The Apple TV remote is kind of neat, but the downside is that it's small and people often seem to lose it (people like me).
What's neat is that you can use third party remotes to control it.
I had programmed the remote for the Oceanic DVR to control the Apple TV, but the DVR crashed and I returned it.
So now I either have to use the Apple TV remote again or use another remote for the Apple TV.
I choose the latter.
My first option was to use my One For All remote. I'm already using the AUDIO function for the Roku (used learn mode), so I wanted to use the STB function for the Apple TV. Unfortunately it didn't recognize the buttons in STB mode (which had been programmed for the Scientific Atlanta cable box). Actually most of the AUDIO buttons worked, but some didn't.
How about this? Let's try the Sony BD remote. That worked. The only problem would be if the BD player is on and it might get confused and do something when I'm trying to use the Apple TV instead (actually it did as the player turned on and the TV sensed the HDMI output and switched to the Blu Ray player).
Another option is the replacement remote I bought for the Toshiba DVD Recorder. That worked too. But I kind of don't want to use it since it was kind of expensive and I don't want to break it through over-use. (Don't know if that's true, it seems a lot of my non-functioning remotes stopped working after I just let it sit lying around and not using it.)
How about the Panasonic TV remote? The problem with that is that I have to find buttons that I don't use normally use with the TV. For example, if I use the MENU button, it brings up the TV menu.
OK, that might work. I'll use the Sub Menu button instead of Menu. And I'll use the Return button for skip back. Couldn't find a button that made sense for skip ahead, but that's OK.
Back to the One For All. Since it recognized the Toshiba replacement, it should recognize the One For All since it's been programmed also as a Toshiba. But for some reason, the up button didn't work. So let me reprogram the up button in learn mode.
OK, how I do that? Let me look. Nope not there, actually here (from when I had it learn the Roku).
"press and hold the LEARN button, then the device key, the press the button you want to learn. It flashes. Then you aim the original remote at the One For All. If the button is learned, then it flashes twice. [Then Press and hold the LEARN key to save your settings. The indicator light flashes twice.]"
At first it didn't work. The problem was with the Toshiba replacement remote. Apparently the battery contact in the replacement isn't that good. I think I had put in leaky batteries. Another reason not to use that remote. OK, twirl around the batteries.
OK that worked. The One For All remote doesn't have a next chapter, previous chapter, or skip ahead button. But I'll live.
So now I have five remotes that can control the Apple TV. The original Apple remote, the Sony BD remote, the Toshiba DVD-R replacement remote (RMC 10339), the Panasonic TV remote, and the ONE FOR ALL remote (which is actually programmed to emulate the Toshiba DVD-R). So actually I should be able to eliminate the ONE FOR ALL remote since it should be using the same codes as the Toshiba replacement.
Checking the ONE FOR ALL in DVD mode, the Menu key didn't work. I think I used the Top Menu on the RMC 10339 instead of the Menu/List. Let's reprogram that key. Nope didn't work.
OK, let's learn the Top Menu key as the Menu key for the ONE FOR ALL. OK.
Trying it out... Actually the left and right buttons work fine instead of using the fast forward, rewind keys. That's how it's used on the original remote (which doesn't have fast forward and rewind buttons). And after playing around, the fast forward, rewind keys actually don't work very well. They lead to the picture pausing. At least on my slow network. So I'm better off without them.
OK, put away the Apple TV remote. And the RMC 10339.
Wait, here's another idea. Let me program the ONE FOR ALL STB function with the Apple TV functions using Learn mode. Yay, that worked (did it one by one, don't know how to do a sequence of keys). OK, so the ONE FOR ALL should work in both STB and DVD mode. Yep. Cool.
I kind of like pressing the Guide Button instead of the Menu button on the One For All since the Guide is to the left which is where the Menu button on the Apple TV is. OK, I'll learn that button as the Menu button as well...
Actually the original Apple TV remote only has seven buttons: up, down, left, right, select, menu, play/pause. Good enough. So these other controllers are actually overkill.
[My old Roku remote has 14 buttons. Back (which is essentially Apple's Menu), Home (Apple's Menu pressed down), up, down, left, right, OK (select), rewind, play/pause, forward, asterisk, Netflix, Pandora, Crackle.]
[Here's Apple guide to using the remote. Couldn't get slow motion to work though. Didn't work in Netflix in Hulu anyway. It's mentioned here too.]
And actually it seems you don't even need the play/pause button as the select button serves that function when a video is playing.
I guess I should delete the Panasonic. If I press MENU, then navigate the TV menu with the arrows and the OK button, it also controls the Apple TV, leading to mass confusion.
Maybe I should delete the Sony BD remote too to prevent possible future problems (since I now have the Sony BD hooked up to the main TV, now that the DVR is gone). Yeah, that simplifies things more. I can always easily add it back later if desired.
So that brings it down to the RMC 10339. And actually I can delete that too I can use the One For All in Apple mode instead of the Toshiba mode.
Down to no learned remotes!
Wait, I kind of like the skip back button. I'll add back the 10339 for now, programming the repeat button for skip back and the skip button for skip ahead.
So I can use the One For All in Toshiba DVD-R mode when I want to skip back. Now if I hook up the Toshiba DVD-R to the main TV again, I might run into problems. But maybe not, because I won't be using the Apple TV and Toshiba DVD-R at the same time. [The Sony BD is odd because it seems that pressing certain buttons on the remote turns it on.]
OK, one learned remote. Which is the Toshiba DVD-R replacement remote. But I'm not planning to use it. Instead I'll use the One For All remote instead either in DVD mode or STB mode. The AUDIO mode is for the Roku. And the TV mode is for the Panasonic Plasma TV (the main TV).
I guess that's enough for today...
Friday, June 26, 2015
(switching to) Oceanic basic cable
My DVR crashed. I had it unplugged for a few days. Plugged it back in. Apparently it needed to be activated as there was a message that showed on the screen for a little while. Unplugged it.
Plugged it back in the morning. The screen said boot, then some scrambled letters, then blank, then back to boot, then back to the scrambled letters, and on and on for hours.
I heard some clicking sounds so apparently the hard drive crashed.
Called Oceanic and the call center girl went to their standard trouble-shooting (which is unplug and plug back in, send an activation signal, send a signal to turn off) which predictably didn't work.
OK time to turn in the DVR. Actually I hadn't been using it that much as I've been watching more Netflix and Hulu. Though I hooked up the cable box if there was a basketball game in HD that I wanted to watch. But once we got to the NBA finals, the games were shown on ABC, so I just bypassed the cable box and plugged the cable directly into the TV.
