5 Jan 2011

Unboxing of Polk Audio f/x Wireless Surround (A 25 day review)

Day Nine

01/13/11

RMA requested. Unfortunately, at the end of the day the Cons won over the Pros. I'll be going back to a wired setup and concealing the wires under the area rug for now. Not being able to take advantage of my Audyssey settings on my Denon was a major drawback. Low volume performance was very bad. Strange test noise patterns also proved to be very distracting. Popping and cracking didn't help either.

BUT, when it was working it created a great surround environment. Really felt like i had 4 speakers back there. I'll be moving towards the Polk Audio Blackstones TL2 models with some Sanus stands. I'm saving some money and will get consistent performance. And i'll be able to run my Audyssey setup once again.

If you have any questions or want to know more information feel free to contact me or comment on this post. 

Day Eight

01/12/11

Polk Audio f/x Wireless Surround has been repacked and is ready to be shipped back.

Day Seven

01/11/11

Verizon has the iPhone. I still have constant disconnects and strange noises coming out of the f/x wireless surround. Already on the hunt for my replacement speakers. Luckily for Polk Audio i still love their speakers. I know the wireless world of speakers has yet to be solved but unfortunately it hasn't happened yet. I'm thinking of going for the Polk FXi A4 with some speaker stands. Will keep you posted.

Day Six

01/10/11

I've reached the conclusion that i should start looking for another alternative. I'm about to just install speakers on the ceiling and run the wires to them. It's really the only reliable thing to do. Let's see how it goes.

Day Five

01/09/11

Same update really. The ease of installation is the only thing that is keeping me with this thing.
Performs great at high volumes.

Day Four

01/08/11

f/x wireless surround keeps cracking and popping. strange digital sounds occur every now and then. seems like a self-test mechanism. Forget about using this in low volume.. it's just not reliable. The receiver needs to be set at about -30dB in order for things to be operating normally. At least for Gran Turismo 5 this is a bit loud for an apartment.

but again i must say, when it's working, it works great. feels like 7.1 surround for sure.

but the crackle pop is driving me crazy.

Day Three

01/07/11

Things are getting better between me and my f/x wireless surround. 

I've moved her back to the rear wall about 10' from the main listening position. Still tweaking the channel levels and also hit a stump figuring out what channel frequency should be the setting for the f/x.

The disconnects have been much less frequent and the unit successfuly resyncs when my home entertainment is turned on. The device is somewhat "smart" as to knowing when to turn on. Although, one caveat is when the devices turns off and turns on again and syncs, it makes a very unpleasant static noise that can startle the usual relaxing person on a couch. or a cat even.

Any suggestions on crossover frequency for this bad boy feel free to share. Gonna do some searching now.

Enjoying a nice surround of The Hurt Locker. Gran Turismo 5 sounds nice too.

 

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27 Oct 2010

Alfred Shortcuts

Alfred-shortcuts


Best Regards,
Robert

24 Oct 2010

RBR420 Red Bull Racing

(download)

- Robert

24 Oct 2010

White Wolf and hot sauce

(download)

- Robert

21 Jul 2010

My green bumper for iPhone 4

Photo

- Robert

15 Jul 2010

Old bars vs new bars / iPhone 4

(download)

- Robert

6 May 2010

Six Things You Need to Know About Facebook Connections | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Six Things You Need to Know About Facebook Connections

Commentary by Kurt Opsahl

"Connections." It's an innocent-sounding word. But it's at the heart of some of the worst of Facebook's recent changes.

Facebook first announced Connections a few weeks ago, and EFF quickly wrote at length about the problems they created. Basically, Facebook has transformed substantial personal information — including your hometown, education, work history, interests, and activities — into "Connections." This allows far more people than ever before to see this information, regardless of whether you want them to.

Since then, our email inbox has been flooded with confused questions and reports about these changes. We've learned lots more about everyone's concerns and experiences. Drawing from this, here are six things you need to know about Connections:

  1. Facebook will not let you share any of this information without using Connections. You cannot opt-out of Connections. If you refuse to play ball, Facebook will remove all unlinked information from your profile.

  2. Facebook will not respect your old privacy settings in this transition. For example, if you had previously sought to share your Interests with "Only Friends," Facebook will now ignore this and share your Connections with "Everyone."

  3. Facebook has removed your ability to restrict its use of this information. The new privacy controls only affect your information's "Visibility," not whether it is "publicly available."

    Explaining what "publicly available" means, Facebook writes:

    "Such information may, for example, be accessed by everyone on the Internet (including people not logged into Facebook), be indexed by third party search engines, and be imported, exported, distributed, and redistributed by us and others without privacy limitations."

  4. Facebook will continue to store and use your Connections even after you delete them. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they're not there. Even after you "delete" profile information, Facebook will remember it. We've also received reports that Facebook continues to use deleted profile information to help people find you through Facebook's search engine.

