Chromecast

Last night; I sent +Joe Totten to Big Flats after work (in Rochester) to pick up a Chromecast from the nearest Best Buy store.  It added an extra two hours to his drive time, but he did it.  He then came home and set it up (upsetting because I missed that part).

Based on what I was told by my other half about set up, what I have witnessed for myself, and what I have seen others saying so far; this is Definitely worth the $35 price tag.  Very simple set-up; you plug it into the back of the TV, and there is minimal set up after that. Chromecast has awesome Wi-Fi connectivity (I value this especially because the Wi-Fi our router provides is constantly disappointing with EVERY other device in our home), Not even once did it need to stop and buffer once we got our router to play nice (I did say it was crappy Wi-Fi right?).

A note of contention has come up in relation to restrictions on the API; however I find myself in a position where I am able to understand this to at least some extent, and others seem to have an optomistic view as well, in this case, it's Gabe Stein of fastcolabs.com .  Another slight upset was the fear that we wouldn't be able to stream personal content through it, but this concern has been assuaged by Kellex over at Droid-life.com.

As we only bought it yesterday; it's likely that I will have more insight into this amazingly affordable and small device, but for now I'm giving it the "Tottenmom Stamp of Approval".

NOTE We have been able to use the usb port on the back of our tv to power the chromecast also making it self contained essentially. 

Pinterest

So; I finally relented and decided to give Pinterest a shot.  I will now admit that I was wrong in my assumption that it would be terrible.  In fact; I can easily admit to being in love.  If only it were friends with Google+!  I absolutely despise how every app seems to be friendly with FaceBook, a social networking site which I never have trusted to protect my privacy.  I pinned so much stuff since yesterday; and it really does make holding onto things like cool ideas, websites, images, etc easy.   So, yes.  I am on Pinterest now...  *sigh*  and now that I feel super guilty now that I have not been using some of the other things I've downloaded...  yeah; time to see what I'm missing with some of those things as well.

Oh boy Google, the inner Geek is not impressed at all this time.

While I was extremely pleased that I received the most recent update to Gmail before my husband did; I find myself still thinking on day 3, how much I still dislike what they've done.

I can see the direction they're going with it, I just prefer to decide what emails go where.  I believe I have expressed my love with Altomail already.  The latest Gmail has tabs which at first glance seem to do the same thing Alto does with "stacks".  The new tabs are pre-set in nature.  You have the option of which to use; however not the option for custom tabs.  I personally find that it is much easier to keep my Ingress related emails separate from my Amazon emails, simply because Amazon is shopping, and Ingress can be a life consuming game if you let it.

I can't say that I was particularly fond of the previous "upgrade" either.  I hold those colorful letters in absolute disdain; rather than simplifying my inbox Google made it more complex, and also continues to give iOS users the mobile app which frankly is better than it's Android "twin".  

Recent events!

1. Tottenmom79 is now a Level 8 Agent of the Resistance. 
2. I have posted my resume for public consumption
3. I have given some thought to teaching myself to "spin" and the idea of raising some angora bunnies to supplement that is really tempting!
4. Soon I'll think of some more tech-related things to post about; and maybe be able to stop having dreams about blowing up every Enlightened portal I see on the Intel map.

That's it for now in a nutshell; I do have invites for Ingress (which is STILL in Beta btw) if anybody needs one!

Alto is missing only one thing

Alto is missing only one thing that would eclipse my use of Gmail as an actual client for viewing my emails.  Today, Google+ was giving me a hard time.  The chat function simply was not working, for whatever reason and this meant that in order to continue my daily here and there conversations with my husband I needed to have Gmail open.  This royally bites especially since I'm trying to give Altomail a real chance.  I have to say; I am a visual person, and I learn by doing best.  That translates to Alto being a really good fit for me; allowing me to organize without creating filters (I hate that process, and it doesn't matter if it's Yahoo! or Gmail, it still sucks) I love the different "view" options in stacks.  Stacks are my friend, they do what I tell them to do, they let me make changes quickly, and they let me create new stacks simply by dragging from my inbox.
I don't need to search through my messages, or watch a huge list of folders...  Yesterday I posted about muffins, and chocolate.  Alto is to email what cocoa powder does for boxed muffin mix (especially the apple cinnamon kind)

Please find more cool stuff for me to try, or be prepared for random content.

MUFFINS

Alright, so this is monumental if you like muffins and chocolate (and even better if you like chocolate muffins)!  I have discovered this week, that making chocolate muffins really only requires a few things.

• Cocoa
• A box of muffin mix (any kind but corn probably wouldn't taste so good)
• The stuff it says you need on the box

All you have to do is add a couple teaspoons/tablespoons of cocoa to the dry mixture, and then follow the rest of the directions on the box.  You can add as much as you want, but I try to keep it so that I put just enough in to make it look that chocolatey brown color.

Had to share that, and so far it's great with apple cinnamon AND banana mix.  kthxbai

Email, email, more email

Believe it or not; I remember life before the internet.  My parents didn't have a computer for me to even do word processing on before I got to my sophmore year in highschool.  I didn't have a home internet connection until I was 21, married, and living in Vermont with our baby girl.  I had the privilege of skipping right over dial-up for the most part, and diving right into a cable internet connection.  email was easy, Yahoo! was where all my friends from NY were on.  I could chat with them, receive countless stupid joke emails that my husband had already seen from his friends at work.  Then I switched to Gmail, I gave up trying to fight Spam in my inbox.  I didn't care about enhancing the size of anything, I didn't want to help someone steal money from Nigeria, and I managed to push my friends in the right direction over time.

Nowadays, I still get the equivalent of a metric ton of email on a daily basis.  Gmail has not been as effective at helping me keep things neat and tidy the way I like them, even while it keeps Spam out with phenomenal success.    Given an invite to Alto, I thought I would set it up and see how I liked it.  I am open to suggestions of other clients that will try to make my Gmail experience better, so if you know of any, please let me know in the comments here or on Google+, and I'll try and share my thoughts and feelings on all of them (after trying them out of course).  I'd love to have one that also has an Android app available, but it's not a requirement, since I don't do much email "reading" on my phone, as much as just checking to see how important it is at the time.

Time to try and get some homework done for school now, leave your thoughts and suggestions below and try to have a good day!