The main reason I was keeping the DVR was that I had some old sports games on it. Most notably the Linsanity vs. Dallas game. And the 2012 "Dream Team" Olympic game. Also some old UH volleyball replays. And some What Color Is Your Dog? episodes (which I had transferred to DVD). The main one was the Linsanity game which I wanted to record in HD somehow, but hadn't figured out the best way to do it. Probably with a Hauppage PVR.
Unfortunately they said there's no way to transfer the videos out of the DVR, especially now that it crashed. So I guess I don't have to worry about that now.
So this gave me the opportunity to cut the cable. But I kind of like the idea of watching the network channels in HD especially for live sports. And also the UH Sports Channel. So I figure I'll switch to Basic cable which is supposed to give you only the local channels, but I know a couple others with Basic cable who have a lot more than the local channels. So hopefully I'll get the others too, like CNBC and OCSports. The TV guy is supposed to come today to filter out the other channels, so I want to see how much they filter out.
So let's see what I get now, then see what he filters out. Here's what I have currently, by plugging in the cable directly into my TV. And while I'm at it, let me rescan them. 63 analog channels, 56 digital channels
Here's the lineup (updated 3/27/15)
2 QVC
3 KHON
4 KBFD
5 KFVE
6 KITV
7 KGMB
8 KHNL
9 KIKU
10 KHET
11 KWHE
12 OC16
13 HLN
14 CNN
15 Fox News
16 OCSports
17 MTV
18 - VH1
19 NBCSN
20 - FSW
21 ESPN2
22 ESPN
23 TWCSports
25 KALO
26 KAAH
27 KPXO
28 TBS
29 USA
30 Golf
31 Prime Ticket
32 Nick
33 Disney
34 ABC Family
35 CN
36 TVland
37 Syfy
38 MSNBC
39 Spike
40 Bravo
41 FX
42 AMC
43 TNT
44 TCM
46-1 KPXO-HD (ion) [see below, formerly 66-1]
46-3 KHON-HD
46-55 TEC 355 (currently UWtv, also on 78-30)
47-1 MeTV
47-2 this
47-3 KHON-SD
47-4 CSPAN
47-5 KFVE-SD
47-7 KGMB-SD
47-8 KHNL-SD
47-10 KHET-SD
47-25 KALO
47-27 KPXO
48-1 KGMB-HD
48-9 KITV-HD
49-1 KFVE-HD
49-3 KHNL-HD
49-12 KHET-HD
50-6 KUPU
50-7 CW-HD
51-1 OCSports HD [see below]
51-3 CNBC-HD [see below]
53 Olelo 53
54 Olelo
55 Olelo 55
56 Zap 2 it
57 HSN
58 travel
59 HGTV
60 food
61 E!
62 Comedy Central
63 Hallmark
64 LMN
65 Discover Life
66-63 QVC
66-64 OC16 (also on 79-16)
67 OWN
68 LIFE
69 Discovery
70 Animal Planet
71 TLC
72 History
73 - NGC
74 A&E
76-6 C-SPAN3
76-10 HSN
76-49 Olelo 49
78-21 KBS WORLD
78-29 Civil Defense
78-30 UWtv (also on 46-55)
79-1 PBS Kids
79-10 On Demand trailers
79-16 OC16 (also on 66-64)
98-1 OCSports
99-16 OC16 HD
115-3 KBFD HD (!)
134-8 C-SPAN2
134-13 Antenna
134-14 KWHE
134-26 TBN
134-49 olelo 49
134-53 olelo 53
134-54 olelo54
134-55 olelo55
[so a few more digital channels than the "official list"]
Channels 102-2 through 132-2 are probably temporary and will fade away.
[6/27/15] Checking again the next day:
gone are
104-2 tbs
added were
102-4 OC16
Still waiting for the Oceanic guy to come and take away my ESPN and other channels
[6/28/15]
120-2 changed from AMC to Nat Geo TV
102-5 Hallmark has been added
132-2 syfy is gone
[that afternoon]
102-1 CNBC changed from 102.2
102-4 Hallmark changed from 102.5
120-2 Nat Geo is now gone
[7/11/15]
66-1 KPXO-HD has disappeared (which is odd because it's been on over a year)
still getting ESPN, etc. / I'm wondering what my next bill will be
let me rescan:
compare my last scan
gone
66-1 KPXO-HD (ion)
102-1 CNBC *
102-4 Hallmark *
(102-1 and 102-4 were likely gone before today)
added
103-5 Animal Planet (gone seventh, in the afternoon)
105-1 insp (gone the next evening, only TCM now left)
105-4 msnbc (gone third)
106-2 arirang (gone fourth)
110-1 A&E (gone late evening)
110-2 syfy (gone minutes later)
118-1 ntdtv (gone sixth)
119-2 Hallmark (gone fifth)
121-4 National Geographic (gone minutes later)
126-2 TCM
manually going to 102 gets
102-3 SURF (now gone)
the added channels will likely be gone soon enough
now 110-2 syfy is already gone
and 110-4 tbs is added
121-4 Nat Geo is gone too
105-4 msnbc is gone
[7/12/15 a.m.] all the added channels are now gone except for 105-1 insp and 126-2 TCM.
[7/17/15] 66-1 KPXO HD is back
[8/14/15] OCSports HD (51-1), CNBC HD (51-3), Prime Ticket (66-1), LMN (66-2) are now scrambled :( Hopefully they'll come back. They're listed on the "official list" as linked above.
[8/15/15] OCSports and CNBC are back. (Whew.) Prime Ticket and LMN are still scrambled, but no biggie.
*** [6/27/15]
I'm wondering how much they'll take away from my TWC app.
Let me check what I'm getting now on my iPad
Live:
AlJazeera
BBC HD
beIN n Sports
beIN Sports
COOKING HD
DIY HD
EL RAY
FOOD
FOX Sports
FOX Sports 2
FXM
FX HD
FXX HD
HGTV
HSN HD
natgeo
NatGeo Wild
QVC
QVC PLUS
REVOLT
There's a bunch of other channels you could catch if you were hooked directly to your Oceanic cable network, including TBS and TNT (don't know if they work if you hooked up via wifi).
These are the On Demand channels currently available on my account
A&E
AlJazeera
AMC
BBC America
BET
BeIN n Sports
CMT
Comedy Central
COOKING
diy
E!
