I bought my first Dropcams back in 2014, right around the time Nest (which had acquired Dropcam) was acquired by Google. Then I added the Nest Thermostat in 2016 (which was later replaced in 2021 with a Z-Wave one during an HVAC system upgrade), the Nest Protect smoke/CO detectors in 2018, and finally a bunch …
Last summer, Google announced that it would be shutting down its Google Domains service and selling it to Squarespace. I had a few domains (like this one) registered through Google that I had transferred from DynDNS (which is now owned by Oracle!) back in 2016 and was just going to let the transfer happen and …
Continue reading ‘Changing registrars: goodbye Google (Squarespace), hello, Cloudflare!’ »
I seem to go through technology re-orgs every four years or so. To start off 2019 I decided to re-do my security camera setup. My first cameras were installed in 2010 (Foscam outside, TRENDnet inside). In 2014 I switched my indoor cameras to Dropcams but since Dropcam (now Nest) didn’t have an outdoor solution at the time …
When I installed the ADT Pulse system in 2011, it came with monitored smoke/heat and CO2 detectors. Since then I’ve been paying the monthly monitoring fee to ADT and have had to deal with inexplicable false alarms (usually in the middle of the night and ADT’s answer was always “just change the battery”). This was …
I’ve been using Google Photos since it was announced back in 2015 as a belt-and-suspenders second cloud backup of my photo library (my primary backups are still in SpiderOak). I was using the “High Quality” setting since most of my photos are less than 16MP and didn’t want to pay for the extra storage required for …
Continue reading ‘Moving from Google Photos to Amazon Prime Photos’ »
I’ve been wanting to try the Nest learning thermostat since the first one was released back in 2012. At the time, though, I had just installed my ADT Pulse and Z-Wave home automation system. Putting in the Nest would mean using a separate app to control my home’s temperature outside of Pulse with no integration …
Why does Google keep killing the stuff I actually use? First iGoogle and now last week they announced they will be shutting down Google Reader on July 1st. I immediately went on a quest to find a decent replacement. After trying out a few alternatives like The Old Reader and NewsBlur, I got a recommendation from a …
Two weeks ago I came across this post on The Verge that talked about using CardDAV and CalDAV to sync Google information to iOS devices which, along with the new GMail app promised better synchronization and better battery life and a break from the current ActiveSync/Exchange method I had been using. I’ve been using multiple Google …
I’ve had iGoogle set as my browser homepage for years (before even the much reviled update that moved the tabs from the top of the page to the side back in 2008). Before that, I think I was using Excite. Now last week Google announced that it will be retiring its iGoogle personalized homepage service in November of …
Google’s forthcoming Chromium OS has gotten a lot of buzz recently. My trusty old EeePC 4G Surf has become quite the sandbox for trying out different netbook operating systems, so of course now it is running Chromium. I downloaded the latest of Hexxeh’s Chrome builds, copied the image onto a 1gb thumb drive, and then …