobile, Blackberry or even Apple iPhone.

There are plenty of places that have given full reviews of Remember The Milk, so I am not going to give you a full run down.  It is a to-do list and Task manager.  You know what it does (basically).  Sign up (its free), and give it a try… and you may never forget the milk on your way home again.

It will be interesting to see what Windows Live Mesh will bring to the table with the ability to sync data “across the cloud” but until it is fleshed out a bit more, and the direction clear, I will stick with Remember The Milk for all my tasks.

Of course, as with many small Web 2.0 companies, particularly those still in Beta, or of unknown financial status, I would not keep anything in this or any other site that would be devastating if it was lost.  Keep duplicates, or synchronize with another source, but never trust your only copy of critical data out of your own control.

I feel very lonely, no I am not completely alone, there are others (well at least two here and here).  But it was this glowing over the top “review”  that was the straw the broke the camel’s back.  I’ve had a lot of thoughts about Alltop, and none of them are positive.

I have seen nothing at Alltop, that would make it stand on its own if Guy’s name wasn’t attached to it. As a matter of fact there are very similar sites already that you could say it is a KNOCKOFF of, and that most people probably haven’t heard of, such as popurls.com or Web 2.0 Workgroup. Never heard of them? My point exactly. Not that there is anything wrong with them per se, they are RSS aggregators. Whoo Hoo! They are not the “next big thing” even if Guy’s name is attached.

Many are bragging about the traffic it brings, but this really reminds me a lot of the old “Web Rings” that were popular with some web sites a long time ago. Yes, they brought some traffic for a little while, that traffic basically was the other members of the web ring (or in this case, other people that are listed at Alltop.com). Much like a multi-level-marketing plan, it almost looks real at first, but eventually the house of cards tumble.

The layout and design is neither time saving, nor customizable enough of experience to make it useful, it is difficult to read, and the “one-page” paradigm is washed out by lots of longs scrolling.

Then, and this may sound a bit bitter, but hear me out. There are some blogs and sites (some of which I read mind you), which are listed on Alltop, which just make me scratch my head, and say if that is the “Top” there is something wrong. Now again, this is not about me being bitter. I know damn well, I don’t belong on any “top” list at this point. I certainly hope to share things with people, and I hope some even find some value in this blog, but when the day is done, I realize what this blog is. It is more of a social medium than anything else. I share bits of knowledge I have garnered and I get some advice when I am stuck by a few readers. That does not qualify this blog as “top” of anything. I saw a comment go by on Twitter the other day saying, “Just ask Guy, I’m sure he will add you if you ask him.” Oh, I see this is what it takes to be a “top” site on the web today? Give me a break.

In the end it is a novelty that will go nowhere once Guy moves on to his next project, and the people listed, stop coming back to prove how worthy they are to be on “the list.” A few sites will continue to have the “badge” long after anybody cares any longer, much likes some old sites that still have links to web rings that have long since stopped being updated, but it won’t matter because nobody will click on it anyway.

I am in a bit of a bind time wise, so this week I am letting somebody else do the heavy lifting for me on TechParent, and it is from the folks at Commoncraft.com. If you are not familiar with them, Commoncraft has started doing something they call Paperworks videos, which are simple “lessons” such things such as online photosharing in plain english, Blogs in Plain English and now Twitter in Plain English (and other topics as well).

Now I am willing to admit, I was one of those people that dragged their feet before finally jumping into Twitter. Simply put, I didn’t “get it.” And seems to be the common thread around those that are either on or not on Twitter. If you “get it” you are probably on it, if not then you probably just don’t understand why people would want to do this. Well, with a simple video and explaination, the folks at Common Craft have made it easy, so that the next time somebody says they don’t understand why people “tweet” you can just show them this video.

Don’t want to spend the money for Photoshop CS3?  (Not that I can say anything, that damn package is expensive).  Would you like an online solution?  Well, Adobe how now unveilved Adobe Photoshop Express (Beta), and is FREE with up to 2 GB in storage for you to save (or share) pictures with.

