Archive for Internet

Abstracting hardware: obsolescence obsolete (with OnLive)

March 25th, 2009 • 1 comment
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

OnLiveMost everyone has heard the news of OnLive, the new cloud-based computer gaming platform. I’m not here to regurgitate that for you. Instead, I intend to give it some context.

Cloud computing is all the rage right now. With netbooks growing in popularity, all sorts of Internet-based services are popping up to make the experience of owning a netbook more rich. OnLive applies this model to PC gaming while broadening its appeal way beyond the netbook crowd. Where an app like Google Documents might outsource a little processor load and some data storage, OnLive’s system will send all of the intense load to your CPU and graphics card associated with PC gaming to a monstrous computer hundreds of miles away. The benefits are clear. While existing web apps have sold themselves to the typical PC user on convenience (e.g. the ability to access documents anywhere), this is the only service I can think of that has a chance to sell itself by saving gamers significant money on the hardware that is typically necessary to run these intensive games… not to mention the dedication to keep up with frequent upgrades just to maintain the performance status-quo. An entry-level gaming PC is going to cost around $800. This system enables a $300 netbook to do the same thing by relegating every task associated with the game other than actual display of the resulting video stream.

There are also implications here for the established modes of game distribution. In my most recent post, I discussed a possibility for a new model of game distribution that does away with the physical product altogether, but that proposition did not suggest any fundamental shifts in the way gaming works—only the way they are distributed. Digital distribution platforms have gained significant popularity over the past year. OnLive’s distribution model is digital, but it seems to be something of a hybrid between GameTap and Steam. I honestly don’t understand the model entirely, but Steve Perlman claimed in an interview there will be tiers of service which suggests a subscription model while the interface’s options for either buying or renting any given title suggests a more traditional model of paying per title. This is serious competition on either front. Steam will have difficulty as games that are available for both services will have significantly lower requirements through OnLive. Subscription services like GameTap typically serve so-called “casual” gamers better and contain few if any new release hardcore games. OnLive is coming into this with major partnerships with huge publishers (and committments for simultaneous release with retail) to give it some more muscle.

For the numerous advantages, this service already has a few small disadvantages I can see. First, the max resolution being quoted right now is 720p which is a bit behind the times. I understand there are now Internet bandwidth considerations as the resolution increases, and I’m sure that is the reason for this choice. It doesn’t make it any better for gamers that crave high fidelity experience with their PC gaming and are accustomed to running 1920×1200 or higher resolutions on their PCs. Second, with any digital distribution model comes concerns about consumer issues. As with other similar platforms, many consumers will likely not be comfortable with the license they are actually purchasing. Every software purchase is merely a license whether or not you receive a physical product, but, frankly, it is much easier for software publishers to enforce unreasonable demands in a license while they still control the software. If I have a disc, I can always resell it whereas a digital software purchase may be impossible to transfer.

For all my excitement, I am sceptical. It sounds much to good to be true. The only way we’ll know (before an actual launch, that is) is by getting in on the beta which should start this summer. If OnLive launches at an attractive price, good performance, and reasonable licensing agreements, this may be the Trojan horse that brings PC gaming back to the forefront.

Video: Automated online bargain hunting

March 20th, 2009 •
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Grab the savingsOnline shopping has opened up for many of us a shopping world that was totally alien before it. Online retailers are competing with every other store you can think of which makes the competition fierce. They also sell large quantities of items which opens up room for deep discounts never before imagine by B&M retailers. Computers and the Internet also make it easier to shop. Here is a technique that automates the entire bargain hunting process. If you want something and a have a few weeks to wait, use this procedure, and there’s a good chance you’ll find a deal you never thought possible.

First, you’ll need a Gmail account. If you already have one, you’ll probably need an additional one. Second, you will need a Yahoo account for use with Yahoo Alerts.

Use the procedure described in the video, sit back, and watch the deals roll in!

 

Here are some great feeds to subscribe to in order to get the most out of this system:

That should get you started. If you find other feeds I may have missed, please post them in the comments. Thanks for watching. I’ll have a new episode on April 3rd.

