There are two things that that annoy me about youtube these days, everytime I play a video I get these semi-transparent signs saying “SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE” and then the other thing are captions telling you something you don’t even care about. I’m here to watch the damn video let me enjoy my 3 to 5 mins in peace without getting blasted by crap.

I thought there was no way to stop and previously there wasn’t but thank you Google for giving so many options, after a little digging in the youtube settings you can switch it all off forever!

Follow these simple steps:

• Visit your YouTube Playback Settings page.
• Untick Show annotations on videos.
• Untick Always show captions.
• Click Save.

You still get the standard Ads but at least the whole screen isn’t cluttered with crap that just blinds you and you can tell what the hell video is playing. So go in do it save your settings and enjoy Youtube once again.

(Yes I have watched Gangam Style at least 1000 times, this song is as addictive as cocaine, once its in your head it never leaves)

If you are looking for a decent media player to plug into your network wired or wirelessly then I would recommend the Boxee D-Link. In my opinion there are two kinds of Media Players out there, the dumb and the smart kind. The dumb is usually the type that just plays what ever you point it too or what ever USB you plug into it. A smart player is the on that gets information for you, tracks your history, gets all the information of TV Shows & Movies with the backgrounds and images to make for a very nice user interface. You can build your own smart player like XBMC or Plex Media Server but in both cases it would require some work and finese to put together a system like that but a lot of people don’t have the patience or know how to make something like this and this case I would recommend the Boxee Media Player because it does about 80% of the smart actions without the difficulty of configuring every little detail of the device.

Pros:

• Lots of Updates for it, and its been around long enough to have fixed most of its kinks
• Very simple and clean interface
• Recognized about 90% of the TV Shows that I have, and 9%5 of the Movies
• Plug & Play no difficulty setting it up
• Scans materials and updates your shows when you add new episodes every few hours
• Keeps track of shows that you have watched and those that you haven’t, and if you are half way through a show you can play where you stopped
• The remote is simple on one side and has a qwerty keyboard on the other, very useful for when you browse online
• Works very well over a wireless network, and in my case the accesspoint is a far from it so I’m impressed with its wireless capabilites
• You can use an iPhone or iPad to control it

Cons:

• Its a bit too dumb on certain parts, I keep having to enter my storage server password everyday which gets annoying, they should give the option to remember
• If you leave it on all day you have to restart it when you use it because it hangs a bit but overall it doesn’t have a negative effect

Overall:

Honestly, Boxee got off on the wrong foot when they first started in 2010 but the hardware is great. The box is small and silent, the RF remote is fantastic, and the hardware overall is a good value over buying an ATOM/ION nettop and IR remote, and installing Boxee or XBMC. I still think this is a geeky product that is trying to be usable for non-geeks which is a step in the right direction.

Price: $179
Link: Amazon
Rating:

Now this is a very cool animation of two men after one fox, and it turns into one very cool martial arts battle. Feels like a Pixar short, and I love the facial expressions.

The App that quietly slipped in with the Jellybean update, when I saw Google Currents, I honestly didn’t know what it is and when I clicked it, it seemed to have feeds to different types of media, I wondered if it was subscription based but turns out its free feeds. Several magazine and website feeds into a magazine like flow to content is the simple way to describe it. The first time I discovered it was on my Nexus 7, I didn’t realize it was on my Galaxy Nexus after the Jellybean update.

I just started using it since getting my Nexus 7 and the list above are the list of feeds that I am currently following. This is not what I use for my RSS Feeds, but something different and interesting to read when I feel like it. Sometimes you need to be liberated from your RSS feeds, it feels like you are tied to them and people have used Flipboard and loved it, even when its available for Android I think Google Currents is just that much smoother for Android Tablets and Phones.

The design is simple and crisp, and lists of new stories scroll up and down while reading within each individual story is usually by swiping left to right. This is a news aggregator that is sometimes conspicuously elegant, but never distracting. That’s exactly as it should be. Sharing is simple, too, and the only downside is that some publishers provide only very limited content.

The approach is simple – it splits content between your own library of subscriptions (both media and RSS) and items that are trending online. The former offers options of a wide range of tech titles, from Engadget to the Verge and several dedicated Android titles, as well as a perfectly decent selection of newspapers and lifestyle magazines. You can easily add RSS Feeds directly from the Google Reader, or add all your feeds if you would like. Keeping in mind that this doesn’t affect your Google Reader counts, it displays your RSS feeds as magazine articles which makes it smoother and more interesting.

One major plus for reader apps is offline access, and the amount that Currents downloads by default is very impressive. One problem with offline mode is that without pictures it looks pretty bare, but I’m grateful that I have access to content when I’m offline so I get to browse through it. Google Currents, overall, is an app every Android user should download.

I have mentioned in my earlier Google Nexus 7 Review that I am having a small issue with my Nexus 7, the screen looks as if its foggy when I start it up it lasts for about 15 to 20 mins then the colors and screen contrast comes back to normal, I thought it was a software glitch and I tried to fix it through a few steps but it didn’t help.

So I called Google Support, they answered the phone very quickly, I told him what was wrong and looked like there was a bit of a screen memory ghost during those first 15 mins of the issue. The support on the phone asked me to switch off Auto-Brightness but that didn’t work and he ask me to do a factory reset which I did but that didn’t help the issue. Then he said he has been authorized to make this device as DOA (Dead On Arrival) and send me new one right away. That took a total of 10 mins without any fuss or complaining from my side which I think is fantastic, Google is out to make a point with the Nexus 7 and it seems they want everyone to be satisfied with it, so the support is just that good.

• 48 Hours After The Support Ticket Was Created They Sent Me An Email With A Link To Get A New Nexus 7
• They Sent Me A Prepaid International Shipping Label, I told them I am outside of the United States and said it is not a problem
• They placed a hold on my credit card for the amount of Nexus 7 16GB until they receive the damaged unit
• It will take two to three weeks until the new one is shipped to me because of the back log of orders they currently have

The guy even apologized the delay of send out the new device because they are currently on back order and I’m honestly satisfied I get to keep it another 10 days before sending it out, they have to get it 30 days after sending out the email so I really am without the Nexus 7 for about 2 weeks really which isn’t too bad. The best part about the tablet is the Vanilla software meaning its pure Android and with that you get the latest updates from Google Right away.

RUIN – An animated short set in a post-apocalyptic universe. It’s an introduction to a much larger story in the works.

I love animation like this, it looks so good it can be real, and this animation short is being turned into a full feature film by 20th Century Fox. Every few years there is a movie like this and usually they are pretty good, it takes a lot of work to make something like this and for a short this is really good.

Fan films come and go but its a different story with a Hollywood actor who actually played the same character is something else. I am a huge fan of Thomas Jane as The Punisher and this short video only proves it, I love a guy who does somethings for the fun of it, they even got Ron Perlman to play a short role.

“I wanted to make a fan film for a character I’ve always loved and believed in – a love letter to Frank Castle & his fans. It was an incredible experience with everyone on the project throwing in their time just for the fun of it. It’s been a blast to be a part of from start to finish — we hope the friends of Frank enjoy watching it as much as we did making it.” — Thomas Jane

With the Nexus 7 and the spread of the iPad it got me thinking a lot about the digital magazine format. In general, I love the entire idea of digital magazines. Carrying a year’s worth of magazines all at once, the new touch interface, interactive components, downloads at your finger tips, and the lack of a paper mountain in your room that makes you look like a crazy hoarder because I don’t want to throw them away. For comic books it worked out this way for me, I read them constantly have hundreds of them on my Galaxy Nexus, iPad, and any other device that Comixology downloads to. I want this to be the future of magazines, well I think.

I say “I think” because I have a secret. Aside from a few magazines that I have to read the day they arrive, I tend to forget about the other magazines because they’re not piling up in my face, filling me with guilt for buying these things and not reading them. And for all the conveniences tablets provide, casually thumbing through a magazine on your iPad still isn’t quite as casual as it is with a paper copy. Am I the only one who has an even bigger backlog of magazine reading thanks to the advent of the Apple & Android Devices? Anyone else feel a bit overwhelmed by the prospect of Next Issue?

This just couldn’t get any cooler!!

All the Batmobiles in one area! Honestly I think if I had unlimited funds I would have the Batmobiles in my collection, all of them. The original was amazing, but the Tumbler is a beast. Nolan knew how to reinvent the Batmobile.

This animation is an homage to one of the most groundbreaking sci-fi television shows ever to beam down to Earth. Our goal was to try and capture the essence of what we found most enjoyable from the series for building this faux opening to this classic show.

An animated reinterpretation of the orignal Star Trek intro, I just love hearing that intro and in style of animation is very cool and retro.