El Rey
Esquire
Food
FOX
FOX Sports 1
FX
FXM
FXX
fyi
GSN
H2
Hallmark
HGTV
History
IFC
Lifetime
LMN
Logo
MTV
MTV 2
National Geographic
Nat Geo Wild
Nick
Nick Jr.
REVOLT
Smithsonian
Spike
Sundance
Teen Nick
Travel
TV Land
VH-1
VH-1 Classic
WE
*** [7/18/15]
Checking my cable bill, still got charged $114.25.
I turned in my cable box on 6/25, but the bill is dated with a statement date of 6/20/15 with date due 7/17/15. But the monthly charge is for dates Jul 16 to Aug 15.
I shall assume that this will be adjusted in the next bill since apparently this bill was generated before I cut my service. The next bill should be generated in a few days and I can check to see any adjustments were made.
[8/14/15] Yep, my Oceanic bill is now listed as negative. Evidently there's a lag between payments and the service. They charge you in advance so my bill was already generated before I cancelled.
[2/26/16] most of the TWC On Demand channels (on my ipad) are inaccessible are gone from my basic account (as noted here). I'm only getting Fox now.
[3/27/16] KPXO HD is now 46-1, formerly 66-1.
Plugged it back in the morning. The screen said boot, then some scrambled letters, then blank, then back to boot, then back to the scrambled letters, and on and on for hours.
I heard some clicking sounds so apparently the hard drive crashed.
Called Oceanic and the call center girl went to their standard trouble-shooting (which is unplug and plug back in, send an activation signal, send a signal to turn off) which predictably didn't work.
OK time to turn in the DVR. Actually I hadn't been using it that much as I've been watching more Netflix and Hulu. Though I hooked up the cable box if there was a basketball game in HD that I wanted to watch. But once we got to the NBA finals, the games were shown on ABC, so I just bypassed the cable box and plugged the cable directly into the TV.
The main reason I was keeping the DVR was that I had some old sports games on it. Most notably the Linsanity vs. Dallas game. And the 2012 "Dream Team" Olympic game. Also some old UH volleyball replays. And some What Color Is Your Dog? episodes (which I had transferred to DVD). The main one was the Linsanity game which I wanted to record in HD somehow, but hadn't figured out the best way to do it. Probably with a Hauppage PVR.
Unfortunately they said there's no way to transfer the videos out of the DVR, especially now that it crashed. So I guess I don't have to worry about that now.
So this gave me the opportunity to cut the cable. But I kind of like the idea of watching the network channels in HD especially for live sports. And also the UH Sports Channel. So I figure I'll switch to Basic cable which is supposed to give you only the local channels, but I know a couple others with Basic cable who have a lot more than the local channels. So hopefully I'll get the others too, like CNBC and OCSports. The TV guy is supposed to come today to filter out the other channels, so I want to see how much they filter out.
So let's see what I get now, then see what he filters out. Here's what I have currently, by plugging in the cable directly into my TV. And while I'm at it, let me rescan them. 63 analog channels, 56 digital channels
Here's the lineup (updated 3/27/15)
2 QVC
3 KHON
4 KBFD
5 KFVE
6 KITV
7 KGMB
8 KHNL
9 KIKU
10 KHET
11 KWHE
12 OC16
13 HLN
14 CNN
15 Fox News
16 OCSports
17 MTV
18 - VH1
19 NBCSN
20 - FSW
21 ESPN2
22 ESPN
23 TWCSports
25 KALO
26 KAAH
27 KPXO
28 TBS
29 USA
30 Golf
31 Prime Ticket
32 Nick
33 Disney
34 ABC Family
35 CN
36 TVland
37 Syfy
38 MSNBC
39 Spike
40 Bravo
41 FX
42 AMC
43 TNT
44 TCM
46-1 KPXO-HD (ion) [see below, formerly 66-1]
46-3 KHON-HD
46-55 TEC 355 (currently UWtv, also on 78-30)
47-1 MeTV
47-2 this
47-3 KHON-SD
47-4 CSPAN
47-5 KFVE-SD
47-7 KGMB-SD
47-8 KHNL-SD
47-10 KHET-SD
47-25 KALO
47-27 KPXO
48-1 KGMB-HD
48-9 KITV-HD
49-1 KFVE-HD
49-3 KHNL-HD
49-12 KHET-HD
50-6 KUPU
50-7 CW-HD
51-1 OCSports HD [see below]
51-3 CNBC-HD [see below]
53 Olelo 53
54 Olelo
55 Olelo 55
56 Zap 2 it
57 HSN
58 travel
59 HGTV
60 food
61 E!
62 Comedy Central
63 Hallmark
64 LMN
65 Discover Life
66-63 QVC
66-64 OC16 (also on 79-16)
67 OWN
68 LIFE
69 Discovery
70 Animal Planet
71 TLC
72 History
73 - NGC
74 A&E
76-6 C-SPAN3
76-10 HSN
76-49 Olelo 49
78-21 KBS WORLD
78-29 Civil Defense
78-30 UWtv (also on 46-55)
79-1 PBS Kids
79-10 On Demand trailers
79-16 OC16 (also on 66-64)
98-1 OCSports
99-16 OC16 HD
115-3 KBFD HD (!)
134-8 C-SPAN2
134-13 Antenna
134-14 KWHE
134-26 TBN
134-49 olelo 49
134-53 olelo 53
134-54 olelo54
134-55 olelo55
[so a few more digital channels than the "official list"]
Channels 102-2 through 132-2 are probably temporary and will fade away.
[6/27/15] Checking again the next day:
gone are
104-2 tbs
106-4 Hallmark
131-1 arirang
131-2 ntdtv.com
Changed
120-2 AMC from TCM
102-4 OC16
Still waiting for the Oceanic guy to come and take away my ESPN and other channels
[6/28/15]
120-2 changed from AMC to Nat Geo TV
102-5 Hallmark has been added
132-2 syfy is gone
[that afternoon]
102-1 CNBC changed from 102.2
102-4 Hallmark changed from 102.5
120-2 Nat Geo is now gone
[7/11/15]
66-1 KPXO-HD has disappeared (which is odd because it's been on over a year)
still getting ESPN, etc. / I'm wondering what my next bill will be
let me rescan:
compare my last scan
gone
66-1 KPXO-HD (ion)
102-1 CNBC *
102-4 Hallmark *
(102-1 and 102-4 were likely gone before today)
added
103-5 Animal Planet (gone seventh, in the afternoon)
105-1 insp (gone the next evening, only TCM now left)
105-4 msnbc (gone third)
106-2 arirang (gone fourth)
110-1 A&E (gone late evening)
110-2 syfy (gone minutes later)
118-1 ntdtv (gone sixth)
119-2 Hallmark (gone fifth)
121-4 National Geographic (gone minutes later)
126-2 TCM
manually going to 102 gets
102-3 SURF (now gone)
the added channels will likely be gone soon enough
now 110-2 syfy is already gone
and 110-4 tbs is added
121-4 Nat Geo is gone too
105-4 msnbc is gone
[7/12/15 a.m.] all the added channels are now gone except for 105-1 insp and 126-2 TCM.
[7/17/15] 66-1 KPXO HD is back
[8/14/15] OCSports HD (51-1), CNBC HD (51-3), Prime Ticket (66-1), LMN (66-2) are now scrambled :( Hopefully they'll come back. They're listed on the "official list" as linked above.
[8/15/15] OCSports and CNBC are back. (Whew.) Prime Ticket and LMN are still scrambled, but no biggie.
*** [6/27/15]
I'm wondering how much they'll take away from my TWC app.
Let me check what I'm getting now on my iPad
Live:
AlJazeera
BBC HD
beIN n Sports
beIN Sports
COOKING HD
DIY HD
EL RAY
FOOD
FOX Sports
FOX Sports 2
FXM
FX HD
FXX HD
HGTV
HSN HD
natgeo
NatGeo Wild
QVC
QVC PLUS
REVOLT
There's a bunch of other channels you could catch if you were hooked directly to your Oceanic cable network, including TBS and TNT (don't know if they work if you hooked up via wifi).
These are the On Demand channels currently available on my account
A&E
AlJazeera
AMC
BBC America
BET
BeIN n Sports
CMT
Comedy Central
COOKING
diy
E!
El Rey
Esquire
Food
FOX
FOX Sports 1
FX
FXM
FXX
fyi
GSN
H2
Hallmark
HGTV
History
IFC
Lifetime
LMN
Logo
MTV
MTV 2
National Geographic
Nat Geo Wild
Nick
Nick Jr.
REVOLT
Smithsonian
Spike
Sundance
Teen Nick
Travel
TV Land
VH-1
VH-1 Classic
WE
*** [7/18/15]
Checking my cable bill, still got charged $114.25.
I turned in my cable box on 6/25, but the bill is dated with a statement date of 6/20/15 with date due 7/17/15. But the monthly charge is for dates Jul 16 to Aug 15.
I shall assume that this will be adjusted in the next bill since apparently this bill was generated before I cut my service. The next bill should be generated in a few days and I can check to see any adjustments were made.
[8/14/15] Yep, my Oceanic bill is now listed as negative. Evidently there's a lag between payments and the service. They charge you in advance so my bill was already generated before I cancelled.
[2/26/16] most of the TWC On Demand channels (on my ipad) are inaccessible are gone from my basic account (as noted here). I'm only getting Fox now.
[3/27/16] KPXO HD is now 46-1, formerly 66-1.
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
just plain Hulu
got this email from Hulu:
We've had a blast with our old friend Plus but it's time to move on.
We just wanted to let you know that we are retiring the Hulu Plus name. From now on, we will just be known as Hulu. No "Plus."
Though the name is changing, your subscription is not. You'll still be a subscriber with all the benefits that come with that. You can keep on watching your favorite shows on all your devices — without having to change a thing. Same great stuff. Slightly different name.
Thanks for watching!
Sincerely,
Your Friends at Hulu
***
P.S. It still says Hulu Plus on my Roku.
We've had a blast with our old friend Plus but it's time to move on.
We just wanted to let you know that we are retiring the Hulu Plus name. From now on, we will just be known as Hulu. No "Plus."
Though the name is changing, your subscription is not. You'll still be a subscriber with all the benefits that come with that. You can keep on watching your favorite shows on all your devices — without having to change a thing. Same great stuff. Slightly different name.
Thanks for watching!
Sincerely,
Your Friends at Hulu
***
P.S. It still says Hulu Plus on my Roku.
Monday, June 15, 2015
upgrading Quicken
Believe it or not, I'm still using Quicken 2000. Hey, it works so why change.
However, I can see a problem might occur if I upgrade to a new computer and Quicken 2000 might not work.
As it is, I'm running it on Vista and though it works, I get prompt screen before I can enter the program.
So I was considering upgrading to a newer version of Quicken.
Actually I tried Microsoft Money first, but it had some problems with converting the data exactly and I noticed a few pennies off here and there. One penny off was unacceptable, so I gave up on that idea.
Anyway, Quicken has a handy website with the steps needed to upgrade old versions of Quicken. Depending on how old your version is, you have to convert it first to an intermediate version of Quicken.
In my case, I would need to convert to Quicken 2004 before upgrading to the latest version of Quicken.
What is really handy is that they have other old versions of Quicken available online. Up to Quicken 2004 anyway.
OK, this is on my to-do list.
Maybe I'll upgrade to 2004 and see if it's good enough for me. Well, actually 2000 is good enough for me, but 2004 has been tested for the later versions of Windows.
***
OK, installed Quicken 2000 on the laptop. It turns out that this is Quicken Trial. Whatever that means. It expires? Yeah, it expires after 60 days. And if you try to register this, you get a broken web page.
I guess I'll try Quicken 2004 later.
[6/26/15] Apparently this Quicken 2000 Trial doesn't expire, because when I start it up, it still says it'll expire in 60 days.
However, I can see a problem might occur if I upgrade to a new computer and Quicken 2000 might not work.
As it is, I'm running it on Vista and though it works, I get prompt screen before I can enter the program.
So I was considering upgrading to a newer version of Quicken.
Actually I tried Microsoft Money first, but it had some problems with converting the data exactly and I noticed a few pennies off here and there. One penny off was unacceptable, so I gave up on that idea.
Anyway, Quicken has a handy website with the steps needed to upgrade old versions of Quicken. Depending on how old your version is, you have to convert it first to an intermediate version of Quicken.
In my case, I would need to convert to Quicken 2004 before upgrading to the latest version of Quicken.
What is really handy is that they have other old versions of Quicken available online. Up to Quicken 2004 anyway.
OK, this is on my to-do list.
Maybe I'll upgrade to 2004 and see if it's good enough for me. Well, actually 2000 is good enough for me, but 2004 has been tested for the later versions of Windows.
***
OK, installed Quicken 2000 on the laptop. It turns out that this is Quicken Trial. Whatever that means. It expires? Yeah, it expires after 60 days. And if you try to register this, you get a broken web page.
I guess I'll try Quicken 2004 later.
[6/26/15] Apparently this Quicken 2000 Trial doesn't expire, because when I start it up, it still says it'll expire in 60 days.
Saturday, June 13, 2015
CHIP, the $9 computer
CHIP is a proposed $9 computer that officially beats the famed Raspberry
Pi as one of the world’s cheapest and smallest computers, at only
1.5-by-2.3 inches. A Kickstarter campaign recently was launched and
already has gone well above its $50,000 goal (at more than $1.4 million
as I write this).
The small wonder runs on a Debian Linux-based OS CHIP, is fully open source and is powered with a 3,000 mAH battery. It has a 1GHz Allwinner A13 processor, 512 MB of DDR3 RAM, 4GB of built-in eMMC NAND Flash storage, a fullsized USB 2.0 port, a micro USB port with OTG (also used as the 5V DC power input for battery charging) and supports 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. There is a 1/8- inch audio jack with a microphone that doubles as a composite video-out. It also has an output for composite monitors, but you’ll need to use an adapter if you want to use VGA or HDMI.
With CHIP, you can access the Internet with the Chromium browser, do your work in LibreOffice (including Word documents, spreadsheets and presentations), listen to music and play compatible games. Plus, if you want to learn to code, it comes preloaded with Scratch, an easy-to-learn language that teaches the basics of programming by making stories, games and animations. In comparison, the similar and latest Raspberry Pi 2 released earlier this year costs $35. Visit Kickstarter.com to see the reality of CHIP.
The small wonder runs on a Debian Linux-based OS CHIP, is fully open source and is powered with a 3,000 mAH battery. It has a 1GHz Allwinner A13 processor, 512 MB of DDR3 RAM, 4GB of built-in eMMC NAND Flash storage, a fullsized USB 2.0 port, a micro USB port with OTG (also used as the 5V DC power input for battery charging) and supports 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. There is a 1/8- inch audio jack with a microphone that doubles as a composite video-out. It also has an output for composite monitors, but you’ll need to use an adapter if you want to use VGA or HDMI.
With CHIP, you can access the Internet with the Chromium browser, do your work in LibreOffice (including Word documents, spreadsheets and presentations), listen to music and play compatible games. Plus, if you want to learn to code, it comes preloaded with Scratch, an easy-to-learn language that teaches the basics of programming by making stories, games and animations. In comparison, the similar and latest Raspberry Pi 2 released earlier this year costs $35. Visit Kickstarter.com to see the reality of CHIP.
TWC Maxx
Oceanic Time Warner Cable customers soon will benefit from major enhancements that will transform your Internet and TV service as you know it today. Hold onto your seats for TWC Maxx. It features ultrafast Internet speeds, state-of-the-art TV services and best-in-class reliability. Full services are expected to be available on Oahu by the end of June.
Oceanic Time Warner Cable president Gregg Fujimoto states, “With TWC Maxx, we’re essentially reinventing the Oceanic Time Warner Cable experience. We will boost Internet speeds for customers up to six times faster, add to Hawaii’s robust TWC WiFi, dramatically improve the TV product and set a high bar in our industry for differentiated, exceptional customer service.”
Oceanic expects you to see speeds up to six times faster on your residential Internet plans (with no extra charges). If you are a Standard customer (15 Mbps), you’ll now receive up to 50 Mbps. If you subscribe to Extreme (30 Mbps), you’ll now receive up to 200 Mbps; Ultimate (50 or 100 Mbps) customers now receive 300 Mbps. You may need an upgraded modem to receive these new speeds, but you will be notified if it is required (no additional charge). The business plans will be upgraded as well starting this summer.
On the TV side, it features an enhanced DVR, on which you can record up to six different programs simultaneously, with the ability to save up to 150 hours of high-definition (HD) programming on its 1TB hard drive (twice the storage of the largest prior model). You’ll also have access to an expanded On Demand library featuring 20,000-plus titles.
Along with TWC Maxx, Oceanic continues to roll out TWC WiFi Hotspots throughout Hawaii. So far, more than 2,100 hotspots have been deployed. They are located in various businesses including restaurants, cafes, hair salons and doctors’ offices, as well as beaches and public parks. They also are available at public venues, such as University of Hawaii’s Stan Sheriff Arena and Blaisdell Concert and Exhibition halls. I take advantage of these all the time, and they are very helpful when you’re out and about, and do not want to waste your smartphone’s data resources.
***
Personally, I haven't been impressed with Oceanic internet. Sure the rated speed may be faster, but it seems not to be steady. Often when I'm at my mom's place watching Netflix of whatever, the service seems to stall for a number of minutes. But when I switch to the slower HawaiianTelcom network, the service is steadier and more reliable. Same with the hotspots, I seem to connect the first time OK, but then after a while the service seems to degrade and I lose response. Of course, this is anecdotal, but that's what it seems to me.
***
Here's the disadvantage of cable:
"You share the available bandwidth of a single cable line with others in your neighborhood. The more people using it at the same time, the slower the performance."
On the other hand, the upload speeds of DSL is much slower. So if you're routinely sending large files, cable is the way to go.
Oceanic Time Warner Cable president Gregg Fujimoto states, “With TWC Maxx, we’re essentially reinventing the Oceanic Time Warner Cable experience. We will boost Internet speeds for customers up to six times faster, add to Hawaii’s robust TWC WiFi, dramatically improve the TV product and set a high bar in our industry for differentiated, exceptional customer service.”
Oceanic expects you to see speeds up to six times faster on your residential Internet plans (with no extra charges). If you are a Standard customer (15 Mbps), you’ll now receive up to 50 Mbps. If you subscribe to Extreme (30 Mbps), you’ll now receive up to 200 Mbps; Ultimate (50 or 100 Mbps) customers now receive 300 Mbps. You may need an upgraded modem to receive these new speeds, but you will be notified if it is required (no additional charge). The business plans will be upgraded as well starting this summer.
On the TV side, it features an enhanced DVR, on which you can record up to six different programs simultaneously, with the ability to save up to 150 hours of high-definition (HD) programming on its 1TB hard drive (twice the storage of the largest prior model). You’ll also have access to an expanded On Demand library featuring 20,000-plus titles.
Along with TWC Maxx, Oceanic continues to roll out TWC WiFi Hotspots throughout Hawaii. So far, more than 2,100 hotspots have been deployed. They are located in various businesses including restaurants, cafes, hair salons and doctors’ offices, as well as beaches and public parks. They also are available at public venues, such as University of Hawaii’s Stan Sheriff Arena and Blaisdell Concert and Exhibition halls. I take advantage of these all the time, and they are very helpful when you’re out and about, and do not want to waste your smartphone’s data resources.
***
Personally, I haven't been impressed with Oceanic internet. Sure the rated speed may be faster, but it seems not to be steady. Often when I'm at my mom's place watching Netflix of whatever, the service seems to stall for a number of minutes. But when I switch to the slower HawaiianTelcom network, the service is steadier and more reliable. Same with the hotspots, I seem to connect the first time OK, but then after a while the service seems to degrade and I lose response. Of course, this is anecdotal, but that's what it seems to me.
***
Here's the disadvantage of cable:
"You share the available bandwidth of a single cable line with others in your neighborhood. The more people using it at the same time, the slower the performance."
On the other hand, the upload speeds of DSL is much slower. So if you're routinely sending large files, cable is the way to go.
Sunday, June 07, 2015
Google Photos vs. Flickr
If you had to rush into a burning computer and could rescue only one folder, what would it be? I’m guessing you answered: “My photos and videos.”
In the last month, two new free services have opened up that make that
kind of disaster impossible: Flickr 4.0 and Google Photos. Quietly,
automatically, and privately, they back up all your photos from all your devices — computer, phone, tablet, flash drives, old hard drives, everything — to a password-protected online site. All your photos, past, present, and future.
Once
your photos are backed up, you can view them, arrange them, edit them,
and share them on the website. You can view low-res versions of them on
your phone, too, using beautiful, fluid Flickr or Google Photos apps —
without high-resolution images sucking up all your phone’s storage
space. It’s like having one of those wallet accordion-fold photo holders
— a really big one that reaches to the moon and back.
And
above all: If anything bad ever happens to the photos you’ve stored on
your phones and computers, you can re-download them all from the site
with a couple of clicks. If you have photos you care about, and you’re not letting these new services back them up automatically, you are, frankly, crazy. They are fantastic.
I reviewed the new Flickr a few weeks ago. Or, rather, I described it; since Flickr is owned by Yahoo (and so am I), I wasn’t allowed to review it. Here’s the article. And here’s the video.
There
are plenty of other photo-storage services: Apple’s newly launched
iCloud Photo Library feature is very similar to Google Photos and
Flickr, except that it works only with Apple products and it costs
money.
Then
there are SmugMug, Amazon, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, and so on. But
for unlimited, free storage with automatic backing up from all your
devices, there are only two games in town: Flickr and Google Photos.
As
automatic, free backup services, Google Photos and Flickr are exactly
the same idea. They are, in fact, almost freakishly alike; you have to
wonder if one company poached engineers from the other.
They automatically back up every photo from your computers, tablets, and phones. You can choose which folders, disks, flash drives, and memory cards get backed up, and you can specify whether the phone app should use cellular data to upload new photos or wait until you’re in a Wi-Fi area. Impressively enough, both programs can even back up iPhoto and Aperture libraries on a Mac (but not, alas, Adobe Lightroom collections).
Both websites display your photos like postcards, arrayed neatly side by side. Both let you organize your photos into albums, edit photos, and share them with other people (one click produces a Web link to a private gallery).
Both companies insist that your private photos are truly private. They won’t use your photos, steal them, sell them, or snoop on them. If you don’t believe it, then by all means don’t sign up; it’s more storage for the rest of us.
Both, incredibly, offer image recognition. You can actually search your photos according to what they’re pictures of — even if you haven’t named or tagged any of them.
There are, however, a few important differences between Google Photos and Flickr.
Difference 1: Storage limits. The free photo storage on Google is unlimited; Flickr offers you 1 terabyte for free (or roughly 600,000 five-megapixel images).
How much difference does that make? Not much. Of the 100 million people with Flickr accounts, guess how many have ever reached the 1-terabyte limit?
Fewer than 50, according to Flickr.
Difference 2: Compression. The photos and videos on Flickr are uploaded and stored in their original form, and there’s no limit on the resolution of the photos.
Google, on the other hand, permanently compresses your photos to take up less space. Yes, it actually throws away picture data.
Now, Google insists that the lost data is so insignificant you’ll hardly be able to see the difference — and on small photos, that’s accurate. You can blow them up and study them till you get a headache, and you won’t see any difference.
But there’s a bigger problem: If the photo’s resolution is over 16 megapixels (like almost all photos from SLRs, mirrorless cameras, and high-end pocket cameras), Google scales it down to 16 megapixels. You lose the rest of the quality forever.
Difference 3: Duplicates. Google Photos doesn’t prevent you from uploading duplicate photos. Flickr “de-dupes” automatically.
Difference 4: Video limits. Both services auto-backup your videos, too. But Flickr’s maximum clip length is three minutes; Google places no time limit, but does limit the resolution — 1080p hi-def is the max.
Once again, though, Google does compress your videos, discarding some of the original quality.
In other words, neither service is wonderful as an automatic video-backup service.
Difference 5: Face recognition. Google Photos can round up all the pictures of a certain person. Its facial-recognition feature doesn’t go so far as letting you name these faces — you can’t name Aunt Ethel and expect it to remember her name — but it’s pretty close.
Flickr doesn’t offer face recognition at all. (Coming soon, it says.)
Difference 6: Image-search refinement. Flickr and Google Photos can both pluck “needle” out of your haystack of photos, or “pumpkin,” or “bird.”
But Flickr’s image-recognition smarts go much further. Flickr can search not just your own photos but all of the 11 billion photos people have made public online.
Difference 7: Community. Google Photos is designed to serve as a personal backup locker, and it serves that purpose well.
Flickr, however, began life as a community. That means people can leave comments on your photos (the ones you’ve made public), offering tips and compliments. Thousands of people use Flickr to discover, share, follow, and favorite each other’s pictures. Maybe that social aspect is important to you, maybe not — but if you do embrace it, you’ll discover a terrific way to improve your photography.
Plus, it’s really fun to see how many people have viewed each of your photos, much the way it’s fun to see how many people have “liked” a Facebook post you made.
Google Photos makes no attempt to be a public gallery for the world’s photos. Everything is either yours privately or shared with certain people outside Google Photos, so there’s no ocean of conversation, tips, and admiration from other photographers.
Difference 8: Editing. Both services offer editing tools. Google’s are extremely basic. You get four sliders for Light, Color (saturation), Pop (intensity), and Vignette (shadowed edges), plus cropping, rotating, and filters:
Flickr’s editing tools are far more comprehensive — so complete they resemble a kind of mini-Photoshop. They let you remove blemishes, fix redeye, add text, draw on top of the photo, selectively add color to a black-and-white photo, add a frame or a sticker, or tweak the resolution, brightness, contrast, saturation, warmth, and sharpness.
Difference 9: RAW files. Many advanced photographers like to take RAW photos — a format that preserves more of the camera’s original sensor data than the usual JPEG files. Back on the computer, you can manipulate a RAW photo with far more freedom than you can a JPEG.
Flickr can’t back up RAW files. Which is weird, since Flickr, overall, seems better suited for advanced and pro shutterbugs.
Google does back up RAW, although it converts them to a compressed format in the process (unless you join the paid plan).
Different 10: Exclusive features. In keeping with its incarnation as a complete photo solution, Flickr makes it easy to turn certain photos into prints, posters, photo books, wrapped-canvas art, and so on.
Google doesn’t offer any options for turning your photography into real-world objects, but it does offer something called Assistants. These are collages, animated slideshows, panoramas, and videos automatically created from batches of your photos.
Face to face
Google Photos is incredibly clean, stripped-down, and simple. For example, it provides zero control over how your photos appear — you can’t alter their size, change how they’re sorted, or view them by the kind of privacy settings they have (you can on Flickr). You can’t even see how many photos you have.
In short, Google Photos screams “1.0.”
Flickr is mature, rich, powerful — and sometimes confusing. Its newest features, like the primary Camera Roll view (all your pictures in one giant scroll, flanked by a time ruler) are spectacularly clean and easy to use, but some of the older ones (like the Organizr) are cluttered and dizzying.
Now, not everyone will care about Google’s decision to reduce the quality of the photos and videos stored there. You crazy kids today, shooting only with your phones and sharing photos only on screens, may never know or mind that you’ve lost a little clarity along the way.
But to me, that data loss is a deal killer. If I lost all my pictures, I’d be thrilled to have an online backup — but my happiness would be dampened by the fact that my restored photos and videos aren’t quite as sharp and clear as the ones I lost.
Similarly, I find it hard to believe that Flickr can’t fix its own limitations — limited video lengths, RAW-file uploads, and a couple of aging organization screens — and thereby trump Google completely.
But never mind all that. Both give you free, automatic, superbly searchable storage for all your pictures, from all your machines. Choose one or the other and download its auto-uploader (and phone app).
And get started now: The first uploading process takes a very long time — days, in fact.
Thanks to these amazing (and amazingly generous) new services, the world has just changed. As of this moment, nobody will ever have sympathy again when you share a sob story about losing all your photos.
David Pogue is the founder of Yahoo Tech. On the Web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s pogue. On email, he’s poguester@yahoo.com. He welcomes nontoxic responses in the Comments below.
They automatically back up every photo from your computers, tablets, and phones. You can choose which folders, disks, flash drives, and memory cards get backed up, and you can specify whether the phone app should use cellular data to upload new photos or wait until you’re in a Wi-Fi area. Impressively enough, both programs can even back up iPhoto and Aperture libraries on a Mac (but not, alas, Adobe Lightroom collections).
Both websites display your photos like postcards, arrayed neatly side by side. Both let you organize your photos into albums, edit photos, and share them with other people (one click produces a Web link to a private gallery).
Both companies insist that your private photos are truly private. They won’t use your photos, steal them, sell them, or snoop on them. If you don’t believe it, then by all means don’t sign up; it’s more storage for the rest of us.
Both, incredibly, offer image recognition. You can actually search your photos according to what they’re pictures of — even if you haven’t named or tagged any of them.
There are, however, a few important differences between Google Photos and Flickr.
Difference 1: Storage limits. The free photo storage on Google is unlimited; Flickr offers you 1 terabyte for free (or roughly 600,000 five-megapixel images).
How much difference does that make? Not much. Of the 100 million people with Flickr accounts, guess how many have ever reached the 1-terabyte limit?
Fewer than 50, according to Flickr.
Difference 2: Compression. The photos and videos on Flickr are uploaded and stored in their original form, and there’s no limit on the resolution of the photos.
Google, on the other hand, permanently compresses your photos to take up less space. Yes, it actually throws away picture data.
Now, Google insists that the lost data is so insignificant you’ll hardly be able to see the difference — and on small photos, that’s accurate. You can blow them up and study them till you get a headache, and you won’t see any difference.
But there’s a bigger problem: If the photo’s resolution is over 16 megapixels (like almost all photos from SLRs, mirrorless cameras, and high-end pocket cameras), Google scales it down to 16 megapixels. You lose the rest of the quality forever.
Difference 3: Duplicates. Google Photos doesn’t prevent you from uploading duplicate photos. Flickr “de-dupes” automatically.
Difference 4: Video limits. Both services auto-backup your videos, too. But Flickr’s maximum clip length is three minutes; Google places no time limit, but does limit the resolution — 1080p hi-def is the max.
Once again, though, Google does compress your videos, discarding some of the original quality.
In other words, neither service is wonderful as an automatic video-backup service.
Difference 5: Face recognition. Google Photos can round up all the pictures of a certain person. Its facial-recognition feature doesn’t go so far as letting you name these faces — you can’t name Aunt Ethel and expect it to remember her name — but it’s pretty close.
Flickr doesn’t offer face recognition at all. (Coming soon, it says.)
Difference 6: Image-search refinement. Flickr and Google Photos can both pluck “needle” out of your haystack of photos, or “pumpkin,” or “bird.”
But Flickr’s image-recognition smarts go much further. Flickr can search not just your own photos but all of the 11 billion photos people have made public online.
Difference 7: Community. Google Photos is designed to serve as a personal backup locker, and it serves that purpose well.
Flickr, however, began life as a community. That means people can leave comments on your photos (the ones you’ve made public), offering tips and compliments. Thousands of people use Flickr to discover, share, follow, and favorite each other’s pictures. Maybe that social aspect is important to you, maybe not — but if you do embrace it, you’ll discover a terrific way to improve your photography.
Plus, it’s really fun to see how many people have viewed each of your photos, much the way it’s fun to see how many people have “liked” a Facebook post you made.
Google Photos makes no attempt to be a public gallery for the world’s photos. Everything is either yours privately or shared with certain people outside Google Photos, so there’s no ocean of conversation, tips, and admiration from other photographers.
Difference 8: Editing. Both services offer editing tools. Google’s are extremely basic. You get four sliders for Light, Color (saturation), Pop (intensity), and Vignette (shadowed edges), plus cropping, rotating, and filters:
Flickr’s editing tools are far more comprehensive — so complete they resemble a kind of mini-Photoshop. They let you remove blemishes, fix redeye, add text, draw on top of the photo, selectively add color to a black-and-white photo, add a frame or a sticker, or tweak the resolution, brightness, contrast, saturation, warmth, and sharpness.
Difference 9: RAW files. Many advanced photographers like to take RAW photos — a format that preserves more of the camera’s original sensor data than the usual JPEG files. Back on the computer, you can manipulate a RAW photo with far more freedom than you can a JPEG.
Flickr can’t back up RAW files. Which is weird, since Flickr, overall, seems better suited for advanced and pro shutterbugs.
Google does back up RAW, although it converts them to a compressed format in the process (unless you join the paid plan).
Different 10: Exclusive features. In keeping with its incarnation as a complete photo solution, Flickr makes it easy to turn certain photos into prints, posters, photo books, wrapped-canvas art, and so on.
Google doesn’t offer any options for turning your photography into real-world objects, but it does offer something called Assistants. These are collages, animated slideshows, panoramas, and videos automatically created from batches of your photos.
Face to face
Google Photos is incredibly clean, stripped-down, and simple. For example, it provides zero control over how your photos appear — you can’t alter their size, change how they’re sorted, or view them by the kind of privacy settings they have (you can on Flickr). You can’t even see how many photos you have.
In short, Google Photos screams “1.0.”
Flickr is mature, rich, powerful — and sometimes confusing. Its newest features, like the primary Camera Roll view (all your pictures in one giant scroll, flanked by a time ruler) are spectacularly clean and easy to use, but some of the older ones (like the Organizr) are cluttered and dizzying.
Now, not everyone will care about Google’s decision to reduce the quality of the photos and videos stored there. You crazy kids today, shooting only with your phones and sharing photos only on screens, may never know or mind that you’ve lost a little clarity along the way.
But to me, that data loss is a deal killer. If I lost all my pictures, I’d be thrilled to have an online backup — but my happiness would be dampened by the fact that my restored photos and videos aren’t quite as sharp and clear as the ones I lost.
Similarly, I find it hard to believe that Flickr can’t fix its own limitations — limited video lengths, RAW-file uploads, and a couple of aging organization screens — and thereby trump Google completely.
But never mind all that. Both give you free, automatic, superbly searchable storage for all your pictures, from all your machines. Choose one or the other and download its auto-uploader (and phone app).
And get started now: The first uploading process takes a very long time — days, in fact.
Thanks to these amazing (and amazingly generous) new services, the world has just changed. As of this moment, nobody will ever have sympathy again when you share a sob story about losing all your photos.
David Pogue is the founder of Yahoo Tech. On the Web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s pogue. On email, he’s poguester@yahoo.com. He welcomes nontoxic responses in the Comments below.
Saturday, June 06, 2015
Video Game Hall of Fame
What are the six most important, influential and iconic video games ever made?
Pong, Pac-Man, Tetris, Super Mario Bros., Doom and World of Warcraft, it turns out.
The Strong National Museum of Play, located in Rochester, NY, has long been dedicated to preserving various forms of childhood entertainment. It is home, for example, to the National Toy Hall of Fame, which includes the Rubik's Cube and the Slinky.
The museum founded the World Video Game Hall of Fame this year, and Thursday it inducted its first class.
The list includes Super Mario, a legendary Japanese game that cemented the console era when it was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985. That was an easy pick, of course -- it's become such a cultural icon that at one point its characters were more recognizable to American children than Mickey Mouse.
Other inductees included Tetris, the Soviet puzzle game concocted in June 1984 by artificial-intelligence researcher Alexey Pajitnov. There was also Pac-Man, one of the most popular arcade games of all time. Naturally, every one of these titles came after Atari's Pong, which was the first video game to break out among mainstream consumers after it was developed and released in 1972 by the California company.
There were some unusual picks as well: Doom and World of Warcraft. Doom, developed by Id Software in 1993, helped create what is arguably the most successful video game genre in history: the first-person shooter. It was also a violent and often terrifying game -- you play a nameless soldier slaying demons that escaped from the gates of Hell -- though those elements helped influence future game developers' ability to imbue their titles with tone, style and other artistic elements.
World of Warcraft, notable as one of the largest and most successful games played over the Internet, was not the first such Internet game. But it has become one of the most influential titles ever made. Since WoW, as it's called, was released in 2004, the game has become the highest-grossing title in history, thanks to added story lines over the years and the millions of subscribers who have paid a monthly fee to play the game. Even today, there are more than 7 million people still logging in to engross themselves in the fantasy universe.
Pong, Pac-Man, Tetris, Super Mario Bros., Doom and World of Warcraft, it turns out.
The Strong National Museum of Play, located in Rochester, NY, has long been dedicated to preserving various forms of childhood entertainment. It is home, for example, to the National Toy Hall of Fame, which includes the Rubik's Cube and the Slinky.
The museum founded the World Video Game Hall of Fame this year, and Thursday it inducted its first class.
The list includes Super Mario, a legendary Japanese game that cemented the console era when it was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985. That was an easy pick, of course -- it's become such a cultural icon that at one point its characters were more recognizable to American children than Mickey Mouse.
Other inductees included Tetris, the Soviet puzzle game concocted in June 1984 by artificial-intelligence researcher Alexey Pajitnov. There was also Pac-Man, one of the most popular arcade games of all time. Naturally, every one of these titles came after Atari's Pong, which was the first video game to break out among mainstream consumers after it was developed and released in 1972 by the California company.
There were some unusual picks as well: Doom and World of Warcraft. Doom, developed by Id Software in 1993, helped create what is arguably the most successful video game genre in history: the first-person shooter. It was also a violent and often terrifying game -- you play a nameless soldier slaying demons that escaped from the gates of Hell -- though those elements helped influence future game developers' ability to imbue their titles with tone, style and other artistic elements.
World of Warcraft, notable as one of the largest and most successful games played over the Internet, was not the first such Internet game. But it has become one of the most influential titles ever made. Since WoW, as it's called, was released in 2004, the game has become the highest-grossing title in history, thanks to added story lines over the years and the millions of subscribers who have paid a monthly fee to play the game. Even today, there are more than 7 million people still logging in to engross themselves in the fantasy universe.
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