The Socket Sense Expandable Surge Protector Strip is something I wish I had a long time ago! It always seems like I have some kind of big bulky adapter to plug in that spans more than one outlet. This nifty little gadget just slides out at any outlet to expand and give enough room for big adapters where needed. I think all surge protectors should do this. I can use one of these in my living room entertainment center, and also at just about every computer in the house, in addition to carrying one in my musicians gig bag for the stage (where I have all kinds of adapters for effects)! Where could you use an expandable socket surge strip? click here to check prices for the “Socket Surge”.
When I wrote my “Network Storage Review“, one of the first things in that article was the “Buffalo Drivestation”. I was thinking about the Drivestation this week because I had a family member who had a hard drive crash and lost all of her family photos and mp3′s she’d purchased, in addition to saved tax returns, and many other valuable documents.
I think sometimes people forget what kinds of “digital treasures” are stored on your PC or laptop, and what kind of chaos could ensue if it suddenly disappeared tomorrow. The Drivestation came to mind because it comes in so many different sizes (from 320GB to many Terabytes), and because it’s so easy to use. Just plug it in, push the button, and you’re backed up! They make models big enough for most small to medium sized businesses, and the versions with “RAID” have 2 hard drives inside for dual mirroring. That means if one hard drive fails, there’s another as a backup. The disks are even encrypted, so if anyone takes the unit, they can’t access any of your data.
It’s like insurance for your computer in a way. You have insurance for your car and home don’t you? If you have an accident or a fire your insurance company will replace what you have lost. Not only is there no insurance for your computer, but the personal documents and data you lose there likely can’t be replaced at all. If you have pics of your daughter’s wedding on your computer’s hard drive, for example, if they were lost no amount of money could compensate you for that.
I recommended the Buffalo Drivestation to my family member that lost her data, and I recommend it to you because of it’s ease of use, multiple connections (firewire and USB), and because it works with both Macs and PC’s. The price is reasonable for the value you get, and even your Grandma or the most tech-clueless office manager or secretary could set one up.
You can nearly always find Drivestations on eBay, or Amazon (below).
This AC inverter fits in your cupholder, has a USB slot, AND a holder for your iPod or cell phone – w00t!
I’m in the car a lot – I commute over an hour to work – so having various accessories and gadgets in the gar is kind of a necessity for a geek like me. I also have two teen aged kids, and they have their own gadgets like mp3 players, cell phones, PSP’s, Nintendo DS, and who knows what else. I’ve had an AC power inverter in the car for quite some time just in case I need to plugin the laptop on the go, and it works quite well. We’ve used it on many vacations and trips too.
So when I found the “Smart AC Inverter” with the USB slot and holder I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Let me tell you about the cool geekery this thing has. First of all it’s 150 watts, and that’s enough to power most any laptop. Second it’s designed to fit in your cup holder! Third, it has a USB port for charging your iPod or any mobile device or portable music player with a USB port. Last, it has a holder to drop your iPod, cell phone, or mp3 player into while charging in ADDITION to the AC outlet! I’m sorry – this was designed by someone who knows that would be useful to people on the go! This would make an excellent gift for a commuter, road warrior, or geek on the go – especially for Dad on Father’s Day!
Monitor how much electricity you’re using the the “Kill A Watt” Electricity Usage Monitor! Meter your own electrical usage!
