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About Me
I'm Michael Koby, and I love technology. I'm also a programmer, currently doing Ruby on Rails development for a small Houston startup. Here I talk about technology, programming, politics, movies, music, and anything else I feel I need to talk about. If you would like to know more, you can check out the About page.Popular Series
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Buying an HDTV: DLP, OLED, & Projectors
Last week, we took a look at the LCD and plasma display technologies and weighed the pros and cons of each. This week we’re going to take a quick look at some other display technologies that are available today: DLP, OLED, and projectors.
DLP Televisions
The abbreviation DLP, stands for “Digital Light Processing” and was invented by Texas Instruments. Images shown on DLP devices are created by microscopically small mirrors that are laid out in a matrix. Each mirror represents 1 or more pixels in the projected image. So in this case, the number of mirrors corresponds to the resolution of the image being projected.
Most DLP televisions do what is commonly referred to as rear-projection. This is why these televisions are generally much thicker than their LCD or plasma brothers. However currently you can purchase 1080p DLP televisions that are larger than 70-inches for the same price as some 52-inch LCDs. So you can get a really large screen but it’s going to come in a bulkier package. Also, DLP televisions can lose some of their brightness if you aren’t looking directly at the TV.
Projectors
If you have the space and you want the true “home theater” experience, nothing will work better than a projector. But be prepared to drop a nice amount of coin to go this route. The 1080p projectors cost just as much (in most cases more) as a 1080p LCD/plasma. The advantage here is picture size. You can really get a true theater experience using a projector. The downside to owning a projector (besides price) is the bulbs, they have to be replaced eventually and they can cost upwards of multiple hundreds of dollars. Some can even cost as much as 1/3rd the price of the projector itself. Also, it is recommended (though not required) that you buy an actual screen to display the projector’s image onto. It will greatly improve the quality of your viewing experience if you buy a screen. Again though, if you want the true theater experience in your home, nothing is going to beat a projector.
OLED
The Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) televisions are something that was just recently introduced (in the last year or so). And currently there is only a single TV available for purchase via Amazon (Sony’s XEL-1 11” OLED Digital TV). Since OLED is so new, the TVs are going to be expensive. That Sony television I just lined to is $2500 for 11 inches of screen. The big deal about OLED is that you can get really slim displays. That 11 inch television is only 3mm thick, that’s really thin. The other big deal about OLED is that it will supposedly fix all the flaws in LCD with regards to motion blur. If this in fact the case, then OLED could beat out both LCD and plasma TVs once the sizes get bigger and the price comes down (but that’s probably not for a while). Unfortunately there are not enough OLED televisions available to the general consumer yet to really be able to weigh the pros and cons of the technology. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Next Week
Now that we’ve covered the different display technologies, we’ll next move is to help you understand what high definition content is available to view on your new television.
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Consulting Consultants: Personal Branding – Social Networks
Last week, we took a look at blogging to improve your personal brand. This week we’re going to look at an aspect of personal branding that still kind of new-ish and can help inform people as to who you are and what you do. What is this thing of which I speak? It’s social networks.
There are several social networks out there that can help you build your personal brand and bring you more networking opportunities. The networks I’m specifically going to focus on are LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
When it comes to social networks, there are several spread out across the internet to help you become social in some way. There are music social networks (Last.FM), there are movie social networks (Flixster), and there are ones for just general networking (Facebook). The social network LinkedIn, is being marketed as “the social network for professionals.” On LinkedIn, you can put up a pseudo-resume, give a little background information on your past jobs, and even talk about your interests as they relate to your career. You can also connect to your co-workers both previous and current. LinkedIn also offers a forum called Answers in which you can answer other peoples questions. Answering questions can earn you points, and is a nice way to become known for something. Think of this as an extension of your blog. You can also use the questions as jumping points for your blog.
Some things you want to do to your profile page. You want to be concise but you want to give people a good understanding of your past work. This is similar to a resume so make sure it shines. You’ll want to put up a photo (try to keep it as professional as possible). You will also want to connect to as many people that you know as possible this will in turn bring others to you. Finally shoot for 100% profile completeness, this will help give a nice overall view of yourself to those on the service.
How does this build your personal brand? Well, this is a site for professionals to connect. and find each other. If you make sure to list your skill sets accordingly people can find you when they need someone that does what you do. It is also a place to brag about your accomplishments. Have an MVP, a certification, or something else? Make sure you say that on your LinkedIn profile. Also, should you get laid off during this current economic crisis, you have a network of people you can ask to keep their eyes and ears open.
