Opinion: EpicReviewGuys

Disclaimer

While I have no right to judge a YouTube Channel who's operators have far more experience and subscribers that I do, I would like to take the opportunity to speak to the value and niche that Chris and Parris have carved out of the vast productivity space that is YouTube. 

Businesses Everywhere, No Less for Wear

I live in California and there are probably hundreds of thousands of businesses here.  Parris and Chris make their business in Austin, Texas; in which I am certain that there are many thousands more businesses.  It was only a few days ago that I discovered EpicReviewGuys and yet they have been operating on YouTube more regularly and with far more videos that I ever did on my account.   Plus I've never even heard of them until now.  This stands as a testament to the capacity of YouTube for greatness, even to a lesser degree.  

Production Quality does not Negate Value

I've definitely seen a lot of both high production quality and low production quality videos on YouTube.  I think that the main reason that I have not produced more videos is that I struggle with wanting to create better quality and so I produce, nothing.  EpicReviewGuys didn't care about production quality (as much), but rather than be bogged down with that concern, they got to work producing.  And look where they are today.  The have hundreds of videos and millions of views (over 50 million as of this post). 

One of the best quotes regarding video production on YouTube that I have heard, and not just from Casey Neistat, is to "Just Start!"  It doesn't matter if your quality is junk or your camera is an old smartphone from 2011 or a point-and-shoot from 2007.  If you can take video then you should start making videos for YouTube.  You have to START somewhere. Even Marques Brownlee, in his earliest days of doing reviews of anything that he could get his hands on in his parent's home; at least he started.

Practice Makes Better (hopefully perfect)

From watching EpicReviewGuys I can definitely see where they began and the progress that they made over time.  Parris had his wife do a couple of reviews; it was not for her.  He had his kids in the videos many times, one of these videos was easily his top video by several million views.  But eventually, Chris stopped doing reviews and Parris' kids stopped being in the videos and it became just Parris. The Intro video (which is 4 years old) still has both Chris and Parris as the EpicReviewGuys, despite the lack of Chris' appearances in any videos after 2015.

It's easy to see the progress that Parris has made in the way that he began including title frames across the thumbnail image.  As time progressed these titles changed, larger font, more color.  In 2018 he began to to use an Orange frame and most of the thumbnails featured the core idea, rather than what appeared to be a random frame.  Very recently, he's been masking the background out with a single color for even more emphasis on the product.

Great Job, Making Progress!

I want to commend the EpicReviewGuys for reviewing everything under the Sun.  They didn't let view count or production quality, or really, much of anything stand between them and making reviews on YouTube.  They got started, they made progress and as they progressed, they improved.  

Do or Do Not, there is no Try - Yoda

Opinion: Bottom Line - Video

How Does it Feel to make... x?

     In the video above there are two men working for a living in the US, one's income is $11,000 per day, the other is $60 per day.  The video follows each through the day as they work.  One works in Day Trading on the Stock Market, the other works by app-based, food delivery.

    Below is my commentary and opinion on this video and it's impact on me.

Disparity

From the get-go, it is fairly apparent that there is a HUGE disparity between the two men.  One's income is roughly 150 times greater than the other.  The monstrous difference in income between these two, who may not know about the other, is it a commentary on life?  Is this a commentary on choices or even a commentary on race?

I think that the way that YouTube is going with actual shows, leads to these sorts of short-documentaries.  People are discovering that they can showcase lesser known issues on a grand scale, like 60 Minutes in 6.

The commentary is left out.  There is no famous person, voice-over telling us what it's about.  We're left to figure that our for ourselves.  Maybe you wish to vastly wealthy, or maybe you're the wealth that you have isn't monetary and think that vast wealth isn't what brings the true joy into your life. But it's hard to judge one's reaction to something one can only dream about.  Until you live with it daily, you'll never really know it.

The video does seem to bring into contrast a difference based on money alone, likely because it is a pertinent topic in the world.  The lower earner does say that he wishes that he had more money, but that it probably wouldn't change him. I'm sure that the wealthier person doesn't wish to be poorer, but he never talks about how the wealth changed him (although he does say that he's always been frugal).

