Venter

La Fonera Exposed

Well, today I finished testing out La Fonera. I tested it out for two days now and have come to some serious conclusions. I received my La Fonera router on Monday and was pumped to use it. But deferred until yesterday, Thursday and finished testing it today, Friday nite!

The first picture is me and La Fonera box it came in, yip thats me with excitement! Second pic is the router out of the box in wrapping paper. If you would like to see more of the router, click on either image! These pics were taken monday, as soon as I got the new La Fonera Router package in the mail.

 

Time to give the overall review of La Fonera:

I am going to start with the criticism of the router instead of the good review.

Weakness:

1. I would say one of the biggest flaws of the router would be the heat it acquired during operation. After only two hours of smelling it smelt like burnt electronics. Not a good sign, the odour of the router was quite noticeable.

2. Initially looking at the router I realized one fatal flaw was there was no fixed lan line capabilities. Come on now, you at least need one fixed lan line!

3. The range of the router was average for the a wifi G / B. The range I found with my laptop wifi card was good. Usually I couldn’t get strong wifi in my upstairs bedroom (my router being downstairs). I tested it out with my friend Fewleftstanding ( he also got the router, he refered me to FON) using Gmail talk and having another web application open and Virbing ( if you know what I mean , listening to some music), quite impressive for about 1 hour then connections started to go wavy. So dunno what that was from.

Besides that not much complaints. Made to do its job -> WIFI!!

Strengths:

1. The package was well laid out, giving one the means of easily following directions of use. This is because it came with a quick install guide and CD with whole manual. So if you had any problems you could refer to those material.

2. The ease of use – easy to setup what more can be explained. Could do it with eyes closed.

3. What I really liked was initially trying the FON_AP, which was the open access Wifi redirected you to join FON community and pay some EURO. My dad was like I am not paying this, so i was like ok . However, I tested the connection with the closed Myspace and found it easy to setup – use Serial number on router for WEP what a good idea.

4. The community behind La Fonera is excellent and will be willing to give suport anytime!

My overall conclusions would be that it would work perfectly in coffee shops and other places commercial, not really practical for business though, stick to Cisco or other routers of choice for business. More relaxed feel to router and giving a community orientated feel. However great concept but don’t think it will pickup everywhere. Loved the initial idea behind it though and thought of being part of the Largest WIFI community.

However if you would like to test it out and see if this is a solution for you here is the link to get your free La fonera….https://www.fon.com/en/main/FGFLandingWeb or give me an email to get invitation code. dave [.] venter [@] gmail [.] com.

Cheers hope to see you again. Feel free to post commnets or disagreements.

Joost in the Spotlight

Reading Digg one day I decided to requested me an invitation code to test out Joost, “The Venice Project”, the much anticipated beta of the year. I had heard about this for a while and decided when the post came on digg to test it. So i’ll take you into the the 3 day process that I tested it out.

Day 1

The initial perception Joost:

A) Design/Layout – Looks great, had a bit of lag experience on my laptop, but nothing serious. Overall design took you into a new window of black abyss. Honestly don’t know what the creators could have wanted more appealing. Aiming for what they achieved Web 2.0.

B) Navigation - Comparison was the feel of a lightbox gallery but in video format. Choose of channels was cool feature, even though there wasn’t much selection, a common complaint. Overall though I liked the navigation system setup because it hide when it was’t needed and had the neat feature of overlay with opacity set.

C) Ease of Use – Super Easy to use and can be easily marketed to those with no skills with the computer. Heck Newbs can even use it because this is the way of the future -> Watching TV online and perfectly clear with no interruptions. However, the commercials was another complaint.

Day 2

Reviews and Comparison with other services I decided to do some digging as regards to other reviews because I can remember an episode of Cranky Geeks – episode 52 offered a review. I watched the episode but didn’t agree with what some of them had to say, even though they were the experts in the matters of tech world. John C. Dvorak wrote a review on his blog very pessimistically-it stinks was the jist.

Then there is always the Joost Fan who has nothing but good to say, well that’s not totally true because they did post John Dvorak comments on there as well. Another set interesting reviews comes from Technorati tagged Joost, where it brings to light the Joost team website. I any interesting article – The Fight Network Delivers KO With Joost.

The Red Herrring was informative post as well as, explaining more of the history behind Joost and what it has to offer. For those of whom don’t us PC but rather a Mac Platform , there is a review for you here as well from Brian Wyrick’s Blog. CenterWorks did a fantastic job with screenshots and gave a well deserved review of Joost. Also found centerworks posted another article on how Joost wants to beat the cable company and not Youtube as everybody suspected, creating a nice spin on Joost competitors.

This leads me into the top competitors/comparison of Joost:

1) The Cable Company – any local of yours or satellite provider. I would say this is the main competition for this service offered because of it easy to accessibility and wide range of channels compared to Joost.

2) Youtube – Accused competitor to Joost, however; this is by popular opinion. They are striking deals with other media broadcasting companies. Joost however, offers by popular demand MTV and Fight TV, kinda unique. However, for this video service to be successful it needs more companies on board with internet TV.

3) PeekVid. – Very Impressive competitor because of the limited selection of TV shows and popularity of shows it makes a good case for being Joost competitor. However, the quality of Joost still seems better and loading time is also faster.

4) Google Video – Still out there….but not highly considered

5) Metacafe – represents the small time video player’s out there, that has amatuer and less professional video’s.

6) Itunes – Indirect competition, but still considering factor on obtaining video.

Day 3

Well, it’s day three and have really come to enjoy Joost because it is like all the TV I need, wait a minute there is still some valued shows missing – IE. Some comedy and other genre’s. I love the fighting channel, car channels, surfing channels and the national geographic – Lions episode since it is Africa, it reminded me of home. So I’ll evaluate the total and overall strengths and weaknesses:

Strengths

1) Community – The creators of Skype and Kazaa founding and funding this operation. Not only are the creators cool but they have valued “key” partners – Viacom (whom is currently in court with Youtube, sounds too fishy to me)

2) External Video Player – Since its external it is FULL screen which is nice and lovely because that is what it is meant for even though it can revert to window. That was one dislike with Youtube, was the ugly full-screen feature. However, Youtube stills has the most random stuff, it’s great.

3) Its only still in Beta – well thats a strength because it looks great but still needs to be tweaked and it will be awesome!

Weaknesses

1) Too Little Channels - One of the greatest beef’s of mine is that they have great content but not enough content!

2) Lags a bit and blurry – Not a great concern for me but still is there..since it is Video and what they are trying to accomplish TV watchers to join the Joost Community. Plus like I said before….its still only BETA!

Well, i must come to a close and to sum it up, I’ll keep on using Joost! It doesn’t stink as John Dv. says it does and most people didn’t get Skype right away either but look what happened it spread like wildfire. People are usually afraid of the unknown! Thanks to Joost creators and Skype creators for making our life easy and fun! Cheers see you guys next post, Be FREE to add comments!