Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review.

Onetime.im — in beta as of this writing — is a Firefox add-on that allows you to chat using multiple Instant Messaging networks. Support will be “available soon” for AOL, ICQ and Yahoo. Note the domain, .IM which stands for the Isle of Man. A bit of a developing trend in the instant messaging area I learned with others including meebo.im, web.im (Yahoo), pidgin.im (formerly GAIM), portal.im, coccinella.im and imo.im. At nic.im you can register tdavid.im for 45 pounds a year. td.im is available for a whopping 495 pounds a year! Pass on both accounts.

Perhaps Oneteam.im biggest competitor in the browser space meebo has the all important dot com where oneteam.com leads to a foreign website that isn’t related. Major bummer. Suggestion #1: use an .im domain name where you actually own the dot com. Most people are going to associate your business with .com, not .im.

Oneteam requires registration which was trouble-free and accepted the + in my email address. They might consider adding OpenID.

You’ll be sent a standard validation link email. After clicking through it’s time to login. My first login on a test Windows XP SP 2 box was met with the unfortunate message:

Suggestion #2: fix this error message. I wasn’t too concerned because the email address given on the review request was from process-one.net, so I connected the dots, but some (many?) new users will be put off by this message. Once logged in a gigantic window opens that I immediately resized.

Suggestion #3: keep IM windows small like the Skype UI and respectful of screen real estate. From here my experience with Oneteam.im was mostly downhill. It doesn’t feel like much more than a prototype in its current form and I decided to list the things it needs to become a complete and usable beta. But before getting to that, I invited a friend of mine, Lestat, to check it out and see if he drew similar conclusions. Here’s a bit of our conversation inside a oneteam.im chatroom.

More suggestions for Oneteam.im
One of the first things I do with sites is update my profile. I like to change the default avatar image — usually something nondescript — with a picture. That leads to suggestion #4:

#4: Fix the avatar upload function with the profile. I tried uploading an avatar picture in JPG and GIF format. Neither was accepted. I was able to update my profile.

#5: Make it a lot easier to add a contacts from the oneteam.im chatroom. With a right mouseclick there should be an option to easily add the contact and yet there isn’t. When you click on the add new contact button in the upper left corner, the two options are Jabber or MSN but nothing for Oneteam? I asked my friend to try adding my Jabber ID and he said it didn’t work. The easiest part of using an IM service should be adding existing and new contacts.

Adding insult to injury, as part of the review I was given contact details to add (an email), but no instructions how to add the contact. Was this a Jabber ID? Or MSN? Those are the only two gateways currently supported as of my review.

#6: Turn off the sounds on the Oneteam.im chatroom by default. While you can easily click on the gears and uncheck the box, that ding sound whenever somebody types a new message in the channel gets old fast. Just start with sounds disabled.

#7: On the Mac OS X Firefox, Oneteam.im tells me I need to use Firefox. Huh?

#8: All new windows launches should open with buttons visible. Some default window sizes don’t contain all the form elements visible on initial load. For example, when I load the add contact window I have to expand the window to see the ‘add’ and ‘cancel’ buttons.

#9: 12 browser validation errors. Lestat took this screenshot using the Firefox add-on Firebug on his Windows XP SP 2 machine:

Overall thoughts
I’m not going to leave a grade for Oneteam.im in its present condition as of this writing like I would with other reviews. It’s just way too early to grade in its condition. Besides looking for suggestions to improve their interface, they mention Meebo and I’d say Oneteam has a long way to go to be as simple to get into as Meebo. They might have some cool features once you get connected, but if it’s not fast and easy to jump into, people will move along and try one of the other zillion IM solutions out there. I realize the browser IM space isn’t too crowded yet, but the IM space in general certainly is. I wish Oneteam.im luck as even if they fix all the things I mention, they still have a lot of work ahead of them to get noticed.

A final suggestion and I mean this positively not as a slam: perhaps it would be better to blend the Oneteam.im feature into another less crowded space.

Hmmcast #127 mp4

Kevin Mitnick.

I’m sure many Hmm readers have heard that name. Mitnick was a well known bad guy hacker who did a couple years in the pen. An article in the June 2007 issue of Playboy describes the mistake he made that got him caught. When he got out he turned author and whitehat security consultant. He’s a new man, or so that’s what we are supposed to believe.