There's a ticker in the upper right-hand corner of the frame that shows the amount of money that each man is making through out the day and it keeps the tally for each. The lower-earner gets excited when he gets a tip of $35 from one of the deliveries, while $35 ticks by every 5 minutes for the high-earner

Pursuit of HAPPYness

Toward the end of the video each is asked if he is happy and we get a slightly different response.  One is happy, but feels an emptiness in his life, the other is happy and says that he would be regardless of how much money he had.

Each man appears to be happy in the video and most might assume that having a significant income would make one feel that way.  But for the man who has never had millions, he cannot comment on having had millions in order to know if it would have changed him.  Whereas the one who has millions recognized that money-issues had caused trouble in the lives of his parents.

Society and culture often repeats to us that we all need to get as much as we can to have a good life, but the pursuit of happiness is never defined as the acquisition of wealth, although often circumscribed as such. It might be generally accepted that a person with vast wealth will live better and be happier.

Comparative Dissonance

This video, I feel, attempts to bring to light the large financial gap between the lives of two people in who live in the same place.  But it, like so many other videos that show only a difference in money, miss out on so many other good comparisons that might not carry the same weight in the world.  It may be because we all have a shared experience in money and that trying to show a comparison between two religions, political perspectives, or moral attitudes is more difficult.

Conclusion

There's no two ways about it, one of these people is running a business of his own and the other is just working for other people.   The higher-earner is generating income from many sources and definitely did not start out that way, he worked his way up to where he is now.  The other, lower-earner has yet to make his move to create a business (albeit he does run a YouTube channel with about 5k subs).

On the surface, just watching these two men live their lives, it is apparent to me that there is a difference, but very little back-story is given.  The story-tellers seem only to want to compare the current perspectives of difference of income. It's almost like taking a quote out of context.  No person is dimensionally flat either physically or characteristically. As I noted earlier, there is no commentary, so we can draw our own conclusions.  But like so many other click-bait shows and links, maybe the implication is all in the deception of the title.

What is the Bottom Line.

Google Smart Display: Getting to Know You

Here Come the Reviews!

Thank you to Mr Mobile (Michael Fischer) and Dieter Bohn of The Verge for their reviews.  Mr Fischer for his justification and Mr Bohn for his explanation of the features.  Check out the videos below.  I don't really want to divert from this any more than I have to, because these guys are really good at reviewing.  Watch their videos

Mr Mobile

The Verge

Emergency Calls to Report the Milky Way

Up There In the Sky...

Apparently it is possible to live on this planet in a place where the Milky Way cannot be seen at night.  You'd think I would know about this, having been born to it.  But my fascination with the sky began at an early age and I was made aware of the this sight early on.  However, my fellow Los Angelinos were not.

In 1994, January 17th at 4:30 AM, shortly after the Northridge earthquake shook people of Southern California out of their beds, many people called in to Emergency Services reporting a bizarre sight.  A sort of cosmic event was overhead.  This cosmic scene surely combined with the recent earthen event was probably enough to give some people a mighty fright. 

The earthquake had knocked out most of the power in many of the cities in the area and this being the dead of winter the Sun would not rise for another few hours, making it likely the darkest part of night.

After decades of the night sky being blotted out by the ground light sent upward, the some of people of Southern California had never been in the presence of what someone in the wilderness could have easily recalled. It was to them a foreign or unfamiliar visage. What odd lights and formations dotted the sky, which before was always black or rarely dotted with the brightest stars, but mostly only aircraft.

Surely some people had seen the twinkling lights and occasional planets in the land where Hollywood Stars originate, but the ominous mid-section of the galaxy that we call home, may have been a awe-strikingly new concept.

Alas, what would our ancestors have said to us for responding so ridiculously to the stars in the night sky? ... "OMG is that the new iPhone!?"

Source: TimeLine

Video Doorbells: The Best Functioning Option

Keeping an Eye on the Porch

With Social Media and the Internet, it's amazing what you can find about the Human Experience. And now with connected / Smart Homes, it is possible to see what's happening at home when you're not at home. Whether for security, deliveries, or just plain curiosity, having a robot with a camera watch your front porch is a fascinating idea.

What are the Options?

There are currently two schools of thought when it comes to Video Doorbells; Motion Capture or Full Stream Capture.  Products such as Skybell and Ring both offer Motion Capture only, where as Nest Hello offers Full Stream Capture.  The difference is that Motion Capture only delivers actual clips of captured activity; so if the camera notices a person, or creature, it will start recording for a short period of time. The Nest Hello records everything constantly and when a motion event occurs, it makes note of it.  There is a further distinction between these two schools, but it will be made clear later.

