Tomorrow, Grandma & I (and maybe Grandpa and Husband) will take Son to see the USCG Barque Eagle at Mayport, and the HMS Bounty (replica) at St. Augustine!
The Eagle is known as “America’s Tall Ship,” and is a functioning, commissioned sailing vessel. It is used mainly for training and is usually anchored at the USCG Academy in New London, Connecticut.
Crunchyroll.com is a streaming video service that licenses and airs Japanese anime (that’s cartoons to you Westerners. Just not ONLY for kids, ‘kay?) and Japanese drama shows. It has a membership structure – non-members (with commercials), anime members, drama members, and all-access members. Non-members have to wait 1 week for new shows to become available; anime members get anime shows on the same day (typically 1 hour after it airs in Japan); drama members get their shows when they are available (evidently there is no standard release as with the anime).
My husband & I discovered crunchyroll when we got a couple of Roku boxes a few months ago. And now we can watch anime on our Windows Phones!
Launched into the Marketplace just yesterday (not available in China or the Middle East, apparently), the app is free, but you must have one of the premium memberships ($6.95/month for either the anime or the drama, or $11.95/month for the all-access – both prices in USD) to log in and stream the videos. It is unclear as of yet if it will become open to non-members in the future.
There is a 14-day trial membership, but if you have an .edu email address, you can get a 30-day trial.
You can get the app here for WP7.
In fairness, it’s here in the iTunes store, and here for Android (although I admit to not knowing about Android app sources, there are probably multiple places to get the Android version of the app). Aha – here it is in the Amazon store. I wonder if this will run on my Fire?
Microsoft SkyDrive’s storage/pricing
is changing. The new tiers are:
SkyDrvie Free: 7G
SkyDrive + 20: Your free + 20G for $10.00
SkyDrive + 50: Your free + 50G for $25.00
SkyDrive + 100: Your free + 100G for $50.00
(All prices yearly in USD)
If you currently have a SkyDrive account, you can upgrade to 25Gs for your free storage. DO EEET NAO!
In December, 2010, I got my HTC Surround, one of three new smartphones on the all-brand-spankin’-new Microsoft Windows Phone 7 OS. Being a new OS, there were naturally few applications for it, but that did not dampen my enthusiasm. (Yes, I am a MS fangirl; what can I say? I detest Apple, for few reasons I can really articulate. Maybe it was the whole cult of personality around Steve Jobs; maybe something else.)
But, naturally, I went and trawled the Marketplace (MS’ “app store”) daily for new gems. I also looked at what was being talked about on a few tech blogs. And I stumbled on this one at Mobility Digest and this one at WPCentral (remember, these are from April 2011).
An app just to show who else had a set (and was running the app)? Kind of cool, in a lost-in-a-sea-of-iThings-and-Robots way. By the time I downloaded it, it already had nearly 7,000 downloads! Neat! And it showed people all over the world! Double neat!
Well, 1 year later, and Happy Anniversary to …I’m a WP7! It’s still a consistently highly rated application in the “Social App” section. When I first opened it up, it literally was no more than “Here are people who have the app all over the world. And where they are on a Bing map! Isn’t that neat? You’re not alone, despite what the carriers would have you believe!” And now it’s a thriving community, with message boards, status updates that link to Twitter and Facebook and Windows Live and LinkedIn, a tutorial section (both for the app and the phone!), wallpapers, ringtones, and Easter Eggs! For FREE! (Okay, you can spend a little and get the extras to change your forums icon, pimp out your lair, and get older wallpapers. But DO EET! The developer has done a great job!) The developer, Liquid Daffodil, is active in the forums, and responsive to the users. (The man has a full-time job and TEN CHILDREN, and he still cranks out awesome apps.)
Well, anyway, so for the 1-year anniversary he created a wallpaper that has the avatars of the 5 oldest (I suspect still active) users – and Yours Truly is the only female. Thanks for the love, LD!!
What it looked like a year ago:
What it looks like now:
