So this device was announced back in September of 2010 when Apple announced their Airplay technology. I was stoked for this technology. Kallie wanted a way to play her music in the kitchen, and throughout the house for that matter, and her laptop speakers…well, they’re laptop speakers. I didn’t want to go buy a new stereo system and I didn’t just want to figure out a way to play music through the TV because that wasn’t portable. Then I stumbled upon iHome’s iW1. It was exactly what I wanted. There are a bunch of other airplay solutions out there, but none offer a rechargeable portable solution.

So I waited. for months. Finally in August 2011 I got an email that said they would start taking orders for special people like me.  I must have placed my order within 20 minutes of the 2pm EST Aug 31st.  It was reported they sold out within 45 minutes.  I must not have been quick enough though, because I was sent an email that the item I bought was out of stock and that I would receive an email when they are able to send it.  I received that email last Thursday, and got the package yesterday, Sept 29th.

In appreciation for being so patient for them to release the iw1, they also sent a free IP37, which is a nice little portable speaker for an iphone or ipod.  Great for camping or needing music on the go.  Heck, a $99 product for free?  Thanks ihome!!!

So, on to the review.  It’s not as large as I expected, but it’s still pretty sturdy and lightweight.  One thing I learned in my reading is that it does not support WEP wireless encryption.  The reason being that WEP is easily cracked and is an outdated technology.  I get that, honestly, but not to support it really seems like their enforcing network security standards.  If you have WEP like me, you are forced to decide between opening your wireless network or to change it to another form of encryption, like WPA2.  In a house with multiple devices set up on WEP, it’s a pain in the butt to do.  I’m the type of person that sees it as iHome just giving me the kick in the butt to change my wireless security, but really, I don’t appreciate that coming from them.  Really, if they’re going to force what kind of encryption is good enough, why not force people to use encryption and not support open networks?  Whatever, I’ll get over it.

Set up was pretty easy.  you can either connect an iphone/ipad/ipod with iOS 4.1 or later by the supplied(!) usb charger cable and download the free set up app.  All you have to do is give your speaker a nifty nickname and configure the wireless.  The other option is to push a button on the back of the speaker that essentially turns it into a wifi access point, get your laptop or other wifi device to connect to it’s signal, and then open up a browser configuration page to give it a nickname and configure it for your wireless network.  That it’s.  You should be all set to go.

Open up your itunes 10.1 or later, down at the bottom right corner click the speakers option and either send sound only to your new wireless speaker or send it to your PC and the wireless speaker at the same time.  Independent volume controls too.  Once it’s playing, you can leave your itunes station alone.

Back to the iw1, you have a nice remote to control next track, volume, and bass/treble.  You can also use the illuminated touch sensors for the controls on the speaker itself.  response time seemed great when using the remote.   One quirk I noticed though, I stood back about 12 feet from the speaker and tried to use the remote, and the indicator light on the speaker flashed, acknowledged I pressed a button, but it didn’t do anything.  No next track, no mute, no volume change.  As I got closer, it worked reliably though.  Weird, right?  I seemed to be within proximity for it to know I pressed a button, but not close enough for it to carry out the action?  I was bummed for like 5 seconds, until I realized — IT’S PORTABLE.  Just take it off it’s charging base and move it closer and you’re all set.

Other nice things about the unit is that you can just plug your iphone, ipod, or ipad into it and play from the usb, or you can can stream over wifi with them as well.  You can switch between wifi or cable on the remote.  The remote also allows you to turn off the device, but it will still be active on the network, which allows you to “turn it on” through itunes.  This saves a lot of time in having to set things up or configure it when you want to use it.  It’s just ready for you to play music.  So far so good.

It seems like it doesn’t have any special requirements to use and is user friendly.  We’ll see how well Kallie warms up to using it instead of relying on her laptop speakers.  Next time we have a house party, we’ll be able to play music throughout the house and control it with our remote app on our iphones, which lets you control itunes over wifi.  CONNECTED.  I’m already thinking about applications with having a baby.  Turn some music on in their room and be able to turn the volume up or off without having to go into the room and risk disturbing them.

Steve Jobs is an interesting fellow who has had quite the interesting life.  We’re probably reaching a point where some generations don’t know that he was actually fired from Apple back in the 80′s.  He went on to form Pixar, then sold it to Disney to become the largest single shareholder of Disney stock shares.  With all that money, he’s also infamous for not giving to charity.

Here’s some of the top 10 unusual things about Steve:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-altucher/steve-jobs-resigns_b_935874.html

Some of them include that he made the game Breakout, he’s half Syrian Muslim, and he was adopted.

