1TO10REVIEWS

My Review: 5

Google either dropped or lost IMAP support today.  Techcrunch’s Mark Hendrickson reported it here.

Now it’s back up - it seems to look fine and work fine.

It’s lame that it failed and/or went down and / or was taken away - lots of businesses rely on it.

It’s good that it is working now and seems as though it’s going to stay there.  If it was a bug then it’s weird that it actually disapperaed from the settings tab itself (as opposed to simply not working.)

But, since it’s there now and appears to be working, we’ll just call it a 5 and keep an even keel. 

My Review: 10

OK, so maybe it’s biased to give your friend’s blog a high rating just because they’re your friend. But I don’t really care.  Shaan writes a cool blog, and you should read it. And then go watch the movie he recommended, because it sounds awesome.

Yum.

My Review: 8

In 1996, my first year of college, the musical RENT, by Jonathon Larson, came out on Broadway in New York.  I was lucky enough to go see it with my friends David Neufeld and Aliza Etlin nee Katz.

I loved this show.  I saw it in New York that year, and then again in San Diego two years later, with Neil Patrick Harris (go Doogie / Barney) playing the role of Mark, one of the lead characters.  He was great.

I think the music, the dialog, and the message in this play are outstanding.  Seasons of Love is an amazing song, just one of many throughout the play.  My friends may make fun of me for writing a post expressing my appreciation for (and love of) this play, but I can take it.  RENT gets an 8, and it’s worth every point.

My Review: 9

I first read about Hulu, as usual, on Techcrunch. I also go my invite to the private Hulu beta back in January by reading an article Mark Hendrickson wrote for Techcrunch.  Many people across the blogosphere have now written about Hulu, largely with good things to say.   I don’t plan to be unique in this instance - I have good things to say too.  Below is a brisk, bulleted battery of reasons why I think Hulu is excellent and likely to be a winner in this space.  Note to developers and Hulu competitors: most of my likes have to do with, you guessed it, user experience.  Try to keep up.

• Hulu has lots of good content, most importantly: full length movies as well as TV shows
• Great selections from multiple networks (Fox, NBC, etc.)
• Fun, old school TV content as well as new / popular content: lots of old school shows like Battlestar Galactica (the original), Knight Rider, and Flipper
• Incredible Selection of full length movies
• User Interface and User Experience:
  • The in screen player shows video in very high quality
  • There is a full screen mode, still very good quality
  • There is a pop-out player, so you can arrange your desktop as you like - the pop-out size is adjustable
  • Outstanding memory features: I watched 1 1/2 hours of a movie, and then had to close my computer.  I came back the next day and as soon as I logged into Hulu, it the movie restarted from the exact same spot where I had stopped
• Queues and Favorites - you can easily set up a list of favorites or shows / movies that you want to watch

The site is clean, easy to navigate, and well thought out.  There are some basic social features, for instance you can set up a profile with your favorite shows, movie, books and music.  And you can rate content as you watch it, and see feedback from other users.  I’ve used many other video sites before, like Veoh, Daily Motion,  and obviously YouTube.  None of them even come close to Hulu in terms of content variety, content quality, or user experience.  Huge thumbs up and a resounding 9 out of 10.

This get’s a 1 out of 10.

I found it here. Brutal.

My Review: 10

My friend Allison (not my wife) likes to use the phrase “on a scale
of 1 to 10″ in unusual ways.  Rather than finishing the sentence with a
number (like 3 for instance) she’ll say something like: “on a scale of
1 to 10 that’s awesome.”  Or: “on a scale of 1 to 10  this sucks.”

I think it’s brilliant, and on a scale of 1 to 10  she’s fabulous.

My Review: 8

Disclaimer: I work with kwiry.

kwiry is a reminder service. Imagine you are on the bus, or at a restaurant with a friend, and you see or hear about… something. It might be a book, or anew movie, or a new album by Jimi Hendrix (even though he’s been dead for 38 years…) You know this is something you want to check out, but you will probably forget about it by the time you get home again. kwiry lets you send a text message about the movie/book/album/whatever and stores that message for you online, and sends you an email. That way, when you get home with a keyboard and a monitor at your disposal, you get your reminder email and you can check out said movie/book/album/whatever. In addition to the email reminder, kwiry also delivers search results (Yahoo!, Amazon, iTunes, etc.) on your kwiry.

Some people might raise objections: why not just send yourself an email directly with your smart phone?, or using the memo pad function on your phone? But not all phones do email. And you still need to remember to look at your memo pad when you get home. But all cell phones do text messaging, and most people have their cell phones with them all the time. kwiry took the least common denominator (texting) for the most number of people (mobile phone users in America) and created a useful service.