  5. Facebook sometimes creates a Connection when you "Like" something. That "Like" button you see all over Facebook, and now all over the web? It too can sometimes add a Connection to your profile, without you even knowing it.

  6. Your posts may show up on a Connection page even if you do not opt in to the Connection. If you use the name of a Connection in a post on your wall, it may show up on the Connection page, without you even knowing it. (For example, if you use the word "FBI" in a post).

You can send Facebook your comments on the new Connections here.

Updated, May 5: We changed Item #6 to clarify how Facebook uses your post.

Related Issues: Social Networks

[Permalink]

via eff.org

6 May 2010

Google's new threads in detail.

via The Official Google Blog by A Googler on 5/6/10

This week we introduced our latest update to search, and I wanted to share a bit of our thinking on the design team. In short, we tried to take all the things we strive for at Google and make them better: powerful technology, snappy results, simplicity and a fun and quirky personality. Our goal was to take a design known by millions of people and make it better. As a designer, it’s hard to think of a more exciting challenge.

During our process we focused on people’s rising expectations for search. As the web has evolved over the past decade, people have been typing more sophisticated searches and seeking out specialized search tools to match. To keep pace with rapid change online, we have teams of engineers working across Google to develop new ways to present and refine search results. Our central challenge with our latest redesign was to figure out how to squeeze all these tools and technologies into a single page.

A common way to expand the flexibility of a website has been to add a left-hand panel of links, often referred to by designers as a “left-hand nav.” We’ve been creating mocks of left-hand panels since the earliest days of Google and have tested these designs with users as far back as 2006. Overall, we’ve found they can provide a great way to navigate without getting in the way of the main content, but they can also be distracting. Our users want more powerful tools, but they also want the simplicity they’ve come to expect from Google.

As a first step towards finding that balance, we introduced the Search Options panel last May, including a toggle to open and close. This way we could quickly try out new search tools, such as refinements by time and content types. Using the lessons from Search Options, designers, researchers and engineers worked side-by-side to explore a vast array of possibilities for a permanently open panel of search tools. We made hundreds of prototypes and gathered feedback from user studies, Googlers and through experiments — including one of our largest visible experiments ever. In the end, we came up with a design that provides dynamic, relevant search tools on the left, while lightening and updating the aesthetics all around. Here’s a picture of the Search Options panel (left) and our new results page (right):



We knew that adding a left-hand panel would inevitably add some weight to the results page, so we took a number of steps to lighten other aspects of the design. The overall visual redesign started with the Google logo. Here’s an image comparing the old logo (top) and the new logo (bottom):
The new logo is lighter, brighter and simpler. We took the very best qualities of our design — personality and playfulness — and distilled them. The logo was the foundation for new icons and hundreds of tiny alterations designed to accommodate and seamlessly integrate the expanded functionality of the left-hand panel. For example, we lightened up the footer at the bottom of the page by removing the blue shading and the underlines on the links, lightening the color and expanding the search box. Here’s a picture of the old footer (top) compared with the new (bottom):

While I’m very happy about our latest improvements, a designer's work is never done. We’re already testing additional refinements and we'll continue to listen to all of you as we work to continue making search better.

If you’re curious, here are some of the other design prototypes we tried (you might have to click to magnify some of these images):

  1. Blue homepage: We’ve always had a strong affinity for blue — after all, blue is usually the color of web links, so it binds the web together. It became the basis for many designs.
  2. Blue button: The big blue button made it all the way to our first external experiment, where it was promptly rejected by users. We heard you loud and clear and changed the button in the next round.
  3. Universal bars: This design emphasizes different types of results with labeled blocks in the main results pane, such as books, news and shopping.
  4. Blue results: This is one of the final blue designs we created and marks the point when we renamed the "Web" link to "Everything" — a label that gets closer to the intent of our mission to organize all the world’s information.
Posted by Jon Wiley, Senior User Experience Designer

6 May 2010

chrome fast.. how fast?

via Tabtablog. on 5/5/10


Beautifully shot. Beautifully edited. Beautifully sound-design-ed.
Love that Google is continuing to find interesting methods of making the web & technology feel organic. Bravo.

Here's a behind-the-scenes look at how it was done.


Permalink | Leave a comment  »

30 Apr 2010

UP THERE... a dying artform ( like so many these days )

via Hypebeast by Edward Chiu on 4/29/10

Shot high above the streets of New York City, UP THERE reveals the dying craft of large-scale hand painted advertising and the in-told story of the painters struggling to keep it alive. Capturing a trade that is equal parts artistic precision and grueling labor, the film presents a painting tradition pre-dating modern advertising. A craft that today finds itself dangling precariously on the brink of extinction. UP THERE is directed by Malcolm Murray, based on an original concept by Mother. It is produced by Mekanism with music by the Album Leaf. Enjoy!

Source: ONEEIGHTNINE

© edwardchiu for Hypebeast, 2010. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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Rob Meireles's Space

just another space to collect research items. the content gathered here is probably used for inspiration or reference for a current project or past project that i've worked on.

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