It is supposedly easy enough for the novice to be able to use, but still have some features that more experienced people would appreciate, I haven’t had an opportunity to play with it yet, and will write a full review on TechParent Tuesday, but in the mean time, you may wish to sign up and check it out.

Pants in a Pinch – a pair of pants that is vacuumed into a disc the size of your palm that is actually a pair of pants for your 3 to 36 month old child (up to 6T supposedly available by special order). I get the idea that these are “In case of Emergency” pants, but at $20 pair I am not so sure how great a deal it is. I mean how many people travel with a small child, and don’t have some sort of backup apparel in a bag, the trunk of the car, etc where you can stash something for these types of situations? And I guess whether you used them or not, you would have to keep buying a new size as you go along, as with the rest of the clothes, but then what do you do with the old one? Pass it along? Maybe I am being too hard on them, but it just doesn’t seem to make a heck of a lot of sense to me.

BabyPlays – I heard this described as the “Netflix of Baby Toys.” I dunno, to me this sounds like an idea that would have (and perhaps should have) come (and more importantly GONE) during the dotBomb era of bad business plans. Let you child play with toys that come in the mail, play with them, then send them back and get new toys. Oh sure, at a marketing meeting this sounds great, it is a great pitch story. Keeps parents from having too many toys around the house, and reduces clutter, of toys that have a limited life in a child’s world. Marketing. But it starts to fall apart in practice as I see it, especially with infant and small child toys where you would think this makes the most sense.

Toys from small kids are generally soft and contain lots of foam. It doesn’t take much to immediately think about every child that has drooled, chewed and spit up on that toy before it arrives in your mailbox. Of course the company says that they sanitize the toys, but how becomes the big issue. Too little santizing, the surface is clean but everything that is caught in the foam remains behind only to be reconstituted when your child’s wet drooling mouth comes in contact with it. Too much santizing and the foam breaks down, and the toy rendered less that appealing. $36/month gets you 4 toys per month (and plans go up from there). I don’t know about you, but with a minimum plan of 3 months or $108 total, I can get an awful lot of toys (especially baby toys) for that price. Again, I guess there is a market of some sort for this type of service, but the thought of rental toys just doesn’t work for me.

Scan-It Operation Checkpoint Toy XRay – Sure there are toys for kids that want to play doctor, be a veternarian, or be a princess, or a knight.   You can be a fireman (excuse me fire person), you can pretend to be many great things.  But up until now, if your child’s imagination had them in a place where they wanted to be an underpaid screener at the airport, there were no toys for them to simulate this career path… until now.  The Scan-It Operation Checkpoint allows you child to check for metal in their toys as the Scan-It will beep when metal passes through.  Who knows, perhaps with these kinds of toys, in another 10 or 15 years, maybe we will have people at the scanners that can actually do their job, and not slow you down.  But I doubt it.

Photobucket Faux Pas – The photo sharing site Photobucket ran into a heap of trouble with users, when they deleted pictures of diaper clad babies by Good Mama Diapers, as claimed it was because the pictures depicted ‘nudity’  They have since,  backed down and admitted it was their mistake.

Seen a dumb product (or an awesome one) that you think should be highlighted on TechParent (look for the new separate blog coming soon), e-mail it to me at jaymonster at the gmail dot com.

I was fortunate enough to be invited into the Beta of Hulu.com. It has received some media coverage, but for those that don’t know, Hulu is an online video service that offers hit TV shows, movies and clips at Hulu.com and other online destination sites. It is presently only available in the United States. It was started as a joint venture of NBC Universal and News Corp.

Yes, but what is Hulu? In simple terms Hulu is an online video service showing movies and television shows from FOX, NBC Universal, MGM, Sony Pictures Television, Warner Bros. and others. But most important to viewers is that the content is original and not some poorly done duplicate as it often the case on YouTube, the controls are strong (more on that shortly), and you can count on it being there because you are not depending on somebody violating copyrights to publish it. Best of all, Hulu is (at least at present) free.

No, Hulu does not (yet) offer content outside of some preview clips in HD, so if you want to pipe it through to your 1080p High Def television (I don’t yet own one myself), the experience may be a bit lacking, but for most others it will be much better than anything you are used to streaming over the Internet, as the shows are typically available in standard 360 and a 480 High Definition mode.