A few days ago I was listening on the radio to a commercial about a product that Mitnick endorsed which would make your experience banking online more secure. It’s a “hardened solution” according to Mitnick since it doesn’t just rely on software. The product sounded worth closer investigation (hey, maybe Google is right to be doing radio advertising, it still works). The product name?

ID Vault.

The radio ad mentioned it was available at Best Buy stores everywhere. I stopped by our local Best Buy and they didn’t have any in stock but there were 19 in the warehouse. The manager told me he was ordering some right away and would be stocking them near the laptop display.

Went back home and searched the Best Buy website. The Federal Way store had two copies. I called and asked if they’d hold one since it was a 30 minute drive. I was told they don’t do that. Oh well, didn’t hurt to ask. We arrived at the store 35 minutes later and both copies were still there at the price of $49.99.

Got home and installed ID Vault. I had the understanding — wrong, it would seem — that ID Vault worked with Firefox. Not for me. The ID Vault FAQ says it does but I never received any of the ID Vault prompts when I visited and tried to login to any sites with Firefox and the instruction manual only mentions Internet Explorer.

Not only a Windows-only deal, but Internet Explorer only too? I tried firing up Internet Explorer once ID Vault was installed and it crashed right away. I uninstalled ID Vault and Internet Explorer loaded right away without incident.

Argh.

Before uninstalling I checked the ID Vault database to see if Sharebuilder was one of the brokerages it worked with? Nope. T. Rowe Price was listed however. The Credit Union we use was listed. ID Vault was noticeably slow retrieving the site information.

The way ID Vault promises to secure you is by requesting a pin number to transmit your username/password. The information is stored on the ID Vault USB key. So when you want to visit one of the secure websites you just click on it and it looks for the ID Vault USB key. When you enter in your site username and password you don’t use the keyboard which would prevent a keylogger from seeing it. The methodology used already doesn’t have me typing out the passwords (I generate them using eWallet which has 256-bit encryption and then copy/paste to the sites), so the ID Vault was just adding another largely unnecessary layer of security. Plus, it doesn’t stop any hacker that has already gotten the username/password from using any computer.

ID Vault would be better if it offered some sort of number challenge that could only be generated from the USB key like the PayPal security key. I wanted to like and use ID Vault but in its current condition I would have been better donating the 50 bones to charity. You can save $20 if you order ID Vault through their website but that’s your call. I hope Mitnick was paid well to pitch this because anything he endorses going forward will meet with much greater skepticism from this consumer. Uninstalled. Grade: F.

Update July 5, 2007 7:01pm PST: Greg Greg Marek, Vice President of Marketing for Guard ID Systems, Inc. stopped by in the comment section below to point out that the version of the software that came with my purchased version of ID Vault probably wasn’t the new beta version that supports Firefox 2.0 due to manufacturing to retail lag time. I’ve asked him to continue the dialog and address if the Firefox version is the same as ID Vault or if there are any differences (I.E less functionality). Also asked him if T. Rowe Price is now supported as it wasn’t a month ago and he made it sound as it was easy to get support for that included by just asking them to do so. Consider this my blog post my formal request, Greg.

Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review.

AVS Video Converter describes itself as:

Rip and burn personal DVDs, convert video, split, join, edit, rotate, apply effects, transfer, copy!

Considering I’ve been spending a lot of time with video this year, I was interested in checking out what the AVS Video Converter could offer me.

Installation
The download is a tidy 39.6 MB. I paused at the following screen wondering why there isn’t a better explanation to the user why Windows Media Format 9 Series Runtime Files are checked by default as a ‘task’?

I’m using Windows Media 11 but left it checked. No problems there however when the install was done and I launched for the first time I was met with a flurry of disk error messages. A lot of software chokes on my setup which doesn’t use the C:/ drive as the primary drive, so I wasn’t too surprised. Here’s a peek at the ugliness:

After getting through that I was treated to a nag screen announcing I was using the unregistered version. As part of compensation for writing this review I was offered a key to unlock the registered version but I chose not to take that and instead look at what prospective customer would see as an unregistered user.

When you click more you are sent to a web page which explains the upgrade options. AVS Video Converter is part of a software subscription by AVS4YOU.com which allows registered access to all programs for a yearly or unlimited fee per machine. Until May 31, the unlimited per PC price is $59 per year and goes up to $69 after that. The yearly price until May 31 is $29 and goes up to $39 after that.

The unregistered experience
The deal offered isn’t just for AVS Video Converter, it is for all the programs by AVS4YOU. I counted well over 25 different programs which puts the lifetime price at under $2 a program even if you wait to buy until after this month.