1. There’s no delete key.  There’s a backspace, to remove characters from right to left, but there’s no way to delete characters from left to right.
2. Prices are ridiculous.  Especially after they switched to Intel based hardware, prices should have dropped significantly.
3. Their CD/DVD drives sound like death.  All of them.  WHY?!?!?!  RRRRBBBBBRRRRZZZZRAREARE.  Every time you eject or insert, it sounds like 100 little bugs in there are choking on asbestos and they’re about to die which means you’ll never see your disk again.
4. Proprietary hardware is proprietary.  It’s so stupid that I can’t just go buy the hardware that fails and replace it myself.  In the PC world, it works just the the automobile industry.  You have a choice to fix it yourself or not.  Apple says you have to let them fix it and you can’t get the hardware out or in without voiding warranty.
5. Planned obsolescence.  They’ve forced depreciation on their customers.  With their latest generation of the ipad, they even reused the name of the first generation, so you have no clue what you’re getting any more, just that if you haven’t bought it in the past year from them, it’s old and dated.
6. What are they giving back?  Steve Jobs himself was not a fan of philanthropy.  I may just be unaware, but I don’t see huge innovation competitions or research grants or programs coming out of Apple.  Where is the investment in future of people?  future of technology? of society?  I don’t like it.
7. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain hype.  Most companies get beta testers for their new products.  They’ll have honest excitement and information and let everyone know what they’re working on.  Not Apple.  Everything is shrouded in mystery until their big unveiling press conferences.  So much hype.  I’m almost positive that strategy stems from legal paranoia or even actually stealing technology but releasing it before anyone has time to stop them.  Secrecy makes me not want to trust you.
8. Itunes on Windows is a load of crap.  I think they do it intentionally.  There’s no plugin support or API to add functionality or change it around or even customize the appearance.  Not to mention the huge memory leaks and errors.  You see Microsoft spending a lot of time and money making it’s products work on macs, but it’s not the same the other way around.  Even take a look at how they treat their app store developers.  They deny apps based on their mood that day and then turn around and put the same functionality themselves!  ^%$&3@$F
9. You need a third hand for key combinations.  I mean, come on!  4 different keys pressed at the same time and they’re no where near each other?  I feel like I’m playing a micro game of twister.
10. I hate gestures.  More prevalent on the laptops, I hate having to gesture on the mousepad to see what windows I have open or perform certain functions.  I have the same distaste for gesture driven browsing on PC.

Honorable mentions:

• No double click on the mouse – There are ways around this now, but that ticked me off that I had to use the keyboard and the mouse at the same time to perform a function.  Isn’t Apple supposed to be known for their interface design?  Or is it just their looks?
• I hate how the system bar changes by what application is open.  It’s as if there’s no way to get back to the operating system functions without closing every application you have open.

You may have noticed the new page – Words With Josh

I play words with friends (a scrabble rip-off basically) with a few people on my iphone, and I wanted to wrap some intelligence around finding the optimal word based off what letters were already played.  Now, I do not condone the act of cheating when you’re playing the game.  I was more intrigued at the logic that your brain does to determine what words to play.  Scrabble is a measurable science, and there is always a best word to play, it’s just a matter of whether you know that word and whether you recognize where to place it.

I at first wanted to write a complete scrabble game, that would track the entire board and value changing tiles, so that you could play against a computer.  I could still do that, but I would think that no one really wants to play scrabble by themselves, right?

So I set off to at least code what could be useful -IF- you decided to use it as a reference tool.  I made a version available through the blog but also a better mobile version for iphones and such here – http://sixf00t4.com/wordswithjosh.  Give it a shot.  It will help you find anagrams, words with letters in specific places, and even includes the option for blank tiles.  I was thinking about adding the functionality to set letter spaces as score modifiers (triple letter, double word, etc), but I got lazy and really just satisfied with what I have now.  It’s all php and mysql.  Let me know what you think!

Don’t waste your time in lines for new places or new experiences or new products. Novelty wears off and your time is valuable. A Nathan’s hotdog for 5 cents, for example, is a great deal, but waiting hours for it is stupid.

after a botched update to some apps, Cydia would not longer launch completely. Cydia would crash when I tried to open it, even after rebooting.

First, I got DiskAid from : http://www.digidna.net/products/diskaid
Second, connect the iphone to your computer and using DiskAid, remove the numbered and tmp files from /var/lib/dpkg/updates/  – (This may be enough to resolve your problem.  Try a reboot and open Cydia again)

Third, I don’t have SSH installed on the phone.  These steps could also work if you don’t have WiFi to use OpenSSH.  I downloaded Universal Extractor:  http://legroom.net/software/uniextract.  That will let you extract .deb files

Fourth, download the latest Cydia .deb file from http://apt.saurik.com/cydia-3.7/debs/

Fifth, extract those files to your desktop and then copy them over to your phone in the appropriate paths using DiskAid  (you’re basically just manually extracting the files)

Sixth, reboot and try again.  Good Luck!

The disclaimer here is that you’re just overwriting files and not editing them.  SAVE BACK UPS OF ANYTHING YOU ARE OVERWRITING!

Although technology can help you simplify your life, it can make it a whole lot more complicated and open the gates to wasting a lot more time.  The key is to get technology working for you, not you working with technology.