What is the Cost?

Although cost of a product is often stated clearly, the function of cost is rarely covered.  You might think that just by my having not jumped immediately to the price, that I may be trying to avoid the numbers.   It is important to not look only at the price of a product but to critically consider the value of the product.  Of course some people just cannot afford the price and so will immediately stop reading, ...

The short answer there is no monthly service fee for Skybell, whereas Ring ($30 / year) costs much less money than Nest ($50-$300 / year or $5-$30 / month). Each of these devices ranges in initial price around $200

But to those who value the function, please continue reading below.

What is the Value of Security?

Although it is difficult to put an actual definite price on Security, it is possible to make an informed decision based on good information.  Supposing a porch pirate steals a package from the doorstep, having a camera out there would have offered a much better idea of when the package was delivered and who picked it up.

To return to the topic mentioned earlier regarding motion capture, the best function that Nest Hello offers above and beyond other video doorbells is that of full daily video streaming.  While all three devices offer motion detection, no robot with a camera is as good as an alert human.  Even with outlines and masks and facial detection, computers are not very wise and experienced; they do not know to ignore plants blowing in the wind, they do no know the difference between a photo of a face and an actual face. 

The value in the Nest Hello is that to hedge the shortcomings of motion capture alone, it delivers all the video from the entire day.  And recognizing that no human (even those whose job it is) wants to sort through hundreds of hours of real-time footage to find the proverbial needle in a haystack; Nest can speed up the playback to a time lapse of the whole day in seconds. (See Video Above)

A New Age of Availability and Function

Throughout recent technological history, let's say in the last 60 years, it has been possible to get video surveillance on one's home.  It has even been possible to get recordings of that surveillance. And if one could afford it, to have a person watch those recordings; to be the human with experience behind the mechanical function of video recording.   Much more powerful computers now aid society in monitoring and finding differences in the videos, but they cannot fully replicate the wisdom of an experienced human. 

Society often argues for the lowest common denominator thinking that if we can get by with paying less, we effectively get more. But in this case, to sacrifice cost over function is an unworthy loss.  There is no way to go back and recover video that was never recorded.  And if the task is left to inexperienced robots, just to save a buck, we lose more than the money we've tried to save.


There are greater available technologies currently available than what is presented in this article, but for the price. So much more is possible and yet many of do not recognize it.  I highly recommend the Nest Hello Doorbell as it's value is much greater than it's price.

Check out the Nest Hello today:
    Nest.com
    BestBuy
    HomeDepot
    Lowes

Unreal Mobile is Real, Cheap!

TL;DR Stuff about Pricing

Unreal Mobile has made a great case for the lowest cost and most simple Mobile Phone service.  Everything; Talk, Text, and Data for $10 per month.  No gimmicks, no promos, no one-time-deals, just ten dollars for Unlimited everything.

Now, if they're offering all this for so little, why cannot any other carrier do the same?  Well, like every other carrier, the data (or lack there of) is the catch.  You get ONE Gigabyte of data at full speed and then everything else is 2G or 512 Kbps.  It is unlimited 2G, you will get all the content you can take at half-a-megabit per second; which if you think about it, is 10 x faster than an old dial-up modem.

A little background on Unreal Mobile

Unreal Mobile is FreedomPOP, which is Sprint.  FreedomPOP is the company that for nearly 8 years has offered a FREE 500-2000 MB of data to anyone who would sign up.

Originally, they rode atop Clearwire 4G which was purchased by Sprint in 2014 and subsequently shutdown in 2016.  Through what might seem like a very simple ideal, FreedomPOP has managed to continue to exist in the bottom tier of Mobile ISPs, by giving away data for free. 

The Simplicity of the UI

Unreal Mobile likes to keep it simple with the User Interface.  It is very practical and visually basic; appealing if you think simple is good.  This interface is responsive as well and scales to fit any device, be it phone, tablet, or desktop.

The tabs across the top, help the user find the basic feature sets of their bill, usage, plan, service, devices, and propagation (sharing).  As of this post the sharing feature has not been enabled.  If you dig into the tabs, you'll find even more ways to save on data use, plus a feature that Unreal Mobile touts to get away from advertisements.  I personally, wanted to get back to using 2G only, to save all the Faster speed data that I could because they let it roll over, month-to-month.