When you get your monthly electric bill – ever wonder what was using the most electricity? What appliance or device is costing you more money per month than any other in your house? Is it your microwave? Your fridge? The hair dryer? There’s no more guesswork, because you can track energy consumption on your own with the “Kill A Watt” gadget. I’ve seen it demonstrated on Good Morning America and other news broadcasts and talk shows, and even online in forums people talk about it calling it the “Kill-o-watt”, “killawatt reader”, killwat, kilowatt, killowatt, and more…
The bottom line is – if you want to learn how-to conserve energy just get this little gadget, let it track how much your spending by the hour, day, week, month, or entire year by measuring the electricity you use for certain devices. Just plug one thing at a time to let it capture a reading, and it will forecast your electric bill costs within 0.2% accuracy! You’ll be amazed at how much money you can save once you find out where your money is going! To Check Prices on the Kill A Watt Click Here
Here’s a video demo of how the Kill-A-Watt works:
I’ve also seen some extremely good deals both new and used Kill a Watt gadgets on eBay – here’s some auctions ending soon for you to check out:
I have become so frustrated by to cost of gasoline in America that day by day I’m out to “find the cheapest gas”. I use the web each and every day from daybreak until bed, so it’s only fitting that I created my own page to find cheap gas. Just click on the tab at the top of any page on this site for a map:
All you have to do is input your zip code at the top to get gas prices in your local area for all listed stations and immediately find out “who has cheap gas” by you!
I commute a lot, and spend a LOT on gas each week. This will help me save money on gas quite a bit I a logon to check the prices every morning before I leave the house. I encourage you to bookmark this page and regularly visit to find the cheapest gas by you too!
Rent Books and Audio books with BooksFree, no late charge, free shipping, it’s basically Netflix for books!
I want to tell you about a new service I recently found, and I don’t know why somebody hadn’t started this company 5 years ago. It’s always cool when a new service comes around that uses the web. Do you have Netflix? Ever used Netflix? It’s the service where they send you DVD’s in the mail (like a rental), and when you’re done watching you slip it into a prepaid envelope and mail it back. No postage costs, quick turnaround on shipments, and you can keep an online queue of moves to be sent next. This is a great way to avoid ever going to the video store again. They also have services like Gamefly to rent video games through the mail like this, and even a few services that rent adult DVD’s this way too.
Well, it only makes sense that someone would invent the very same service for paperback and hardback books. BooksFree is a service that has over 100,000 books available from classics to recently released, and you can signup and have them sent to your home free of shipping charges just like Netflix. It’s like having your own library that you can check out what you want, when you want – without ever having to visit the library.
If you’re looking for the latest novel by Steven King, Michael Crichton, Mary Higgins Clark, or John Grisham – they have them all and more! One bonus feature is – if you’re a commuter (like me) they also have a huge stock of audio books, so if you drive a lot this service is perfect for you! I think it would also make a great gift for any reader – maybe for your Mom or Dad on Mother’s or Father’s day! You can cancel it anytime, and they have plans that start at $9.99 too. I think I’ll get as much use out of BooksFree as I do out of Netflix!
This is my review of “hulu.com”, the TV network and movie studio attempt to battle YouTube head to head.
I’ve been working online for 13 years. In that time we’ve seen the rise and fall of Napster, the birth of IM, online chat, and “social networking”. I’ve read that 70% of the country (or more) has a broadband connection. I was appreciating that fact today uploading 200K pictures to one of my web sites. Zing, zing, zing, all 100 of them were uploaded in just a few minutes. What does all this mean? The web is growing up. It’s maturing. It’s also changing how we live our lives, and what we watch and see and do. I was just telling my son the other day that I remember when I was a kid we had one tv in the family room and an antenna rotor. There were 6 channels to watch, the three major networks, one PBS, and two independant channels. In my house today we have a flat screen tv, DVD, VCR, a Wii, and a laptop in the family room. Every bedroom but one has a PC. Every bedroom has a tv and a DVD player. My son’s room has an Xbox 360 and 7 or 8 older classic game consoles. He also has a wireless mp3 player. We have a 3 base telephone set with a Vonage line, and 2 adults and 2 teens in the house have cell phones. The house has wired and wireless broadband throughout. Both of our cars have satellite radio.
In other words – there is no shortage of multimedia distractions in our home. I can’t imagine that we’re much different more or less than millions of other families. What this means is traditional media should be worried…VERY worried. Traditional broadcast media, or what we call “terrestrial tv and radio” – they should be the most worried of all. If cable and satellite tv haven’t already nearly killed them compared to their decades and decades of near total dominance – the web has usurped the rest of. But the web has also hurt traditional print media like newspaper and magazine sales, and it’s also hurt the recording and movie industries. Rather than try and embrace the “information superhighway” nearly all of these forms of “traditional media” have dragged their feet. Since the advent of the Internet has also meant the ease of “digital distrubution” some media have resorted to frivolous lawsuits against private citizens in a vain attempt to scare the public and keep themselves fat and happy. While YouTube is still a big of a mess (as far as copyright infringement and video quality are concerned), the model that has made it so successful is flourishing better than flowers in a manure pile.
I wasn’t surprised when NBC first announced it’s deal with YouTube. It seems like they were the first major network to make a deal with YouTube. Maybe it was that experiment that taugh them it could be done better. It wasn’t long ago I heard NBC was going to create their own online video network. As soon as I heard it I just said “whatever”, figuring that it would about as successful as all the other “video clones” currently sprouting up. And then last week I heard it was live on hulu.com.
Naturally – I had to check it out, and I have to admit I figured in less than 5 minutes I’d chalk it up to be a complete and utter failure.
When I went to hulu.com for the first time the first thing I noticed when browsing around was that multiple networks were participating. Bravo, Sci-Fi, FX, G4, Sony, Sundance, E!, Fox, Universal, NBC, the NBA, USA, WB, 20th Century Fox, the NHL and more had signed on.
In addition major movie studios such as Lionsgate, Metro Golwyn Mayer, and 20th Century Fox had signed on.
Even though it would appear that there are less than 1,000 full pieces of content within the site currently (based on the fact that you can browse them from one or two web pages), I think that the quality of the content indicates there is much, much more to come. Within just a few minutes I found that I could be instantly watching Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, Family Guy, The Office, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Ice Age, Point Break, Sideways, or Weekend at Bernies. These are major titles, and many current broadcast shows.
For the purposes of this review I chose to watch a movie – “The Big Lebowski”. I should mention that prior to this I had already signed up for a free “account” which you have to do to view content. It was nothing extravagant, just a simple form and then email verification. Which surprised me, because the movie I had chosen to watch was “rated R”.
I mean honestly – I was glad it was so easy to just “start watching”, but who’s to say I really was the appropriate age? They asked my age when I signed up, but both my teens are savvy enough just lie about that – as are the bulk of the web aware youth today. So after the obligatory “intended for mature audiences” screen, the next thing I’m faced with is of course an advertisement.
I was concerned about this at first, but in the scheme of things it’s really not that bad. If you look at this images check out the timeline at the bottom of the pic. The white dots in the timeline are commercials. For this two hour movie there are 11 dots, and added to the one at the beginning that’s 12 commercials for a two hour movie. These are 30 second commercials, and that amounts to 6 minutes of ads for the entire movie. Compare that to 24 minutes of commercials for two hours of television or 15 minutes of previews in the movie theater. All traditional media has always been based solely on this type of advertising model – it makes complete sense to just carry it to to the web. Oh – in addition in this image notice that wherever you move your mouse, the exact timestamp appears, which is handy for moving to any point in the timeline you would like (no you can’t forward past the commercials).
In this next image I show you the menus that appear when you mouse near the edges. At the bottom you’ve got the standard play/pause, timeline, and volume – but there are 4 options on the left and 4 options on the right.
The second from the top right is “Pop Out”, which allows you to watch the movie in it’s own browser window like this (the menu only stays when you mouse near the edge):
The “share” option leads you to a social media sharing menu with options for myspace, facebook, digg, windows live, del.icio.us, reddit, StumbleUpon, or Google Bookmarks. Look at this, major networks and movie studios brazenly asking us to “digg” them!?
Another option they give us is to email it to a friend:
And in an incredible YouTube ripoff moment they give us the ability to “embed” anything. Wow, you can embed a 2 hour movie in your blog? Why yes you can…
There are also options for “full screen” and even one to change the video quality from 360p to 480p. I applaud them for actually stating the quality without the usual “broadband” and “dialup” type options. I tried viewing the movie full screen in 480p, and it wasn’t choppy at all, it instantly buffered, and the quality was pretty good. There wasn’t much I didn’t like about the entire experience. I found that there were sections on the site for just “clips” and another for full length series and feature films. Searching was easy and brought expected results. Play was pretty instant and the entire site seems to be on a pretty good backbone with some pretty good servers and bandwidth. I know wonder that if the free vintage TV series at NBC.com I wrote about a few weeks back also run on this network (or not). I would have to presume “yes” since a search for the A-team on hulu.com brings immediate results.
In synopsis, I have to say that I am very impressed with Hulu and I’m very surprised that the major networks not “get the web” and aren’t yet again trying to screw us. One of the modern “conveniences” that has long since bothered me is the fact that modern media thinks that we (as consumers) are stupid. They blatantly believe they have the ability to charge us over and over and over again for the exact same content. Case and point – I paid full price for the Rolling Stones “Tattoo You” album when it came out when it was released in 1981. Then in about 1985 I bought in on cassette, and again probably about 1995 on CD. If I want to listen to it on my phone, Sprint wants me to buy it again – and even if I do (buy the full song) I have to pay $3.99 just to use “Start Me Up” as a ringtone. To play it on my iPod I have but the album again on iTunes, and for the privilege of listening to those Stones songs on my satellite radio – I have to pay a monthly subscription fee. Sometime in the near future I’ll probably be forced to buy it yet again in an “HD Audio” version. This same example could also have been the movie “The Blues Brothers” which I have now on both VCR and DVD. I’ve yet to try and view it on my iPod or one of our computers. “F” you guys! Don’t you get how sick of this I am? I don’t want to continue to buy “licenses” for the same content on different devices.
While Hulu doesn’t completely address this issue, it’s a start, and I hope that the other major players follow suit. As an online markete the thing I really find hilarious is the fact that major media are just figuring out the web, but the sex industry has been raking in over 300 billion online for many years now with the exact same model (give tons of free content away and sell loads of advertisement). If you want to see if hulu is for you or not – I give to you John Belush in one of my favorite SNL sketches “Samurai Delicatessen”:
Need external storage that’s extremely portable? I’ve wished for an external hard drive enclosure that’s wireless, and my wireless hdd guide will show you the in’s and out’s of what’s currently available!
I’ve blogged a lot off an on about making your home entertainment network more user friend, and the gadgets that can help you get it done. Yesterday we were talking at home about the value of maybe getting a big external hard drive and hooking it up (wired) to one PC so the entire household could store their media on it. We’d maybe start it off with one big USB 2.0 external 500GB disk. You can get one new for around $120. I’ve written about the wireless USB hub and how you could connect multiple external hard drives or enclosures that way, and I’ve also posted about the value of a good network storage drive. But now they’re coming out with wireless hard drives that may start to change all of that…
What is a Wireless Hard Drive?
You have to be very careful when you’re shopping for a wireless hard drive, because devices that may appear to do the same thing may not. There are many, many flavors that may do many many different things – pay attention to what your needs are, the price, and value for the money. I’m going to show you some different kinds of wireless hard drives and enclosures:
The Iomega 33349 StorCenter has 1 Terabyte (1,000 GB) of storage and is a “Network Storage Device” – meaning you can plug it into your router or switch on your home or business network for everyone to share (without having it hooked to one dedicated computer). The StorCenter is “wireless” as well as wired, so all laptops and mobile devices can access it. Imagine having one device that could be accessed by PC’s, laptops, cell phones, PDA, iPhone, iTouch, or even your PSP or other mobile devices. There’s a price to be paid for all this technology, and it’s a little under $500 (as of this writing). You can get the latest price by following these links.
