If you've been reading my blog within the past few months, you've probably noticed I've been on a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) kick.  While a big part of this is to increase search engine ranking and traffic, the other part is to increase the quality of the site.  If google likes your site, people probably will too.  To some of you this may seem a little odd, but it's true.  I won't go into the details in this article, but google has a lot of features in its algorithms that make sure your site is as search engine popular as it is socially popular.

I saw this in the mall the other day and I thought it was one of the most ridiculous things I've seen in a long time.  Yes, it is an iPod vending machine.  You swipe your credit card and punch in the number of the item you want. I really don't have much to say about it, but I wanted to share it with everyone.

[See Picture Below]

I am trying to find a simple solution that will allow me to upload and play videos on my website in a format similar to google video or YouTube, but it doesn't look like there's really anything good out right now that does that.  The closest thing I've found is to convert the video to flash (flv) on a local computer, then upload the file to my webserver, then play that back with an FLV player.

I've attached a sample video below so you can see how Riva's encoder performs.  It's really crappy in my opinion, so I may just go back to using Google Video / YouTube.  The original video was taken with my Cell Phone at 640 x 480 resolution in 3G2 format. It was approximately 250kb in size.  I had the Riva encode shrink it down to 320 x 240 and somehow the video quality got worse (blockiness) and the size of the file went up to nearly 1 MB.

I just went through another round of buying toys and I’m not sure I’m quite done yet.  My most recent purchases include yet another large hard drive (500 gig), next-gen game console, speaker wire, and more.  

The Xbox 360 Elite edition recently came out and I had been eyeing it for a while leading up to it’s release.  It’s very similar to the Xbox 360 Premium edition, but it adds an HDMI port, black finish, and larger (120 gig) hard-drive. There are a number of reasons I decided to take the plunge and get one.  I’m not really a true “gamer” by nature, but I am interested in console modding / hacking.  My current Xbox 1 is the pinnacle of my home theater and entertainment system.  It’s modified to run “homebrew” software, copied games, and emulate older consoles. It currently has a piece of software on it called Xbox Media Center (XBMC), which serves as a dashboard from which I can launch other applications, games, and widgets or play movies, music, and pictures. I really should post an article about this to describe in more detail what it does, but for now I’ll leave it at that.

That being said, the Xbox 360 really didn’t excel at any of the things that my Xbox 1 did once it was modified.  However, the in-game graphics and technology inside the console are what really did me in. I said I’m not really a gamer, but if you know me you know I love technology and high-resolution video/graphics.  I recently bought a 56” 1080p TV and now that the Xbox 360 includes an HDMI output, I thought it would match up well.  On top of that, all my home-theater equipment is black so the console will match much better than the standard white version.  The fact that they threw in a larger hard-drive was just an added bonus.  I really have no need for it now – I already have around 2 TB (terabytes) of storage capacity on my network – but in the event that the Xbox 360 is modified to allow homebrew apps I’ll be happy the storage space is there.

Since I moved to my new apartment, the complete home-theater experience has been lacking in one area – completing my surround sound.  I have a 1000 watt 7.1 setup powered by an Onkyo high-current amp, but I only have 2 speakers and the sub hooked up at the time.  The way I laid out the apartment wasn’t really accommodating for the complete system, but I finally decided to buy the tools I needed to complete the job.  Laura has been doing some decorating and I now have a great place to hide the two rear speakers out of the way. I bought some Acoustic Research PR362 flat, white speaker wire to run to the rear locations and a fishing tool to get the wire where I need it.  I still don’t have a good location for the rear center speakers, but for the time being 5.1 will have to do. Attached is a diagram of what a 7.1 setup looks like.