During the Beta phase, I was I must admit a bit unenthusiastic about Hulu, but that was mostly because I wasn’t seeing the content. There were more clips there than full shows or movies. and I was questioning how much NBC, Fox and their partners were actually going to put up in the way of real content. Well just prior to their March 12th launch, the content started really showing up, and the library while by no means complete (they really need to find a way to get ABC and CBS in the fold to get this to really take off), if there are shows you like (or liked in the past) the is a good chance that if they are from one of the current partners, you just might find it there.

But you are not stuck only viewing the shows and clips on the Hulu sight. As has become the norm since YouTube, you can also embed a video player with content right into your web site or blog. There is supposed to be a “social” feature to it, but that idea seems to be more a work in progress, as a present all you seem to be able to do it link it into MySpace (no shock there since News Corp owns MySpace), Facebook, Digg and a few others.  The queuing feature (ability to tag what movies you want to watch so you can find them easily later) also while functional seems a bit lacking, like they have a vision for what they want to do with it (I’m guessing a “if you like X, then you may also like Y type of thing), but for now it is just a functioning queue.

Working with the site is incredibly easy, the controls are intuitive, and the lag on my FIOS connection is almost non-existant sans a short delay if I skip a large block of the show.  You can pop the movie/show out of the browser into a new window, or even play it full screen.  At full screen on my laptop (running 1440 x 900) there was some pixilation on the standard 360 mode, but the movies that were available at the higher 480 appeared quite clean.

Of course, the big question is (or should be), is there advertising.  And the answer is yes.  There are commercials inserted into both the movies and the television shows.  But they were a single commercial which seemed to pop up somewhat randomly (perhaps because I haven’t watched for any long length of time yet, I have usually watched parts of a show or movie when I had a spare few minutes, so perhaps if I watched longer at one time, I would see a pattern (say every twenty minutes or so).  Since it was only a single commercial at a time and not a “block” of them as you normally see on network television, I found it much easier to tolerate while watching a movie or show. I had heard talk (but not from the company) about possible a premium edition that would allow you to watch without the commercials, but as I said, they are far less intrusive here since there isn’t a seemingly endless batch of them at one time.  A single commerical and back to the show, works well enough for me to stick with the free version.

In conclusion, Hulu still has some work to do, and still have some slightly rough edges.  But it is here now and far more functional than anything else out there right now.  This is no doubt the closest that the mainstream media outlets have come to getting new media and the Internet right.  For times that you need to watch something that is a litle more adult while your kids once again are dominating the television set with Disney or Nick jr, Hulu is a great way to get to watch some shows for yourself.  Thow on a headset, fire up that computer and watch your shows while they watch theirs.

Hulu is not going to take over your viewing completely, it is not quite ready for that… yet.  But it certainly is worth checking out.

I had much grander plans in delving into the specifics of Blu-Ray this week, but I ran into some stumbling blocks.  Namely, it is not as clear cut as I had originally anticipated.

Yes, the war is over and and Blu-Ray has defeated HD DVD.  But does that mean that it is time to rush out and get a Blu-Ray player?  The best answer at this point is… maybe.

Prices have come down on Blu-Ray players a bit, but now that there is no longer any competition from Toshiba and HD DVD, I suspect prices will start dropping a bit slower as we move forward.  Also, be warned of a Blu-Ray trap.  Unlike HD DVD, Blu-Ray was fully “cooked” when it first came to market.  There are several models of Blu-Ray players on the market that appear (relatively) cheaper than most models.  Those are the version 1.0 machines.  Version 1.1 is already out and version 2.0 is due very soon.  (Version 2.0 players will have Ethernet connectivity, allowing future updates to be downloaded to the device, much like the PS3, but more on that in a moment).

Unlike when the “switchover” from VHS to DVD took place, where for a time the DVDs actually cost LESS to entice people to make the switch, at this point you will pay a premium for Blu-Ray discs.  I am not saying they are not worth a premium (but DVDs were certainly worth a premium over the quality of VHS as well, and that had no bearing on price).

