Happy New Year!

Hey Folks! I hope you all had as nice as a New Years Eve as our family did.  It was really nice and we spent some good times with our neighbors and met a lot of nice people.  The kids had fun and even though I slept in, I feel pretty good.

Chinese TV

Today, I am going to finish helping my Chinese mother-in-law set up a Medialounge device on her TV.  You see, she bought this rather cool set top box that was a wireless media extender but was pre-programmed to go out and get Chinese content on her TV.  She would like to watch this on her TV while she did her treadmill, Lose Weight Exercise bike, etc.  She doesn’t want to watch it on her computer monitor.

We got it set up and I was pretty impressed.  I can’t read Chinese but it did look like it was going to be great.  What she found out was, they get you hooked and then literally nickel and dime you to death.  The first shows are free, then $.10, then $.50, and so on.  She sent it back, but wished we could do something else.

D-link DPG-1200

We had a family trip to our local Fry’s and we were trying to figure out how to get the Chinese content off her PC onto her TV.   Sure, Fry’s had a ton of the wireless media players, but they were expensive.  They had two open boxes for the D-Link DPG-1200.  I scanned the barcode with my Google G1 and found that the price was right but had a really hard time finding any reviews.

I brought it home to set it up and was impressed.   Now this is no original XBOX with XBMC on it, but it would do fine for our needs.

Wireless Woes

What I didn’t plan on was that her PC is hooked up wireless as well as the DPG-1200.  The DPG-1200 could get content from the Internet just fine, but watching content off of her PC sucked bad.  I’m guessing it had to do with both devices being connected to the LAN wirelessly.

So the plan is when we go over there, will run Cat5 cable through the walls.  This is always a slippery slope.

My thoughts on the Dlink DPG-1200

Honestly, I like DPG-1200, but I will admit the set up was very complex.  I don’t think the less tech savvy crowd would have hung with it as much as I did.   Additionally, there is almost zero documentation on what to expect with the device.  Someone who never had a device like this would be like, “Okay, now what?”

I can’t even tell if it supports uPNP, but that’s just me.  For my mother-in-law, I think she’ll be happy but if she didn’t have me around to help, I think she would have disappointed and frustrated.

I’ll keep you posted on how it goes today.

olympics

I really intended to post my review about my new TomTom tonight, but I’ve been overwhelmed by the olympic’s opening ceremony.  I’ll have to do it another night.

I really enjoyed reading all the Tweets tonight about the open ceremony.  Everyone is so impressed and it was cool reading them in real time, (more or less).  We’re lucky to be watching it in HD and on a 47″ tv.  I am however frustrated by the amount of commercials.  I did see, that someone already posted a torrent of the entire ceremony in HD.  I might need to grab that.

I like how they are calling the U.S. basketball team, “The Redeam Team.”  Chumps.  I read that in Europe, basketball has become huge.  Instead of European basketball players being focused on hot-dogging and endorsements, they are focues on the fundementals, technique, and skill.  We’ll see who wins.  I’m no expert, but I predict the U.S. will get spanked by the Europeans in basketball.

see me for who I am; how can I help?

I had a hard time coming up with a title for this post. I wanted to have something clever but not sound cliché, so I decided to start writing can see it something came up.

It’s always funny where inspiration comes from. It can hit you when you least expect it. It can be that little glow of an ember that could ignite into something wonderful, but only if you give it those first few flames of air. I’ve posted in the past about some really great TV shows on the BBC. I don’t watch BBC America often but every once in a while I’ll find something that I get a kick out of. I’m sure you’ve also heard how the BBC comes up with a great show and here in the U.S. they’ll try to copy it and just don’t do it right. There are plenty of examples; Who’s Line is it Anyways?, Coupling, Weakest Link, Who Wants to be Millionaire, The Office, and I am sure there are others.

We just started watching “Last Restaurant Standing.” We had three episodes on Tivo from last season. It’s really an interesting show. Surely you are aware of “Top Chef.” Top Chef on its own accord is pretty cool, but “Last Restaurant Standing” is sort of like ‘multi-dimensional chess” in comparison. The premise is that one of England’s most predominate chef and restaurateur, Raymond Blanc, is looking to partner with a couple to open a restaurant. Nine couples are given a restaurant to run, (none of them have any experience running a restaurant), and are given direction from the chef. The winner of the weekly change is given immunity and the rest of the couples face some sort of elimination challenge. The winning couple is split up and offers help to the remaining competing teams.

The last two episodes were around identifying and strengthing the restaurants’ brand.  Last week, each couple was given simple directions to “develop a brand” and then set up.  It was interesting to see how each couple went about what they each thought what was “their” brand and how to establish it.  Most of them floundered, most of them had a really hard time with this excersice.  And with this, I found myself relating.

The next episode they were given more clarification on what or how to identify their brand;

What excites you? What is your passion? What do you believe in?  That is your brand, and that is what you must do.  You must make other people, your customers understand and identify with your brand!

I’ve heard it before, this is nothing new.  But the difference here was seeing the people in the hot seat and how they reacted to this.  It was like they were too close to it to realize it.  Each contestant had that moment where they said, “Oh! I get it!”

It was at this time, I had a realization.  No, I didn’t realize what my brand was.  I think I have a good handle on that, (don’t get me wrong, it did take some time to get there).  What I realized was that manybe I wasn’t doing enough to promote what my brand was.   Some of the contestants had really clever and innovative ideas on how to promote their brands.  I would have not thought of them, but what I did find myself having, and this was like getting hit with a ton of bricks, was the permission to try really different things.  I’m talking about stepping out of my comfort zone.

One thing is clear, is that you have to have a personal brand. I saw something on a new blog I started reading, Wirelessjobs.com.  It referred to the 95% rule.  Whenever you are at a networking event, see and hear what 95% of the people are doing.    Then, do the opposite.  If you are in the 5% minority, you are sure to get noticed.