Sherlock - new TV series on PBS

I confess I don't watch that much on PBS even though OETA is one of the better public broadcasting networks I've seen.  But last night, not being able to sleep I got caught up in a new series on PBS called Sherlock. From skimming the brief description in the guide, I thought it was going to be one of those old black and white movies from the 40's and 50's starring Basil Rathbone.  

Boy was I wrong.  

This is a new series with a Sherlock Holmes character but set in the present day. And it was really well done.  And I have to say that I am a student of Sherlock Holmes, having read all of the Arthur Conan Doyle stories and novels at least twice.  They keep the characters true to the original stories but with modern day updates.  Dr. Watson, just like the original is a retired army doctor that is a veteran of Afghanistan war - the current Afghanistan war with some very real flashbacks. Instead of Holmes indulging in his "7% solution" of heroin from the original stories, he now slaps multiple nicotine patches on his arms to get his high. Holmes still plays the violin, is moody as ever, there is a Mrs. Hudson and they reside at 221B Baker Street in London.  But there is an update to keep up with current technology, but in a way that is a believable part of the story and not getting in the way.  Holmes has a web page, the characters have smart phones and send text messages. 

I have to say it took me a bit to get my head around the British accents. 

Dr. Who fans will recognize the work of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss - the creators of this new series. 

Check it out at PBS.org - Your tax dollars are helping to pay for it - might as well enjoy it.  I got it on the TIVO to catch each week. 

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Juan Williams, @NPRnews and How to Talk Tea Bag

Twitter and the blogospher has been on hot this morning over the firing of Juan Williams by National Public Raido.  Williams had worked there for more than ten years, but apparently the comments he made on Fox News' O'Reilly Factor this past Monday were too much.  On O'Reilly he stated that he gets "nervous" if he's at an airport and sees "people who are in Muslim garb."  Not an unrealistic reaction considering the events of 9/11. Williams went on to argue that the terrorists only represented extremist elements of the Muslim faith and not all Muslims should be considered as terrorists.  But NPR didn't like it and sent him down the road kicking rocks.

 

Now I have found that there is very little I agree with Juan Williams about. He's raised my blood pressure up more than a couple of times to the point of muting the tube. But I will say that he strikes me as honest and his views are consistent. The times he has guest hosted programs on Fox such as the O'Reilly Factor, he has treated conservative guests with respect even while disagreeing with them. I certainly don't think a comment such as the one made on Monday night warranted being fired.

 

In their statement on the termination of Juan William's contract, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller said "...However, his remarks on The O’Reilly Factor this past Monday were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a News Analyst with NPR"

 

Yep, Those Editorial Standards are high over at NPR.  If you don't bellieve me, just take a look at this fine piece of journalistic excellence by Mark Fiore from a year ago: OPINION: 'Learn To Speak Tea Bag'  I wonder if Mr. Fiore ended up kicking the can down the road or if Ms. Schiller looked the other way on that insulting piece of crap.

 

So much for the tolerance of Public Broadcasting - anything but "fair and balanced".

 

Attempting to fend off calls for defunding NPR by the federal government, NPR released a chart showing the sources of their funding and the portion that comes from the government.  They seemed quite proud of the fact that less than 6% came from the government.  I say "GOOD!" give it up and quite taking unwilling taxpayer contributions to your operations.

 

PS - Mara Liason - better watch your butt - you're hanging around Fox News an awful lot too!

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ChaCha - an alternative to Goog411

This past week Google announced the upcoming demise (November 12) of their Goog411 service. Goog411 let you call an 800 number and ask for the phone number of a business.  A disembodied voice from deep within Google would deliver the phone number or numbers if there were multiple businesses in that location and you could pick the one you wanted.  All over a cell phone connection, any cell phone - no smart phone required.  All for no charge.  Pretty good deal considering the outrageous fees the cell phone carriers stick you with for their 411 service.  It turns out that Goog411 was really a means for Google to collect voice samples of known lingo for the development of some of the fancy services  being offered up through their Android OS on those cell phones. 

Personally, while Goog411 could get the job done, I found it frustrating that it didn't have enough granularity in making a query.  You could specify a business and the city and state.  That was fine until you needed the number of a business that had multiple locations in town.  The first time I tried it, I needed to call our pharmacy. That's when I found out how many "Walgreens" there were in town. Goog411 read them all off to me.  And the alternative "Walgreens" that we sometimes used wasn't even on Goog411's list because technically they were just outside of our city limits and as far as Goog411 was concerned, they might as well have been on the other side of the state. And I sure didn't want to ask for a "Walgreens" in Oklahoma City - the cell phone would probably have died before that list was finished. 