Now please bear in mind, the point of this is for those sitting on the fence, for those that are trying to find the best balance of value for the money.  If you can afford to drop the cash on a Blu-Ray player, I am not saying you absolutely shouldn’t (well, with the exception of the 1.0 outdated players).

But at this point, I don’t yet see the real value, and would  tell most people to hold off for now.  The only exception being, if you are looking to go the Blu-Ray format by picking up a PlayStation 3.  Then it probably makes sense.  You get the added benefit of having the gaming console, plus it is already Network ready, so you can get updates for it when the Blu-Ray 2.0 specification is completed without obsoleting your unit.

On a side note, if you say, have a Flat Screen TV and would really like to see some benefit, here is a neat little trick you can consider while waiting for Blu-Ray players to come down in price.  Look for one of the now on sale and quite cheap HD DVD players that are on fire sale everywhere now.  For somewhere around $79 or maybe even less by now, you can buy the HD DVD play which will “upconvert” your DVDs  (in simple terms, upconverting takes your 480i DVD and plays it at 720p or 1080i). Will it be the same as getting Blu-Ray?  No, but you can use your existing DVDs and get a better experience, while waiting for Blu-Ray to come out with the 2.0 spec and the price of the players to drop (because you know sooner or later they will.)

At this point, my bet is that it will around Xmas time when the studios are going to want to see a profit and start leaning on the Sony and other hardware makers to start pushing down prices.  I’ll even bet that this year on Black Friday, it will be the Blu-Ray player and not that cheap PC that lures people to wait on line all night to rush in for a bargain.

The time to make the move to Blu-Ray may be coming, but it isn’t here… yet (except for PS3).

OK, so your kid wants a new game for their PS3 (Xbox360, Wii, PS2, GameCube, etc). Check out WhatTheyPlay.com. Sure there are plenty of sites out there that give you information about games, what is good, what is hot and what is not. But that is not what this site is about.

WhatTheyPlay tells you in plain English what the ESRB categories are (for those that don’t already know), and some of the explainations that go along with it, so that you can get enough unbiased information to make your own decision, because honestly, while the ESRB ratings are generally a good guideline, there are some areas that are a bit murky, such as some of the warnings about things like “Alcohol References.”

What exactly does “Alcohol References” mean? After all, you may not want you kids playing a game that glorifies drinking, right? And based solely on the box, with other point of reference, even though the rating may be right, that “Alcohol Reference” may give you pause, because there is no way of knowing. And this is where WhatTheyPlay comes in. Now a couple of examples from the site that I have seen include the games, DiRT a rally game, and Cooking Mama: Cook Off. Both of these games have “Alcohol Reference” listed on the box. But according to the site, DiRT’s only alcohol reference is your passenger mentioning “cracking open the champagne” when you win, and Cooking Mama mentions cooking with wine. Obviously not what most people thing of as “Alcohol References” in a game.

There is also an “Ask GamerDad” column, where you ca read questions and answers from other parents, or you can ask GamerDad a question of your own. The Site not only covers the PS3, Xbox360 and Wii, it also covers the PS2, Gamecube, PC and Macintosh as well as the handheld games like GameBoy Advanced, Nintendo DS, and the Playstation Portable. If you want to find out “What is hot and what is not” go to someplace like 1up.com. But for information to make your own decision on titles you may or may not wish your children to play. Don’t depend on gossip around the water cooler about who got there kids what game, and whether or not it was appropriate, check out WhatTheyPlay.com and get the facts you need to decide for yourself.

While, this came off more like an advertisement than I intended, this is not some PayPerPost type promotion. Matter of fact, there is no advertising here at all from WhatTheyPlay at all. I was just that impressed with the whole idea, it is an excellent tool for parents.

I can make no guaratees as time (as previously mentioned) has been at a premium, but it has been my long standing (and hopefully now coming to fruition) idea to start a Tech Tuesday for Parents. Next Tuesday, I am currently looking at posting some information and doing some research on Blu Ray now that the format war is over. If you have any questions you would like answered, or information on a particular Blu Ray product, drop me a note over at JayMonster and that is at Google’s Gmail with a dot com ending (just let me see a screen scraper try to harvest that!)