You have some products that proclaim to be a “Wireless Media Player” like the MG-350HD HD Wireless 802.11G Media Player by Mediagate. This is just fancy hard drive enclosure – since the device comes sans hard drive. It does proclaim so pretty boasty features, like the ability to stream HD video via wireless up to 1920 x 1080p. It’s got all kinds of fancy connections, like L/R stereo out, and composite, component, and S-video out. This particular unit can stream video from an internal hard drive or a PC on the network and even has a remote control. So you can see that this unit (as a wireless hard drive) is very different in that it can be a set-top box OR a media gateway to access (from networked PC’s). Follow these links to find more out about this device.
You might be interested in an Asus Wireless Storage Router which has an internal 250GB hard drive. It has a USB connector so you can connect other (wired) storage devices to it for sharing, and it even has the ability to download files from the Internet when your PC is turned off. The specs say you can download up to 7 bitTorrent files or 10 FTP/HTTP files simultaneously. For what it does, this wireless hard drive is a pretty good at half the price (and storage) as the StorCenter. You can get the wireless storage router through these links:
If you a have a hard drive lying around, you might be able to stick in a wireless hard drive enclosure box and put it on your network (wirelessly) that way. You can get one pretty reasonably, but the two I found were only for 2.5″ drives. I hope we see more (and a 3.5″ version) on eBay soon:
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You can actually make any external hard drive enclosure wireless by using the Linksys Storage Link for USB Disk Drives. Just like many other devices Linksys makes to connect computer hardware to your home or business network, they make a Storage Link that will connect any 2 USB storage devices to your wireless local network. The thing that’s always sucked about external hard drives is that they have to be attached to a physical computer via USB to work, and then you have to access them through that computer on the network. If that computer is turned off or locked up – you can’t access those drives. With a Linksys Storage Link, you can put up to 2 USB storage devices on your network independant of all your PC’s. Just plug it into your router or hub (or switch) to work. Oh – you can even stick a flash memory stick or drive into one of the USB slots to share it on the network as well. This is not only great for file sharing, but an easy way to connect with many mobile devices!
With all the people downgrading from Windows Vista to XP, I felt this was a pretty timely post. You can’t boot Windows XP from a floppy disc, but you can from a CD Rom if you need to reinstall or make a repair. Burning CD’s is so passe anymore – can’t you just boot Windows XP from a USB flash memory stick drive? Of course you can – if you know how!
What’s more – you can use applications you’ve installed on the flash drive as well to fix any PC problems you may have.
First – you’re going to need a program called PEBuilder – download it here. The PEBuilder Home page is here. PE Builder is “Pre-Installed Environment Builder” – basically think of it as a freeware way to build a “Windows” LiveCD (like Linux).
As the home page states it will give you:
A complete Win32 environment with network support
A GUI or graphical user interface (800×600)
FAT/NTFS filesystem support
You get the ability to:
Do burn in testing with no installed OS
Rescue files or boot a dead PC
Perform Virus scan, remove trojans, fix problems, etc.
Microsoft already has a PE or Pre-Installed Environment utility – BUT, it’s only availble to big enterprise and OEM companies, AND it’s only command line (no GUI). Ok, now that you have to tool to build a PE, you need to get another tool to install that PE to a usb flash drive. So you need download PE to USB, a program that was specifically designed to use PEBuilder and install that PE to a flash drive.
Now I’m going to show you how to get this done in 5 easy steps:
Install PEBuilder
Copy your “i386″ directory from your Windows XP Pro SP2 CD to a folder in the PE Builder directory called “BartPE”
Extract the PEtoUSB files to the PEBuilder folder
Run the PE to USB program and select “Enable Disk Format”, “Quick Format”, and “Enable File Copy”. For “Source Path” select the “BartPE” folder
REBOOT with USB flash drive and you will have a running Windows environment on a stick! (enable usb boot in bios if needed)
If you have something to add or a suggestion about building a Windows booting Flash drive – please, comment now!