Instead, I have been using ChaCha as my alternative 411 service. Rather than being a machine driven system, ChaCha uses "real live human bein's" to answer questions you pose over the phone.  Call ChaCha's 800 number (1-800-224-2242), dictate your question (note - this is not limited to directory assistance type questions!) and in a minute or two, you get a text message or messages with the answer. Since you can use ChaCha to ask any question, it can be kind of addicting. Make sure you have a good text message plan - you can get caught up playing "stump the chacha guy". A friend and I ended up playing that one night while partaking in adult beverages.  I'll just say we ran out of beer before we got a bad answer. 

I initially started using ChaCha two or three years ago when they were a start up. They were later bought out by AT&T, and AT&T has done some things that have not exactly improved the service. It seems like more of the "answers" are machine generated. It used to be they were dead on with an answer to your question.  Case in point: I was supposed to meet someone for lunch at a restaurant that I could swear I knew the location of.  Wrong.  I got to the location of where I thought it was and discovered that I wasn't as smart as I thought.  I calledChaCha on my cell phone in the car, asked "where is Casa Pereco Mexican restaurant on the north side of Oklahoma City and what are the nearest major cross streets?".  A few minutes later I got a text message back with the address and the nearest intersection. I found I was off by about a mile. 

Regardless, ChaCha offers some granularity that Goog411 did not have. For my Walgreens example, I could ask "what is the phone number of the Walgreens at 150th and North Western in Oklahoma City" and probably get the right answer without a lot of other alternatives to wade through. 

So give it a try: 1-800-224-2242 (1-800-2chacha)

Oh yeah, and like Goog411 its free. And free is good. 

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VirginMobile MiFi - then I'll give it a rest

OK, one more post on VirginMobile's Broadband2Go and then I'll give it a rest. 

I came into a little extra coin this past week - very little, but enough.  I took the VirginMobile USB 3G modem I got a week earlier back to WalMart and exchanged it out for the MiFi.  The MiFi is a small flat slab, with a footprint smaller than the area of a credit card and about a quarter inch thick. It acts as a 3G modem to connect to the internet over the cell phone data network - in this case Sprint's data network - and also as a wifi router that lets you connect up to five devices.  Thus you can share your internet connection as well as set up a local area network through the MiFi to share files between devices locally.  When you connect to the MiFi, you have to provide a password, so there is some security. 

Consider your options on Mobile Broadband

Last week I posted some of my impressions on Virgin Mobile's Broadband2Go USB 3G modem and service. Overall, I thought the service met my needs and one of the more attractive features was the pricing and absolute total lack of a contract or any commitment.  On Virgin Mobile, you could pick up the USB 3G modem for about $75 or a MiFi (a 3G internet connection and wifi router all in one) for about $140 (WalMart pricing).  Broadband was priced at two tiers: $10 for 100 MB used within 10 days, or $40 for unlimited bandwidth over 30 days.  This could be done using Virgin Mobile's "Top Up" cards, eliminating even the need to hand over a credit card number.

@Pogoplug - new model - new color, wifi

I'm definitely a Pogoplug fan boy so it nice to see that a new model of the Pogoplug is now out.  The new Pogoplug Pro:

 

• has built in wifi so you can tuck it away with hard drives and printer out of the way and it can connect to your router wirelessly.
• is now at $99 - cheaper than when I bought it back in December
• is now available in black. More business like I guess, but the garish pink and white kind of grew on me.

A quick review is at Wired today. Check it out here. 

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VirginMobile Broadband2Go - I need this (like another hole in my head)

Having a ubiquitous internet connection - beyond that of a cell phone - always seemed to be kind of fascinating to me.  I knew that Verizon, Sprint and AT&T had offerings, all of which were designed to separate another $60 from your wallet each month for at least a two year time period. That was too much of an expense for me to try and justify for what I would use it for. Then I heard of Virgin Mobile's Broadband2Go offerings from Katie Floyd on a MacPowerUsers podcast. While her experience seemed to be less than satisfactory, I filed it away in the back of my mind as something I wanted to look into.

They left something out....

From Drudge this morning - I think they forgot to mention that it was a Republican President that did it: 

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