Archive for September, 2007

Local or National?

Sunday, September 30th, 2007

I’ve spent the last few hours looking into many different options regarding an internet service once we move.  There’s a local service that has a triple-play option with TV/Internet/Phone for approximately $130 a month.  The thing is, I’m not overly fond of a VoIP system based on the fact that I like to have a LAN line in the house in case of an emergency.  Living in a blizzard heavy state is something I consider an emergency, honestly.  So I’ve been looking into Verizon because they also offer a triple-play option but I know that the phone service isn’t VoIP based, it’s a land line and that makes me rather happy.  Their option comes with satellite TV, FIOS internet and a real phone line.

Which option would you consider? They’re both in the same price range, I know that much.

What happened to Halloween?

Sunday, September 30th, 2007

PPPSean and I tend to look into everything with a bit of overkill. We’re unsure of whether or not we’ll be settled in by Halloween so with that in mind we’re already planning for Christmas. For many years I’ve been accustomed to a large tree filled with beautiful twinkling lights, heaps of ornaments and surrounded by any possible Christmas decoration there is. I personally prefer a large green tree with multi-colored lights, the more traditional approach. Sean’s mother likes white trees with white lights, which I personally find gaudy, but if that’s her personal taste – then so be it.

All of my ornaments are up in New York and I don’t want to take that away from my father because I’m starting my own life somewhere else, so Sean and I are going to work from the ground up and get everything from our own ornaments and decoration to the more basic strands of LED holiday lights to completely surround the house and brighten it for the holiday season. I know I’ll be doing a lot of cooking, and decorating in preparation. I’ll leave him with the task of decorating the exterior of the house. His brother put up over 10,000 lights on his house at the last Christmas and knowing the competitive edge in both of them, I can only imagine what kind of a decoration war is going to be going on. To the point that it kind of scares me but I’ll make it a point to keep a close eye on the credit cards so that he doesn’t go too overboard with things. I assume his brothers wife will do the same, at least I hope. There’s something about men and ladders, that’s for sure.

My reason for looking into LED Christmas lights is based on a few options, really. One of which is the bill that will show up at the end of the month once the Christmas rush has ceased. They use about 80% less power than a standard string of lights and that’s enough to make my wallet very happy. There are many different styles of LED Xmas lights, so many that it’ll be hard to decide which ones to go with. I think as far as outside of the house is concerned, I’d like a nice white light setup, but I hate the icicle lights so a solid rope strand will be more than enough for me. Something tells me there will be a lot going on on the roof but I’ll have to put a stop to that before it gets too out of hand, so that should be interesting – heh.

One Tiny Tablet

Sunday, September 30th, 2007

With the Fujitsu Lifebook UB10, you can have it all: portability, versatility, and style.  This convertible mini notebook weighs a mere 1.6 pounds and features a 5.6-inch WSVGA Crystal View display.  Twist the screen to use this device as a Tablet PC, or flip it back to uncover the newly designed ultra-slim QWERTY keyboard (aluminum plated for extra durability) and work on the U810 as a traditional notebook.  An 800-MHz Intel A110 processor, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth will keep you productive on the go, and the four-cell battery supplies up to 5.5 hours of juice.

Fujitsu Lifebook U810; starting at $999; www.fujitsu.com/us

Travel and Remote Access

Sunday, September 30th, 2007

Over the course of the next few weeks, Sean and I are going to be doing quite a bit of driving. First is a five hour trip north to my fathers house on Long Island, we’ll be there for a few days while I’m finalizing all of the loan-based information and visiting with family. Another five hour drive back to here so we can begin packing up our things. By the following weekend we’ll be on our way to Ohio to make the purchase, do some cleaning up because the house has been there for six months untouched and is probably covered in dust, then we’ll be traveling back to Delaware to get the rest of our things and then make the move, his brother is going to follow us in the uHaul. There’s a lot of driving involved with this move and I have to say, it’s going to be pretty hard on us.

Knowing that we’re going to be on the road for a very long period of time, I’m kind of looking forward to the fact that I’ll be able to get some work done on my computer while he drives. To prolong the life of his already dying car, we’re going to take a rental to Ohio. Since this is an eight hour drive, I know that my laptop is going to be used pretty heavily and thankfully I have a car charger so that when my battery gets too low I can boot myself up. I’ll also be purchasing a notebook wireless card just so I can make the trip, I’m sure there is some kind of a prepaid option. My only issue is the inability to add my external to the plug we have because of the one-jack option it came with so I have no idea how I can access my external hard drive and there’s no real tell-tale sign that I’ll have enough plugs to work with once we get to the hotel room either.

RemotePCI’ve been looking into a few different remote access options because it may be easier to just leave the hard drive at home and then only access it when I really need to. I came across RemotePC, which is one of the leading remote access solutions for PCs. You can access your home computer from anywhere with an Internet connection and there’s currently a 30 day free trial before your $4.95 a month plan starts. I don’t intend to do any major design work while we’re finalizing the house based things but I would like to be able to get to my email without having to load it onto my laptop considering everything is saved on the external at the moment. It’s how I access my email from both the desktop and the laptop. With this program there’s also the option of holding a remote-meeting with 10 users sharing the same desktop. I think it’s pretty cool but I only need the one person to access my external at the moment – and that’s me…heh.

High-Def, Hold the Shakes

Sunday, September 30th, 2007

Panasonics new HDC-SD5 is more than just the worlds smallest and lightest 3CCD full-HD camcorder.  The device, which weighs less than a pound, records AVCHD video at 1920×1080 pixel resolution and features Advanced OIS, which means your footage will be a steady as it is sharp.  An 8GB SDHC Pro Card can hold 80 minutes of video of maximum quality.  This comcorder is so smart, it captures the action before you press a button.  The Pre-Rec function continuously records three seconds of video to an internal buffer memory.

Panasonic HDC-SD5; $999; www.panasonic.com

Point of Sale

Sunday, September 30th, 2007

I don’t know of one business anywhere in the world that isn’t using some form of a computer in order to help maintain their business. Machines have leaped into the technological age and there isn’t one on the market that doesn’t have some kind of a computer back-end. Even the registers at your local supermarket are equipped with an LCD monitor and cool images that show up on the screens during all aspects of the sale. So naturally it’s no surprise to know that there are other companies out there with refurbished products available to businesses and corporations around the world.

Point of SaleThis evening I came across Vision Point of Sale (visionpos.com). Through this company you can purchase all of the used point of sale equipment that your heart desires. Most supermarkets, for example, use ibm pos equipment. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a market with some kind of a Dell setup but I’m also living in what most would consider to be “Lower Slower Delaware” so who knows if there’s just a time delay or if people know that IBM builds solid machines and even refurbs are better than Dell, hands down. Another one that I found was NCR point of sale equipment, featured to the left, can also be used to help out your business. If you’re looking into POS equipment then check out visionpos.com.

Upgrades

Sunday, September 30th, 2007

I just upgraded Wordpress to the latest stable version (via Fantastico at least).  I’m waiting patiently for version 2.3 to be made available for Fantastico so I can play around with that version, there were a lot of interesting features added that I’m interested in trying out.  Most of it is TinyMCE based because there are supposedly hidden features in earlier versions that you can now access with 2.3.  It’s worth checking out for all of you wordpress fans.  I’ve been using Wordpress for years, I started using it when it was first created by Cafelog as B2.  Now there’s B2Evolution which is nice and all but when you’re only running one blog and you have the features of a complete CMS program – Wordpress is really the way to go.

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Winter wolves

Sunday, September 30th, 2007

I’ve been doing some surfing around the ‘net for some new pc games to play. I’ve kind of gotten sick of the ones that I’ve been playing on a regular basis recently. You can only play Snood for so long before you want to actually throw shrunken multi-colored heads around. I came across Winter Wolves, it’s a newer site where you can download a few different games. I downloaded Quizland because I’m more into puzzle games than anything. I downloaded the trial because I don’t see a point in paying for something before I try it. I’ve only ever done that once and it was based on the fact that it was software that I knew I needed to have. I don’t even think I remember the name, now that I think of it.

QuizlandSo I downloaded this game called Quizland which has a database of over 1500 questions. You have like 15 seconds to answer each question and the faster you answer the question, the higher your score. And on each level you can use the Jolly button so that two answers can be removed. It reminds me of “Who wants to be a millionaire” because there’s that 50/50 option where two wrong answers are taken away. With the full version of the game you can play local multiplayer games, submit your high scores to the online standings and all of the 1500 questions are available. If you get the answer wrong, you can view the correct answer so you can keep that in your brain for future reference. It’s only $9.95 and you can download it in both PC and Mac formats.

There are many other games that you can download, and the cool thing about it is the option to download both PC and mac games. Knowing that in the very near future (thanks to my recent loan approval), I’ll be purchasing an iMac with some of the money so having the ability to download mac games that I find more than entertaining is a great thing to know. I’ll have to keep WinterWolves.com on my list of resources. If you own either a Mac or a PC, and you like games, then this is the site for you.

Sony Walkman S600 and A800 Series

Sunday, September 30th, 2007

After a few false starts, Sony is firing two shots across Apple’s bow with its latest flash-based music players, both of which play music, photos, and videos and offer Clear Audio Technologies for enhanced sound quality.  The A800 and S600 leave the lame Sony Connect store behind and support AAC, MP3 and WMA files.  They also sync with the more popular Windows Media Player 11 and work with all the major online music stores under that umbrella (including Napster, Urge and Yahoo).  The A800 features a two-inch QVGA LCD (good for watching video) and comes in white, black, silver and pink.  The sportier S600 features a smaller 1.8-inch display and includes an FM tuner.  This model comes in black, pink, red, and silver and has a soft-touch finish.

Sony Walkman S600 Series; $120 (2GB), $160 (4GB), $210 (8GB)

Sony Walman A800 Series; $140 (2GB), $180 (4GB), $230 (8GB)

www.sonystyle.com

You Can Submit!

Sunday, September 30th, 2007

When surfing around the Internet you come across many different things that can easily spark your interest. Lately for me it’s been all about home improvement with my upcoming purchase, but at the same time I do still have work in mind and everything from search engine marketing to blogging and even podcasting still sparks my interest. For a while now I’ve been interested in podcasting, this is mainly due to the recent rise in it, it’s a lot easier than typing things out – I’ll tell you that much. There are so many different programs that you can use to record your podcast and while some take the approach of doing verbal interviews with someone (as opposed to the AIM based ones that many have done in the past). It also takes less time to get your point across through podcasting than it would if you were doing a formal write-up for your visitors to listen to.

YouCanSubmitThis afternoon I came across YouCanSubmit, it’s a site that helps you out with everything you could possibly need for your website, including podcast production.  This site isn’t based on podcasting, please don’t go there thinking that it is.  This is an SEO company that helps you with everything you could possibly need in regards to getting your website noticed, and to keep people coming back.  They tell you from the get-go that you’re not spending thousands of dollars on getting your website to a PR7 with 50,000 visitors a day, they help you to get your name out there and make your valuable content known to potential readers to keep them coming back to you on a regular basis.  This is the point of any SEO company, they’re just taking a different approach to it.

You don’t need to fill your website with ads for other companies, you don’t need to change your content around to better suit your visitors needs.  All you need to do is have a website of any kind.  It could be a regular blog, it could be a business, it could be a daily podcast about everything from daily life to corporate companies that you feel you need to have an opinion of.

Check them out, you may like what you see and use their services.