Download the podcast

Google Reader adds comments for sharing

March 12th, 2009 •
Tags: , , , , , ,

Google sharing commentsThis is a big deal for social web addicts. One of the first articles posted to this site was about the inadequacies of Google Reader as a sharing platform when compared to FriendFeed. Yesterday, one of FriendFeed‘s advantages over Google’s sharing platform was mitigated as Google unveiled comments for shared items. Google Reader makes it easy to share stories with friends, but it hasn’t fostered conversation around shared content. The best you could do is to either e-mail the sharer or re-share the item with a note containing your own comments. This new feature is a real breakthrough, and it’s something I know for a fact I will use every day. Now, if Google will only copy Gmail’s new label management system right on over to Google Reader…

Tagging conventions and hive organization

March 9th, 2009 •
Tags: , , ,

tagsWhen the excellent social bookmarking site Delicious launched in 2003, it re-branded an old idea about categorizing and organizing data—namely tagging. Tagging is basically the same concept as keywords, but somehow the rebranding makes it seem more friendly and accessible. Delicious provided users with a system that made tagging easy and gave users a way to exploit this organization allowing them to browse tags to find sites and pages of interest.

With tagging comes debate about how best to utilize the tags to the benefit of the community. In the summer of 2007, Tagamac—a blog about utilizing tagging on the Macintosh platform—wrote a post outlining a set of general tagging conventions that can be applied to any tagging system. The post excited me, and I began religiously putting these tenets into practice. The conventions as laid out in the post are simple:

  1. Be succinct
  2. Use lowercase tags
  3. Use singular words

A couple of months back, I realized this system wasn’t really working for me. The realization came from my own habits in searching Delicious for content. First, let me say that Delicious is a fantastic search tool. Since Google uses an algorithm to return search results, it can be gamed and isn’t always accurate. Delicious having user-generated tags is much more accurate. If I browse through a tag on Delicious, I know some user has looked at each of these sites and decided to give it that tag. It’s much more reliable than an algorithm no matter how sophisticated. Needless to say, I often use Delicious to find resources. I noticed that when I searched Delicious, I didn’t assume that others followed the conventions laid out in the Tagamac post which I myself followed. In fact, I couldn’t assume that… at least not with any success.

The author of these guidelines has an admirable goal. By setting out rigid guidelines for tag use, it would make tagging more useful to those who use the organization to find things while also making it easier for taggers to tag a piece of content. The problem may be that tagging is more of an organic activity. People tend not to dwell much on composing tags. It’s almost word association in which the tagger asks, “What does this make me think of?”

I want to address each of the three guidelines in turn. Succinctness is without a doubt important and is encouraged by most tagging systems. Tags are often limited to a single word by using the space as a delimiter. For example, if I bookmark a site in Delicious and want to tag it hardware, tutorial, and diy, I simply type each of those words in the tag box with spaces between like this: “hardware tutorial diy”. If I decide I also want to tag it “how to,” I can’t just type that into the tag box. Rather than adding a single “how to” tag, the item would be tagged “how” and “to”. Instead, I have to either butt the words together or use a hyphen to avoid their being split into two distinct tags. This automatically discourages tags with multiple words and, although there are times it is appropriate (such as the aforementioned scenario), multi-word tagging in general is not desirable or very useful. Using lowercase tags is a reasonable guideline, but most systems are case-insensitive. Why even worry if people searching tags will not see a difference? The last guideline is the most problematic: singularity. It is sometimes difficult to decide which form of a word to use when tagging. A simple rule like “Never use plural words,” would be great if everyone followed it all the time. The problem comes when only 10% of taggers follow the guideline all the time while the rest use whichever form of the word pops into their heads at the given time or whichever form seems more appropriate given the circumstance.

