A Blog by Dan

Thinking about going cable-less…

I rarely ever watch TV anymore these days. The last few months I have found myself mainly watching Lost on Netflix (tonight I am watching the series finale, so excited!) and the Colbert Report, Tosh.0 and South Park. I realized now that I can watch all these shows on Hulu so I signed up for the trial and I like it for the most part (but hate the ads). So I think we are going to cancel the cable. I will probably grab an Apple TV or Roku box to stream both to my TV and see how it goes.

I will miss sports but I can watch a lot of them online so it will probably be ok…

Some NBA Playoff Predictions

Eastern side:

I believe the Heat do not get Christina Bosh back but ultimately prevail over the Celtics in 5.  Had the Celtics been healthy I would have given them a chance, but I believe LeBron and Wade are too good for this Celtics team. Rondo will keep them in it but only KG has looked himself recently. Allen looks hurt and Pierce is hurt and playing slow. I expect the younger team to dominate this one.

Western side:

Spurs over the Thunder in 6. Thunder will play good but the Spurs will pull this out with teamwork and experience. Durant and Westbrook will have to wait until next year. The Spurs are so deep that even their bench could give the OKC starters a run.

Finals:

Spurs over the Heat in 6. LeBron jobs to the same team again.

The puzzle that is Google+

I do not know if any of you use Google+ (I assume you “use” it in the sense Google forced you to, but probably do not actually use it on a daily basis), but I find it to be a pretty enjoyable social network.

Yes, in many ways, it is simply the Google version of Facebook. But it also so much more. It also has video chat in its mobile app, trending topics similar to Twitter, circles to hide things from people you do not like, plus just a more open feel than Facebook. To me, G+ feels like Facebook meshed with Twitter. While you interact in a manner similar to Facebook, it feels more open like Twitter where you can talk to random people and see their views on things.

I ultimately hope G+ catches on, because Google has shown great dedication to keeping it cutting edge. In a short time, Google+ has added so many new features, totally overhauled its mobile app to look like something amazing and more. They do desperately need public APIs though. More mobile apps could have G+ integration, but Google hasn’t made this feature available yet for whatever reason. It is nice many Google services have G+ integration, but we need more.

We also need an iPad app Google. Come on! I have been using iShare+ for now which works fine, but an official client would be much appreciated.