Seemed like a good deal if the software is worthwhile and something you can’t find somewhere else for free. There are a ton of different video conversion tools out there these days. I’ll get back to this point in a little bit, but let’s see how easy it is to convert a video.

As the screenshot above shows there are a bunch of different conversion options from left to right on the radio dial: To AVI, DVD, MP4, 3GP, MPEG, MOV, WMV, RM, and SWF. With the input window you browse to the file you want to convert. In my case I chose our digital camera video. It’s the Kodak EasyShare Z760 and encodes in an MOV format. When working with the video for Hmmcasts on my Windows machine I convert that first to AVI using Quicktime Pro (which I paid $29.95).

As a test case I decided to encode yesterday’s music video Hmmcast from MP4 to SWF. Since that was over 25MB I figured it would be a good test of a larger video file to convert.

In the lower window there are two tabs to open up more information about the file including Aspect Correction and File Information. There is a brief, useful explanation of what Aspect Ratio is:

Aspect ratio of an image is its displayed width divided by the height. The aspect ratio of a standard TV screen is 4:3. High definition televisions have an aspect of 16:9.

The File Info displays the input and output file (the converted file) details. Once you have the settings in order and click the “convert now!” button unregistered users will see the following nag screen message.

The process of converting from MP4 to SWF went fast on my Windows XP powered PC with 2GB RAM.

You can watch the progress of the video being converted to the new format.

The program is pretty much useless with the watermark in the center which is the point to let you try it and see if it properly converts the file. If you like it then you have two choices: register the program or hit Google and look for a competing program.

Darkmoon at LUX informed me of an audio and video program called SUPER that is free and does a lot more than AVS Video Converter. As you migth expect, the problem with SUPER is that it’s not nearly as user-friendly as AVS Video Converter. It is possible the other AVS4YOU programs emulate some or all of SUPER’s extensive feature set, but I had to spend a few more minutes working with SUPER to get it to convert a file. SUPER has the right price though if you are looking for something free to do the same thing.

Refund policy
AVS4You has a reasonable Refund Policy which basically says they will only refund those who report technical problems on their computer:

If you send us a message informing about an error, any question or just a suggestion, you will receive a fast and competent answer from our technical support team within 48 hours. As a rule all the majority of problems is solved “on the spot”. Numerous positive reports concerning our specialists and products prove that perfectly well.

I didn’t test these service claims for this review, but I did do a couple different Google searches to see if there were any major dissatisfied customer reports. In the day of blogs companies with shoddy customer service can’t hide. I didn’t see any significant customer complaints to share.

To register or not AVS Video Converter
Until Darkmoon showed me the competing program SUPER I was sold on AVS Video Converter. I figured if the unregistered program installed and ran without problems I’d buy into their unlimited for one PC plan. I mean really, $59 for a lifetime and 30 25+ software programs is a compelling deal. However, looking through the list of other AVS4YOU programs the one I’d use the most is AVS Video Converter. I’m not going to grade down AVS Video Converter too much because there is a free alternative, especially because it works as advertised and was easy to do what I wanted to do, however I want to pass along Darkmoon’s tip on a free alternative. It also loses some points for being Windows only. What about Mac and Linux?

If you are going to sell dozens of Windows software at a fair price I really like the route AVS4You is going with the one year or lifetime subscription option. Although I didn’t do any business with AVS4You I’ve bookmarked the site and could be back to buy into the unlimited option. I welcome any readers who have done business with AVS4You to offer their customer experiences below. Grade: B-

I’m down for trying any new pizza place with garlic in the name.

I first learned about this pizza joint from one of their employees holding a sign out on the street. Yes, human street advertising works. In these parts we see lots of businesses running out workers dressed in crazy outfits holding oversized signs. We never ran any employees on the street outside when I was in the restaurant business pre 1994, but we did have people dress up for the kids on family nights. Relatively inexpensive advertising on busy streets, although I feel for the workers in blazing suits on sweltering days.

You can see if there is a Garlic Jims in your area by checking the GarlicJims.com Store locator. They appear to be in rapid franchise expansion mode.

What’s supposed to make Garlic Jim’s pizza different and better than the competition is that they are “gourmet.” I know, start raising your eyebrows now. Don’t you love it when places claim to be more upscale or fancy when at the end of the day the food tastes pretty much like (or worse) than every non-gourmet food tastes like? I mean really, it’s not like world famous chefs will be spinning pies at the local Garlic Jim’s. Chef Ramsey from that Hell’s Kitchen reality show running around demanding quality pies, not.