I propose an alternate method: the shotgun approach. Use every form of a relevant word that comes to mind when tagging an item. It may sound a bit like overkill, but consider the stakes: as a Delicious user, I want to find sites about games. I come to Delicious and view the bookmarks tagged “games” to the exclusion of anything that is tagged only “game” or “gaming“. Because of the simple fact that, when I ask myself, “What am I looking for?” my brain replies “games” rather than “game”, I will miss out on the benefits of any resources you have tagged “game”. What is lost by tagging an item with both plural and singular forms of a word? A few seconds at most. If I have a new bookmark that I want to benefit the most people, I will want to tag it with as many synonyms as possible to reach the widest audience. My tag shotgun will sacrifice accuracy to hit a wide range of users with my chosen tags. I can apply this tenet to more than just plurality. In terms of the example given in the previous paragraph, tagging a tutorial with “tutorial tutorials howto how2 how-to diy” will be much more effective to users than giving it any one of those. Even though my tag cloud will look a bit messier, I have provided more value with my post.

This method actually better exploits the advantages of the tag model of organization. For so many years, computers have been dependent upon the hierarchical folder structure for organization imposing a strict one-to-one ratio. We needed to decide the one location that would be the easiest place to find an item and hope we could reason that out the same way when we were later trying to find it. Tags grant us the flexibility or giving an unlimited number of descriptive words to an item to make it easy to find later regardless of how we decide to describe it.

Firefox extensions for heavy surfers

March 4th, 2009 • 2 comments
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Dude surfing a huge fucking waveThis could easily be mistaken for hyperbole, but that would in fact be a mistake: Firefox completely changed the experience I have on the world wide web. It is easily extensible and allows a level of customization that few other applications in general (let alone web browsers) can touch. This enables users to craft a web experience that is highly customized to the interests and habits of that user. The browser can, by the way of extensions, become a powerful tool for web developers, a home-base for social media addicts, or an incredible environment for heavy surfers. This post highlights some of the best extensions for web addicts.

Adblock PlusAdblock Plus- The web is a much different place than it was in the ’90s. At some point, companies realized they could advertise on the web. Now, web sites will sell their entire site design off to an advertiser and convert the whole site to an ad for a week or more. You’re going to see ads that try to get your attention by being disgusting. You’ll have animated flashing ads and ads that come up on top of content forcing you to watch before you read the site. It’s the one thing about the old web I really miss. I would almost be willing to go back to the days of the solid-grey backgrounds to dispense with the plethora of annoying ads I must put up with today. Luckily, thanks to a wonderful Firefox extension called Adblock Plus that will block 99% of all that crap, you can lose the ads and still keep your pretty backgrounds. The plugin automatically updates from a list of block rules that will cover most every ad you might see. You are also free to add your own custom rules to block ads the filters might have missed. Adblock Plus is the first extension covered for a reason: it is the biggest part of reclaiming your web surfing experience.

StumbleStumbleUpon- You’ve already loaded all your favorite sites into a feed reader like Google Reader, right? In that case, you may be looking for something to do when your feed reader is empty. StumbleUpon takes your interests and delivers a cool page related to one of them with every click of the Stumble button. My favorite metaphor to explain Stumble is that it is channel surfing for the web. Of course, it is far more intelligent than channel surfing. The StumbleUpon toolbar has a thumbs up and a thumbs down button. As you Stumble, you can rate pages using the buttons. This along with the interests you have selected determine which pages you will receive. It also includes a social networking aspect. You can add friends and recommend pages to them. Those pages will come up when they are stumbling. You can add any interesting page to StumbleUpon by clicking the thumbs up button. If a page has never been stumbled before, you will be prompted to provide some information in addition to a review. It’s a really fun way to discover more of the web.

XmarksXmarks (formerly Foxmarks)- Foxmarks has been a great way to keep bookmarks in sync across multiple computers. Link as many machines as you like to your account, and your bookmarks are always in sync on all the machines. Now, the name has changed to Xmarks and features have been added to allow users to discover new sites that may be of interest. The new features are intriguing, but the bookmark syncing alone is enough to recommend this extension to anyone who uses more than one computer. The bookmarks are available online through the web interface in case you can’t or don’t want to install the extension. You’ll never be able to get away from your bookmarks!