Oh – and if by some chance you need a geeky new USB flash drive – then I can tell you some of the best deals are on eBay! Here are some usb flash memory drive auctions on eBay right now!
I want to talk to you about the HDD Player. For about $30 or less, you can buy a HDD or Hard Disk Drive Multimedia Player Encolsure that will blow your mind! These external enclosures can be either Sata, eSata, or IDE – and they even have wireless and wired LAN versions. You won’t find these in a brick and mortar store anywhere – usually only on eBay or an online gadget shop? Why? Well, the big electronics giants would never want to see you have something this cool – EVER!
Because it’s keeps you buying their clunky, proprietary garbage. They want to tie you into DVD burners that won’t backup your legal store bought DVD’s, that don’t support ripped and burned DVD’s, and devices that use HDCP and DRM to limit what you can to with your own electronics! Your dvd player might only play DVD’s coded for North America – and you want a region free player that will play DVD’s from anywhere in the world!
What if you could have a device that would allow you to store all of your ripped DVD’s and movies, YouTube, MySpace and online video, your entire mp3 collection, in addition to the thousands and thousands of digital pictures you have accumulated!? You need a storage device – and entertainment storage device at the center of your house! With 500GB hard drives at an all time low – the time is right for a device like this! I’m telling you – it works great for me because I am so tired of plugging in my laptop to our 42″ flat screen just to watch some video I edited or something from our digital camera or camcorder.
The HDD or Hard Disk Drive Enclosure Multimedia Player
Most of these hard drive enclosure boxes will do the following:
Play mp3′s
Play mp4′s
Play Divx movies
Play AVI videos
Play DVD’s
Play Audio CD’s
Play VCD’s
Play SVCD’s
Play JPG pictures (slideshow)
Most come with a remote, some even play AVI and Windows Media WMV and WMF formats. I’ve even seen quite a few new ones that EVEN have a memory card reader slot. Also, many have optional connectors for either a TV (AV cable or s-video) or PC (VGA connector). You can usually use up to a 80GB+ hard drive, and depending on which case you get, it can be either 3.5″ PC form factor, or a notebook HDD. The one I mentioned with the memory card reader, it even has a one-touch button to copy everything from a memory card to the hard drive without having to hook it up to a PC at all. Most also have 5.1 channel digital audio output support as well. These things work with Windows PC’s from 95, to 98, 2000, Windows XP and Vista, in addition to Mac and Linux, and NTSC or PAL formats. They even have handheld ones with an LCD screen – so you don’t need to hook it up to anything!
You can get an AWESOME deal on one of these on eBay. As always, but from reputable sellers with lots of positive feedback, know how much shipping is in advance (usually $10-$30 depending on there it’s being shipped from and it’s weight), and read all the details to make sure that your HDD player does exactly what you want when you get it. Ask the seller questions in advance so you know what you’re getting.
Also, if it’s still not clear – let me point out why this is one of the coolest things out there. You can put your pictures on it. Put your music on it. Convert and rip movies and dvd’s to it. Watch them on any PC you take it to, or any TV you hook it up to. Copy pictures from your digital camera flash card with the touch of one button, and watch them on your television in seconds. No more figuring out how to burn downloaded movies to DVD, VCD, or SVCD. Imagine all the money you’ll save on blank DVD’s and CD’s alone. Just copy to this drive and watch on your TV, then delete when you’re done. If the hard drive dies or is too small, just replace it with another one. These are cool, you will use yours all the time ( I know I do ).
I’m going to show you some HDD player auctions ending on eBay soonest below. If you want to see everything, just…
also – if you’re looking for region free dvd player for your home entertainment center, or a region free portable dvd player – here are bunches of options new and used on eBay right now:
My name is John Pratt and I like all kinds of geeky, gadget tech stuff. I maintain web sites, write a little code, fool around with Wordpress, Ubuntu, play lead guitar in a band, and have a general fondness for computers electronic 'thingies'!