There is an upscale contemporary design inside their stores complete with two LCD TVs playing movies.

I noticed that the new Jack in the Box had an LCD TV in the store too. So while people are waiting in line they can watch TV. I’m sure some study has proven that if you show customers a TV they will be less likely to complain or react negatively to wait times, but we didn’t have any trouble getting pizza on Sunday afternoon. The whole time we were there (perhaps 30 minutes or less) we only saw two other customers.

We ordered two pizzas to take home, one of which was their best selling Ultimate. The kids and I liked the pie, but I’d put it about on par with Domino’s. Here’s how I’d rank the local pizza places on taste:

1. Round Table - they have the best sauce and understand when I say “extra, extra sauce” I mean literally oozing out of the pizza. Great buffet at a reasonable price too. My wife and I go there a few times a month.
2. Godfather’s - there isn’t a Godfather’s near by any more, in fact Garlic Jim’s opened in the same general area and what used to be Godfather’s is now a bank.
3. Pizza Hut - we love the breadsticks there!
4. Domino’s - got sick of Domino’s back when I was in high school and we ate them every day. I mean. Every. Single. Day. Sometimes multiple times in a day!
5. Little Caesar’s (if you can still find them) - the only place to find this pizza these days is at K-Mart and it’s gone way downhill. In its prime, I’d take this pizza over Garlic Jim’s.
6. Garlic Jim’s - #6 out of 8, not the ringing customer endorsement they were hoping for, but we’ll be back again trying other items on the menu.
7. Alfy’s - a little too pricey, pizza is alright.
8. Papa John’s Murphy’s (take and bake) - they have the closest location, but I’d rather eat frozen.

Here’s a scary thought: if it were fair to put frozen pizza options in the list above (it’s not, I’m just saying), I’d put Tombstone at #5 ahead of Garlic Jim’s and the others behind it. Tombstone pizza can be found at the local grocery store for a couple bucks a pizza and if you bake it and eat it right away. Good stuff.

Dwayne Northrop, president and one founder of Garlic Jim’s and opened the first store in March 2004 in Bellevue, Washington and says:

“Lots of people make a good pizza but can’t deliver it in less than an hour … A lot of people can deliver in less than an hour, but can’t make good pizza. We fill the gap.”

Apparently they have strict corporate delivery mandates that result in the pizza delivery service not extending very far in busy areas. The Garlic Jim’s manager (franchise owner?) we spoke to on Sunday mentioned that it was difficult to provide the fast delivery corporate demands in the busy area where their store was located during traffic peak times.

The GJ closest our home, about 8 miles is too far out of range for GJ delivery.

Sorry Dwayne and company but your pizza isn’t anything special nor fits what I’d call “gourmet.” The store design, decor and cleanliness? Excellent, A. Friendly help? Excellent, A, but the biggest weight in scoring goes to the pizza taste itself which I’d give a D+. It wasn’t that it wasn’t baked good, it just didn’t seem like that great a pie to me and my wife didn’t like it at all. She used less flattering terms to describe it. Our three teenagers ate it but teenage boys would clear out a fridge with food flirting with expiration if you let them. As mentioned above, we’re going to try the lunch menu later today and also pickup the new Ozzy CD. Maybe Garlic Jim’s lunch menu will prove more “gourmet” than their pizza? We’ll find out later today. Grade: C+.

How do you rank the pizza places in your area? Who has the best pie in your town?

Gamepads — no matter how well designed — aren’t good for all games. Pac-Man, Frogger and a slew of fighting games are better controlled with a joystick than a D-pad. You can imagine my delight when today I saw the Madcatz Xbox 360 Gamestick bundle which comes with the stick and redeem codes for three arcade games: Astropop (800 points), Time Pilot (400 points) and Frogger (400 points).

Although I still have a few thousand unredeemed Microsoft Points, I don’t have many Live Arcade games on my Xbox 360 Elite yet. As mentioned last Sunday I’m still working my way through the surprisingly entertaining Viva Pinata. We’ve also rented and watched a few of the movies through the Live Marketplace.

I decided to purchase Pac-Man today (400 Microsoft Points) and try the Madcastz Gamestick out on that first. Pac-man is one of my favorite games of all time and one where I prefer a stick over the Xbox 360 gamepad. Response?

The joystick is too loose around the base forcing you to push it hard one way or another to get the desired movement. This had pac-man stopping in the maze and being easy prey for Inky and his buddies. I also needed to seat the joystick between my legs at sort of an awkward angle to get the best grip and response as shown below:

I prefer a gaming stick with stiffer response as opposed to having more play at the base. Not as hard as say the old Atari 2600 joystick but not as loose as this one. As far as price goes at $39.99 at Best Buy, it’s not that expensive with the three full arcade games which add up to 1600 Microsoft Points. $39.98 at Amazon for the Madcatz Arcade GameStick for Xbox 360 (affiliate).

I have to play with this longer to see if it works well with many (any) games including the pack-in titles (I don’t recall trying the puzzle game Astro Pop yet) but early impression is somewhat disappointed. If you like a joystick with a lot of play at the base — perhaps too much play — than you will really like thie Madcatz Gamestick. If you’re more toward having a closer to arcade feel stick then look around for sometihng else. Grade: C-

Yesterday morning we got up and caught the 10:30 showing of Spider-man 3.

The theater was about 60% full and the mood of the audience was lukewarm. Some laughter, no crying, no applause or cheering. For this review I’m assuming you’ve seen the first two Spider-man movies.

In the first a vital part of the suspense was how Peter Parker became Spider-Man and how he wished he could get his girl of dreams, Mary Jane Watson. She didn’t know he was Spidey which added to the suspense. It had a great villain in The Green Goblin. In the sequel, Spider-Man reveals his identity to Mary Jane at the end and the whole “go get him, Tiger” took away the mystery of him not revealing who he is to her and whether they would ever work as a couple or not.

In Spider-Man 3 that mystery is gone and it hurts the script. Instead we get a lame Mary Jane failed broadway actress story and even a jealousy subplot that doesn’t work. Spider-man isn’t a musical drama. Spider-Man 3 focuses too much on redemption and forgiveness and comes off almost insultingly sappy.

Venom and the Sandman are decent villains but don’t get enough screen time to become much more than cardboard characters. The New Goblin (or is it just “Goblin”?) sidestory is interesting, albeit cliched. Sam Raimi would have been better leaving some of the Mary Jane and “The New” Goblin scenes on the cutting room floor (sorry Kirsten Dunst and James Franco) and given that screen time to Venom and Sandman being more, well, bad.

Spider-man 3 didn’t connect with me like the first two and sorry Howard but I don’t see how it will make more than the other two movies except that it was showing on half the 12 screens at our local theater. Let’s see, what is there to see today? Spider-man 3, Spider-man 3, Spider-man 3 … The opening weekend sales will be good, but this won’t perform as well as the first two. Probably good enough to generate another trilogy. Grade: C+

Update 5/7/07 3:27am PST: Indystar is reporting that Spider-man 3 set a couple opening records: most number of screens (4,252) and ticket sales $148 million (besting Pirates Dead Man’s Chest). The Spider-man 3 budget (yo Forser) is an estimated $258 million.

Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review.

I hadn’t heard of the legal EZTakes online movie service, but was intrigued by their business which doesn’t try to get you to watch movies on your computer but encourages you to burn them to DVD that can be played on “most any” DVD player. Sweet, no DRM.

EZTakes self describes their service as:

EZTakes is different from almost any other legal movie download service in that we DO NOT use Digital Rights Management (DRM) and we make it easy for consumers to burn our downloads to DVDs that will play in just about any DVD player. Almost all of our DVDs include the same special features found in the physical retail DVDs. In addition to burning, our customers can also print their own label and cover art by using our free EZTakes Download Manager software. Although we just came out of beta testing in late 2007, we already have over 2,000 feature-length films on-line, including many dozens that won awards at Sundance, Cannes and other prestigious festivals, plus a few Oscar winners.

Once I clicked over and saw they had Troma films, I was hooked! I’m a huge Troma fan seeing The Toxic Avenger and Class of Nuke’em High several times when younger. Haven’t really stayed up with what they’ve been up to in the independent horror film market, but I had my eye on a couple films to check out right away. The fact that they could be burned to DVD and played in our DVD player was a bonus. I was ready for some Troma action.

But first the account registration and software download process.

EZtakes Download Manager Software and account registration
It isn’t required — or even available from what I could see — to register for an account through the EZTakes website, you can do that right inside their software. A bit unusual, albeit a nice touch. The download footprint is 25 MB and the EULA didn’t have any language that crossed my eyes, so I proceeded. The registration information required is pretty minimal: email address which becomes your username, password, first and last name.

I like that “yes” for the weekly email radio button wasn’t selected. Neither “yes” or “no” is selected. I chose “yes.” Fairly quickly I was sent an email confirmation with a validation link to click. Smooth registration and installation process.

Time to go DVD shopping
There are a couple free test videos you can go with but I decided to skip those in favor of checking out some Troma films. I choose the oddly titled Surf Nazi’s Must Die because well, I think all Nazi’s should die and the title struck me as classic Troma. I was also intrigued by another Troma title The Killer Condom, but planned to try the Surf title first. After clicking the download I was prompted to enter credit card information.

It accepted the form with no problem and the downloading began.

Time to download the selected Troma film Surf Nazi’s Must Die with default settings using the EZTakes Download Manager software on my cable connection: 1 hour 40 minutes. Comparable time to downloading movies on Xbox 360 but without the ability to start watching it midstream.

Wait, there’s a better way.

Download TIP: For those with the bandwidth and CPU, you can cut more than half that time by going into TOOLS->PREFERENCES ->NOW DOWNLOADING and moving the slider all the way to the left “Fast” and increasing the threads to a maximum of 5. I didn’t figure this out until about halfway through the first download.

Unlocking
After downloading the DVD, it goes through an “unlocking DVD” phase which took an additional 10 minutes. I’m not sure why it didn’t download unlocked to begin with? Is this some kind anti-piracy measure? The process isn’t explained in the interface anyway, perhaps that’s in the help docs somewhere.

And unlike the download process the unlocking doesn’t give a time that it will take, but does show a progress bar. Suggestion: add some sort of estimated time for end users. We want to know how long it will take, at least an estimation.

Moving the first download broke it somehow
After downloading I realized the default directory wasn’t the one I wanted to use long term. I wanted to use one of our beefier external hard drives. Changing the default drive was easy but when I went to move the file it locked up after about 15% of the progress and I had to close. This somehow hosed the movie and it wouldn’t play once burned or play from the computer.

I downloaded a second time (at no additional charge) and burned a new DVD. This time it froze at the Warning screen in our DVD player three different times. The only way I could eject the DVD was to power off the DVD player, turn back on, and immediately eject. I tried loading the DVD on our newest computer powered by Windows Vista and it froze on the Warning screen there too. The second time, however, it loaded the full menu.

Ejecting the DVD, I looked at the other side. It was clear with no scratches or other blemishes. I tried putting in our DVD player again and, to my surprise, it made it past the Warning screen. I didn’t clean or otherwise do anything to the play side of the DVD, odd.

Let me go back to the DVD burning process for a minute.

First time DVD burning experience
Would you believe this was the first DVD I’ve ever burned? Despite owning over 500 store bought DVDs and several DVD burner drives, I’ve never taken the DVD plunge before. Sure I’ve burned ISOs, lots of MP3 CDs and plenty of backup CDs but never a DVD movie burn — until now. The EZTakes DVD burning process?

Pretty smooth. Just pop a blank DVD into the drive and press the “burn DVD” button and then [sigh] wait. It’s another 10-15 minutes at 4X speed (the max speed my DVD writer would produce).

By now, I was a good three hours into “the process” and somewhat exhausted. I’d have thrown the flag and driven to the store to buy the DVD by now. Easier, less hassle.

EZTakes Satisfaction Guarantee
I like the EZTakes Satisfaction Guarantee from CEO Jim Flynn that states if you aren’t completely satisfied with the service within the first 48 hours of download you can email tech support and they will refund the charge.

No, I wasn’t “completely” satisfied, but not sure if that was because I screwed up the first download by trying to move it to a different drive or if that was a bug in the software, but I’m not going to request a refund. After all, I was able to redownload the movie again without additional charge. I suspect most won’t take advantage of this offer, they will simply try a second time as I had or quit using the service, but I’m glad to see the guarantee being offered.

Note: I was also offered to have the cost of buying the movie reimbursed as part of writing this review but am declining that polite offer. I wanted to see this movie and have no problems paying for it, but I did find it pretty cool that in the review request notes EZTakes indicated that they would still pay the studio for the film even if I requested a refund. These guys are clearly serious about running a legit operation. Respect.

Comparing to DVD purchases
A couple omissions when comparing to buying the DVD in the store:

1. No transfer of ownership rights. You own these movies forever, yes, literally forever. Because the Terms of Use state you cannot resell the material. This makes building a collection for future sale, which we are doing with our store bought DVDs impossible with EZTakes current licensing. They should provide a transfer of ownership clause. Why can’t I permanently transfer ownership to another EZTakes user? Even for a small fee that they could pay the studios again and keep some for themselves.
2. Unprofessional packaging. Printing out packaging unless you are a professional printer with expensive equipment is cheesy. I’m sorry, but even with the coolness of my Lightscribe DVD writer — which I didn’t actually use the Lightscribe function — it’s nowhere close to the DVD you buy in the store.

Summary and grade
Of the many online video download services, EZTakes scores points for wanting to eliminate DRM. They told me in the review comments that their strategy is working and they’re receiving reports they are outselling some billion dollar competitors. For those who like independent films, I believe that.

It would be much better if the major studios would sign onto this service, however the main weakness which I can’t really get past is there being no collector’s value to the deal and the whole “process” to downloading and burning is still a bit clumsy and time consuming. I don’t want to spend hours getting to the movie I want to see. Even on Xbox Live when we rent a movie we can start watching it after it streams for a little while.

Also I can go pick out and buy the DVD from the store (admittedly not many of these independent titles) and be home within 30-45 minutes watching it. While I could pick out, buy and download a movie from EZTakes in that time, there is still the burn and will it play phase and the lingering realization that there’s no resale/collector value. I would like to see EZTakes do more about explaining what DVD players are not compatible with their service and why. Maybe they have that explained clearly in the help documentation but the only thing I saw clearly advertised was that the burned DVDs would play in “most” DVD players. Our DVD player is a newer JVC progressive scan player and as mentioned it did work after some fiddling. The point is that there hasn’t been any store bought DVD that doesn’t play. Perhaps a list of known incompatible players would be a good addition to the site.

For those who enjoy independent films and would like to support a DRM-free online movie service — and I think their mission is a good one — EZTakes, despite the shortcomings mentioned in this review is still worth checking out. Grade: B-

Sunday night we resubscribed to the Hollywood Video MVP pass. $19.99 for 3 movies out at a time, unlimited rentals and, get this, the manager actually asked us if we wanted to cancel right away so we wouldn’t be charged automatically at renewal. How many times has that ever happened to you? Us? Never.

The first three movies we rented included Stranger than Fiction with Will Ferrel. Didn’t work for my wife, but I thought it was an alright Ferrel vehicle. No laugh out loud funny moments like Talladega Nights. We also rented Sentinel starring Michael Douglas and Jack Bauer, er, I mean Kiefer Sutherland. I can’t help it with Sutherland, he’ll be forever typed as Bauer.

And finally the blatant Snakes on a Plane ripoff with Snakes on a Train. We watched this one last night and I’ve never heard of snakes that eat their way into people. Yes, I know about the Boa Constrictor and some other snakes that will devour rodents and smaller creatures, perhaps even small children in rare cases. I thought snakes primarily just bit people when startled? Maybe there are some snakes that are more aggressive and actually hunt people for food but I couldn’t get past that part of this movie with the premise that this woman has received a curse of “the snake” which means she has snakes inside her, trying to eat their way out … and back in.

There is some but not enough nakedness for a horror flick so somebody please call Mr. Skin. The acting is mostly bad. The ending of the movie, which I won’t ruin, is completely implausible. If you like snake movies, it’s barely worth a rental, but not recommended as a purchase. Like most movie knockoffs, it’s not in the same league. Grade: D+

Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review.

Some people believe that local search is a space that Google hasn’t yet conquered. I haven’t found that to be the case in our local area as Google occupies like 98% of my daily searches, including local businesses. There is, however, something to the notion that nobody knows local businesses better than the people in the area.

This is where iBegin Source steps in offering yellow pages for businesses around the United States that anybody can update using a wiki-style concept. iBegin source offers a free download license for non-commercial use. Businesses can license a state for $1,000 or the entire US for $40,000. As of this writing iBegin claims to have 10,820,479 total business listings.

iBegin downloadable data
The data is pipe (|) delimited and includes the following fields for non-commercial (free): ID, Name, Street Address, City, Zip, Fax, Category, Website URL, Hours, Time Added (timestamp), Time Last Updated (timestamp)

Those who purchase the commercial license get the following additional fields: Phone, Geocoding (latitude and longitude) and Major Intersection.

Having the fax but not the business phone number for personal use isn’t very useful but fortunately you can search from the iBegin Source website and find the phone numbers of local businesses.

