Okay, a few folks have mentioned to me recently that they've enjoyed read my blog, so now I feel shamed into posting some new content after a two-year hiatus.
The restaurant scene in Oakland continues to evolve nicely, though I have to admit I'm a little annoyed by all the hipster bars that are popping up left and right. Don't get me wrong...I'm all for a good bar scene but I think we're getting over saturated with bars and the City of Oakland seems to be handing out liquor licenses like they're going out of style. Would love to see a few less bars and a few more food-centric businesses in their place...but that's just me.
I'm also happy to say that most of the restaurants I've written about before are still going as strong as ever. However, there have been a few notable closings within the past year or so. B-Side BBQ, easily my favorite BBQ in the East Bay, sadly closed earlier this year because they were having a hard time making things work financially. I found it a little surprising, as every time I've gone there business seemed pretty good and they were also handling a lot of takeout orders. However, their location was admittedly a bit sketchy...I bet if they were in Uptown they would still be going gangbusters. Two of James Syabout's restaurants also fell victim in recent months. The first, Box and Bells, closed early last year. That location in Rockridge seems to be a huge jinx or something, as no restaurant has ever been able to make it work there long term. Also, I think everyone is so health conscious these days and weren't so keen on their heavier, gastropub style of food...of course I am a big exception! The Dock at Linden Street also just closed within the past few weeks, but will supposedly get relaunched in several months. I think one of their big challenges is location as well...it's a terrific space, but located in an area of West Oakland that is largely unknown and not well trafficked. Of course, with all the hipsters moving to West Oakland that could end up changing real soon! And lastly, Stag's Lunchette, my go to sandwich place in Uptown, abruptly closed a couple of months ago. I was pretty shocked to hear this, as the place was always slammed during lunch...this in spite of the fact that I felt they overcharged for their product.
Okay, now for some notable openings within the past year or so:
Calavera and Agave: Both of these Mexican joints are in Uptown...Calvaera in the Hive complex, and Agave on the ground floor of the new Kapor Center. I've enjoyed the meals and vibe at both places, though I still think the food quality is just a notch below that of Nido's.
Belotti: Located in a smallish location in the middle of Rockridge, I had lunch here one day recently and was simply blown away by the quality of their pasta...it definitely rivals Dopo for "best pasta in Oakland". Can't wait to go back and try some of their other dishes.
Drake's Dealership: Okay, so I ragged on all the drinking joints that have been opening up recently, but Drake's is an exception. Really cool location and use of the space, fantastic beer selection and surprisingly good food for a beer garden - I especially enjoy their pizza and ribs. And very kid/dog/family friendly to boot! The only drawback to this place is that it's uber popular and jam packed every night of the week.
Delage: The owner of B-Dama recently opened this sushi/omakase place right next door, and for $65 this is the best 9-course omakase deal around. Their fish is flown in from Japan, and oh...so fresh and tasty. Very happy to see more quality Japanese fare in Oaktown.
Parlour: Great neighborhood restaurant serving mostly Italian fare. Very solid pizzas and pastas, though I have to say that their pasta dishes are a tad overpriced compared to other quality Italian places in the area. And oh...their bar makes a terrific house gin and tonic!
Clove and Hoof: This combination restaurant/butcher shop makes THE best sandwiches in the city, even a notch or two higher than Stag's used to make. Nothing but high quality and freshest ingredients, and such attention to detail for a sandwich shop. Make sure you also save some room for their tasty hand cut beef tallow fries, and if you have the time then also enjoy watching them chop up a dead cow :) More recently they've started to serve dinner entrees, but I haven't had the opportunity to try them out yet.
Hina Yakitori: This cool yakitori joint opened up several months ago and the chefs came from Ippuku, one of my favorite places in all the Bay Area. So, as you might expect the quality is on par with that of Ippuku's, though the interior and ambiance don't have that same authentic Japanese feel. However, definitely the place to go if you're not up for the trek into downtown Berkeley and/or want to save a few bucks.
Sweet Belly: Belly Uptown's dessert spinoff recently took over the space of this incredibly shitty Chinese takeout place which surprisingly lasted for over a decade. Terrific made-to-order mini-donuts in 6 flavors that you can buy by the dozen or half dozen. Also some great soft serve ice cream in several flavors and your choice of toppings. Super delish...Alice and her team have another winner!
Itani Ramen: Oh, how I looked forward to the opening of this place, as it owned by Kyle Itani, co-owner of Hopscotch and one of my favorite restaurants in town. However, it's been really hit and miss during the course of my 8 or so visits there. The first few times were very mediocre experiences as the ramen preparation was very inconsistent - sometimes the broth was not hot or flavorful enough, or the noodles were overcooked, or the chasu pork was not sliced correctly. However, my last couple of visits were a lot better, and I'm hoping this is a good sign for them going forward. Definitely can't compare to Ramen Shop, but on the other hand it's conveniently located, easy to get into and open late 7 days a week.
Happy eating!
Friday, October 21, 2016
Sunday, August 31, 2014
Oaktown Restaurant Update - September 2014
Whether you love or hate this "Brooklynization of Oakland" movement that's been going on, as a foodie you've got to acknowledge that it's done nothing but wonders for the Oakland dining scene. New restaurants are still popping up at an incredible clip throughout the city. Over the past few months I've dined at a number of new places that have recently opened and which I wouldn't hesitate to go back to - Captain & Corset, Shakewell, The Dock at Linden Street, Michel, Belly Uptown, Abura-Ya, Bissap Baobab and Liba Falafel are amongst the newbies and are all excellent.
I guess it's also time to update my "Top 10" Oakland restaurant list again, though it's getting really hard with the proliferation of all these new great places. I've adjusted my list a bit to include more balance in terms of food variety as well as price points. So, without further ado, here they are in alphabetical order:
Still the best BBQ joint in the city, and by a long shot. They recently tweaked their dinner menu a bit to allow you to order a two-way combo...which is fantastic because I love both the St. Louis ribs and the brisket. They also now include a side with your dinner entree, and only charge a couple of bucks more than they used to...so it's even a better deal now. For awhile they stopped serving lunch, which was really a bummer, but I'm pleased to report that they resumed lunch service a couple of months ago.
James Syabout's flagship is still worthy of its Michelin Star, and it's the only restaurant in the entire East Bay to be awarded one (Chez Panisse lost theirs a few years ago). Though the price of the prix fix menu has continued to crawl up I still think it's a relative bargain given the quality and preparation being put into each meal. When booking a reservation I would highly recommend requesting seats at the Chef's Counter, so you can watch the artisans at work. The wine pairing at ~$55 is also a bargain in my opinion.
Syabout's latest has fast become one of my favorites. The place is split up into two halves; the main restaurant and the beer garden, which has its own hours and serves a few snacks and desserts from the restaurant menu in addition to the wide variety of beer selections...many of which are from the Linden Street Brewery right next door. The food menu mainly consists of small plates meant to be shared, and can best be described as upscale bar food with an Asian twist. Gorgeous restaurant and in a very cool West Oakland location with plenty of free parking onsite. And oh, you must order one of the sundaes for dessert!
A fair number of Italian restaurants have opened in Oaktown during the past couple of years, but Dopo continues to be the king when it comes to pizza and pasta. Their thin pizza crust is still consistently the best of the bunch, and their pastas are also expertly prepared and never overcooked. I've heard of some service issues there from a couple of my friends, but never a complaint about the food quality. They also take a limited number of reservations now, which is great because the waits can be on the long-ish side there.
Into its second year now, Paul Canalis' beautifully designed restaurant is still firing on all cylinders. The arroz negro paella is still one of my favorite dishes anywhere, as is the steak. Their menu changes constantly, and one of my current favorites is the lamb and lobster sausage...delicious! And in addition to their live music they're now starting to show art house films, free of charge. Their Bodega is also a cool place to hangout during mornings or on weekends for some coffee, pastries or an ice cream sandwich made from Ici in Berkeley - owned by Paul's wife.
I was there the day they first opened, there again on their first anniversary, and again on their second anniversary...that's how much I love this place. Still going very strong, so much so that it's getting pretty hard to get a seat in the place without booking well in advance. To keep up with the demand they've rented out the space two doors away which they typically use for larger groups. The fried chicken continues to be amongst the best anywhere, and lately I've been enjoying some of their brunch specialties such as the Soy Braised Pork Belly Benedict...very yummy indeed! And for those of you who are whiskey lovers, Jenny has curated a most impressive collection of Japanese whiskeys in their bar.
Speaking of fried chicken, I would say that Miss Ollie's is in a tie with Hopscotch for the best fried chicken dish in Oakland, though the preparations are totally different. For about $18 you get 4 pieces of creole-style fried chicken, plus a bowl of potato salad and some greens...quite the bargain! The staff at Miss Ollies is always friendly and helpful, and you definitely must remember to order the Creole doughnuts for dessert.
It took me three visits to finally warm up to this place, but I have to say now that this is the finest Mexican restaurant in Oakland. The best dishes there are ones that are non-traditional, with the pork Chuleta perhaps being the best pork chop I've had anywhere. They serve some great margaritas as well, with my favorite being the spicy Picosa. Believe it or not, their kitchen does not have a refrigerator...so you know everything they serve is going to be fresh.
Growing up Asian, I'm always a bit suspicious of Asian restaurants touted as "fusion" or being run by non-Asians. However, after a couple of friends recommended this place I decided to try it for myself, and boy I'm really glad I did. Located in the old Nan-Yang location in Rockridge, Osmanthus serves up modern renditions of classic dishes across all of Asia. Among the dishes I've tried are the tea leaf salad, trout fried rice, kabocha short ribs, brussel sprouts and the pork belly...all are highly recommended. The menus somewhat resembles that of the uber-popular Burma Superstar, but their preparations are a bit more refined in my opinion.
I resisted going to this place for the first couple of months after it opened, because I couldn't understand how anyone could get away with selling $17 bowls of ramen. But when I finally gave in and tried it I became a total convert and now it's one of my main "go to" places...despite their no reservation policy. If you're looking for traditional Japanese ramen you might be disappointed, but if you've wondered what it would be like if Chez Panisse alum were to make ramen...well, that's exactly what you get here. In addition to three ramen choices per day they also serve a number of tasty side dishes, including some type of fried rice which I usually get as an appetizer. And for dessert the black sesame ice cream sandwich is the bomb!
And now a few comments about some the restaurants that dropped out of the Top 10, as well as a few other notables that didn't quite make it:
Flora: Kind of pains me not to include them, as they were the first ones to embrace Uptown and set the stage for what that area has turned out to be. But their food is a lot more hit-and-miss these days, plus they continue to suffer from constant staff turnover...I keep seeing all their good bartenders and waiters showing up at some of the other restaurants listed here. I'm still a fan, though, and I think their burger is still one of the best in town...as is their bar.
Pizzaiolo, Boot & Shoe Service and Penrose: All three of Charlie Hallowell's restaurants are excellent and come close to making the list, and Penrose has one of the coolest interior designs of any Oakland restaurant. But I do find that the pizzas at Pizzaiolo and especially at Boot & Shoe to be inconsistent in terms of the all important "crispy crust" factor. And one thing that all three of these restaurants share - very high interior noise levels.
Haven: Daniel Patterson's Jack London joint has unfortunately gone downhill. I was so in love with this place when it first opened, when Kim Alter was at the helm in the kitchen. But after she left in an effort to salvage Patterson's other restaurant Plum the food quality suffered, and the service issues which I had previously overlooked became a lot more bothersome to me as a result. And speaking of Plum, though I was pleased with the improvements when Alter took over their kitchen, that proved to be short lived as the restaurant was recently rebranded as Ume and Alter was gone as well. Now both of Patterson's Oakland restaurants are merely okay, but definitely not great.
Hawker Fare and Box & Bells: Either of these can justify being on my Top 10, but hey, we can't have all four of Syabout's restaurants on the list, can we? Hawker Fare recently changed up their menu for dinner, so now there's quite a selection of new and tasty items to try. And Box & Bells is a great addition to Rockridge, taking over the former (and mediocre) Somerset space. The fare there is high-end gastropub, a bit on the "heavy" side but which is fine by me.
Camino: Still very good, though the last couple of times I went there I thought it was just okay. What's always a bit challenging with this place is the fact that they only serve three entrees per day, so you sometimes end up going there just to find out that nothing sounds terribly appealing.
Cosecha: This is the best tacqueria in town, which is not surprising since it's another restaurant run by a Chez Panisse alum. I actually boycotted this place for over a year because of some horrific service I received on one occasion, but after finally coming back I was happy to see that the food quality has remained consistently great...I particularly like the shrimp and pork belly tacos.
Abura-Ya: This new pop-up in downtown Oakland is housed in a salad bar on 15th St. and serves 6 varieties of the most awesome and tastiest Japanese chicken karaage that you'll find anywhere. And dirt cheap too...4 large pieces for $7; 8 pieces for $12. In addition to the karaage they serve some really tasty salads, including a delicious and creamy wasabi slaw.
Belly Uptown: Finally...a takeout place just a stone's throw from my office that serves high quality food. I love, love everything this place serves. The burgers are delicious and sort of Umami Burger-like, and the tacos and burritos have Asian influences in them that work just perfectly. In particular, I'm nuts for the burritos because they use sushi rice which gives them an additional slight chewy texture in the fillings...really well done!
I guess it's also time to update my "Top 10" Oakland restaurant list again, though it's getting really hard with the proliferation of all these new great places. I've adjusted my list a bit to include more balance in terms of food variety as well as price points. So, without further ado, here they are in alphabetical order:
B-Side BBQ
Still the best BBQ joint in the city, and by a long shot. They recently tweaked their dinner menu a bit to allow you to order a two-way combo...which is fantastic because I love both the St. Louis ribs and the brisket. They also now include a side with your dinner entree, and only charge a couple of bucks more than they used to...so it's even a better deal now. For awhile they stopped serving lunch, which was really a bummer, but I'm pleased to report that they resumed lunch service a couple of months ago.
Commis
James Syabout's flagship is still worthy of its Michelin Star, and it's the only restaurant in the entire East Bay to be awarded one (Chez Panisse lost theirs a few years ago). Though the price of the prix fix menu has continued to crawl up I still think it's a relative bargain given the quality and preparation being put into each meal. When booking a reservation I would highly recommend requesting seats at the Chef's Counter, so you can watch the artisans at work. The wine pairing at ~$55 is also a bargain in my opinion.
The Dock at Linden Street
Syabout's latest has fast become one of my favorites. The place is split up into two halves; the main restaurant and the beer garden, which has its own hours and serves a few snacks and desserts from the restaurant menu in addition to the wide variety of beer selections...many of which are from the Linden Street Brewery right next door. The food menu mainly consists of small plates meant to be shared, and can best be described as upscale bar food with an Asian twist. Gorgeous restaurant and in a very cool West Oakland location with plenty of free parking onsite. And oh, you must order one of the sundaes for dessert!
Dopo
A fair number of Italian restaurants have opened in Oaktown during the past couple of years, but Dopo continues to be the king when it comes to pizza and pasta. Their thin pizza crust is still consistently the best of the bunch, and their pastas are also expertly prepared and never overcooked. I've heard of some service issues there from a couple of my friends, but never a complaint about the food quality. They also take a limited number of reservations now, which is great because the waits can be on the long-ish side there.
Duende
Into its second year now, Paul Canalis' beautifully designed restaurant is still firing on all cylinders. The arroz negro paella is still one of my favorite dishes anywhere, as is the steak. Their menu changes constantly, and one of my current favorites is the lamb and lobster sausage...delicious! And in addition to their live music they're now starting to show art house films, free of charge. Their Bodega is also a cool place to hangout during mornings or on weekends for some coffee, pastries or an ice cream sandwich made from Ici in Berkeley - owned by Paul's wife.
Hopscotch
I was there the day they first opened, there again on their first anniversary, and again on their second anniversary...that's how much I love this place. Still going very strong, so much so that it's getting pretty hard to get a seat in the place without booking well in advance. To keep up with the demand they've rented out the space two doors away which they typically use for larger groups. The fried chicken continues to be amongst the best anywhere, and lately I've been enjoying some of their brunch specialties such as the Soy Braised Pork Belly Benedict...very yummy indeed! And for those of you who are whiskey lovers, Jenny has curated a most impressive collection of Japanese whiskeys in their bar.
Miss Ollie's
Speaking of fried chicken, I would say that Miss Ollie's is in a tie with Hopscotch for the best fried chicken dish in Oakland, though the preparations are totally different. For about $18 you get 4 pieces of creole-style fried chicken, plus a bowl of potato salad and some greens...quite the bargain! The staff at Miss Ollies is always friendly and helpful, and you definitely must remember to order the Creole doughnuts for dessert.
Nido
It took me three visits to finally warm up to this place, but I have to say now that this is the finest Mexican restaurant in Oakland. The best dishes there are ones that are non-traditional, with the pork Chuleta perhaps being the best pork chop I've had anywhere. They serve some great margaritas as well, with my favorite being the spicy Picosa. Believe it or not, their kitchen does not have a refrigerator...so you know everything they serve is going to be fresh.
Osmanthus
Growing up Asian, I'm always a bit suspicious of Asian restaurants touted as "fusion" or being run by non-Asians. However, after a couple of friends recommended this place I decided to try it for myself, and boy I'm really glad I did. Located in the old Nan-Yang location in Rockridge, Osmanthus serves up modern renditions of classic dishes across all of Asia. Among the dishes I've tried are the tea leaf salad, trout fried rice, kabocha short ribs, brussel sprouts and the pork belly...all are highly recommended. The menus somewhat resembles that of the uber-popular Burma Superstar, but their preparations are a bit more refined in my opinion.
Ramen Shop
I resisted going to this place for the first couple of months after it opened, because I couldn't understand how anyone could get away with selling $17 bowls of ramen. But when I finally gave in and tried it I became a total convert and now it's one of my main "go to" places...despite their no reservation policy. If you're looking for traditional Japanese ramen you might be disappointed, but if you've wondered what it would be like if Chez Panisse alum were to make ramen...well, that's exactly what you get here. In addition to three ramen choices per day they also serve a number of tasty side dishes, including some type of fried rice which I usually get as an appetizer. And for dessert the black sesame ice cream sandwich is the bomb!
And now a few comments about some the restaurants that dropped out of the Top 10, as well as a few other notables that didn't quite make it:
Flora: Kind of pains me not to include them, as they were the first ones to embrace Uptown and set the stage for what that area has turned out to be. But their food is a lot more hit-and-miss these days, plus they continue to suffer from constant staff turnover...I keep seeing all their good bartenders and waiters showing up at some of the other restaurants listed here. I'm still a fan, though, and I think their burger is still one of the best in town...as is their bar.
Pizzaiolo, Boot & Shoe Service and Penrose: All three of Charlie Hallowell's restaurants are excellent and come close to making the list, and Penrose has one of the coolest interior designs of any Oakland restaurant. But I do find that the pizzas at Pizzaiolo and especially at Boot & Shoe to be inconsistent in terms of the all important "crispy crust" factor. And one thing that all three of these restaurants share - very high interior noise levels.
Haven: Daniel Patterson's Jack London joint has unfortunately gone downhill. I was so in love with this place when it first opened, when Kim Alter was at the helm in the kitchen. But after she left in an effort to salvage Patterson's other restaurant Plum the food quality suffered, and the service issues which I had previously overlooked became a lot more bothersome to me as a result. And speaking of Plum, though I was pleased with the improvements when Alter took over their kitchen, that proved to be short lived as the restaurant was recently rebranded as Ume and Alter was gone as well. Now both of Patterson's Oakland restaurants are merely okay, but definitely not great.
Hawker Fare and Box & Bells: Either of these can justify being on my Top 10, but hey, we can't have all four of Syabout's restaurants on the list, can we? Hawker Fare recently changed up their menu for dinner, so now there's quite a selection of new and tasty items to try. And Box & Bells is a great addition to Rockridge, taking over the former (and mediocre) Somerset space. The fare there is high-end gastropub, a bit on the "heavy" side but which is fine by me.
Camino: Still very good, though the last couple of times I went there I thought it was just okay. What's always a bit challenging with this place is the fact that they only serve three entrees per day, so you sometimes end up going there just to find out that nothing sounds terribly appealing.
Cosecha: This is the best tacqueria in town, which is not surprising since it's another restaurant run by a Chez Panisse alum. I actually boycotted this place for over a year because of some horrific service I received on one occasion, but after finally coming back I was happy to see that the food quality has remained consistently great...I particularly like the shrimp and pork belly tacos.
Abura-Ya: This new pop-up in downtown Oakland is housed in a salad bar on 15th St. and serves 6 varieties of the most awesome and tastiest Japanese chicken karaage that you'll find anywhere. And dirt cheap too...4 large pieces for $7; 8 pieces for $12. In addition to the karaage they serve some really tasty salads, including a delicious and creamy wasabi slaw.
Belly Uptown: Finally...a takeout place just a stone's throw from my office that serves high quality food. I love, love everything this place serves. The burgers are delicious and sort of Umami Burger-like, and the tacos and burritos have Asian influences in them that work just perfectly. In particular, I'm nuts for the burritos because they use sushi rice which gives them an additional slight chewy texture in the fillings...really well done!
Saturday, June 8, 2013
The Best Restaurants in Oakland - According to Me
This is a departure from my usual tech-oriented writing, but a few of my friends have previously suggested that I write a food blog as I'm always checking out the latest restaurants in Oaktown and have pretty strong opinions about who is or isn't serving quality food. Quite honestly I don't have the time to write such a blog, plus I don't consider myself to be anything close to an expert when it comes to the culinary arts - I just love to eat! However, I do have my favorite hangouts, and so without further ado here is my official "Top Ten Restaurants in Oakland" list. In alphabetical order:
If you're looking for quick and cheap BBQ with the meat piled on high then this isn't your place. However, if you're looking for very well prepared fare using quality ingredients and a great atmosphere then you've come to the right BBQ joint. My favorite two dishes are the brisket and the Dark & Stormy St. Louis ribs. The sides are excellent too. I've had their cornbread, mac 'n cheese, spicy coleslaw and potato salad...all were great. Even the toast that comes with the BBQ is done really well...no slices of Wonder Bread here. And finally, how can you not like a place that often shows Blazing Saddles on their big screens?
Run by an ex-alum of Chez Panisse (as are a number of restaurants here) I guess it's no surprise that I consider this place to be the closest thing to Chez Panisse without having to actually go there. Some people might be put off by their "community" seating arrangement, but it doesn't bother me at all. The reason I don't come here more often, though, is because their menu changes daily, you don't know about it until they post it to their website they day of, and they only serve three entrees per day - so it's always a bit of a gamble. On the plus side they'll serve you boatloads of Acme's "Pain de Mie" rolls, which I am terribly addicted to. Though I haven't eaten here a lot, the times that I have I've walked away thoroughly satisfied...I think the last time here I had some terrific roasted crab.
Quite simply, the best fine dining in the East Bay. James Syhabout's first restaurant is a winner and has deservedly earned its Michelin Star. The attention to preparation and detail is amazing in this place. In fact, when you're in there it sometimes feels a bit eerie because the kitchen is right in the middle of the restaurant but you never hear a peep from any of the chefs because they're all meticulously working on the food preparation/presentation. Their multi-course fixed-price menu changes frequently, but definitely count on a couple of the courses bordering on molecular gastronomy...Mr. Syhabout evidently worked a stint at the famed elBulli restaurant in Spain. The food here isn't cheap and in fact is probably the most expensive restaurant on this list, but after eating here I've always come walking away thinking it was a bargain.
I've eaten at every decent Italian joint in the city, but Dopo stands out for me as having the best pasta and thin crust pizza of the bunch. Their menu changes constantly, but when they offer a squid ink pasta I almost aways get that. They serve lasagne pretty regularly and that is excellent as well. Their calzones are also a great alternative if you're not quite in a pizza mood. I really like that the crust on their pizzas/calzones have that perfect amount of crispness without getting burnt. If there are any downsides it's that the place is pretty noisy, I sometimes feel cramped in there, and their pasta portions are a bit on the small-ish side.
This is the hot new kid on the block, and I'm currently addicted to it. Paul Canales of Oliveto fame recently opened up this place, and not only is the food terrific but the space itself is stunning and ambitious - they spent what looks like a small fortune gutting it out and creating a sense of openness throughout. The restaurant is broken up into several sections: the main restaurant; the central bar area with shared table seating; the all day "Bodega" where among things they offer coffee, dessert, Spanish wine selections and olive oil; and an upstairs lounge where they occasionally host live music. The food is Spanish tapas style and meant to be shared. My favorite dishes include the squid ink seafood paella, the prime rib steak, and the stuffed peppers with lamb.