DeliciousDelicious/Diigo- I’m covering these together because you probably only need one or the other. Both are social bookmarking sites that, like Xmarks, store links to your favorite web sites online but unlike Xmarks these services have focused on the social aspects from the beginning. Before the massive improvements made in Firefox bookmarks with the 3.0 update, I used Delicious (and it’s extension) exclusively for bookmark storage. Now, I use both. In fact, I’m currently using Firefox bookmarks, Delicious, and Diigo. Diigo is a more full-featured service but is sorely lacking in the most important part of social experiences: users. Delicious has plenty of users to make the service seem worthwhile. The extensions for the services are similar. Both let you view bookmarks stored at the site without having to navigate to the page. Both allow users to easily add sites from the browser. They also work well with Firefox’s built-in bookmarks with a setting that allows bookmarks to be duplicated in both places. Both are indispensable for users who want to share their bookmarks and find cool new sites.

CybersearchEdit Middle 2 and Cybersearch- Now, the most obscure extensions covered here. These are not flashy but are very useful. Firefox 3 gave us the “Awesome Bar”—a toolbar that is significantly less stupid than its predecessors in every browser released up to that point including Firefox 2+. Now, anything you type in the location bar is searched against URLs and titles of pages in your bookmarks and history. You may notice that searches are halted if you edit letters in the middle of whatever you have typed. Edit Middle 2 fixes this strange behavior and allows search to persist even if you correct a mistake in the middle of your typing. Cybersearch allows the “Awesome Bar” to search one more source: Google. Fantastic additions to an already stellar feature.

Read It LaterRead It Later- You may often find yourself with stories in your feed that are going to require more time and attention than you have at the moment. Read It Later allows you to organize pages and stories such as these. It uses Firefox’s bookmarking but tags the bookmarks you create with it so that it can include them in your reading list—a list of pages you would like to read at some point. Once you have read the page, you can add it to the permanent bookmarks, add it to a number of social news and bookmarking service, or simply mark it as read removing it from your list and bookmarks. This extension also offers syncing of its bookmarks, but you won’t need that if you’re also running Xmarks. The coolest feature of Read It Later is that, upon installing it, your Google Reader will incorporate a Read It Later button next to each of your stories making it easy to mark stories from the RSS reader for later review.

Tab Mix PlusTab Mix Plus- Firefox tabs are an amazing feature the browser thrust into popularity years ago. The browser’s native implementation improves with each release, but there are still some missing features. That can all be remedied with the Tab Mix Plus extension. You will now have a range of tab options you probably never before considered but soon will be unable to live without. My favorite option is the ability to choose which tab receives focus after you close one. I prefer the opening tab since I usually want to continue surfing that page after diverging to one of the links on it.

Stop-or-Reload Button- Here’s another small and simple extension that is really worth quite a lot. You may soon find that toolbar real estate is a premium in your newly tricked-out browser. This extension reclaims the space of one button which can be devoted to something more useful. How often do you need simultaneous access to both the stop and reload buttons? (That was a rhetorical question. You never need that, of course.) You only need to stop while a page is actively loading. Otherwise, you will instead have access to the reload button.

dlstatusbarDownload Statusbar- If your travels on the ‘net end up netting you any new files on your computer, you are probably somewhat frustrated with the fact that Firefox wants to pop up a new window when you start a download. It’s annoying. More annoying still is the fact that I have to switch between two windows to track my downloads while continuing to surf. The Download Statusbar puts your downloads at the bottom of the current window in a clean little bar above the status bar. When you aren’t downloading, it goes away. It’s much more elegant than Firefox’s default download manager.

Customization tips

You may find your interface a bit bloated if you install all of these and keep their default settings. You may customize the interface by right-clicking on an empty spot on the Firefox toolbar (try between the location bar and the search bar).

Firefox UI customization

From this menu, you may disable toolbars or click Customize to start rearranging toolbar buttons. I usually end up with all bars hidden except the navigation bar and the bookmark bar. If there are buttons from another bar I want to use, I click the customize option and drag those from their current bar to either the navigation bar or the bookmark bar. Then I hide the other bar to save space. If you’re a Windows user, you can drag your bookmark toolbar to the top of the window next to the menu bar (You know the one. File, Edit, etcetera.) then hide the dedicated bookmark toolbar. Of course, if you’re a Mac user and don’t use the bookmark toolbar, you can just hide it without losing anything. This will save even more space. The key here is to get as much functionality into the smallest space possible to leave the most room for the actual browsing!

I hope you enjoy these tips. These extensions have really made the significant time I spend in my browser much more enjoyable and productive. If you’d like to recommend an extension or a tip for other web junkies like yourself, just drop us a comment!

Gaming blogs roundup

March 2nd, 2009 •
Tags: , , , , ,

Gaming feeds

I’m on a major gaming binge right now. As a result, I’m looking around for some cool blogs to add to my reader. I’ve found quite a bit of good stuff. Gaming is really so much more mainstream than it was ten years ago. Its audience has also matured tremendously. The media and the moral police of this great nation have had to accept the maturity of the content. The blogosphere reflects these sweeping changes in the medium. The blogging medium is even newer than gaming so as gaming has matured, blogging has matured into respected citizen journalism. These are the blogs that stand out right now. I’m skipping right over the Joystiqs and Kotakus—the juggernauts. You probably already know those. These are the blogs that, although they are a little harder to find, are well worth the effort.

Catchy Name News

Catchy Name News (RSS feed)- I first have to mention a friend’s blog. Justin is a long-time gamer with a lot of insight, a sense of humor, and an intense hatred of space marines and “art games.” His articles are always hilarious and often cover the dark corners of gaming many fear to tread. He just won the local SFIV tournament so head over to his blog and comment your congrats.

Sexy Videogame Land

Sexy Videogame Land (RSS feed)- Leigh Alexander is all over the ‘net at major sites like Gamasutra and Kotaku. This is her personal gaming blog. There are some very cool posts. She’s currently playing RapeLay, the rape game that Amazon got into hot water for selling. I thought that might get your attention.

Magical Wasteland

Magical Wasteland (RSS feed)- The design of the Magical Wasteland is complementary to the content. The entire site is black and white with no images getting in the way of the content which is insightful and well-written. This won’t clog up your reader either as updates come about once a week.

Arcade Heroes

Arcade Heroes (RSS feed)- If you want to follow the dead and/or dying arcade scene, this is one great place. One thing you’ll learn from reading the site is that the arcade scene is much more vibrant in Japan than it is here in the US.

Dusty Pixels

Dusty Pixels (RSS feed)- Is retro your game? Dusty Pixels covers game not in this generation (and I don’t see anything from the previous one), but even younger gamers may still be able to get “retro” as they seem to cover games for the original Playstation. There is a post with cool tips for acquiring older games to help get your collection going.

There are probably more blogs than there are people on earth so you probably have a few favorites I have missed. Maybe you have a gaming blog of your own you’d like to plug. Post a link in the comments. I’m always game for more cool game blogs!

Recession relief: Getting geek on the cheap

February 23rd, 2009 •
Tags: ,

As an Internet user, you should know you never have to pay retail for almost any gadget you might want. Internet retailers can sell much cheaper and they discount much more aggressively than their brick-and-mortar counterparts. Here are some of my favorite sites for getting great deals on geek sustenance—games and gadgets.

Games

Cheap Ass GamerCheapassgamer.com- Maybe you want to save $5 or $10 on a game that’s launching soon. Maybe you want to find a heavy discount on a game that’s been out for a few months. Maybe you want the details on an upcoming game clearance at a retail chain. Cheapy D and the forum folks at CAG will hunt down the craziest deals and provide you with all the details. This site has been around for a while, and I don’t think they ever really miss. If there’s a deal, check out these forums and you will find it.

Cheap College GamersCheapCollegeGamers- Another forum for gaming deals. I only discovered this one recently. My favorite thing about it: the RSS feed is updated more frequently than that of Cheapassgamer and hits more of the deals where CAG only includes maybe one stellar deal per week. This feed has multiple deals every day. A great candidate for your Google Reader.

half.comHalf.com- eBay bought this site a few years ago. Almost yearly, eBay announces the site will be shut down, but the users just aren’t having it. So, the site survives. It is a marketplace for games, movies, books, and music. It’s sorta like eBay, but everything is Buy-it-now. All the auction foreplay is dispensed with. One really nice feature is the pre-order feature (now called Match My Price). Go to an item page, click Match My Price, and enter your desired price. When a seller lists an item, they will see they can sell it immediately for your requested price. If they choose to do so, it’s over. The item is yours and they are paid. You can set expiration for your pre-order for as little as two weeks, and you will receive e-mail updates to remind you that the pre-order is active. You can also manually cancel it at any time.

Gadgets and Gear

woot!Woot- I’ve covered this one before, but this article cannot pass without mentioning it. Woot will give you one daily deal on a product. Most products are geek-friendly although there is the occasional golf club or espresso machine.

slickdealsSlickdeals.net- The site has deals on all types of items, but much of what is posted is tech related. The RSS feed is great, but I find the deals are sometimes expired by the time they hit my reader. I guess if you really want to be thorough, you will have to keep the site open and spam refresh.

hardforum[H]ard|Forum- These are the forums of an excellent computer hardware site HardOCP. Check out the Hot Deals and the For Sale/Trade forums for nice prices on computer hardware and gadgets. You may find some gaming stuff here too. I actually came away with a 3DO console for practically nothing.

I know there are many more sites I may have missed. That’s where you come in! Post in the comments your favorite deals sites or even techniques for getting great prices on your geek gear. You may see an episode of the podcast in the coming weeks with some advanced online shopping techniques that will completely automate the process of finding deals online! Subscribe to the site feed or the podcast (iTunes) to stay informed.

Tumblr vs. Posterous: microblogging throwdown

February 22nd, 2009 • 15 comments
Tags: , , , ,

Tumblr versus Posterous

I’ve been auditioning the two heavyweights in the greater-than-140-characters microblogging space for a bit over a week now. I can tell you right off the bat, there is no clear winner here. Both services certainly have a place. In fact, the services are not quite as similar as I first thought.

Registration is an easy win for Posterous. It is one of few services that do not require a registration form to begin. Instead, just e-mail post [at] posterous [dot] com. Tumblr’s registration isn’t terrible, but you can’t beat no registration.

It was easily apparent that Tumblr (read my post about it) is the more full-featured of the two. It is truly just a half-step below a full-featured blog. There are multiple media types that can be easily added to your tumblelog. Posterous (read my post on that one too) takes a more hands-off approach to media. If you make a post with a link to a video on YouTube or a host of other media hosting sites, the media will automatically be embedded, but no attempt is made to facilitate your actually adding a video or audio file yourself unless you have first uploaded it to one of the aforementioned services. Tumblr, on the other hand, will send you to Vimeo when you want to post a video then add it to your blog. Audio hosting appears to be done in-house at Tumblr.

Both services offer a bookmarklet for easily sharing content without interrupting your surfing. There was at least one page that would not share with the Tumblr bookmarklet for some reason. I never really understood why that was. It seemed to share fine with Posterous. The bookmarklets are slightly different: Tumblr’s opens a new window/tab where Posterous overlays on top of the current page. I didn’t really see that make much difference. I’m sure some people would prefer one or the other, but it is purely cosmetic.

Both services also offer posting via e-mail. Posterous is intelligent in handling your e-mails. As I stated before, it will automatically embed media if you send e-mail with a link to said media. It seems Tumblr posts any link you send as just a link which is a bit of a bummer. You can, of course, still post a video through the web interface, but it would be nice to see e-mail posts handled based on context. Also, the Posterous address is a no-brainer: post [at] posterous [dot] com. Tumblr generates an e-mail address for each user. This means, you will probably not be recalling your e-mail for Tumblr if you happen to be away from your contact list.

The web interface is not the focus of the Posterous service. They really expect you to post everything via e-mail. It is still serviceable though. You get a WYSIWYG text editor, and, just like sending an e-mail, it will intelligently decide how to handle links. Even though Posterous doesn’t show you dedicated options for posting media, that functionality is present and works beautifully and simply. At Tumblr, you will select a type of post which will determine how your data is displayed. It has all the goodies as well. It’s nice to be able to explicitly specify what you are trying to post. If you were to post a link to a video site Posterous does not support, it is unclear how that would be handled. Since you would have already specified in Tumblr that you intend to post video, it makes sense that you would receive an error if Tumblr cannot find video at the given location.

If you need customization, you should really just forget about Posterous as there isn’t any to speak of. Tumblr has a really wide-range of options here. If this is going to be your only blog and you want to express yourself, Tumblr is the way to go.

Tumblr has added a new feature since I wrote about them that is very interesting. Users can now call a 1-800 number to post audio from their phones on the go. This is really cool, but I’m not sure exactly how I would use it.

As I said in the opening, neither service dominates the other. My advice: if this is your only blog or you really need to be able to customize, go with Tumblr. It’s easy, offers a lot of features, and completely flexible as far as styling. If you’re looking for a service to supplement other services in the social media space, stick to Posterous. It’s quick to setup, you don’t even have to think about design or customization, and you can basically use e-mail for all your posting be it text or multimedia. I’m personally going with Posterous. I’m already well-represented on the social web so I don’t need a microblogging service to reflect myself in any aspect other than the content. Posterous really dispenses with all the frills and lets me focus on just that.

Once again I want to mention that, should you decide to start using one of these services, you should totally add me. We could be friends and stuff. I will probably use my Posterous for most things, but I’m keeping my tumblelog around just to see if I can find a use for the über-cool audio posting via phone feature. If you’d prefer to follow both via RSS, I made a pipe for that which will try to eliminate any duplicate posts.  See you on the Interwebs!

Geek your way to a lower entertainment budget

February 20th, 2009 •
Tags: , , , , , , ,

TVJ.D. over at Get Rich Slowly (one of my favorite blogs, btw) has a fantastic article about how he ditched cable, spent a fraction of the cost on iTunes downloads, and supplemented that with some free content from Hulu. This trend is becoming more and more popular in recent times. Kevin Rose has mentioned a couple of times on his podcast Diggnation that he recently ditched cable and now gets his entertainment via the Internet. I personally have been cable-free for quite a few years now. Between video games, Hulu, and Netflix streaming, there’s never a dull moment.

How I Cut My Television Bill in Half (via Get Rich Slowly)

Does Netflix need a desktop client?

February 19th, 2009 •
Tags: , ,

QueuedReadWriteWeb has unearthed an interesting AIR app. Queued is a multi-platform application that manages your Netflix queue. I have played with the app a bit to do some queue changes. It’s actually a great app. The interface is undeniably beautiful. In addition to providing queue management functionality, the app also has a few tricks up its sleeve that allow you to find new movies with lists of the top rentals, new movies, and your recommendations. It provides all the pertinent information needed to select new movies for queueing and to decide how to arrange your existing queue.

I’m really liking the app thus far, but I do question the utility of it. The one feature I gain over managing my queue at the site is offline access. I can make changes to my queue, and they are updated to the site the next time I have an active connection. Frankly, I don’t often find myself using the computer without Internet access, but there is something to be said for the convenience of a quick, desktop app to accomplish a task that would otherwise be done in a somewhat slower web app that I will first have to actually load in my web browser. I’m going to give it a few weeks and see how (and if) this app makes sense for me. I suggest you try it too!

Archives

RSS@raddevon on Twitter