Don’t see a business you know is there? Registered users can suggest updates to the system either through the website or using the automated trackback system. The only fields required to become a registered user are username, password and email address.

Design and interaction
Some of the pages use inline windows that appear and the background fades like the definition for geocoding shown below:

I’m sure this was done for stylistic reasons as the site design otherwise is bland. I happen to like bland though when it comes to getting to raw data. The site is primarily text-based and I encountered no third party advertising. There is a button to click for online support but nobody was available (it’s a Saturday, not surprised) to talk to about the site/service.

Accuracy of data
Our offline business established in town since 1996 was listed under the corporate name but the fax number was about three years outdated. It showed being added on January 23, 2007, so whatever source used was wrong. The street address number was completely wrong — off by one number — we moved from there a year ago to our present location. I decided to attempt to fix/update the data.

Through the web form I edited the wrong information and corrected and then his submit and was treated to a PHP header error:

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent [server/file details redacted]

By revisiting the page all my changes took, but a keyword search still would not reveal the business either before the change or after. Compare this to Google and I put in our business name which also had our address a year ago with all other information correct. Both iBegin and Google had the right phone number (which has never changed), so that’s positive. Still, I don’t know why our business wasn’t turning up in the search using the zip code.

I tried a couple other searches for local businesses. Data accuracy overall was on par with other business data services I’ve seen, including the phone book, which isn’t that good. I didn’t fix any other data.

Other features
Some attractive iBegin feature for developers: every listing in hCard microformat and has location saved in KML, the aforementioned geocode data which would be handy for mapping mashups and everything is section 508 accessbility friendly using HiSoftware’s Cynthia Says.

Summary and grade
The problem I see with community updated data sources is what’s to stop competitors, vandals and spammers from altering data? It was easy to change our business information, too easy. And I didn’t even get into using the automated system. How do they know the address I put in was accurate? It’s relying on Wiki style monitoring and updates and my experience with public wikis is they only work if you have enough people monitoring the changes and locking out abuse.

Like any directory service, it’s only as good as the accuracy and reliability of the data. I’m not convinced iBegin Source will do any worse — or any better — than competing services that poll businesses to gather the data (like the phone company and local yellow pages).

Pricing? As a small business owner $1,000 for the entire state seems reasonably priced if you market to the entire state, however our primary marketing area is the greater Puget Sound area, so we’d need a much smaller subset than the entire state.

Unlike the Wikipedia iBegin Source is not a non-profit venture and they may find it difficult to get enough people involved to help maintain the integrity of the database. On the plus side the forms and scripts don’t have the annoying Wiki markup. Overall, not something I’d use for personal or business use, but others might find this useful in their local areas. Grade: C-

Remember the band Damn Yankees? Tommy Shaw of Styx fame and Jack Blades of Night Ranger joined forces on a project called Shaw Blades and for the second CD have released 11 covers from the 60s and 70s. The title? Influence.

I’m a sucker for covers and recognized 10 of the 11 songs Shaw Blades covered. My favorites include their electrical version of “Time of the Season” by the Zombies (1968) complete with a nice axe solo, “California Dreamin’” by the Mama & Papas (1963) and “Dirty Work” by Steely Dan (1972).

Shaw Blades miss the mark with their cover of Orleans “Dance with Me” (1975) because the vocals aren’t high enough. The one song I didn’t recognize — at least the Shaw Blades version — was “On a Carousel” by the Hollies (1965).

They also cover Summer Breeze by Seals & Crofts (1972) and Yes “Your Move” (1971), not one but two songs by Simon & Garfunkel: “I Am a Rock” (1966) and a very good version of “The Sound of Silence” (1964). Emerson, Lake & Palmer “Lucky Man” is handled artfully and the second to last song is “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield.

I picked up the CD at Best Buy last night but it’s also available at Amazon: Shaw Blades Influence (affiliate). The best deal I found was on iTunes for $9.99, but I’d rather have the CD and be able to rip to MP3 freely than deal with the DRM.

I understand Blades is working on a new Night Ranger album and Styx enjoyed a small resurgence after releasing their own CD of covers (Big Bang Theory). While their replacement singer is competent, Styx needs to bury the hatchet with Dennis De Young because Styx isn’t Styx without Shaw and De Young.

Other cover albums you can recommend? And yes, I’m familiar with the podcast Coverville. Overall Influence is a solid effort with only a couple weak covers. If you like the songs mentioned above and covers, it’s recommended listening. Grade: A-