September 15, 2009
I’ve had Hulu Desktop on my machine probably since it came out a while back but never really used it. They haven’t really figured out a good way to navigate around all the content they have. It is designed to be able to be used with just a remote, but you quickly get lost in layer and layer of menus.
So why did I try it out tonight?
I have my MacBook hooked up to a 20″ LCD. It sits on my desk, closed unless I take it for a trip. I decided tonight that I wanted to watch Hulu on the MacBook screen while I do stuff on the LCD. It kind of works but the Hulu video is always so small. I attempted to put it in full screen on the MacBook. It works if you have no desire to do anything else with the computer. As soon as I click anything on the monitor it jumps out of full screen mode. With dual monitor setups becoming more and more common I can’t believe this simple feature hasn’t been figured out.
I remembered having Hulu Desktop around and figured I’d give it a shot. It doesn’t solve the full screen issue but comes pretty close. The video fits to the window and you can resize the window. So I have the window maximized, which is 95% as good as full screen. It also solves some of my other issues with Hulu, such as always having to select 480p and it shows the buffer without having to pause.
Now that I’m aware of this I think Hulu Desktop will be how I Hulu. I just haven’t found how to get embed code from inside the application. After using it, hopefully I’ll get used to the interface and see what the designers were going for.
Update: Actually fullscreen does work for Hulu Desktop. I just had to find it.
July 28, 2009
My favorite feature of Firefox 3 (I think that’s when it was added) is the Awesome Bar. It searches your history based on what you type in, instead of just matching the beginning of previous URLs. I was curious what the Awesome Bar would point me to for each letter. Here’s the list:
A – Amazon
B – Borderline Fantastic
C – Crutchfield
D – Google Docs
E – ESPN
F – Facebook
G – Penn State Sports
H – Hulu
I – Ice Cream Helmet
J – Joystiq
K – Kentucky Derby
L – last.fm
M – MLB.com
N – NHL.com
O – Orbitcast
P – Phillies
Q – Game FAQs
R – Rotten Tomatoes
S – Star Tribune
T – Twitter
U – Uni Watch
V – Verizon Fios
W – Wikipedia
X – Random things like Amazon items with x in the URL
Y – YouTube
Z – Zillow
Not too many surprises. I was shocked by S. You’d think there would be a ton of S-sites. I wouldn’t ever pick the Star Tribune. It’s likely on there because I went there a lot for news on the Senate election.