Whether or not you like this place, you have to give props to Flora for being a groundbreaker in Uptown, being the first ones of their stature to take a huge gamble on the neighborhood. And it's paid off handsomely for them, as they've continued to be one of the most popular restaurants in the city. They've gone through several chef changes over the years, but I think their most recent one has made them as good as they've ever been. About half the time I go here I sit at the bar and eat their burger, which for my money is the best burger in town. Their menu changes constantly and I've rarely been disappointed with any of their meat and seafood dishes. And oh, their caramel pudding, which they've had since the very beginning, is simply to die for. Great art deco look and feel too, and the best bar and cocktails in town. They also recently opened up their sister bar Fauna right next door.
Daniel Patterson's second restaurant in Oakland (Plum being the other) is easily their best. The location is a bit hard to find for a first-timer, as it's tucked away in an area of Jack London Square that isn't obvious as being a retail space. But once you go inside, the modern industrial look is great, and I think the best seating location is right at the bar overlooking the kitchen. Kim Alter is the executive chef here, and I guess the best way to describe her style of cooking is "bold and aggressive", with dishes like bone marrow and shepherd's pie cooked with pig's blood often on their menu. Some folks think her "bold" style results in dishes being overly salty and/or buttery...but I'm a sucker for all that.
James Syhabout's second restaurant is one that I go to quite often for lunch or a casual dinner. They primarily serve Thai rice bowls mixed with various meats and veggies...my favorites are the poached chicken, pork belly and veggie curry. You would think that Asian restaurants could not possibly screw up making something as simple as steamed rice, but the reality is that many unfortunately do. Hawker Fare makes their rice just about as perfect as can be, and they also do a great job with it in their congee dish - just the perfect texture and consistency. Recently they expanded their menu to include more small bites, mainly meat skewers done Izakaya style...they are delicious. And from what I've heard they plan to offer even more dishes in the not too distant future. Oh, and they've got a cool assortment of old school music posters featuring local acts on their wall, and they often have a lot of soul/R&B classics that I love playing in the background.
I have a special fondness for this place because they are super close to my office, I was there for dinner the first night they opened and had a fabulous meal, and Jenny and team are always super nice and accommodating...in fact we had our company holiday party there last year and had a blast. The restaurant looks like a 50's diner which is cool in and of itself, and perhaps the best way to describe the cuisine is "diner food with a Japanese twist". Their signature dish is the fried chicken, marinated in a soy/mustard sauce and perfectly executed. Other menu items come and go; I recently had an oxtail stew which was just out of this world. They also open for lunch and serve a fantastic Tonkatsu sandwich, along with their First Base Burger which you can order with a slice of beef tongue on top - awesome! Within their first year of operation they received a 3-star Michael Bauer review and also made the Chronicle 100...very impressive! Great bar too, and one of the few that serve Asahi Super Dry on tap.
This place been a Temescal mainstay for a decade now, and it's still going strong. Excellent pasta and other main dishes, and their pizzas are fantastic as well...just a hair below Dopo's in my opinion. They also serve homemade toast and Blue Bottle coffee in the mornings...great place to hangout before starting the workday. The vibe at night is pretty hip and so the place does get pretty loud. The restaurant seems to be booked solid all the time, and for whatever reason they've never taken online reservations; otherwise I'd go a lot more. Wassup with that?
Okay, I just realized that there are a lot more good restaurants in town than just these ten. Here are a few of my other favorites in no particular order:
Oliveto: Been a Rockridge institution forever and it's had its ups and downs, but recently on an upswing again. Great location on top of Market Hall serving upscale Italian fare.
Wood Tavern: I just haven't been here enough to consider it for my Top Ten, as the place is just so damn hard to get a table. I will say that the last time I went they prepared a fabulous steak.
Stag's Lunchette: Best sandwich shop in Oakland...period. The grilled cheese and pastrami reuben are menu fixtures and are excellent. And some of their "guest" sandwiches have just knocked my socks off, like the meatloaf and the coca cola braised beef.
Burma Superstar: Sister restaurant to the SF institution. Pretty much the same menu, but pricier and in a more upscale setting. The Rainbow Salad is always popular, though really not my thing. My favorite dish is their pork belly with pickled mustard greens.
Chop Bar: Great place to have brunch on a nice day where you can sit out on their patio area. Very well prepared egg dishes, nice assortment of muffins/pastries, and very friendly service.
Sidebar: Their ribeye steak frites is huge and the best steak bargain in the city...I pretty much get this every time I go there.
TrueBurger: The closest thing to a Shake Shack experience outside of NYC. Really well prepared burgers, and I love the brioche-like buns they use. Great shakes too.
Boot and Shoe Service: Same ownership as Pizzaiolo and same thin crust style pizza. However, the place is even louder than Pizzaiolo (and too hipster) and I find the pizza quality to be less consistent.
Miss Ollie's: This place is fast becoming one of my favorites and may be in my Top Ten before too long. Fried chicken is amazing, and other dishes are also excellent. Very reasonable prices too.
Rosamunde: Recently opened in Old Oakland. Love the variety of sausages; my two favs are the chicken habanero and the Mission Street.
B-Side BBQ
If you're looking for quick and cheap BBQ with the meat piled on high then this isn't your place. However, if you're looking for very well prepared fare using quality ingredients and a great atmosphere then you've come to the right BBQ joint. My favorite two dishes are the brisket and the Dark & Stormy St. Louis ribs. The sides are excellent too. I've had their cornbread, mac 'n cheese, spicy coleslaw and potato salad...all were great. Even the toast that comes with the BBQ is done really well...no slices of Wonder Bread here. And finally, how can you not like a place that often shows Blazing Saddles on their big screens?
Camino
Run by an ex-alum of Chez Panisse (as are a number of restaurants here) I guess it's no surprise that I consider this place to be the closest thing to Chez Panisse without having to actually go there. Some people might be put off by their "community" seating arrangement, but it doesn't bother me at all. The reason I don't come here more often, though, is because their menu changes daily, you don't know about it until they post it to their website they day of, and they only serve three entrees per day - so it's always a bit of a gamble. On the plus side they'll serve you boatloads of Acme's "Pain de Mie" rolls, which I am terribly addicted to. Though I haven't eaten here a lot, the times that I have I've walked away thoroughly satisfied...I think the last time here I had some terrific roasted crab.
Commis
Quite simply, the best fine dining in the East Bay. James Syhabout's first restaurant is a winner and has deservedly earned its Michelin Star. The attention to preparation and detail is amazing in this place. In fact, when you're in there it sometimes feels a bit eerie because the kitchen is right in the middle of the restaurant but you never hear a peep from any of the chefs because they're all meticulously working on the food preparation/presentation. Their multi-course fixed-price menu changes frequently, but definitely count on a couple of the courses bordering on molecular gastronomy...Mr. Syhabout evidently worked a stint at the famed elBulli restaurant in Spain. The food here isn't cheap and in fact is probably the most expensive restaurant on this list, but after eating here I've always come walking away thinking it was a bargain.
Dopo
I've eaten at every decent Italian joint in the city, but Dopo stands out for me as having the best pasta and thin crust pizza of the bunch. Their menu changes constantly, but when they offer a squid ink pasta I almost aways get that. They serve lasagne pretty regularly and that is excellent as well. Their calzones are also a great alternative if you're not quite in a pizza mood. I really like that the crust on their pizzas/calzones have that perfect amount of crispness without getting burnt. If there are any downsides it's that the place is pretty noisy, I sometimes feel cramped in there, and their pasta portions are a bit on the small-ish side.
Duende
This is the hot new kid on the block, and I'm currently addicted to it. Paul Canales of Oliveto fame recently opened up this place, and not only is the food terrific but the space itself is stunning and ambitious - they spent what looks like a small fortune gutting it out and creating a sense of openness throughout. The restaurant is broken up into several sections: the main restaurant; the central bar area with shared table seating; the all day "Bodega" where among things they offer coffee, dessert, Spanish wine selections and olive oil; and an upstairs lounge where they occasionally host live music. The food is Spanish tapas style and meant to be shared. My favorite dishes include the squid ink seafood paella, the prime rib steak, and the stuffed peppers with lamb.
Flora
Whether or not you like this place, you have to give props to Flora for being a groundbreaker in Uptown, being the first ones of their stature to take a huge gamble on the neighborhood. And it's paid off handsomely for them, as they've continued to be one of the most popular restaurants in the city. They've gone through several chef changes over the years, but I think their most recent one has made them as good as they've ever been. About half the time I go here I sit at the bar and eat their burger, which for my money is the best burger in town. Their menu changes constantly and I've rarely been disappointed with any of their meat and seafood dishes. And oh, their caramel pudding, which they've had since the very beginning, is simply to die for. Great art deco look and feel too, and the best bar and cocktails in town. They also recently opened up their sister bar Fauna right next door.
Haven
Daniel Patterson's second restaurant in Oakland (Plum being the other) is easily their best. The location is a bit hard to find for a first-timer, as it's tucked away in an area of Jack London Square that isn't obvious as being a retail space. But once you go inside, the modern industrial look is great, and I think the best seating location is right at the bar overlooking the kitchen. Kim Alter is the executive chef here, and I guess the best way to describe her style of cooking is "bold and aggressive", with dishes like bone marrow and shepherd's pie cooked with pig's blood often on their menu. Some folks think her "bold" style results in dishes being overly salty and/or buttery...but I'm a sucker for all that.
Hawker Fare
James Syhabout's second restaurant is one that I go to quite often for lunch or a casual dinner. They primarily serve Thai rice bowls mixed with various meats and veggies...my favorites are the poached chicken, pork belly and veggie curry. You would think that Asian restaurants could not possibly screw up making something as simple as steamed rice, but the reality is that many unfortunately do. Hawker Fare makes their rice just about as perfect as can be, and they also do a great job with it in their congee dish - just the perfect texture and consistency. Recently they expanded their menu to include more small bites, mainly meat skewers done Izakaya style...they are delicious. And from what I've heard they plan to offer even more dishes in the not too distant future. Oh, and they've got a cool assortment of old school music posters featuring local acts on their wall, and they often have a lot of soul/R&B classics that I love playing in the background.
Hopscotch
I have a special fondness for this place because they are super close to my office, I was there for dinner the first night they opened and had a fabulous meal, and Jenny and team are always super nice and accommodating...in fact we had our company holiday party there last year and had a blast. The restaurant looks like a 50's diner which is cool in and of itself, and perhaps the best way to describe the cuisine is "diner food with a Japanese twist". Their signature dish is the fried chicken, marinated in a soy/mustard sauce and perfectly executed. Other menu items come and go; I recently had an oxtail stew which was just out of this world. They also open for lunch and serve a fantastic Tonkatsu sandwich, along with their First Base Burger which you can order with a slice of beef tongue on top - awesome! Within their first year of operation they received a 3-star Michael Bauer review and also made the Chronicle 100...very impressive! Great bar too, and one of the few that serve Asahi Super Dry on tap.
Pizzaiolo
This place been a Temescal mainstay for a decade now, and it's still going strong. Excellent pasta and other main dishes, and their pizzas are fantastic as well...just a hair below Dopo's in my opinion. They also serve homemade toast and Blue Bottle coffee in the mornings...great place to hangout before starting the workday. The vibe at night is pretty hip and so the place does get pretty loud. The restaurant seems to be booked solid all the time, and for whatever reason they've never taken online reservations; otherwise I'd go a lot more. Wassup with that?
Okay, I just realized that there are a lot more good restaurants in town than just these ten. Here are a few of my other favorites in no particular order:
Oliveto: Been a Rockridge institution forever and it's had its ups and downs, but recently on an upswing again. Great location on top of Market Hall serving upscale Italian fare.
Wood Tavern: I just haven't been here enough to consider it for my Top Ten, as the place is just so damn hard to get a table. I will say that the last time I went they prepared a fabulous steak.
Stag's Lunchette: Best sandwich shop in Oakland...period. The grilled cheese and pastrami reuben are menu fixtures and are excellent. And some of their "guest" sandwiches have just knocked my socks off, like the meatloaf and the coca cola braised beef.
Burma Superstar: Sister restaurant to the SF institution. Pretty much the same menu, but pricier and in a more upscale setting. The Rainbow Salad is always popular, though really not my thing. My favorite dish is their pork belly with pickled mustard greens.
