Lincoln: Not Gone, But Somewhat Forgotten

Since I haven't posted any entries here for awhile, I thought I would talk about our 16th U.S. President, Abraham Lincoln, since today is what would have been his 203rd birthday if he were still alive.

Even though it is his birthday today, he is mostly forgotten today. Special editions of Good Morning America and Today this morning focused their broadcasts almost entirely on the passing of singer Whitney Houston.

But what I really want to talk about today is the United States penny which has a portrait of President Lincoln on the heads side of the coin. I want to try to give my opinions to some important questions: Why is the penny still around and should the penny still be manufactured today? I also want to mention how the outcome of this year's Presidential race could somewhat determine the fate of the penny.

Since we currently pretty much have the technology to do away with the penny, what are the main reasons why we still have it?

1. President Obama: He is from Illinois which is where President Lincoln is from. Even though they are from opposite political parties, Pres. Lincoln is still popular among many Democrats.

2. Lincoln's 200th birthday: In order to celebrate what would have been his 200th birthday, the U.S. Mint came up with the idea to release new designs for the tails side of the penny which is likely prolonging the penny's lifespan.

3. General public and politicians not open to change: It is rather strange how politicians and the general public seem to be OK with making changes these days from everything to Postal Service operations, definitions of marriage, and the legalization of certain controlled substances to make them fit with our modern times. But the penny seems to be ignored when making changes to modernize our currency.

Now should the penny still be manufactured today? Well it sort of depends on whether you are rich or poor. It also sort of depends on whether this country wants to be technologically advanced and globally competitive from other countries.

If President Obama wants to live up to his State of the Union address comments when he talked about being ahead of the other countries' technology and being competitive with them, one of the moves he should make is to eliminate the penny. Mitt Romney, who could be running against President Obama this year and is extremely wealthy compared to most Americans probably didn't make his fortune from the penny. The penny is becoming less important as inflation continues to dwindle the value of the penny.

In conclusion, my opinion is that the Lincoln Penny should probably be phased out sometime this century. With President Obama re-elected it will likely happen at a somewhat slower pace than it would with a potential Mitt Romney Administration since a rich guy like Mitt has practically no need for the Lincoln one cent piece, and our current president is likely to keep alive a piece of currency that shows the image of one of his political idols.

Amazon.com opening Washington State Retail Location???

There is a story floating around since this morning that Amazon.COM is planning to open a retail store right here in the State of Washington. The retail store is supposedly going to be a small store that carries mostly e-reader related items such as Kindle devices and accessories.

What does this mean?

The answer is we don't know yet what this means exactly.

If they do open a store here in Washington State, they will be facing a lot of competition: Walmart, K-Mart, Target, Fred Meyer, and Best Buy to name a few.

The only advantages to having a physical location to purchase from would likely be Black Friday promotions and sales to draw more interest to the Amazon and Kindle brands and the ability to shop for last minute gifts where even one day shipping would be too late to get to the buyer on time.

My first reaction would be that this doesn't sound like a great idea to open a physical store. But with the U.S. Postal Service's new slower delivery times coming very soon, this might actually be a good idea.

It should be interesting to see if this retail store idea makes it past the planning stages. We will all have to just stay tuned for now!

Kindle Fire News and WDTV Live Update

Since it is a new month already, I thought I would comment again on the long awaited WDTV Live Plus firmware. Sadly, we are still waiting (been about 6 months now) for a new and likely final firmware update from Western Digital for the older generation of the WDTV Live and Live Plus machines. It was revealed by Western Digital that they did intend to put out this likely final update around the beginning of the year. So once again it appears that Western Digital cannot keep up with putting out firmwares.

Now Archos, on the other hand, has been a rather different story when it comes to firmware updates. They put out one like every other month or so for their Gen8 tablets it seems. It is really too bad Western Digital doesn't try to put out firmware updates on a consistent basis like Archos does with their tablets.

Now I wanted to briefly talk about the Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet. There is a lot of talk going around that Walmart is going to give purchasers of the Kindle Fire this weekend a $50 Walmart gift card. It sounds like a good deal, but I am not sure I would take advantage of it since a newer version of Kindle Fire is likely going to be out by the end of this year. If you really need a cheap tablet right at this moment, that might be a really good deal. If you are wanting a newer version of the Fire that has better features, this might be a deal you will probably want to skip.

And finally I should mention today's Amazon Free Paid App of the Day available here in the United States. Today's offering is called Gravilux. It is quite a unique type app. It is hard to describe what it is like. It may not be for everyone, but it is way better than that rather cheap looking Tic Tac Toe game that was the free app yesterday in my opinon. If you are a creative person, chances are you will like the Gravilux app.

Hopefully, I will be back again soon!

A mid-January 2012 Update

I have been away for a while. So I thought I would check in again. It has been a snowy week here in Washington State. Much of the state from Seattle to Eastern Washington has been hit by snowstorms this week. The snow can really disrupt things in this state, especially around Seattle.

I should mention that my NATHANROADINWA YouTube Channel videos have recently passed the 50,000 total views mark. So I still feel good about getting 100,000 total views by the end of this year.

