Can. Not. Wait.

"Happy Australia Day - It's the 8th Annual Top 20 Drum n Bass of 2013. DJ Sikosis, Melonfarmer and N3B have narrowed it down to the final 21 (20 + 1 special mention track).

So many good tunes to go through this year making our jobs harder than ever, still what we have here is a great selection of tracks for you today."

Source: Top20DnB.com

Netflix is an American provider of on-demand Internet streaming media such as TV Shows and Movies and is available to North and South America, the Caribbean, United Kingdom, Northern Europe, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and the Netherlands.

The Good

What's not to like ? Thousands of movies and TV shows to choose from, streamed to your TV via any number of media devices or browsers including mobile (iOS/Android). When you rate the TV shows or movies that you just watched, Netflix gets better at recommending more things to watch. It's about discovery and this can also be strangely addictive, moving from one recommendation to another.

Not only the recommendations, they shows you what's popular on Netflix and also keep a very good track of where you're up to in a TV shows series or say if you start watching a movie on your TV and then stop it, you can very easily head to bedroom with the iPad and continue where you left off.

The Bad

So what's not to like ? Firstly, it isn't available and there is no sign of it coming to Australia, yet there are ways around that using third-party DNS switches or VPN services. Honestly, I think Telstra will do everything in their power to stop Netflix from coming to Australia. If they did, it would kill Foxtel overnight. Netflix uses bandwidth. This is something to be aware about. Unlike the US, where bandwidth is unlimited, we have our monthly quotas in Australia. So, not only is it costing you a monthly fee to access Netflix, but you're also using your download quota. Whilst it might not seen like much, we were doing about 7-9GB per day. There are settings in Netflix to change the quality, which can reduce this amount down, but like I said, something to be aware of. Not only that if you want a good viewing experience (ie. good quality, no buffering) you pretty much can't use the Internet for anything else.

Another aspect of Netflix is shows and movies expire. Netflix's licenses with the various studios runs out and so regularly movies / shows are removed. Thankfully, Netflix also gets new stuff, which they add each monthly.

The Ugly

The web browser requires Silverlight - Microsoft's failed equivalent of Adobe's Flash. The Silverlight app lacks proper controls and keyboard shortcuts. The only keyboard shortcut available to you is the Spacebar for Play/Pause. No ability to go back or forward, full-screen, etc - so you'll be using your mouse or touchpad to do all the navigating. The Silverlight app also has a tendency to get the video and audio out of sync and the only way to fix that is to close the thing you're watching and then reopened it again.

I was testing this on a Mac using Safari as it wouldn't let me use Chrome as it's an unsupported browser, which is weird because other Windows friends of mine use Chrome and don't have any issue. Perhaps this is just more proof that Chrome isn't Chrome on all platforms.

Anyway, all and all Netflix is a good streaming service with caveats.

 
Star Wars: Attack Squadrons is a free-to-play online space combat game where players customize iconic ships and engage in high-velocity 16 player dogfights in fabled locations.

It's currently in closed beta, but if done right, could be very cool.

Today, I received my AfterShokz Sportz 2 Bone Conduction Headphones and I proceeded to put them through the paces. The AfterShokz Sportz open ear headphones were designed with safely in mind for joggers, bike riders, skateboarders, hikers and other athletes.

The headphones feature *cough* military special ops bone conduction technology and sit in front of the ear, thereby bypassing the Outer Ear and Eardrum, and permitting users to hear ambient noises such as oncoming traffic, car horns, ambulances or other warning noises.

Unfortunately, I was hoping to use these headphones on my daily commute. In this scenario, being on a train, these headphones are an utter fail. The noise of the train on the tracks drowned out the voices of the podcast I was listening to. I had to put the iPhone on max volume and the AfterShokz's own standalone volume control to full and then I was able to make out what the people were saying on the podcast. I'm sure, so could the other passengers on the train, so I tried to keep this to a minimum.

Walking with the headphones in worked just fine. I could hear all the traffic noises and still listen to my music or podcasts, though I've never had any trouble with this and standard ear buds in the past. I could imagine running with this product to be very good as the headset helps keep them on your head and not fall our like the ear buds.

The main thing I have noticed is, the noise coming out of the headphones; I can't be sure it's actually using bone conduction and not just my ears picking up the sound as the headphone's speakers are in close proximity to my ear. The only way I could be sure was to put my fingers in my ears to block them and then the sound was very clear and even had more bass. So, I'm guessing I would have to use them with earplugs to get the best sound out of them -- there being the problem, they would no longer be open ear and provide any safety.

Still, in a quiet office or home environment, they work just fine. I can hear everything in the office, along with my tunes while no one else can, but once again, I'm wondering if my ear is actually picking up the noise not the bone conduction. The previous mentioned AfterShokz's amplifier box requires charging (2 hours for full charge and lasts about a week) and features it's own standalone volume control. Unfortunately, no control over the iPhone to stop/start and control it's volume. Also no microphone, though there is a later version AS321 that does include a microphone.

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