Chop Bar: Great place to have brunch on a nice day where you can sit out on their patio area. Very well prepared egg dishes, nice assortment of muffins/pastries, and very friendly service.
Sidebar: Their ribeye steak frites is huge and the best steak bargain in the city...I pretty much get this every time I go there.
TrueBurger: The closest thing to a Shake Shack experience outside of NYC. Really well prepared burgers, and I love the brioche-like buns they use. Great shakes too.
Boot and Shoe Service: Same ownership as Pizzaiolo and same thin crust style pizza. However, the place is even louder than Pizzaiolo (and too hipster) and I find the pizza quality to be less consistent.
Miss Ollie's: This place is fast becoming one of my favorites and may be in my Top Ten before too long. Fried chicken is amazing, and other dishes are also excellent. Very reasonable prices too.
Rosamunde: Recently opened in Old Oakland. Love the variety of sausages; my two favs are the chicken habanero and the Mission Street.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Going the Opposite of Cord Cutting - The Tivo Stream
You would think that my being a tech geek/early adopter type means that I would have been one of the first to jump on the "cord cutting" bandwagon and dump my cable subscription. And trust me...the thought of cutting out a $100+ monthly Comcast bill, along with the usually horrible Comcast customer service department, crosses my mind each time I see that charge on my Visa statement. But attractive as that sounds, and despite the fact that I am downloading/streaming more and more of my video content, I can't seem to escape the clutches of my cable subscription. One of the main reasons for this is the obvious one for many us, namely live sports. Until the major networks come up with an equitable solution for cord cutters to access their live content over the internet this may be a huge stumbling block for me and other sports fans. The other reason is simply convenience...having all my video content stored on an easily accessible hard disk still beats picking and choosing content from various sources (Netflix, iTunes, Hulu, etc.) and having to deal with the occasional internet connectivity issue while downloading or streaming.
Which brings me to Tivo...I've used quite a number of DVRs over the years, and their UI's range from simply horrible (Comcast) to pretty decent (DirecTV) to Tivo, which is still the best of the bunch despite not having done much in recent years to advance their technology. The one nice thing about Tivo, though is that it's an open platform, so as a result there are some extremely clever and useful 3rd-party projects such as PyTivo and kmttg that extend the functionality of the platform. I recently decided to upgrade my unit, because believe it or not I watch enough TV that I occasionally run into situations where I need to record more than two shows at once...their new Premiere 4 allows you to record up to four shows concurrently. One of the other reasons I picked up the new unit is because Tivo was offering a bundled deal which includes the Premiere 4, a MoCA adapter which basically allows you to attach wired devices to your network via your home's existing cable coax, and their relatively new Tivo Stream mini-device which lets you stream and/or download content from your Tivo box to your iPad. The device itself is small (4"x4") and super simple - just plug in the AC adapter and connect to your home network with an ethernet cable and you're all set to go.
The Stream allows you to stream content from your Premier that was previously recorded or is currently recording, and it also lets you downloaded content directly to your iPad for offline viewing...both of these functions are performed using the free Tivo iOS app. As you might expect the app looks and feels similar to its TV sibling, so there was zero learning curve involved. One cool feature is that you can "slide" the playback marker to any specific time within the program - something that you can't do with the TV remote. For the most part everything worked pretty flawlessly and as advertised. If you began watching a program on your TV, paused it and later resumed watching it from your iPad, it remembers where you previously left off and picks up from that point...and vice versa. The one annoying bug I found is that if you stream a program that is still being recorded, your streaming gets interrupted when you get to the location where the Tivo was recording as you began your streaming session...you have to jump back out to the "Now Playing" list, select the program again and then it will resume streaming from the point where it left off.
Will Tivo sell many of these Stream units? Probably not, as it's really a niche product at the moment with a fairly limited audience. First off, it only works with the iPad, so if you're thinking about using it to stream to your desktop/laptop computer or Android device you're basically SOL. Secondly, the streaming function only works within your internal home network, i.e. you can't stream over the internet...which is really a shame because if it did this then I would no longer have a need for a Slingbox. And lastly, it obviously only works with Tivo and specifically with later modeled Tivo's...and your Tivo needs to be ethernet or MOCA connected to your home network to boot. However, if you can deal with these limitations then the Stream is a nice add on and essentially turns your iPad into an additional (and portable) home television.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Bluetooth Finally Comes of Age - The Jawbone Big Jambox
Well, it's almost the end of the year and I have to say it's been a pretty ho hum one in terms of tech gadgetry...why else would I be talking about something so mundane as Bluetooth! But seriously, Bluetooth technology has come along quite a way since it was introduced over a decade ago. Back then the technology was so flaky - slow speeds, compatibility issues, connection problems, etc...and this seemed to continue on for a number of years. Did anyone back then ever get Bluetooth to work on a Windows machine? I bet not! It was only during the past 3 or 4 years that things got progressively better, probably due to a combination of evolving/maturing Bluetooth standards along with the proliferation of Bluetooth headsets and "hands free" automobile products that brought the technology to the mainstream. Nowadays Bluetooth seems to be pretty robust and I can't recall the last time I had issues pairing a device. To paraphrase the late Steve Jobs, "it just works"...finally!
A great example of the above is the latest gadget I purchased, the Jawbone Big Jambox wireless Bluetooth speaker. Talk about a dead simple setup procedure - the first time you turn the thing on it smartly goes into pairing mode automatically and has voice/sound prompts to guide you through the process. The speaker can store a total of 8 paired devices, and 2 of them can be simultaneously connected to it. In addition, it also comes with a built-in microphone so that you can use it as a wireless speakerphone. So, for example, if you're streaming your favorite tunes from your iPad to the Jambox and your phone happens to ring, the Jambox will recognize this and pause your music, announce the incoming call (w/ caller id even), and when you pick up the call it immediately turns itself into a full-duplex speakerphone with amazingly good call quality. Audio quality is generally very good for a speaker of this size - as long as you keep that in perspective you should be fine. The device's software can be updated through the Jawbone website, and there are even some supplemental apps (e.g. voice dialers) that you can download to the device as well as a plethora of optional audio "voices" in case the default one doesn't suit your taste.
The versatility and simplicity of the Jambox makes it a better choice for many audio enthusiasts over the more elegant (and non-Bluetooth) wireless solutions offered by Sonos. Don't get me wrong, though...Sonos products are in a league of their own in terms of versatility and handling complex, multi-room environments. But they can also be a bit finicky in terms of setup and maintenance...at least that's been my experience.
The Jambox is also quite stylish-looking too; don't you agree?
A great example of the above is the latest gadget I purchased, the Jawbone Big Jambox wireless Bluetooth speaker. Talk about a dead simple setup procedure - the first time you turn the thing on it smartly goes into pairing mode automatically and has voice/sound prompts to guide you through the process. The speaker can store a total of 8 paired devices, and 2 of them can be simultaneously connected to it. In addition, it also comes with a built-in microphone so that you can use it as a wireless speakerphone. So, for example, if you're streaming your favorite tunes from your iPad to the Jambox and your phone happens to ring, the Jambox will recognize this and pause your music, announce the incoming call (w/ caller id even), and when you pick up the call it immediately turns itself into a full-duplex speakerphone with amazingly good call quality. Audio quality is generally very good for a speaker of this size - as long as you keep that in perspective you should be fine. The device's software can be updated through the Jawbone website, and there are even some supplemental apps (e.g. voice dialers) that you can download to the device as well as a plethora of optional audio "voices" in case the default one doesn't suit your taste.
The versatility and simplicity of the Jambox makes it a better choice for many audio enthusiasts over the more elegant (and non-Bluetooth) wireless solutions offered by Sonos. Don't get me wrong, though...Sonos products are in a league of their own in terms of versatility and handling complex, multi-room environments. But they can also be a bit finicky in terms of setup and maintenance...at least that's been my experience.
The Jambox is also quite stylish-looking too; don't you agree?
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Quick Thoughts on Tyler Hamilton's Book
I just got done reading Tyler Hamilton's book, and all I can say is "Wow". I know that his credibility may be called into question given some of the lies he's told over the years, but the level of detail and specificity described in the book makes it hard for me to believe that he's saying anything other than the truth. And I've definitely come away from it feeling stronger than ever that Lance was been doped up all these years. A few noteworthy takeaways:
- I was amazed at all the planning and precision of the doping programs by the top teams and how everything was so carefully timed and executed.
- It was interesting to read about how all the riders had so much information about the doping methods used by their rivals, and how they all knew who was/wasn't doped up.
- Lance was an unbelievable control freak and bullied everyone who got in his way. He was even more of an SOB than I had previously imagined.
- Illegal practices or not, Michele Ferrari was a genius scientist/doctor that you had to grudgingly admire for his knowledge of the human physiology, training methods, diet, and of course performance-enhancing drugs. I loved the story about Lance getting worried about Pantani's solo breakaway during a Tour stage, and getting Bruyneel to call Ferrari on the phone to run some quick calculations to confirm that Pantani would eventually blow...which he did.
- Recreational riders are going to start using the term "not normal" on their weekend club rides from now on.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Nexus 7 - The Best Android Device Available
Let me just start out by saying that the Nexus 7 is unquestionably the best Android device available today! It's lightning fast, noticeably faster than any mobile device I've used...and I've used a bunch of them. I don't know if it's due to the quad-core processor or the smoothness of the Jelly Bean OS...probably a combination of both. Applications download/install several times faster than on other devices, and when you go into 3D mode on Google Maps it's absolutely amazing how quickly all the building structures take shape. I bought the device intending to hand it to one of our developers in order to test our Android app, but I've held onto to it for over a week now and I'm not sure I'm going to relinquish it...sorry David!
There are a number of other reasons to like the Nexus 7. The build quality is excellent, as is the screen resolution. For lots of people the form factor of a 7-inch device is advantageous to the 10-inch iPad because of portability. One of the nice things about its size is that I can store the device in the glove compartment or in the center console of my car, something I absolutely can't do with the iPad. The smaller/lighter form factor will also be preferred by a lot of people who read books, though I suspect magazine readers may not think the same. If you rely heavily on Gmail, Maps and other Google apps like I do then there is no comparison between the way they run on the Nexus vs. the iPad...the latter seems stuck in the stone ages. Battery life is also outstanding, on par or maybe slightly better than the iPad. And perhaps its biggest advantage is the price...at $199 it's priced the same as the mediocre Kindle Fire and and blows it away in just about every respect. And that price is less than half the cost of the entry-level iPad.
Quite a bit has been written recently about Android 4.1, aka Jelly Bean, particularly the sheer speed and smoothness of the OS. In addition to that Google is really trying to play up its Play Store (no pun intended) as well as the integration with all of its cloud-based services. For example, after going through the setup process my homepage shows a collage of content I have stored in Google:
There are a number of other reasons to like the Nexus 7. The build quality is excellent, as is the screen resolution. For lots of people the form factor of a 7-inch device is advantageous to the 10-inch iPad because of portability. One of the nice things about its size is that I can store the device in the glove compartment or in the center console of my car, something I absolutely can't do with the iPad. The smaller/lighter form factor will also be preferred by a lot of people who read books, though I suspect magazine readers may not think the same. If you rely heavily on Gmail, Maps and other Google apps like I do then there is no comparison between the way they run on the Nexus vs. the iPad...the latter seems stuck in the stone ages. Battery life is also outstanding, on par or maybe slightly better than the iPad. And perhaps its biggest advantage is the price...at $199 it's priced the same as the mediocre Kindle Fire and and blows it away in just about every respect. And that price is less than half the cost of the entry-level iPad.
Quite a bit has been written recently about Android 4.1, aka Jelly Bean, particularly the sheer speed and smoothness of the OS. In addition to that Google is really trying to play up its Play Store (no pun intended) as well as the integration with all of its cloud-based services. For example, after going through the setup process my homepage shows a collage of content I have stored in Google:
Perhaps the coolest Jelly Bean feature is Google Now, which is best described as an intelligent extension to the notification system. Google Now will automatically display "cards" based on some of your common activities. For example, I checked the score for a recent Giants game on the device, and ever since then it's been display cards for each of the Giants games, keeping me up to date on the scores. Ditto for the weather. And it even goes beyond that, bordering on creepy. The other day I was reading an article on TechCrunch written by a guest author who is employed by one of the local VC's. After finishing the article I decided to hop onto the VC's website to check out the author's bio...this was done on my laptop. A few minutes later I picked up the Nexus and noticed that a new notification had popped up...it was driving directions and estimated drive time from my home to the VC's office. As I stated...a bit creepy, but useful nonetheless.