Ahh Facebook, the “professional” Myspace. Well maybe not really, but it does look more uniformed and is easier to look at than MySpace. Facebook can arguably be interchanged with LinkedIn depending on where most of your network already connects. If it’s on Facebook than you’re halfway there. If it’s not, then Facebook is a good place to show the more personal side of yourself. Facebook does allow you to have the best of both worlds in that you can create a really nice profile with little fluff and connect to your (former) co-workers.
When you fill out the information to show on your profile, you’ll want to be concise but also somewhat through. This is because not just employers are going to be looking at this profile. Chances are high that this profile will easily show up in a Google search for your name. Fill in as much information as possible. Avoid overly personal details but you can put things like phone numbers, relationship status, and some photos up. Keep the photos neat and clean if you want to maintain the more professional profile.
Facebook gives a lot of options when it comes to securing your profile. Make sure that if you do plan on putting stuff up that is professionally questionable that you lock your profile down so that anyone searching can not get into the “meat” of your profile and will only see a small portion.
The most misunderstood application on the social bandwagon. Twitter is alike a giant chat room where you can tell people what you’re doing, ask for help, offer help, tell people about a cool website/project, and just catch up. As you become more known for something, people will tend to follow you because they think you’ll talk about that so keep things like that in mind as you begin to twitter. Twitter is more conversational than blogging, and more interactive than Facebook or LinkedIn. It requires that you participate. You have to both listen and speak. If you don’t speak, no one ever hears you. If you don’t listen then no one speaks to you.
When using Twitter for the sake of personal branding you’ll want to make sure your tweets focus on whatever it is you are attempting to brand yourself for. This means keeping the personal tweets (what you’re eating, where you are at, what you’re doing) to a minimum. This also means “re-tweeting” other posts that have to do with the area you’re trying to brand yourself with. Once again, I’m a bad example of this, but even I still get questions from friends about how to do things on occasion.
Conclusion
Personal branding is one part focus and several parts putting yourself out there for the world to find you. You can be well known and respected in your field but if people can’t find you, there is very little point. Putting yourself out there apart from your blog makes it easier to directly communicate with those you know and those you will meet.
Next week, we’re going to take a look at public events as a way to help build your personal brand.
Michael Koby 
Physical Media is Not Dead
Being on the forefront of technology (or at least reading about it) brings me to a lot of blogs, articles, websites, and the like that all seem to say the same thing, “Physical media is dead” and they have all started saying that downloaded content is the way of the future. I have discussed this before but I think it might be time to revisit the issue since I have recently moved into the HD world.
A couple of weekends ago, I purchased a 720p Samsung plasma television and with it my interest in watching high definition content has increased drastically. Probably to my wife’s annoyance. One of the first things I did was download an HD copy of the latest Battlestar Galactica episode online so i could watch the episode in high definition since Comcast here in Houston does not get the SciFi channel in HD. I have a modded Xbox running Xbox Media Center so I figured that this would be a no brainer: just make sure I can access the file from the Xbox and I’d be able to watch one of my favorite shows in high-def without too much trouble. WRONG.
You see, the Xbox isn’t powerful enough to play the download file (which was an MKV file). This wasn’t because the content was high definition but rather because the MKV file format (while excellent for HD content) takes a lot of computing power to decode and play. This means that if I want to watch shows that come on HD channels that Comcast doesn’t give me access to, I have to take an extra processing step in order to watch them. And yes, I do know how to get the MKV file into an AVI file.
The point here is that I know what I’m doing. I know how to research and find ways to get my files to play without issue. But even I have to jump through hoops. And I only spent around $100 dollars total to get my XBMC setup (used Xbox plus extras needed to do the hack). Most Home Theatre PCs (HTPC) cost as much as an actual computer, but they’ll play most files and come with a nice media center frontend (usually Windows Media Center). Most average consumers are not going to spend that extra money just to play downloaded movies on their TV when they can simply buy a DVD or Blu-Ray disk.
Point is, the average consumer likes simplicity when it comes to a home theater setup and especially when using it. They are not going to worry about codecs and downloads when they can go buy a Blu-Ray player and some Blu-Ray discs and get the same thing. They don’t have to think about it as much. Downloading movies is one thing, getting them to play on your big screen in a nice resolution is another issue entirely. In 5-10 years however this could be a different world. But with most cable internet providers limiting the amount of data you can download monthly, the whole digital distribution for HD content starts to become even less attractive.