One of the things I like most about kwiry, aside from emailed reminders and search results, is the centralized list of ALL my reminders. Post it notes get thrown away. The tasks I put in my calendar (pay the bills, pick up the Hanukkah bush, etc.) get lost in the shuffle. I think it’s neat (and useful) to have a centralized list of all the little notes to myself that I wanted to remember - these are things I can look at weeks or months after the fact.

I tagged this under the gadgets category, even though it’s a website. I did that becasue it’s useful, and I use it with my phone most of the time. In my mind that makes it (sort of) a gadget. I think kwiry is a cool service, and it’s free. Even though I work with kwiry to promote the service, I still find myself using it on a regular basis, for my own personal needs. And I’m a fan of kwiry on Facebook.

In spite of any potential conflict of interest, I independently find kwiry useful. That’s high praise compared with most of the web 2.0 garbage that I see, take note of, and then promptly disregard as unnecessary. kwiry gets an 8 out of 10; it helps me remember things on a daily basis.

My Review:9

A couple of years ago I bought a knife made in Italy, an automatic. This particular one does not have a button to eject the blade. Rather, it is a style known as a “scale release” knife.

On a folding knife (one that does not have a fixed blade) there are usually two sides to the handle, known as scales. Typically the blade folds down in between those scales. A scale release knife is an automatic (or switchblade) knife that allows you to release the blade by sliding the two scales in opposite directions. See the video below for a demonstration:

My close friend and mentor Earl had a knife like this, and I always thought it was the bee’s knees. His was given to him by a friend, and I only got to play with it about once a week. Eventually, with much painstaking research, I finally figured out where I could get one for myself. A company called: AB Coltellerie. (UPDATE: There is an newer website up, owned by the same group: http://www.skmknives.com/ - it stands for Switchblade Knife Makers)

Here are the dimensions:

• Handle: Silver Satin Anodized Aluminum
• Blade length: 3″½
• Length of closed knife: 4″
• Bolsters: None

AB Coltellerie is an Italian knife company located in Maniago, Italy. They are willing to ship to the United States, but be aware that switchblade knives are illegal to buy and sell in most states. I love this knife, though I do wish there had been an option to have a pocket clip on it. Not having a pocket clip makes it difficult to conveniently carry around.

The quality of craftsmanship and materials is impeccable. The aluminum is finley machined and the knife feels solid and comfortable in the hand. The curve of the blade is nicely elegant for a drop point blade. The spring behind the blade is powerful, and after 3 years of semi-regular use there is no discernible change or decline in its strength. I expect to get a lifetime of good service out of the knife.

Truthfully it is probably not a good knife for everyday carry. But it is a fun knife to use, and it has such a neat and unusual mechanism for opening. Those factors, plus the high quality and beauty of the knife make it a very solid 9 for me.

My Review: An 8. Or a 2.

I so often feel as though this cartoon embodies my life.

That makes me both happy and depressed. Generally I have to just smile my Jim Halpert smile and shrug my shoulders.

An 8. Or a 2. I still can’t decide.

My Review: 3

I tagged this under Web 2.0, but really this a very Web 1.0 site and issue. I just tried logging into my online account for my credit card, provided by U.S. Bank. I got a message that said: “Internet Banking is experiencing high traffic volumes at this time. Please try again later.”

That is not acceptable. U.S. Bank is a major financial institution with millions of customers. They ought to be able to scale their servers well enough to deal with my traffic. It is not acceptable that I can’t check my credit card balance anytime I want, not in the year 2008. These are the kinds of FUBAR’s that cost companies their customers.

U.S. Bank’s website gets a 3 today, and they barely deserve that.

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UPDATE:

I have to say that as annoyed as I was with US Bank, I was not expecting much in the way of a response.  But I was pleasantly surprised and impressed.  I sent the tech support an email with my post, and I heard a prompt response:

“I apologize for any misunderstanding or inconvenience regarding this issue.  We are not aware
of high traffic issues on our website over this last weekend.  Your browser may have stored an
incorrect shortcut in its temporary internet files (cache).  Please clear your cache, delete any
bookmarks or favorites for www.usbank.com, close out of your computer and manually type in our
web address to log on with your current Personal ID and Password...”

The response goes on for literally 2 pages after that.  Their answer did not at all satisfy my issue.  I know that it was not a stored cookie issue, or anything of the sort.  I still think it’s ridiculous to have the site be unavailable, and because that is inexcusable, I am not revising my rating.

Nevertheless, this lengthy and timely response was more and better than I expected to get, and I want to acknowledge it.   It shouldn’t have happened at all, but they did try to respond to my issue.