So the big question is...will I replace my trusty iPad with the Nexus 7? It's a really, really close call...but probably not. I do like the convenience of having 4G connectivity when I need it, and unfortunately the Nexus only supports wifi. And though I love the whole concept behind Google Now, I also think that the technology is something I'd rather have on my smartphone than on my tablet device...now, if Verizon can get off their butts and deliver Jelly Bean to my Galaxy Nexus I'd be set! I also think the iPad still gets the nod as the superior reading device, especially for reading magazines/newspapers in landscape mode. In fact, some of the Android reading apps don't even support landscape mode on the Nexus, probably due to the fact that at 7 inches the screen isn't conducive to a quality reading experience in landscape. But at $199, it's easily the best value out there and is worth serious consideration for anyone needing to buy a tablet...regardless of the price point.
Friday, June 15, 2012
Apple TV - Not Just for the Home
At my company one of the most important meetings we have is our weekly development sprint review and planning session. For those of you unfamiliar with the Agile development methodology this is where the development team showcases what they've been working on during the past week, and it's also where we plan and prioritize the upcoming week's set of stories, or to-do list. Anyway, one of the biggest challenges we've faced is that the meetings tend to run long, and one of the main contributors to this is the fact that during the meeting anywhere from 4-8 people are projecting their laptops onto our conference room TV in order to display something to the entire audience. With one fairly short VGA cable to share amongst all of us, we not only had to play musical chairs within the conference room anytime someone new had something to present, but whoever was presenting also needed to make sure their display settings were correct and that they were projecting the right desktop window onto the TV. All told I would estimate that we wasted 15 minutes per meeting doing all this logistical juggling, and when you multiply that by about a dozen participants that's a total of 3 hours of lost productivity for the team.
Luckily we recently moved into a new office space, and in this space we had the luxury of setting up our new conference room from scratch. We decided from the get go that we were going to purchase one of those conference tables where all the wiring is accessible from the center of the table, so we didn't have to hassle with wires strewn all over the table and tripping on them as we walk in and out of the conference room. But at the last minute I decided we could go even one better...enter Apple TV.
As most people know, Apple TV is a cool little device that allows you to stream video (and/or audio) to your TV. The video streams could be from iTunes purchases, YouTube, Netflix, and a host of other available content sources. However, there is also a very cool and somewhat under promoted feature in Apple TV called Airplay. What Airplay allows you to do is a couple of things. First off, you can use Airplay Streaming to wirelessly stream multimedia content from your iPhone, iPad or iTunes-enabled computer directly to your TV via Apple TV. When you're in the media player you will automatically see a new control pop-up on the screen, and when pressed it enables you to select which available Apple TV device to stream through. It works wonderfully, and you can stream movies and TV shows in all of its high-def and multi-channel audio glory. But in addition to this the Apple TV also supports a feature known as Airplay Mirroring. What Airplay Mirroring allows you to do is to stream any content to your TV via a supported device. Right now the only supported devices are the iPhone 4S and the iPad 2 (or later). However, Apple is about a month away from releasing Mountain Lion, the next version of Mac OS X, and that version will support Airplay Mirroring as well. Given the fact that most everyone in our company is on a Mac, once Mountain Lion is out we'd all be able to stream anything from our laptops onto the big screen.
But there's no reason to even wait for Mountain Lion, because there are already 3rd-party solutions to enable Airplay Mirroring from Mac OS and even Windows clients today. We're currently using one called Airparrot, and at $6 per license (when purchased in blocks of 5) it's really a no-brainer. It allows you to either mirror or extend your desktop to the TV, lets you enable/disable audio streaming on-the-fly, and even provides an option for only displaying a selected application vs. your entire desktop.
All of our employees are now using Airplay to wirelessly stream their laptop screens during group meetings, and I have to say the productivity gains are immediately evident and the three Apple TV's we purchased have paid for themselves multiple times already.
In case you're wondering what our setup looks like here's a picture of the wall in our main conference room with dual 52" monitors. My iPad is being streamed on the left screen; my Macbook Pro on the right.
Here's a pic of one of the Apple TV's, which we conveniently hide behind the TV screen:
And of course, since the Apple TV is still a consumer device there's always a little time for fun as well:
Luckily we recently moved into a new office space, and in this space we had the luxury of setting up our new conference room from scratch. We decided from the get go that we were going to purchase one of those conference tables where all the wiring is accessible from the center of the table, so we didn't have to hassle with wires strewn all over the table and tripping on them as we walk in and out of the conference room. But at the last minute I decided we could go even one better...enter Apple TV.
As most people know, Apple TV is a cool little device that allows you to stream video (and/or audio) to your TV. The video streams could be from iTunes purchases, YouTube, Netflix, and a host of other available content sources. However, there is also a very cool and somewhat under promoted feature in Apple TV called Airplay. What Airplay allows you to do is a couple of things. First off, you can use Airplay Streaming to wirelessly stream multimedia content from your iPhone, iPad or iTunes-enabled computer directly to your TV via Apple TV. When you're in the media player you will automatically see a new control pop-up on the screen, and when pressed it enables you to select which available Apple TV device to stream through. It works wonderfully, and you can stream movies and TV shows in all of its high-def and multi-channel audio glory. But in addition to this the Apple TV also supports a feature known as Airplay Mirroring. What Airplay Mirroring allows you to do is to stream any content to your TV via a supported device. Right now the only supported devices are the iPhone 4S and the iPad 2 (or later). However, Apple is about a month away from releasing Mountain Lion, the next version of Mac OS X, and that version will support Airplay Mirroring as well. Given the fact that most everyone in our company is on a Mac, once Mountain Lion is out we'd all be able to stream anything from our laptops onto the big screen.
But there's no reason to even wait for Mountain Lion, because there are already 3rd-party solutions to enable Airplay Mirroring from Mac OS and even Windows clients today. We're currently using one called Airparrot, and at $6 per license (when purchased in blocks of 5) it's really a no-brainer. It allows you to either mirror or extend your desktop to the TV, lets you enable/disable audio streaming on-the-fly, and even provides an option for only displaying a selected application vs. your entire desktop.
All of our employees are now using Airplay to wirelessly stream their laptop screens during group meetings, and I have to say the productivity gains are immediately evident and the three Apple TV's we purchased have paid for themselves multiple times already.
In case you're wondering what our setup looks like here's a picture of the wall in our main conference room with dual 52" monitors. My iPad is being streamed on the left screen; my Macbook Pro on the right.
Here's a pic of one of the Apple TV's, which we conveniently hide behind the TV screen:
And of course, since the Apple TV is still a consumer device there's always a little time for fun as well:
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Fitbit Aria Wi-Fi Scale - the Perfect OCD Gift
Okay, so I'm probably one of the few guys around that gets overly obsessed with his weight. Not for any vanity-related reasons, mind you, but because of my fanatical obsession with cycling and the "weight weenie" aspect of wanting myself and my bike to be as light as possible. So, when I first heard about the new Fitbit Aria wi-fi scale I just couldn't resist picking one up. I've been following the goings on at Fitbit for awhile now, and their cool Ultra device has become pretty popular with people who want to track all their physical activities, calorie consumption, and sleep patterns. I never bothered with the Ultra since I already use a Garmin 500 to track all my cycling activities, but when I heard about the Aria I just knew I had to have it. What's cool about it is that not only does it show you your weight, but it also displays/records your body fat percentage and uploads all of the recorded data to the internet, which you can view by going to the Fitbit website or through their free iOS/Android applications. The scale can provide this data for up to 8 people in your household, and by default it makes each person's data completely private. You can weigh yourself as many times as you like throughout the day, and each time it will add the latest update to your online profile. This is great, because sometimes it's useful to record your weight at the beginning or end of each day, or before/after working out.
My Aria was waiting for me when I returned from a recent East Coast conference, and for the most part setting up the device was a breeze. I loved the packaging it came in, and dare I say that opening up the box was somewhat akin to opening up one for an Apple product...nice little touches and very pleasing to the eye. As soon as the box is opened there are specific instructions for going to the Fitbit website to download a setup program. I did this, and here's where I encountered a bit of a problem. Turns out that the setup program requires that your machine be connected to the internet via a wireless network - more on this requirement in a second. Anyway, after unplugging my ethernet cable I tried running the setup program several times, but each time it kept telling me that I was not using wireless. I almost decided to give up for the night, but just for fun I rebooted my machine, reran the setup program, and whoa-la...it worked this time! Once the setup program runs it asks you to create a Fitbit account if you don't already have one, and then it "finds" your Aria on the wireless network, asks a couple of basic questions, and automatically configures the device. I was wondering how this was going to work, because the Aria has no buttons to speak of and so I was curious as to how you would go about configuring it to connect to your wireless network. But what I believe the setup program is doing is copying the wireless network settings from your computer and then using those settings within the Aria to spoof the identify of your computer...very clever indeed! And the fact that the Mac address for the Aria doesn't show up as a registered device anywhere on my wireless router seems to support this theory.
The Aria comes in a black or white finish, with a clear Gorilla Glass-like overlay that you step on. The LED display is bright and readable, and overall the unit is very stylish and modern. After using it for a few days I can safely say the unit works exactly as advertised and performs flawlessly. The only bummer that it's constantly reminding me of how surprisingly high my body fat percentage is!
My Aria was waiting for me when I returned from a recent East Coast conference, and for the most part setting up the device was a breeze. I loved the packaging it came in, and dare I say that opening up the box was somewhat akin to opening up one for an Apple product...nice little touches and very pleasing to the eye. As soon as the box is opened there are specific instructions for going to the Fitbit website to download a setup program. I did this, and here's where I encountered a bit of a problem. Turns out that the setup program requires that your machine be connected to the internet via a wireless network - more on this requirement in a second. Anyway, after unplugging my ethernet cable I tried running the setup program several times, but each time it kept telling me that I was not using wireless. I almost decided to give up for the night, but just for fun I rebooted my machine, reran the setup program, and whoa-la...it worked this time! Once the setup program runs it asks you to create a Fitbit account if you don't already have one, and then it "finds" your Aria on the wireless network, asks a couple of basic questions, and automatically configures the device. I was wondering how this was going to work, because the Aria has no buttons to speak of and so I was curious as to how you would go about configuring it to connect to your wireless network. But what I believe the setup program is doing is copying the wireless network settings from your computer and then using those settings within the Aria to spoof the identify of your computer...very clever indeed! And the fact that the Mac address for the Aria doesn't show up as a registered device anywhere on my wireless router seems to support this theory.
The Aria comes in a black or white finish, with a clear Gorilla Glass-like overlay that you step on. The LED display is bright and readable, and overall the unit is very stylish and modern. After using it for a few days I can safely say the unit works exactly as advertised and performs flawlessly. The only bummer that it's constantly reminding me of how surprisingly high my body fat percentage is!
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Verizon and the Galaxy Nexus - Two Worthwhile Upgrades
Being the Android fanboy that I am, I had my eyes on the latest "pure Android" device, the Galaxy Nexus, ever since it was launched a few months ago. The device comes pre-loaded with the latest and greatest Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) version of Android, with lots of new bells and whistles and a much improved user interface. But alas, it was only available on Verizon and I had been a dedicated (and mostly satisfied) T-Mobile customer for the past 7 years. In addition to that I felt that this trend towards larger and larger handset screens was not to my liking, and so when I saw that the Galaxy Nexus was sporting a 4.65-inch screen I figured I really didn't want to deal with anything that bulky. So, given these two issues I decided I would just stand pat for awhile and see how things were going to play out. And as it turned out, Google did start rolling out ICS to existing Nexus S users such as myself, and since the Nexus S is no slouch of a device I figured I would just hold onto it for awhile and wait for the ICS update. And sure enough, back in December I was able to download and install ICS without a hitch, so I thought I was golden.
Well, I quickly found out that ICS on the Nexus S had a couple of major issues, notably excessive battery drain and a general sluggishness with most applications. In fact, shortly after Google started deploying ICS to Nexus S owners they abruptly halted the deployment, probably because everyone was having similar problems to mine. It was around this time that I also started losing my patience with T-Mobile, as there were just too many places I was going that had little to no reception, and even in the places where there was reception it was often the case that all I could get was 2G....WTF, that just doesn't cut it in today's world.