Comparison to other carriers

The kicker wit Unreal Mobile is the price, but why do no other Mobile ISPs provide all this for as little.  First off, Unreal Mobile (FreedomPOP) is backed by Sprint.  Sprint had, for about a month, a deal on Unlimited Everything for $15.  It too offered minimal data at LTE speeds and then the unlimited came at 2G thereafter.  But that deal was for a limited time.

Every other carrier is almost the same as Unreal Mobile in that they offer a small amount of LTE (1 or 2 GB) and the remainder is at slower speeds. While each carrier has a slightly different deal, each usually runs at least $50 / month with almost the same features as Unreal Mobile.

Source: CNET (https://www.cnet.com/news/verizon-att-t-mobile-sprint-unlimited-data-plan-comparison/)

What's the Catch?

How can Unreal Mobile sell Unlimited Everything for $10 / month, and yet no one else offers such a deal?  The reality is that the four major carriers do in fact offer these deals, but they do not advertise them.  They know that they could sell these features for this low price, but they have spent hundreds of millions in advertising to convince consumers that there are more features available if they pay more. 

End Game

Unreal Mobile is a very simple ideal.  It does have other, more costly plans ranging from $10 to $40 and offering more high-speed LTE data, upwards of 10 GB for the top tier.  It is more effectively a mobile phone plan for those who use very little data, or just those who want to text and talk.  Of course anyone can use WiFi for Data, but if WiFi isn't always accessible, it might be good to go with a bigger carrier. Or if you're cool with 2G speeds (512 kbps) all the time.

The end game on this is that Unreal Mobile is trying to tap the bottom of the market, those with the least amount of liquid funds.  It could be that this phone is just a backup phone or for teenagers whose parents won't get them a phone. In any case Unreal Mobile has made the proposal that it is possible to get an unlimited mobile phone plan for almost nothing.

Smart Light Switch from TP-Link

A Smart Light Switch, without Sacrificing Common Function

Just about everyone wants to change or upgrade the home they live in.  And even the wealthiest people never quite get what they want out of their home(s). But with a simple change, a poorly placed switch can be upgraded to a whole new world of possibility.

Using the TP-Link WiFi Light Switch (HS200), it is possible to effectively move the position of the light switch to the kitchen.  Via Google Home devices, like the Google Home Mini, and their ability to receive commands through voice control, the kitchen light switch can be operated from anywhere in the home. The TP-Link Kasa app can also be used to operate the switches, if voice control is not an option.

... But Why a WiFi Switch?

I've long used SmartThings Home Control with both Zigbee and Z-wave and the mere fact that I already have WiFi devices and coverage in my house bewilders me for their necessity.  I recognize that Z-wave requires less power than WiFi, but for something that is hard-wired for power, (like the HS200) it works just fine.   Power conservation is not the problem at hand.

Convenience an' all that...

Skeptics may question whether it is actually convenient to have a mere single light switch converted to automatic for $40, when a standard switch costs no power to operate and barely $2 to purchase.  But in my experience it is the paradigm shift from single manual to multi-use control that is the key.  Were it my decision, no light switch or power outlet in the world would be singly manual. 

The added function of remote access and / or voice control offers more channels of access to lighting control. A person does not need to physically interact with anything to operate a device.  Using the light switch is as simple as speaking.  

Managed Control

Short of obsession, the level of automation in my home is probably not the same as that of Bill Gates' home, but I'd wager that I have more home automation that 90% people.  Yes, I do this because I enjoy it, which probably exceeds even the level that some geeks put to the task. Digital informational feedback is exciting to me; it seems to offer a modicum of control.  

I see home automation as an inevitability, like the automobile in years past. The more automation we can get from the tools on which we rely, the better our lives can become.  In the 1800's it was common for a person to walk the streets in at dusk and dawn to light and extinguish the street lamps.  Later in the early 1900's, a person stood in the middle of the street to direct traffic.  Through automation these monotonous jobs have been re-allocated to a machine.  

It is a realistic expectation that in the near future many devices will be more automated and connected, offering more precise control and better feedback.  It will be possible to recognize better ways to do work and home activities.  Personal ease will enable even further action beyond that which is today inhibited by too often required manual operations.  The future is bright and Smart devices are leading the way.

Check out the TP-Link WiFi Light Switch HS200 on Amazon: