I was looking for an action cam a couple of months back and narrowed down my options to the GoPro Hero, Replay XD1080 and the Contour+. It was a really tough decision because each one of these cameras had an advantage and disadvantage. With the GoPro I hated the form factor, it felt too awkward to use and I didn’t feel comfortable using it but it was the cheapest of the bunch and the video quality wasn’t that bad. Plus it’s the most popular action cam with a ton of mounts. The Replay XD1080 is the smallest of the three and has a very easy to manage form since it’s basically just a small cylindrical tube. The downside is that it’s the least popular of the 3 so I couldn’t find much feedback on it and it also had a limited amount of mounts which were also expensive. Finally I checked out the Contour cameras. I love how they look and at first I wanted to go with the entry level Contour Roam which was waterproof and pretty cheap compared to the Replay and GoPro. But, it had one limitation which was the fact it couldn’t record at 60fps which meant if I ever wanted to do any slow motion I wouldn’t be able to properly. I then decided to check out the Contour GPS which was a notch above and finally ended up with the Contour+ which is their top of the line model.

The Contour+ has a bunch of cool features which I will try to go through quickly. First it has built in GPS. When you record a video with GPS turned on and then upload the footage to their website, you get a small map next to your video showing you the route you had taken. That can be handy if you’re racing around a track or going on trails but I don’t have a use for this feature and I always keep it off to gain around 30 minutes of extra battery life. The camera lens rotates which is super practical because if I mount the camera upside down or sideways, I just rotate the lens so that the footage ends up facing the right way up. It also has a bright f/2.8 lens and from the 3 cameras in the line up the Contour+ offered the sharpest and most detailed footage. I haven’t seen a comparison yet to the GoPro Hero2 but I would think the Contour+ is closer in quality to that than it was compared to the previous Hero.

My favorite feature of the Contour+ is the ability to turn my iPhone into a viewfinder for the camera. With one button press on the camera, the Contour App launches on my iPhone and I can then see what the camera sees. Not only that but I can also use the app to change the camera settings like exposure, brightness, contrast, resolution etc. Another feature film makers will like is the external mic jack. What this will allow you to do for example is mount the camera on the outside of the car while having the mic inside the engine bay recording the engine sound without the wind noise. The Contour+ (and the whole Contour family) also has a large sliding button on top of the camera which you use to start or stop recording. It’s easy to activate while wearing gloves and it allows you to tell if you’re recording or not either by feeling where the button position is or just looking at it.

The build quality of the camera is great, it has a brushed metal body and feels like it can take a hard drop. It’s not waterproof but I purchased the waterproof case which makes it resistant up to 60m. I also purchased a universal mount which is a small adapter that gives the Contour+ a tripod mount. I didn’t purchase any official mounts from Contour, instead I purchased some more durable and sturdier metal mounts from RAM. I got the flat surface suction mount and another mount for my bike.

Arctic Cat from Mark on Vimeo.

I really love the camera and have no regrets getting it even though the Hero2 got released. The quality of footage is very good (watch above) especially when the weather and light is great. Customer support is also superb. They have pretty active forums and their customer support people are always there ready to answer or solve any of your problems. Not all is perfect since I do have two issue with the camera and the big one being the price. Both the GoPro and Replay XD cost around $300 while the Contour+ costs a whopping $500! You could literally get two GoPro cameras for the price of one Contour+ which is just insane. I had a bunch of PayPal credits which is why I went for it but if I was paying for the whole thing myself I would have most likely gone with the Replay XD instead. Another issue I have is with the night time footage quality. The image isn’t as clear as I would have liked it to be but it’s probably me expecting too much from these small action cam sensors. You can see a short nighttime footage below.

But as I said, I have no regrets getting this camera and compared to the GoPro which I tried using, I found the Contour+ a lot more easier and natural. If you’re interested in purchasing it get it from ebay. I got mine brand new for $455 including the waterproof case. That’s a big saving compared to Amazon’s $499 listed price for just the camera without the case.

A friend of mine here in Kuwait got the Wacom Inkling and has some samples up. If you don’t know what the inkling is, it’s basically a small device you attach to your notebook and whatever you draw in your sketch book or on paper will be transferred as a digital drawing to your computer.

According to him “it’s good for fast sketching but not good enough for tight detail doodling”. He has two examples which explain his comments which you can check out. You’ll notice some of the digital lines are not in the same place as the original drawings as well as some details missing. Check out the two samples [Here] and [Here]

The Inkling isn’t available on Amazon yet. He had a friend in Hong Kong purchase it for him and ship it to his Aramex China mailbox.

Thanks Pinot

I’m not a fan of Sony headphones and I think the last time I bought a pair I was still listening to music from my discman. But while I was in New York killing time as after midnight at a Best Buy I spotted these on display and since I had my iPhone with music with me I figured I would try them out. I played the Tron: Legacy Reconfigured album and was blown away by how good the headphones sounded. Right away I wanted to purchase a pair but they were out of stock so I loaded up my Amazon app on my iPhone and bought it on the spot. It was an impulse buy but it should give you an idea of how good they sounded.

They’re not the most accurate headphones but they’re definitely the most fun. I count the Monster Beats Studio as fun as well but these cost a lot less and actually sound better. You’ve got the deep powerful bass but the mids and the highs are prominent as well. While the Beats can sound muffled with bass sometimes overpowering everything else, I have yet to face a similar problem with these cheap Sony’s. They also don’t need any batteries or a portable amp to power them.

And yes, these headphones look hideous. I own a bunch of headphones from entry level in-ears to 600ohms overheads and these Sony’s the ugliest pair I own but they’re also the cheapest. I can’t believe these headphones cost just $49 and sound this good. I’m not sure if they’re sold locally but you can check them out on Amazon. I love them. [Amazon Link]

I generally read a lot of magazines and a lot of online content but when it comes to books I hadn’t read one since The Lost World back in 1997. That’s why even though the Kindle intrigued when it first got released, I just couldn’t get myself to plunk down $400 for a device I might never use. Then Amazon started releasing newer Kindles and with each release dropping the price down until it hit $79. I don’t read books but for $79 I was willing to give it a shot so while in New York I passed by Best Buy and picked one up.

First thing I noticed once I took it out of the box was how light and small the Kindle was. It weighs just 170 grams which is slightly heavier than my iPhone but feels lighter due to the weight being spread out over a larger surface. The Kindle easily fit into my back jeans pocket and it even managed to fit into my jackets inner pocket. Because it’s so light you don’t feel it in your pocket and it also makes it easier to hold for long periods without your muscles fatiguing.

I carried the Kindle with me everywhere I went in NY since and whenever I found a free moment I would take out the Kindle read as much as I can and then put it away again. Because it’s a device dedicated to reading it makes reading very easy. I don’t need to turn the Kindle off or on and I also don’t have to worry about the battery dying. In just a few days I managed to finish reading my first book in years and I didn’t even charge the Kindle I just used it right out of the box. I didn’t even have to connect it to a computer I just logged into my amazon account from the device and bought my first book. Buying a book is also super easy since you just find the book you want and then click buy and that’s it. No need to log in or enter a password or anything like that.

For readers in Kuwait the Kindle makes a lot of sense since we don’t have a decent bookstore here but even if I lived in the US I would still prefer a Kindle over a real book. For one thing the Kindle is easier to carry around since it’s thinner and probably lighter. It’s easier to read since you can control the font size and most importantly you can carry more than one book at a time and buy a new one right from the device. Actually you don’t even have to buy books since Amazon offers a ton of books for free as well as other books you can borrow. I was going to buy a book called Elizabeth Street but since I’m an Amazon Prime member, Amazon offered me the option to “borrow” the book which I did. I played with the Kindle Fire and it seemed cool but I saw it as an iPad or Galaxy Tab competitor. The main competition to the $79 Kindle is the Kindle Touch and the Nook Simple Touch. Although I liked the feel of the Nook I thought it was bulky plus you can’t buy books from the Amazon Store which I prefer. The Kindle Touch on the other hand costs more than the $79 Kindle but it also has no physical buttons for page turning and I like the buttons as well as the fact that the buttons are located on both sides (useful if you’re holding the hand with just your left or right hand). The touch is also slightly bigger and heavier. The $79 Kindle does come with adverts but they’re not annoying at all since they never show up while reading. You only get to see an ad while the device is on standby or on the main home page but they’re really not intrusive and they don’t bother me at all.

If you haven’t considered the Kindle before or are thinking of buying one I would personally recommend the $79 version. It’s really cheap and has a lot of advantages which makes it a great buy in my book. Check it out on [Amazon]

I knew I was going to be using my iPhone a lot on this trip so before I arrived I ordered a battery powered case for my iPhone and had Amazon ship it to my hotel. There were a ton of options available and at first I was leaning towards a $90 Mophie Juice Pack Plus but then I decided I didn’t want to pay that much since I would only be using it on this trip, my London trip in January and then probably never again. So I looked around and finally decided to go with the Lenmar battery-powered case which you can see above and below. The price was just $30 and the reviews were mostly positive.

I’ve been using it for the past 2 days and so far it’s great. Whenever the iPhone’s battery level reaches 20%, I press a button on the back of the case and it automatically starts charging the iPhone back to nearly 100%. So now my phone lasts the full day with heavy use and still have a lot of battery left. Size-wise it just adds a bit of bulk to the phone but it still fits easily into tight jeans pocket with more than enough room to have your hands inside the pocket as well. Overall not bad for just $30.

Here is the battery case on [Amazon]

Earlier in the month I posted about my quest to find a good car cam, a camera I can use to record what’s happening on the road while I drive. My thinking was I might one day capture something interesting that I could later upload onto YouTube and post about on the blog. I was looking for something affordable with decent video footage and after a bit of research I was leaning towards the Muvi Micro camera. A reader then pointed out that X-Cite were selling the same brand so I emailed my contact and managed to get 3 cameras sent over to review.

Muvi Micro Pro vs Muvi Atom
I’m going to start the review comparing these two cameras since they are priced similarly and offer nearly the same quality footage. Both these cameras are extremely small, if you look at the picture on the top of the page, they’re the two tiny cameras in that photo. The Atom is the smaller of the two and comes with slightly more accessories but both come with the very important clip. The clip snaps on to the back of the cameras and you can then clip them anywhere including your rear view mirror (if it’s not very thick).

Both these cameras don’t do HD but at this price point and with this physical size I wasn’t expecting them to. The video footage from both cameras is practically identical in terms of quality. The only difference I found is that the Micro Pro’s footage was slightly sharper when compared side by side with the Atom. But, the Micro Pro also has an annoying time-stamp that’s imprinted on the bottom of the video which killed it for me. Battery life for both these cameras is not that great, the Micro Pro lasts for around 90 minutes while the Atom just 45. On the bright side they both can be powered by USB and record while charging at the same time.

If I had to choose between the two I would most likely go for the Atom just for the fact that it doesn’t have the time-stamp on the video. The footage from both the cams aren’t that great but for YouTube they should work out fine as you can see in the sample videos below. I uploaded two videos shot simultaneously so you could compare the quality of the footage between the two cameras. I start off the video in an underground parking lot so you could see the low light performance and then I’ve got outdoor footage after that.

Veho Muvi Pro Sample Footage
Veho Muvi Atom Sample Footage

Muvi HD Pro
The HD Pro is larger than the other two cameras but it’s really not that big, it’s just that the other two that are really small which is why the HD Pro looks more bulky. Unlike the other two cameras the HD Pro has an LCD screen so you can actually see what you’re shooting instead of just aiming and hoping for the best. The HD Pro also shoots full HD (1080p) and has a battery that lasts up to 3 hours. So that’s three major advantages over the other two. The camera also comes with a ton of accessories most of which are mounting adapters including a windshield mount. You’re paying for all these extra features and accessories though since the HD Pro is double the price of the other two cameras. There is a more affordable option called the HD10+ which is the same camera but comes with less accessories and the price ends up falling between the HD Pro and the other two cameras.

Check out the comparison videos below between the HD Pro and the Muvi Pro.

Veho Muvi Pro Sample Footage
Veho HD Pro Sample Footage

Originally I was leaning towards geting the Muvi Micro from Amazon (a step down from the Micro Pro featured here) but after seeing the difference in quality between the Micro Pro and the HD Pro I realized it’s better to spend and get the best quality footage I could afford. With that mindset I ended up ordering the Contour+ which I’ll post about once I test it out. If you’re looking for an affordable camera to shoot video with while driving, walking (you can clip the Micro and Atom to your pants) or maybe mounting it on your RC car, then these cameras are worth looking into.

All the camera’s in this review were supplied by Alghanim and their prices are listed below: (They’re more expensive than Amazon)

Veho HD Pro KD89
Veho Muvi HD10+ KD69
Veho Atom KD40
Veho Muvi Micro Pro KD39

This is going to be my last post on the iPhone 4S since there is only one thing left to discuss and that is battery life. When I first got the phone I noticed the battery life was similar to the iPhone 4 but this weekend the battery life got so bad I actually went and purchased a car charger.

But I also found out why the phone started draining a lot more battery than my iPhone 4 ever did and that’s because I was using the Reminder App a lot because of Siri. When I tell Siri to remind me to pick up tea once I get to the supermarket, the phone starts checking my location at intervals to see if I’m at the supermarket or not so it could remind me to pick up tea once I am.

Once I turned location based reminders off I noticed the battery life went back to normal. It’s not hardware related since the Reminder App is also available on the iPhone 4 but Siri makes it more fun and easy to use. So to summarize things, the battery life is the same if you use the iPhone 4S like the iPhone 4, but once you start taking advantages of some of the iOS 5 features, battery life on both the iPhone 4 and 4S starts dropping considerably.

On a side note, check out this tip on how to make the Reminder App even more useful [Link]

My iPhone 4S arrived from the UK yesterday and so I managed to spend more time with the device and now have a few things I want to highlight, mostly the negatives.

Reception
According to Apple they’ve improved the reception on the iPhone 4S. I never had any issues with the reception on the original iPhone 4 but I do have an issue with the new “improved” reception on the 4S. Although the phone signal now spends most of its time with full signal bars which is great for people who use the phone to call people, another problem has come up instead. The phone now spends a lot more time on Edge instead of 3G internet. I hadn’t seen the little “E” icon on my iPhone for ages but now it’s popping up all the time. I first noticed it in my underground parking, I used to get a weak phone signal before (say 2 bars) but would have 3G. Now I have full signal bars but Edge instead of 3G. I figured it’s not an issue since I don’t spend too much time in the basement checking email or tweets. Once I got out of the parking it swapped back to 3G, but then once I hit the traffic light near Corniche Club on the Gulf Road it was back on Edge. It swapped back to 3G again before going to Edge once I got near TGIF. I even got the Edge signal at the Kuwait Stock Market traffic light. And I’m not talking about Edge appearing briefly and disappearing again, I’m talking about Edge being there the whole time while I’m waiting at the traffic light.

Edge SUCKS. I might as well not have internet since Edge is that horribly slow. I don’t know what Apple did to the reception but I hope this is just a bug that will be fixed in the next software update because I would rather have 2 signal bars and 3G instead of full signal bars and Edge.

Siri
She’s great but I have an issue and it’s not that she doesn’t understand me sometimes (check above). In my previous post I mentioned how I wanted to use Siri to remind me of stuff when I get home or get to work. For example “Remind me to walk my dog when I get home”. Siri is supposed to know when I get home and remind me to walk my dog. Problem is because we are in Kuwait we can’t teach Siri where home or office is. Siri uses Google Maps address to learn our home and office locations and right now Google Maps addresses only work in the US. What I don’t understand is why Siri won’t learn the locations using GPS positioning. If you use the Reminder App without Siri you can teach it locations using your GPS position. I already has a saved location in the Reminder App called “Work” and I can tell the App to remind me to do something once I get to the location “work”. Why can’t Siri use the already saved location information or why it can’t learn locations using GPS instead of street addresses doesn’t make any sense.

Finally another issue with Siri and I don’t know if this problem is only happening with me or not but Siri refuses to make phone calls. If I tell her for example to call my wife or call my brother, she will start the calling process and show me she’s dialing the number but then she replies back apologizing that she can’t call them. I’ve tried it with a bunch of different people in my contact list, I’ve removed the +965 from numbers, I tried everything and Siri will keep telling me she can’t call them. Again a strange issue which hopefully will be fixed in the future.

Speed
The phone is fast, for day to day operations it’s not noticeably faster than the regular iPhone 4 but just run any game and you’ll instantly see a huge difference. Most games were loading and opening instantly and even games like Rage were loading in just a couple of seconds. If you’re a gamer you’re gonna love the 4S.

The only thing really left to test is the battery life and I can’t do that right now since I’m too busy playing with Siri and the new features. Maybe once my phone use goes back to normal in a weeks time I’ll be able to compare it to my previous iPhone.

If anyone has any questions or anything they want me to try just ask in the comments below.

Update: My guy at Alghanim just called to tell me they’re selling the iPhone 4S 16GB for KD289 and they already started delivering the phones to people from yesterday. I purchased the phone from the Apple Store in the UK and with shipping it ended up costing me around KD230. But I guess if you want the phone right now and don’t want to wait 2-3 weeks for it then this is probably your best option.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Alghanim Electronics sent over an iPhone 4S for me to try out. I’ve been using it for a few hours and thought I would share my first impression on two of the most important new features.

The Camera
Thew camera on the iPhone 4S is a much better camera when compared to the regular iPhone 4. I saw some sample shots on the Apple website and they looked great but those shots were obviously taken in perfect lighting with an amazing photographer. I was curious to how the camera would fair in boring regular situation with random light and a not so great subject. Since the weather today is a mixture of humid, hot and dust, I decided to go to the roof and take a landscape shot.

On the left is the iPhone 4S shot and on the right the iPhone 4. Although it doesn’t look like that dramatic a difference when you zoom in at 100% it’s a complete different story as you can see below.

As you can see the iPhone 4S photo had a lot more details and a lot less artifacts. Another advantage of the iPhone 4S camera is that the lens is brighter which means better shots in low light situations. Below is a photo I took indoors.

Again zoomed out like this the details don’t show as much but once you zoom in at 100% (check below) you’ll see that the iPhone 4S shots are a lot less noisier and a lot more sharper.

One of the main reasons I purchased the iPhone 4S is because of the camera. I take a lot of shots for the blog and although I should, I don’t usually carry my good cameras with me all the time. Most of my shots are taken with an iPhone so the ability to take better shots is a great advantage for me. If like me, image quality is something you care about then the difference between the iPhone 4 and 4S is actually pretty major. You can download the full resolution images I shot and used above from these links:

Landscape with iPhone 4S
Landscape with iPhone 4
Low light with iPhone 4S
Low light with iPhone 4

Siri
Another reason I got the iPhone 4S is because of Siri. I’m a huge Stark Trek TNG fan and Siri reminded me a lot of the computer on the starship Enterprise. Even though Siri is limited when compared to the computer on Enterprise (it can’t prepare meals for example), it’s still very impressive and I love it. Siri is going to get even better in the future and I honestly can’t wait.

There are a few things that won’t work in Kuwait though. If you ask Siri for the best burger joints in Kuwait it will tell you it won’t know. Some of the Siri features are US only for now but it does do a whole bunch of other things. You could ask it to convert currency for you, find out the population of countries as well as other trivia. More importantly for me it can take notes and set reminders which is a big deal for me. I’m a very forgetful person and also very lazy so even when I usually remember something I never write it down or set a reminder. Now with Siri, once I remember something I can just tell it to write it down or remind me when I get home or work to do something. She’s really going to be my personal secretary/assistant.

Siri didn’t have that many problems understanding me. I do tend to mumble and I did have a few instances when Siri wouldn’t know what I was talking about but I also found Siri pretty forgiving. For example I might start saying “tell me” and then mid sentence change to “I mean what is the capital city of Kuwait” and Siri would still understand and tell me “Kuwait City”. Yes it does feel weird (ie stupid) talking to a phone but I’m sure I can get over that.

I ordered my iPhone 4S last week from the Apple UK store but for those of you who haven’t ordered yet and just want to walk into a store and pick one up Alghanim Electronics will have them in stock starting tomorrow. I asked about the price but as of this post they still hadn’t finalized it yet.

Update: The prices for the iPhones has been released by Alghanim and they are the following (don’t shoot the messenger):

iPhone 4S 16GB for KD350
iPhone 4S 32GB for KD390
iPhone 4S 64GB for KD420

Since I’ve started running and biking I was using the Nike+ GPS app on my iPhone to calculate the distance and amount of calories I was burning. But it had limitations and a few bugs so I decided to invest in a watch that would do a better job at it. The first watch I looked at was the Nike+ SportWatch GPS but it wasn’t cheap at $200 and it didn’t come with a heart rate monitor which was another $70. It also wouldn’t work well with biking. After a bit of research I finally ended up getting the Garmin Forerunner 305 for a number of reasons while I will list below.

The Forerunner 305 has a built in GPS, a very large screen and it comes with a heart rate monitor. The amount of information it can collect during a run (or bike ride) is overwhelming. For example, you can find out the distance traveled, your top speed, average speed, max hear rate, average heart rate, amount of calories burned, the elevation, the duration, the length of your rest breaks, what zone your heart rate is in and a few more details all of which you can be uploaded onto the Garmin Connect website and get it displayed as maps, charts and numbers.

The 305 has a large screen which as a result allows you to display a lot of information on it. The screen can be divided into 4 sections with each displaying information of your choice. For example I have it set up to show me:

- The current duration of my run
- The amount of calories burned
- The distance I’ve traveled
- The current time

All the above in one screen and if with a press of a button I can flip over to a second screen with 4 more pieces of information. If that’s a lot of information you could also divide the screen into 1, 2 or 3 sections. I also got two accessories with the watch, one is a bike adapter so I could mount the watch onto my bike and have the information in front of me. The second accessory I got is a velcro strap since it’s thicker then the rubber strap that comes with the watch and personally I think looks much better.

There are two negatives about the watch, nothing major but ones that are worth mentioning. Because of the GPS, the battery on the watch lasts for just 10 hours before needing a recharge. 10 hours is more than enough time since my runs are a lot shorter but I already have too many devices I need to charge and don’t really need another one. The second issue is the way it looks. This is not the best looking watch out there. But on the positive side it is very light and I would rather have an ugly watch with a large screen over a good looking one with a smaller one. But still, this watch would probably rank high up in my Top 10 Ugliest watches ever list.

I’ve saved the best thing till the end which is the price. This watch cost me just $128! It’s literally a steal right now since the newer Forerunner 310 came out. This watch originally cost over $400 and at $128 I don’t think there is any other watch in the market with similar features at this price point. This is a good deal, just ignore the way it looks. You’re not supposed to look good working out anyway, if you do then you’re doing it wrong.

Here is the link to the Forerunner 305 [Amazon Link]

I’ve got a ton of TV shows and documentaries on my server and for the longest time ever I had been using XBMC to watch them all. XBMC is basically a software that allows you to stream videos from another computer or hard drive. Originally I used to use XBMC installed onto the old original xbox, then I installed it on a hacked AppleTV but since XBMC on AppleTV couldn’t play 720p video I finally I ended up purchasing the small Acer Revo and was using that to run XBMC until Boxee.

Boxee is the name of another media center software that was actually built using XBMC. But unlike XBMC, Boxee was more focused on providing content (TV Shows/Movies) from the internet primarily and from a local home server secondary. Boxee never really interested me much until the end of 2010 when they did something I always wanted XBMC to do… release a set-top device that was dedicated to just running the media center software. The Boxee Box (pictured above) is a beautifully designed tiny angular cube that runs the Boxee software. Everything about it from the package to the interface is very tastefully designed and that really sets it apart from XBMC. Where XBMC looks like it was put together by geeks, Boxee looks like it was put together by Apple. They even paid attention to the little details like how the Boxee logo lights up in a nice green glow when the device is powered on.

It might not show in the pictures above but the Boxee Box is pretty small, maybe around the same height as the iPhone. It comes with a double sided remote control that has a very simple minimal amount of buttons on one side and a QWERTY keyboard on the other. The remote uses radio instead of infrared to send signals which is great because you can hide the Boxee Box anywhere in the room and still be able to control it. It also comes with a power adapter that works in Kuwait (110-240v) as well as a HDMI cable.

The interface is very easy to use. You can easily browse the available online TV Shows and Movies all nicely organized but you need to have a VPN account (I use StrongVPN) to actually watch the shows online since they don’t allow non-US residents to stream stuff. Watching your local media files is also easy, you can either plug in a hard drive into one of the Boxee USB ports or connect to your home server over Ethernet or Wifi. Once you add the media it will scan IMDB for information on the shows or movies and then download the DVD cover and all the other information and store them on Boxee. It’s really very easy to use, much easier than XBMC since Boxee is trying to be fairly mainstream.

There are some minor downsides but it’s really just nitpicking. I don’t like how the remote control feels and I can never tell which side is up or down without looking at the remote. The remote keyboard buttons on the rear also need to be pressed hard but I guess that’s better than no keyboard at all. Boxee is also not as easily customizable as XBMC.

Price wise it’s fairly decent costing around KD50 on Amazon plus around KD13 to ship it with Aramex to Kuwait. I think this is probably the best media center option available right now until Plex (another XBMC clone) starts working properly on the Roku. Boxee doesn’t have any trouble playing 1080p video files and most importantly it doesn’t take much shelf space while still managing to look very cool. If you have a lot of media files and are looking for an easy way to watch them on your TV screen then I highly recommend the Boxee Box. It’s only available on Amazon and here is the link if you’re interested [Amazon Link]

Update: Forgot to mention you can install Apps in Boxee and my favorite is Pandora.

On Thursday two engineers from Mada came over and handed me a router so I could review and after using it over the weekend here are my findings. I’ll start the post with the speedtest results since I know that’s what everyone has been waiting for. I used speedtest.net for the testing and although I was originally planning to test using the servers in London, New York and LA, I ended up running into issues with the New York and LA server and so decided to add two more locations which are New Jersey and San Francisco.

I don’t know why the NY and LA servers were giving me such terrible numbers but I think it had to do more with the server than my connection since the connection worked perfectly again with their neighboring cities. The location of the WiMAX router does effect the speed of your connection. For example I live in Salmiya block 9 and according to a Mada engineer, Salmiya is one of their most focused areas so the speeds I’m getting are probably the fastest you can get. When I tried the Mada router at my office in Kuwait City, I was getting on average around 2.8Mbps tops. The engineer told me it had to do with the location (Kuwait City), the fact my office is on the 21st floor (connection starts dropping after the 15th) and the fact the windows were double glazed (bounces signals). A reader called Kevin tried Mada in Mangaf block 1 and his download speed was around 6.5Mbps. So location does make a big difference on the speed. I don’t play many games online but my brother who lives next door and leeches my connection does. He spent the weekend playing on his Xbox online and according to him he didn’t notice any difference going from DSL to WiMAX.

Setting up and connecting the router was a very simple process. You just plug in the power cord, wait a minute and that’s it. You can then either connect to the router via one of the two ethernet ports on the device or by wifi. I did face a minor problem when I wanted to log into the device so I could change the wifi password as well as setup other options. Underneath the device you have two sets of login information. One is supposed to be the default wifi password the other I assumed to connect to the device to change the settings but it wouldn’t work. It was around 11PM and I wasn’t sure if there would be anyone at Mada support to help but I called them up and someone answered right away and gave me the default username and password which was just “user”. I liked the fact that I didn’t have to go through a dozen menus on the phone just to get to someone from support and I liked the fact that I didn’t have to wait on hold either. This probably has to do with the fact that the service is still new and so not many people have subscribed with them yet.

Which brings me to the future. The Mada WiMAX service currently has no download cap for the next 3 months, after that they are still not sure what the download cap will be but they’re saying it will be at least 20GB and that they will be offering a package for people who consume more. 20GB a month means around 600MB a day which is too little and makes the device really useless. 600MB a day is suitable for users who just use their internet to check email, maybe visit a few websites and also watch a video or two on YouTube. Those kind of users aren’t heavy internet users and for them if it’s a 1MB connection or 10 it wouldn’t make a difference. The real people who can use and fully take advantage of Mada’s WiMAX speed are users like me who spend all their time online surfing through a ton of websites, watching a million YouTube videos while iTunes is busy in the background downloading all the latest TV shows and Movies, the Playstation and Xbox downloading game demos and the server downloading torrents. For me it makes a huge difference if the connection is 1MB or 10.

Which brings me to a potential future issue. The connection is really great right now but that’s because the service is only a few days old, how will it be a month from now or even a year from now? I am not sure. Mada has been around for awhile now catering for the commercial industry so that gives me a bit of confidence in them. But still, 20KD for 10MB is going to attract a lot of people specially with all the problems people have with the ISP’s introducing download caps. Personally I am going to take it day by day and right now the Mada WiMAX internet connection is the fastest connection I’ve ever had. I’ve already disconnected my DSL modem at home and replaced it with WiMAX, that’s how much I’m loving this connection.

Mada currently have a booth setup at Marina Mall right outside the Mac store Digits and they also have a booth at Mohallab. It’s KD20 a month and if you sign up for 3 months it’s KD60 but you get the router for free. Here is a link to their website [Link]