I just bought one of these to try and control the 7 devices that need controlling in my ever more complex living room. Had it about 12 hours so far and my reaction is mixed.
It’s not a cheap top – you can get these things from about £12 but this one was £60 (about $120) but it looks pretty. For me the standard by which all other remotes should be judged is my Tivo. This remote sits in your hand like it’s part of your body and your fingers find the right keys as if by magic. It works from any angle and from any distance. It’s remote perfection.
The antithesis of this is the remote for my Sony surround sound DVD player. It refuses to work if the batteries are remotely flat and unless you’re within about 10 degrees.
Turns out the new remote doesn’t fix the Sony issues.
So far I’ve got mixed feelings about it – it’s great to get rid of the pile of remotes and the new sleek black bar looks good – but I’ve lost my tivo reactions. The remote is a bit incompatible (it didn’t have a setting for my Sony or my television) and the learning is a bit hit and miss – had to try a few times to get the volume down setting to take.
However it is great that I can change channels and volume with one remote and the fact that the television now seems to be behaving itself and not turning off randomly twice a day when changing channels on the Tivo is great!
More reports as I get used to this. Anyone else have one of these? Any thoughts?

Not quite but this survey comes close. 70% of the people who bought a Zune would switch to an iPod or iPhone and 36% regret ever buying the device. Of those who’d keep the ‘device’ 22% were motivated by their dislike of apple. That mean 6% of Zune marketshare is down to people not liking something else!. To put that into perspective 6% of iPods is more than to totality of Zunes ever sold.
I wonder sometimes about how MS get into these situations? It can’t be because they can’t attract the talent – they can pay for it and have shown no compunction in spending their way into a market. Why is it that Apple release constant wonder in their iPods (and now the iPhone) while microsoft knowing full well the eyes of the world will be on them actually release a brown Zune?
The only explanation I can think of is institutional. The managers are incapable of taking control of anything – it’s all design by comittee and that always ends up in the lowest common denominator. The software at release was abysmal – the only way you deliberately let something like that out is to try and meet a ship date – not a commitment to quality.

A satire site post I saw recently is hilarious. Kids are freaking out about the possibility that Harry Potter dies – this kind of puts it all into perspective.

For reasons I won’t go in to I bought the entire 4 series DVD set of Monk which I’m watching randomly. It’s been really cheaply and annoyingly put together on the DVD.
When you insert the disk you get the usual Universal graphic display (which of course you can’t skip – why the hell do the publishers think we want to watch this crap). Then you have to choose a language. Then you get 45 seconds of copyright and then the main menu.
The thing is the main menu has a language option – it struck me only last night why they make you choose a language upfront – it’s so they can show you the copyright notices in the right language.
Is there anything more arrogant than these guys? We pay for the damn DVD and they force a horrible experience on you simply so they can tell you not to copy the damn thing? Movie producers keep selling us on the ‘experience’ of their films but when you go to the cinema or watch the DVD you paid for, the experience is continually broken by their commercial interruptions.
The music industry has already started dying a deserved death – when will we get rid of these idiots as well?

Lifehacker has some rather useless hints for how Not To Suck At Socializing. The Hints are all fine, it’s the idiotic way they miss the point of why people are not doing all this already.
“People are interesting” – well if they were to everybody then no-one would stand in the corner at parties. Many people don’t find the vast majority of people interesting at all. That’s why people are not constantly making new friends with strangers.