I waited and waited for Google to address the ICS issues, but no dice. And then I heard about this great deal that Amazon had for the Galaxy Nexus, just $99! So, I immediately jumped on the deal, had my phone in a couple of days (with number ported) and I was in business. And boy, I can't believe I didn't switch to Verizon sooner. I'm getting spectacular 4G coverage in most places....check out this speedtest report which I ran near my office:
ICS on the Galaxy Nexus doesn't seem to have any of the battery issues I experienced with the Nexus S either. I consider myself to be a pretty heavy smartphone user, but despite that I am able to go nearly a full day with the device off of a single charge; noticeably better than my Nexus S even before the ICS upgrade. And the dual-core processor in the Galaxy is so damn fast....it's night and day compared to any other phone I've used in terms of the speediness of apps. This, along with Verizon's great coverage and speedy 4G network have me in smartphone heaven at the moment. Do I still think the phone is too big? Yeah, it would be perfect if the screen was closer to 4-inches even...but I'll overlook this given all of the phone's other advantages.
Oh, but now it's time to play with my new "retina display" iPad...so stay tuned!
Well, I quickly found out that ICS on the Nexus S had a couple of major issues, notably excessive battery drain and a general sluggishness with most applications. In fact, shortly after Google started deploying ICS to Nexus S owners they abruptly halted the deployment, probably because everyone was having similar problems to mine. It was around this time that I also started losing my patience with T-Mobile, as there were just too many places I was going that had little to no reception, and even in the places where there was reception it was often the case that all I could get was 2G....WTF, that just doesn't cut it in today's world.
I waited and waited for Google to address the ICS issues, but no dice. And then I heard about this great deal that Amazon had for the Galaxy Nexus, just $99! So, I immediately jumped on the deal, had my phone in a couple of days (with number ported) and I was in business. And boy, I can't believe I didn't switch to Verizon sooner. I'm getting spectacular 4G coverage in most places....check out this speedtest report which I ran near my office:
ICS on the Galaxy Nexus doesn't seem to have any of the battery issues I experienced with the Nexus S either. I consider myself to be a pretty heavy smartphone user, but despite that I am able to go nearly a full day with the device off of a single charge; noticeably better than my Nexus S even before the ICS upgrade. And the dual-core processor in the Galaxy is so damn fast....it's night and day compared to any other phone I've used in terms of the speediness of apps. This, along with Verizon's great coverage and speedy 4G network have me in smartphone heaven at the moment. Do I still think the phone is too big? Yeah, it would be perfect if the screen was closer to 4-inches even...but I'll overlook this given all of the phone's other advantages.
Oh, but now it's time to play with my new "retina display" iPad...so stay tuned!
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Bike + Tech Gadgets = My New Parlee Z5 SLi
Those of you that have known me for awhile are aware that two of my personal hobbies/passions are cycling and tech gadgets. Well, a few months back I decided to pull the trigger on a new bike, and after going back and forth on all the available options I finally settled on the recently released Parlee Z5 SLi frame, married with Shimano Dura-Ace components. And not just any Dura-Ace component group, mind you, but the latest DI2 electronic shifting version of it. That's where the gadgetry comes in, and the resulting combination is oh so sweet.
The idea of electric shifting is not new, and in fact back in the 90's the French component manufacturer Mavic came out with the Zap electronic shifting system...and sure enough, yours truly was one of the early adopters of it. I will say this...when it worked it worked pretty well, but after a few unfortunate mishaps I gave up on it and went back to a more traditional setup. Then finally, a couple of years ago Shimano announced the new DI2 system, and knowing how good Japanese companies do electronics I just knew that one day I would have to have it. One of the issues with DI2, though (well, other than the expense), is that with all the electrical wiring running around it doesn't make for a very clean look on the bike. So, that's where the Parlee comes in. I've always admired Parlee for their handiwork and they were always near the top of my list for my next frame. And I always respected the fact that they only cared about making the best frames possible rather doing anything gimmicky like weird tube shapes or loud paint schemes. So when the Z5 SLi came out I just knew I had to have it. The "SL" stands for "super light", and at 820 grams it is indeed one of the lightest frames in the world. And the "i" in SLi stands for "internal routing", which means the frame is pre-drilled to allow the electrical wires to run inside of the frame vs. routing them externally and looking a tad ugly. The result is simply awesome!
I think pictures are worth a thousand words here, so let the cameras roll. First up, here is the bare frame and fork, just after I unboxed it at my bike shop. See the hole close to where the down tube meets the heat tube? That's for the internal wiring:
I debated quite awhile between going with a traditional gloss finish vs. the matte finish that is very popular today. I'm glad I went with matte, as in addition to looking great it has bit of stealthiness to it that I like a lot. And the Parlee guys did a fabulous custom paint job for me with the white racing logos, the stealthy head tube logo and just a hint of pink in a couple of places.
And just to prove I wasn't lying earlier, here's the frame up on the scale...yup, just .82 kg:
In case you're wondering if you need to remove the seat post in order to recharge the battery, the answer is no. The latest version of the Calfee battery allows you to charge it through a connector attached to the rear derailleur...very cool indeed!
The "control panel" is used to fine-tune the rear derailleur as well as check the strength of the battery
Here are a selection of other pictures:
The "cockpit". Lots of wires and cables here, but all nice and tidy. Enve bars and stem. BTW, Enve also supplies Parlee with their forks.
Beautiful sculpted and beefy bottom bracket section. 172.5mm Dura-Ace cranks with standard 39/53 chainrings.
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The "brains" of the system sit here on top of the Dura-Ace front derailleur.
The satellite rear shifters make it super easy to shift without having to take your hands off the bars. The only "cost" is the additional 70 grams in weight - weight weenies be warned!
And here is the finished product. In addition to the Dura Ace gruppo I went with Enve for the seat post, bars (deep drop) and stem (12 cm.), Look Keo Ti pedals, San Marco Concor saddle (which I may switch out for something else) and Arundel carbon bottle cages. The only items I didn't purchase new are the Dura-Ace C24 clincher wheels which I bought last year and my trusty Garmin Edge 500 cyclometer. I also considered going with compact cranks as they are so in vogue now, but since the Euro pros aren't using compact I couldn't bear the thought of doing so myself!
The total package as seen weighs in at about 14 lbs, 12 oz, a bit under the UCI weight limit which means I can't legally ride the Tour de France :-) Once I finally settle on a saddle the weight will go down an additional ounce or two, as the one I'm using now is not a carbon-railed version. If I wanted to I could have gone much lighter, but I wanted components which I could use day in and day out under any conditions, with no hassles and with zero compromises. The bike rides like a dream - fast and responsive, stiff but not overly so, and very comfortable to boot. And of course, that flawless shifting! Thanks a bunch to the folks at CycleSports Oakland who worked with me off and on over many months to get to this point. Special thanks to Chris Blease who continually put up with all my questions and obsessive-compulsive behavior, and also many thanks to Tim Parker whose mechanical abilities are second to none and who is the only person I've let touch my bikes for most of these past 20 years.
The idea of electric shifting is not new, and in fact back in the 90's the French component manufacturer Mavic came out with the Zap electronic shifting system...and sure enough, yours truly was one of the early adopters of it. I will say this...when it worked it worked pretty well, but after a few unfortunate mishaps I gave up on it and went back to a more traditional setup. Then finally, a couple of years ago Shimano announced the new DI2 system, and knowing how good Japanese companies do electronics I just knew that one day I would have to have it. One of the issues with DI2, though (well, other than the expense), is that with all the electrical wiring running around it doesn't make for a very clean look on the bike. So, that's where the Parlee comes in. I've always admired Parlee for their handiwork and they were always near the top of my list for my next frame. And I always respected the fact that they only cared about making the best frames possible rather doing anything gimmicky like weird tube shapes or loud paint schemes. So when the Z5 SLi came out I just knew I had to have it. The "SL" stands for "super light", and at 820 grams it is indeed one of the lightest frames in the world. And the "i" in SLi stands for "internal routing", which means the frame is pre-drilled to allow the electrical wires to run inside of the frame vs. routing them externally and looking a tad ugly. The result is simply awesome!
I think pictures are worth a thousand words here, so let the cameras roll. First up, here is the bare frame and fork, just after I unboxed it at my bike shop. See the hole close to where the down tube meets the heat tube? That's for the internal wiring:
I debated quite awhile between going with a traditional gloss finish vs. the matte finish that is very popular today. I'm glad I went with matte, as in addition to looking great it has bit of stealthiness to it that I like a lot. And the Parlee guys did a fabulous custom paint job for me with the white racing logos, the stealthy head tube logo and just a hint of pink in a couple of places.
And just to prove I wasn't lying earlier, here's the frame up on the scale...yup, just .82 kg:
One of the cooler things I did was to substitute the stock Shimano lithium iron battery with Calfee Design's new version which mounts inside of the seat post. Normally the DI2 battery would need to be mounted somewhere on the frame itself; again, rather ugly. Here's a picture of the seat post (incl. battery) being installed in the frame:
In case you're wondering if you need to remove the seat post in order to recharge the battery, the answer is no. The latest version of the Calfee battery allows you to charge it through a connector attached to the rear derailleur...very cool indeed!
I was told by my shop that getting all the wiring in place within the frame was a bit time consuming. I guess this next picture (my favorite) says it all:
Is this a bicycle or a computer? All those little zip ties actually serve a purpose...while inside of the frame they "hug" the surface of the frame so that the wires don't rattle around in there...pretty clever.
The electronic shifting is amazing. The levers are located in the same locations as the non-electric version, but they act a bit more like buttons than levers since there's not as much throw to them. As expected shifting is precise and flawless...it's also dead simple to make micro-adjustments to the rear derailleur - just hold the button on the "control panel" for a couple of seconds and then tap the levers in the proper direction. Even more impressive in my opinion is the front derailleur; in addition to the flawless shifting the front derailleur auto-adjusts itself depending on the chain angle...no more having to manually trim! You can also shift while braking as well as shift both derailleurs simultaneously - very nice!
The "control panel" is used to fine-tune the rear derailleur as well as check the strength of the battery
Here are a selection of other pictures:
The "cockpit". Lots of wires and cables here, but all nice and tidy. Enve bars and stem. BTW, Enve also supplies Parlee with their forks.
Beautiful sculpted and beefy bottom bracket section. 172.5mm Dura-Ace cranks with standard 39/53 chainrings.
.jpg)
Dura-Ace electric rear derailleur - note the cabling being routed inside of the chainstay.
The "brains" of the system sit here on top of the Dura-Ace front derailleur.
The satellite rear shifters make it super easy to shift without having to take your hands off the bars. The only "cost" is the additional 70 grams in weight - weight weenies be warned!
And here is the finished product. In addition to the Dura Ace gruppo I went with Enve for the seat post, bars (deep drop) and stem (12 cm.), Look Keo Ti pedals, San Marco Concor saddle (which I may switch out for something else) and Arundel carbon bottle cages. The only items I didn't purchase new are the Dura-Ace C24 clincher wheels which I bought last year and my trusty Garmin Edge 500 cyclometer. I also considered going with compact cranks as they are so in vogue now, but since the Euro pros aren't using compact I couldn't bear the thought of doing so myself!
The total package as seen weighs in at about 14 lbs, 12 oz, a bit under the UCI weight limit which means I can't legally ride the Tour de France :-) Once I finally settle on a saddle the weight will go down an additional ounce or two, as the one I'm using now is not a carbon-railed version. If I wanted to I could have gone much lighter, but I wanted components which I could use day in and day out under any conditions, with no hassles and with zero compromises. The bike rides like a dream - fast and responsive, stiff but not overly so, and very comfortable to boot. And of course, that flawless shifting! Thanks a bunch to the folks at CycleSports Oakland who worked with me off and on over many months to get to this point. Special thanks to Chris Blease who continually put up with all my questions and obsessive-compulsive behavior, and also many thanks to Tim Parker whose mechanical abilities are second to none and who is the only person I've let touch my bikes for most of these past 20 years.
Monday, December 26, 2011
My Ice Cream Sandwich is Quickly Melting
You know you're a tech/gadget geek when you decide to perform a major OS upgrade while on vacation...and in Sin City of all places. But that's exactly what I did while I was in Vegas week before last. I caught wind of the fact that the latest version of Android, 4.0 (aka "Ice Cream Sandwich") was slowly being released over-the-air for the Nexus S. Of course, being my impatient self I couldn't wait for that and instead found a download link off of Google's servers and manually upgraded myself. In typical Android fashion the upgrade process was very straightforward and in less than an hour I was up and running with the latest and greatest from Google. So how's my Ice Cream Sandwich experience been since then?
Well, let me start out by saying that if you are current Nexus S owner and have not yet upgraded....please don't! Google pulled the plug on the upgrade shortly after it was released due to a number of issues that were reported by early adopters. In some cases the upgrade never completed and essentially bricked the phone, in other cases certain functions stopped working post upgrade (e.g. WiFi), and in a lot of cases, myself included, battery consumption has simply been atrocious since the upgrade. Right now I'm lucky to get half a day of normal use out of my battery before it dies. Some people say that turning off WiFi or disabling the Google+ app helps, but I've done both and it doesn't seem to matter. I'm crossing my fingers that Google does something about this soon, and it's been such a royal pain in the ass that I'm even thinking of switching to Verizon and buying a Galaxy Nexus just so that I don't have to deal with it anymore. And in addition to the power issue there are a couple of other major annoyances with ICS. Text rendering in Gmail and the browser seem to take forever sometimes, and some of my apps just appear to be more sluggish in general.
But despite all these issues there are some really nice enhancements with ICS. The Gmail app is a lot more refined and intuitive, and some of the more commonly used functions (e.g. labels, mark as unread) have dedicated icons now instead of your having to pull up the options menu. The notifications pulldown has also been enhanced to allow you to remove individual notifications by swiping them to the left. This new swiping gesture has been applied to a number of other places within ICS as well. Within Gmail you can swipe to go to the next/previous message, and within the "running apps" list you can kill specific apps by swiping them away - very nice. There's also a really cool new feature which allows you to send one of five preconfigured (and customizable) text messages to a caller during an incoming call when you can't pick up the phone. Ice Cream sandwich also seems to have addressed a couple of major issues that I often encountered with the Gingerbread OS. Sometimes when I press on the "home" button it would take at least 15 seconds for the icons to appear, and even worse, sometimes the home screen itself would become totally unresponsive and I would have to power cycle the device to fix it. Fortunately ICS addressed both of these issues.
Please Google, fix the damn battery issue and allow me to enjoy my Ice Cream Sandwich.
Well, let me start out by saying that if you are current Nexus S owner and have not yet upgraded....please don't! Google pulled the plug on the upgrade shortly after it was released due to a number of issues that were reported by early adopters. In some cases the upgrade never completed and essentially bricked the phone, in other cases certain functions stopped working post upgrade (e.g. WiFi), and in a lot of cases, myself included, battery consumption has simply been atrocious since the upgrade. Right now I'm lucky to get half a day of normal use out of my battery before it dies. Some people say that turning off WiFi or disabling the Google+ app helps, but I've done both and it doesn't seem to matter. I'm crossing my fingers that Google does something about this soon, and it's been such a royal pain in the ass that I'm even thinking of switching to Verizon and buying a Galaxy Nexus just so that I don't have to deal with it anymore. And in addition to the power issue there are a couple of other major annoyances with ICS. Text rendering in Gmail and the browser seem to take forever sometimes, and some of my apps just appear to be more sluggish in general.
But despite all these issues there are some really nice enhancements with ICS. The Gmail app is a lot more refined and intuitive, and some of the more commonly used functions (e.g. labels, mark as unread) have dedicated icons now instead of your having to pull up the options menu. The notifications pulldown has also been enhanced to allow you to remove individual notifications by swiping them to the left. This new swiping gesture has been applied to a number of other places within ICS as well. Within Gmail you can swipe to go to the next/previous message, and within the "running apps" list you can kill specific apps by swiping them away - very nice. There's also a really cool new feature which allows you to send one of five preconfigured (and customizable) text messages to a caller during an incoming call when you can't pick up the phone. Ice Cream sandwich also seems to have addressed a couple of major issues that I often encountered with the Gingerbread OS. Sometimes when I press on the "home" button it would take at least 15 seconds for the icons to appear, and even worse, sometimes the home screen itself would become totally unresponsive and I would have to power cycle the device to fix it. Fortunately ICS addressed both of these issues.
Please Google, fix the damn battery issue and allow me to enjoy my Ice Cream Sandwich.
Friday, November 18, 2011
New Kindle is good but not quite on Fire
First off, in answer to the most obvious question...No, I really don't need yet another device to supplement my Macbook Pro, iPad and Nexus S smartphone. But for $200 I really couldn't resist - compare that price to the price of the original Kindle. Plus, as an Amazon Prime subscriber I felt if I got the Fire I would be more inclined to use the free services available to Prime subscribers, most notably the movies and TV shows that are available for free as part of my subscription.
My Kindle Fire arrived a day earlier than expected, which was a nice surprise. Setup was a total breeze - When I turned the device on I went through a short setup process and was up and running in less than 5 minutes. In fact, I didn't even have to enter my Amazon credentials since it assumed I was purchasing the device for myself and preauthorized my device...hmm, I wonder if that would be a problem if I were to buy one as a gift for somebody. Anyway, once the setup was completed it instantly made available all of my digital Amazon content - books, videos, music, etc. And it also made available all of the Amazon Appstore apps that I had previously purchased/installed on my Nexus S. So far so good.
I was also pleasantly surprised by the form factor of the device itself, as most of the reviews I had read had bashed it. At this point it's too early to say if a 7-inch screen is preferable to the 10 inches provided by the iPad and other devices, but it does make the device nearly pocketable and also more conducive to one-handed operations. I also appreciate the rubberized backing and sides of the device, is it makes the device easy to hold for long periods of time. This is something I don't like at all about the iPad 2, as its tapered edges make it very uncomfortable to hold for extended periods.
In terms of functionality, most of the built-in functions seem to work pretty well. As others have pointed out, even though the Fire is Android-based you would hardly know that Android is being run under the covers due to the heavy customization made by the Amazon developers. Video streaming, e-books, and music all worked without a hitch...nice job Amazon. Some of the apps, however, were less than stellar. The built-in mail app is really basic, and though it automatically configured my Gmail account it wouldn't detect my work email as also being Google-based and forced me to manually configure the IMAP settings...PITA. And it seems like the vast majority of 3rd-party apps are still not optimized for tablet devices, so all you get is a bigger version of the phone app. There are a few notable exceptions, however, like Evernote...those guys can do nothing wrong in my opinion!
By far the biggest disappointment is the performance of the much ballyhooed Silk browser. In theory Silk was supposed to render pages more quickly than any mobile browser due to the fact that Amazon was using its own EC2 to serve and/or pre-cache a lot of your web content...resulting in fewer HTTP connections and speedier rendering. But in reality the Silk browser is probably the slowest mobile browser I've used. Perhaps Amazon hasn't enabled all of its fancy algorithms yet to optimize the Silk browsing experience, or maybe it needs to "learn" my browsing habits first. I sure hope they address this, as Silk was one of the biggest reasons for my getting the device in the first place.
Am I going to keep the Fire? Hard to say right now. On the one hand it's a great content consumption device, particularly for Prime subscribers. And for $200 you're getting great value for the dollar. But it certainly won't replace my iPad, and apart from the integration with Amazon's own services it doesn't do anything that the iPad doesn't already do...and in most cases doesn't do them nearly as well.
My Kindle Fire arrived a day earlier than expected, which was a nice surprise. Setup was a total breeze - When I turned the device on I went through a short setup process and was up and running in less than 5 minutes. In fact, I didn't even have to enter my Amazon credentials since it assumed I was purchasing the device for myself and preauthorized my device...hmm, I wonder if that would be a problem if I were to buy one as a gift for somebody. Anyway, once the setup was completed it instantly made available all of my digital Amazon content - books, videos, music, etc. And it also made available all of the Amazon Appstore apps that I had previously purchased/installed on my Nexus S. So far so good.
I was also pleasantly surprised by the form factor of the device itself, as most of the reviews I had read had bashed it. At this point it's too early to say if a 7-inch screen is preferable to the 10 inches provided by the iPad and other devices, but it does make the device nearly pocketable and also more conducive to one-handed operations. I also appreciate the rubberized backing and sides of the device, is it makes the device easy to hold for long periods of time. This is something I don't like at all about the iPad 2, as its tapered edges make it very uncomfortable to hold for extended periods.
In terms of functionality, most of the built-in functions seem to work pretty well. As others have pointed out, even though the Fire is Android-based you would hardly know that Android is being run under the covers due to the heavy customization made by the Amazon developers. Video streaming, e-books, and music all worked without a hitch...nice job Amazon. Some of the apps, however, were less than stellar. The built-in mail app is really basic, and though it automatically configured my Gmail account it wouldn't detect my work email as also being Google-based and forced me to manually configure the IMAP settings...PITA. And it seems like the vast majority of 3rd-party apps are still not optimized for tablet devices, so all you get is a bigger version of the phone app. There are a few notable exceptions, however, like Evernote...those guys can do nothing wrong in my opinion!
By far the biggest disappointment is the performance of the much ballyhooed Silk browser. In theory Silk was supposed to render pages more quickly than any mobile browser due to the fact that Amazon was using its own EC2 to serve and/or pre-cache a lot of your web content...resulting in fewer HTTP connections and speedier rendering. But in reality the Silk browser is probably the slowest mobile browser I've used. Perhaps Amazon hasn't enabled all of its fancy algorithms yet to optimize the Silk browsing experience, or maybe it needs to "learn" my browsing habits first. I sure hope they address this, as Silk was one of the biggest reasons for my getting the device in the first place.
Am I going to keep the Fire? Hard to say right now. On the one hand it's a great content consumption device, particularly for Prime subscribers. And for $200 you're getting great value for the dollar. But it certainly won't replace my iPad, and apart from the integration with Amazon's own services it doesn't do anything that the iPad doesn't already do...and in most cases doesn't do them nearly as well.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
As the Saying Goes, Once you Go Mac.....
Let me start out by just cutting to the chase...I'll never go back to Windows again!
Those that know me know that I've been weaning myself slowly off of Microsoft-based technologies. It started off with moving off of MS Exchange, then Outlook, then Office...the last holdout being Windows itself. But after my recent job switch I decided I needed to finally bite the bullet...plus I was envious of seeing all the "cool and hip" people toting their Macbooks around from place to place while I was still lugging my uncool and unhip Thinkpad. I was told by several friends that the switch from Windows to Mac was going to be initially painful - one buddy of mine told me that "you will hate the damn thing for the first two weeks". Plus, every time I would walk into an Apple store and start playing around with a Mac it would last less than 5 minutes, as I would get so frustrated not being able to right-click, not figuring out how to resize a window, looking for the "file" menu, etc. The other complication is the fact that for the life of me I could never get used to touchpad-style pointing devices - I was a firm believer of the Trackpoint and even preferred it over a regular mouse. Anyway, I definitely had my work cut out for me.
However, I was very pleasantly surprised by the fact that I was only completely frustrated on the first day, and after the second day I already knew I had made the right decision and knew that I would never go back to a PC again. I think there were a few reasons why the transition was not as painful as I had anticipated. First off, the fact that I've owned an iPad for awhile has conditioned me to "think like a Mac user"...if that makes any sense. There are a number of similarities between Mac OS and iOS, and with the recent Lion release the two operating systems are even more alike than ever. Secondly, I don't use a ton of keyboard macros, and the ones I do use are all the basic ones and so it's simply a matter of remembering to use the "command" key instead of "ctrl"...so I had a much easier time of it when compared to the MS Office super-user types who get thrown off by all the keyboard macro differences between PC and Mac. And lastly, though I still miss the Trackpoint I've come to appreciate some of the benefits of the touchpad, particularly some of the multi-touch gestures that Mac OS provides.
Compared to Windows, Mac OS does seem to be a lot more stable and efficient in its use of system resources, and I've rarely run into issues that have caused me to reboot the machine, let alone encounter a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) equivalent. With Windows I would periodically need to do a "therapeutic reboot" in order to free up system resources, or Windows itself would do that for me by blue-screening on me every once in awhile. And the hardware design of the Macbook Pro is so well thought out and the build quality is second to none. I can't even hear my hard disk spinning unless I press my ear against its surface - you would think there was an SSD inside of the machine. And all the little touches, such as the magnetically attached AC adapter and the little clips attached to the adapter that you wrap the cord around. It's no wonder Apple has won all those awards for design excellence.