As for the rumored final firmware update to the WDTV Live Plus from Western Digital that was mentioned as being planned for early 2012, it has not happened yet which is no surprise because Western Digital has a long history of making you wait months instead of days for a new firmware. Like I have said before, it is highly unlikely I will purchase another Western Digital media streamer again because of the lack of updates. For a company like Western Digital to announce that they are not likely going to release another firmware update to a product like the WDTV Family less than 24 months after being released is totally unacceptable. They need to create products that can be easily upgradable without forcing you to buy a new media streamer every 24 months or so just to get a device that has current support.

As for those wondering when my next YouTube video on my NATHANROADINWA Channel is coming out, I will most likely put out another video by sometime in February at the latest. I just have been rather busy lately with other activities.

So that is my update for now. I will be back rather soon probably.

Possibly some good news about the AMAZON.COM App Store!

In my video review that I did last year for the Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet, I mentioned that a credit card WAS required to download even the free apps on their Apps Store. Well this morning I decided to try once again to verify that this was still the case. I tried to purchase a free app. I just selected a free Solitaire game app to purchase. And it worked! I was able to purchase the app for free even though I still had not entered any debit/credit card info. I tried to purchase another one. That time I chose the Sudoku Free app. And it also downloaded fine without any payment information!

Before you get excited and try it yourself, I should warn people that I had told Amazon.COM about the problem of the Credit Card being required for free apps and the Amazon.COM person said they would look into it. So they might have made an exception just for me. If you have had the same problem with getting free apps without entering a credit card, please let us know if my experience is an isolated one or if Amazon.COM has indeed changed their payment policy for all users.

2012 is here, but is that a good thing?

I want to start out by wishing everyone a Happy New Year. Now that 2012 is here, maybe things will improve. But there is a good chance they will not improve. Some of the bad things that happened in 2011 include:

Postal Service debates about cutbacks in service.

Postal Service is still cutting back processing centers and still threatening longer mailing times as we speak.

Western Digital continued to be slow to update their WDTV Live family machines.

There is a new firmware finally coming out any day now for the discontinued 2010 Plus model, but it is rumored to be the last. Western Digital will unlikely fix any more bugs or update the services supported on this model. This means if you bought the Plus model like I did, you are probably regretting the purchase of it now.

YouTube view count bug came back around December 2011 and appears to be still giving inaccurate view counts as of early 2012.

YouTube had listed the same view counts on several of my videos at the exact same number for days until a couple of days ago. But it appears that the view counts are still not updating right away which makes it hard for me to judge how well my videos are being received since I get very few comments or ratings on my videos.

2012 GOALS FOR NATHANROADINWA YOUTUBE CHANNEL

Now I want to talk about my 2012 goals for my NATHANROADINWA YouTube Channel.

Hit the 10,000 views milestone for a single video for the first time.

This one I am almost certain will happen this year.

Hit the 100,000 views milestone for my total views.

This one seems in reach as long as I continue to get views at the rate that I was getting during the 4th Quarter of 2011.

Finally the most important one which is to be more successful on YouTube.

YouTube is a tricky platform for someone with my video making style. I have seen videos similar to mine that are shot with absolutely no preparation on a low resolution webcam and get way more views than mine even though I try to research the topics thoroughly and make the information much more organized. Unfortunately, YouTube continues to be dominated by people who make funny videos and by celebrity videos or those with subscribers it seems. I don't really encourage subscribing on YouTube since it takes your attention away from videos made by other individuals who upload an interesting video on a rare occasion.

So hopefully I will be able to make the needed adjustments to my videos to accomplish the third goal. We will find out sometime this year.

Final video of 2011 is now on my NATHANROADINWA YouTube Page

I want to let people know that my final video for the Second Season of my NATHANROADINWA YouTube Channel is now on my YouTube channel page. The video is entitled "Tech Confusion: Deleting YouTube Videos in 2012 on PCs and Other Devices Such as Internet Tablets".

In the video, I show how to delete videos in the upcoming year that are uploaded to your YouTube account. I show how to do it using the new YouTube page design that was recently introduced. I broke up the video into 3 parts. In the first part, I show how to delete a YouTube video using a Desktop or Laptop PC connected to the Internet. In the second part of the video, I show how to delete a YouTube video using a tablet such as newer Android tablets like the Archos Gen8 Tablet or an Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet. And in the last part of the video, I talk about trying to delete YouTube videos using other devices such as media players like the WDTV Live Plus.

I also want to mention that I have recently introduced a skill level system to some of my videos. I recommend them on whether they are for Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced level users. If I rate a video for Beginners or above, that means the video should be helpful to all users. If I rate it for Intermediate or above, that means the video should be helpful to the Intermediate and Advanced level users, but Beginners might have a hard time understanding and following those videos. And finally, if the video says it is recommended for Advanced users, that means you will have to be very careful if you are not yet an Advanced level user when performing things similar to what I show in my videos.

I am labeling this video for Beginners or above since this is a basic level task. The only danger here is accidentally deleting the wrong videos since YouTube deletes videos permanently when you mark a video for deletion.

A final note: Please rate this video and leave comments letting me know if you think this video is helpful or not and whether you think this skill level addition is a good idea. Also be sure to look for the other videos I have done on my NATHANROADINWA YouTube channel.

To see this and my other videos on my NATHANROADINWA Channel Page, --> CLICK HERE <--