But despite all of the improvements, far and away the best thing about my Mac is the fact that I now have suspend/resume that actually works! With Windows this has always been a crapshoot. I've had so many occasions in the past where I shut the lid on my laptop, commute home or to the office, get there and discover my laptop is still burning hot because it never went into suspend mode. Equally frustrating are the frequent occasions where you open the lid and wait for 10-15 minutes until you finally see the screen, all the while your hard disk is spinning away like crazy. I remember at one of my startups when we were fundraising and seeing VC's on a regular basis. We would go through this routine where we would open the lid on one of our laptops while parking the car, and carry it with the lid still open while walking into the VC reception area. We must have looked a bit silly, but we wanted to ensure our presentation/demo went without a hitch and didn't want to take a chance on the laptop screen staying blank. It's so comforting now to be able to just shut/open the lid freely anytime I need to and know that my machine will just work.
Is the Mac perfect? Heck no...there are a number of little things that still annoy me today. Why Steve Jobs doesn't allow you to cut-and-paste files is beyond me. And the fact that you can only see the "file" menu for the foreground app is a real pain in the butt. But overall it's been a great move for me, one that's been a long time coming. I'm also relieved that my multi-year quest to divorce myself of all things Microsoft has finally come to end...well, at least until the Skype acquisition is complete. I guess I still have a few months of freedom before needing to tackle this again!
Those that know me know that I've been weaning myself slowly off of Microsoft-based technologies. It started off with moving off of MS Exchange, then Outlook, then Office...the last holdout being Windows itself. But after my recent job switch I decided I needed to finally bite the bullet...plus I was envious of seeing all the "cool and hip" people toting their Macbooks around from place to place while I was still lugging my uncool and unhip Thinkpad. I was told by several friends that the switch from Windows to Mac was going to be initially painful - one buddy of mine told me that "you will hate the damn thing for the first two weeks". Plus, every time I would walk into an Apple store and start playing around with a Mac it would last less than 5 minutes, as I would get so frustrated not being able to right-click, not figuring out how to resize a window, looking for the "file" menu, etc. The other complication is the fact that for the life of me I could never get used to touchpad-style pointing devices - I was a firm believer of the Trackpoint and even preferred it over a regular mouse. Anyway, I definitely had my work cut out for me.
However, I was very pleasantly surprised by the fact that I was only completely frustrated on the first day, and after the second day I already knew I had made the right decision and knew that I would never go back to a PC again. I think there were a few reasons why the transition was not as painful as I had anticipated. First off, the fact that I've owned an iPad for awhile has conditioned me to "think like a Mac user"...if that makes any sense. There are a number of similarities between Mac OS and iOS, and with the recent Lion release the two operating systems are even more alike than ever. Secondly, I don't use a ton of keyboard macros, and the ones I do use are all the basic ones and so it's simply a matter of remembering to use the "command" key instead of "ctrl"...so I had a much easier time of it when compared to the MS Office super-user types who get thrown off by all the keyboard macro differences between PC and Mac. And lastly, though I still miss the Trackpoint I've come to appreciate some of the benefits of the touchpad, particularly some of the multi-touch gestures that Mac OS provides.
Compared to Windows, Mac OS does seem to be a lot more stable and efficient in its use of system resources, and I've rarely run into issues that have caused me to reboot the machine, let alone encounter a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) equivalent. With Windows I would periodically need to do a "therapeutic reboot" in order to free up system resources, or Windows itself would do that for me by blue-screening on me every once in awhile. And the hardware design of the Macbook Pro is so well thought out and the build quality is second to none. I can't even hear my hard disk spinning unless I press my ear against its surface - you would think there was an SSD inside of the machine. And all the little touches, such as the magnetically attached AC adapter and the little clips attached to the adapter that you wrap the cord around. It's no wonder Apple has won all those awards for design excellence.
But despite all of the improvements, far and away the best thing about my Mac is the fact that I now have suspend/resume that actually works! With Windows this has always been a crapshoot. I've had so many occasions in the past where I shut the lid on my laptop, commute home or to the office, get there and discover my laptop is still burning hot because it never went into suspend mode. Equally frustrating are the frequent occasions where you open the lid and wait for 10-15 minutes until you finally see the screen, all the while your hard disk is spinning away like crazy. I remember at one of my startups when we were fundraising and seeing VC's on a regular basis. We would go through this routine where we would open the lid on one of our laptops while parking the car, and carry it with the lid still open while walking into the VC reception area. We must have looked a bit silly, but we wanted to ensure our presentation/demo went without a hitch and didn't want to take a chance on the laptop screen staying blank. It's so comforting now to be able to just shut/open the lid freely anytime I need to and know that my machine will just work.
Is the Mac perfect? Heck no...there are a number of little things that still annoy me today. Why Steve Jobs doesn't allow you to cut-and-paste files is beyond me. And the fact that you can only see the "file" menu for the foreground app is a real pain in the butt. But overall it's been a great move for me, one that's been a long time coming. I'm also relieved that my multi-year quest to divorce myself of all things Microsoft has finally come to end...well, at least until the Skype acquisition is complete. I guess I still have a few months of freedom before needing to tackle this again!
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Amazon Cloud Player vs. Google Music Beta
Last week Apple gave us a previous of iCloud and iOS 5 at its annual WWDC conference. What they showed was pretty impressive, but most of it is still beta and won't be generally available until the Fall. Of particular interest to me are their plans around moving iTunes to the cloud and finally relieving us of the painful and outdated method of cabled sync in order to move content to mobile devices. But if you're like me you don't live in a world where Steve Jobs has complete control over your mobile existence, there are a couple of Android-based alternatives available right now that you might want to look at; Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music Beta.
Amazon Cloud Player has been around for the past two months or so, and I've been using it off and on since then with generally good success. They give everyone 5GB of storage for free, but as I mentioned in a prior blog post you can get an upgrade to 20GB by purchasing any album, including a bunch for just 99 cents. Google Music Beta came out shortly after Amazon and gives you storage for up to 20,000 songs; plenty more than most people will require. I finally received an invite to the beta a couple of weeks ago and so I installed it right away and had a chance to compare it with Amazon. Here's how the two offerings compare:
Installation: Both products download and install very easily, and both use a Flash-based component for scanning music on your local machine and uploading it to the cloud. But they greatly differ in their approaches to this. The Amazon uploader must be manually initiated, and once it kicks off it spends a few minutes analyzing your iTunes library, compares it to what's already been stored in the cloud, and then presents you a screen where you can either automatically upload all the music it finds that's not already in the cloud or selectively upload the playlists, albums, artists, etc. that you'd like to be synced. It also provides a comprehensive report of content that it finds that it is unable to sync, e.g. DRM'd content. By contrast, Google's default mode is to always run in the background and automatically upload new iTunes music to the cloud, without the user having to take action. In theory this seems like a better and more elegant solution. However, in my case the Google software consumed nearly all of the CPU on my machine while scanning/uploading my iTunes content, and to add to my frustration the upload process itself took an incredibly long time - roughly a couple of days to upload just 3500 songs. In fact, the CPU consumption was so bad that I had to go into Task Manager and lower the priority of the Google music manager process.
Advantage: Amazon
Web Music Player: To be honest, I didn't spend much time using either player - after all, I've got iTunes running on my laptop! But they both seemed to do the job, and Google's player has a few extra features such as thumbs up/thumbs down and keeping track of the play count. But I do like the look of the Amazon player a little more, plus it has the advantage of being able to play music purchased from the Amazon MP3 store.
Advantage: Neither - it's a tie.
Mobile App: Both mobile apps did the job and generally worked well over Wi-Fi or when wireless coverage wasn't in issue. But on several occasions the Google app would just stop midway through a song for no explainable reason. I like the UI better on Amazon, and I like the fact that it lets you easily switch between music in the cloud vs. music sitting on your device. Google lets you do this as well, but you have to go into one of the options settings in order to switch back and forth...a bit of a pain. I've also used both applications during long bike rides that went through areas of spotty to low coverage, and I have to say that both applications had their share of issues when dealing with bad coverage and both frequently just stop working and never recover even when reception improves - maybe they should reverse engineer the Pandora app and figure out how they are so good at dealing with this. Google would also randomly skip both forwards and backwards within a song when experiencing reception issues...very strange. Amazon performed a bit better, and I suspect it "reads ahead" within a playlist and stores upcoming songs within its local cache. I'm sure Google does some of this too, but perhaps its cache is smaller. One very annoying problem with Amazon is that it sometimes caches garbage for a song, and once it does then each time you play that song you'll hit that garbage and it just stops playing..at least until the cache is cleared.
Advantage: Amazon
iOS Support: Well, as you would expect neither offering has native iOS support, although both claim to be usable from Mobile Safari. I was able to verify this myself using my iPad.
Advantage: Neither - it's a tie.
In summary, I have to give a slight edge to Amazon, although not by much. And both companies need to spend time on their Android apps and improve their handling and recovery of reception issues.
Oh, and it looks like Spotify is close to launching here in the U.S....I can't wait.
Amazon Cloud Player has been around for the past two months or so, and I've been using it off and on since then with generally good success. They give everyone 5GB of storage for free, but as I mentioned in a prior blog post you can get an upgrade to 20GB by purchasing any album, including a bunch for just 99 cents. Google Music Beta came out shortly after Amazon and gives you storage for up to 20,000 songs; plenty more than most people will require. I finally received an invite to the beta a couple of weeks ago and so I installed it right away and had a chance to compare it with Amazon. Here's how the two offerings compare:
Installation: Both products download and install very easily, and both use a Flash-based component for scanning music on your local machine and uploading it to the cloud. But they greatly differ in their approaches to this. The Amazon uploader must be manually initiated, and once it kicks off it spends a few minutes analyzing your iTunes library, compares it to what's already been stored in the cloud, and then presents you a screen where you can either automatically upload all the music it finds that's not already in the cloud or selectively upload the playlists, albums, artists, etc. that you'd like to be synced. It also provides a comprehensive report of content that it finds that it is unable to sync, e.g. DRM'd content. By contrast, Google's default mode is to always run in the background and automatically upload new iTunes music to the cloud, without the user having to take action. In theory this seems like a better and more elegant solution. However, in my case the Google software consumed nearly all of the CPU on my machine while scanning/uploading my iTunes content, and to add to my frustration the upload process itself took an incredibly long time - roughly a couple of days to upload just 3500 songs. In fact, the CPU consumption was so bad that I had to go into Task Manager and lower the priority of the Google music manager process.
Advantage: Amazon
Web Music Player: To be honest, I didn't spend much time using either player - after all, I've got iTunes running on my laptop! But they both seemed to do the job, and Google's player has a few extra features such as thumbs up/thumbs down and keeping track of the play count. But I do like the look of the Amazon player a little more, plus it has the advantage of being able to play music purchased from the Amazon MP3 store.
Advantage: Neither - it's a tie.
Mobile App: Both mobile apps did the job and generally worked well over Wi-Fi or when wireless coverage wasn't in issue. But on several occasions the Google app would just stop midway through a song for no explainable reason. I like the UI better on Amazon, and I like the fact that it lets you easily switch between music in the cloud vs. music sitting on your device. Google lets you do this as well, but you have to go into one of the options settings in order to switch back and forth...a bit of a pain. I've also used both applications during long bike rides that went through areas of spotty to low coverage, and I have to say that both applications had their share of issues when dealing with bad coverage and both frequently just stop working and never recover even when reception improves - maybe they should reverse engineer the Pandora app and figure out how they are so good at dealing with this. Google would also randomly skip both forwards and backwards within a song when experiencing reception issues...very strange. Amazon performed a bit better, and I suspect it "reads ahead" within a playlist and stores upcoming songs within its local cache. I'm sure Google does some of this too, but perhaps its cache is smaller. One very annoying problem with Amazon is that it sometimes caches garbage for a song, and once it does then each time you play that song you'll hit that garbage and it just stops playing..at least until the cache is cleared.
Advantage: Amazon
iOS Support: Well, as you would expect neither offering has native iOS support, although both claim to be usable from Mobile Safari. I was able to verify this myself using my iPad.
Advantage: Neither - it's a tie.
In summary, I have to give a slight edge to Amazon, although not by much. And both companies need to spend time on their Android apps and improve their handling and recovery of reception issues.
Oh, and it looks like Spotify is close to launching here in the U.S....I can't wait.
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