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Amazon Video on Demand

Author Thomas | 01.10.2008 | Category Web

iTunes of course has the market for music downloads on the Internet, but a winner is not so clear cut for video content. Video content can be rented from iTunes. The limitations and viewing period is somewhat bothersome, but you can watch your videos on an iPod.

Amazon has entered the game with their Video on Demand program. Visitors can select from videos within the On Demand library and rent or buy the movie.

One benefit of the Amazon Video on Demand is that the first 2 minutes are free to watch. With this benefit, you can start watching a movie, and if you find out in the first 2 minutes that it’s going to be a dud, you’re not out anything.

Videos can be watched without an Internet connection by using the free Unbox program. If you start watching a video, you can stop and come back where you left off. Another nice feature is that you can watch from different computers. If you’re going on a trip, you don’t have to download the whole movie before leaving, just log in when you reach your destination to watch.

You can connect you video stream to your Tivo or from your computer to your TV.

Amazon Prime Review

Author Thomas | 02.05.2008 | Category Web

Paying for shipping and having to wait 5-14 days before your delivery date can be a real pain. Amazon Prime makes it easy with free, two-day shipping.

I’ve been using Amazon Prime for a while and love it! Most often, better deals are to be found online than in the stores, but when holidays and birthdays roll around, it’s hard to plan in advance. I usually think of what I need to get the week of the birthday or holiday. Not planning ahead meant I’d spend more money at a local retail store than I would have had I planned 5-14 days in advance.

Amazon Prime is a yearly membership with Amazon that offers free, two-day shipping on qualifying items. The qualifying items are marked as Amazon Prime on the site. The free two-day shipping is great because now I can get a great deal on the product, order a lawn mower (for example) and have it delivered to my door in two days for free.

It’s incredible. Amazon is happy because you’re more likely to come back and purchase their products, and you’re happy because you get your products quickly.

The Amazon Prime membership is around $80 US. Because I can order what I want and get free shipping and delivery in two days, it’s worth every penny of it.

Speed up your Internet Connection with OpenDNS

Author Thomas | 22.04.2008 | Category Freebies, Web

Many Internet surfers now enjoy “High Speed” Internet. However, many find that “High Speed” just isn’t a good description of the type of connection. Oh sure, today’s High Speed connections are faster than dial-up (for the most part), but many people find frustration in waiting for pages to load and videos to finish downloading.

There’s a tool that’s been around for a while that more and more, people are becoming aware of. OpenDNS is a free service that can help speed up your Internet connection while providing free content filtering. Simply follow the instructions to point your home computer or your home wireless (or regular) router to the OpenDNS servers.

Every time you enter a website to visit in your web browser, OpenDNS will route the traffic back to your computer most often much faster than your ISP can do. Create a free account at OpenDNS to enable the content filtering and block specific websites or groups of websites.

Remote Desktop Presentations

Author Thomas | 08.04.2008 | Category Freebies, Software, Web

Recently, we highlighted Logmein which allows a user to remotely control his or her Mac or PC from another Mac or PC.  However, to do so, the a user name and password for the remote computer must be provided.

To share the desktop only, say for an online presentation or online meeting, there are a couple great options out there that will let you share your desktop screen for free.

SharedView by Microsoft is a great, lightweight little tool that gets the job done.  You can use the tool to share your entire desktop, or just one application (e.g. Powerpoint or a web browser) at a time.

Installation and Getting Started - To initiate a session, you need to download and install the software, and log in using a Microsoft Passport (Live/Hotmail) account.

Security - According SharedView, the connections are encrypted.

Collaboration - You can allow the other participants to have mouse pointers on your shared screen and will be identified with their names on the mouse.

Easy to use - The application is very easy to use especially compared to some of the solutions out there that have too many confusing features.  If you want something quick and simple, SharedView is the way to go.

The software is easy to use and has an added feature of being able to preview what others are seeing.  When you initiate are sharing session, the window (highlighted above) provides login information that you can email or share with others that you want to participate.

Western Digital 250GB Passport

Author Thomas | 02.04.2008 | Category Electronics, Web

The 250 GB “Passport” from Western Digital is a fantastic external hard drive.

With such a sleek design, the Passport is definitely not an eye-sore. It’s amazing how lightweight the device and small is the device.

Power - The Passport is powered through its USB connection to your computer. Meaning, you don’t need an extra power plug. This feature truly makes the device a portable external hard drive.

Small Drive - It’s amazing that 250 gigabytes can fit on a device so small, but it does. An added bonus from some retailers is that the hard drive comes with a soft, padded black case (which is the case I purchased and love).

Hard Drive Installation - On my laptop, it was plug and play. I love it when I don’t have to install any software for devices I plug into my computer. However, you can run an installer included on the hard drive that will help your synchronize your data and encrypt it to the drive. I usually dislike having to install any additional software, however, since this device is so portable and will probably travel with me, I want my data that is stored on the hard drive to be encrypted. The sync software runs off of the drive itself, so you don’t even have to worry.

Synchronizing & Encrypting Data - Once you run the sync software and create a user name and password, you’re data that you sync will be encrypted to the drive.

The sync opens once you’ve entered your password and copies over your files.

Once your files have been synchronized, you can close the application or view your files through the file viewer.

If you access the drive directly, there is a folder called “WD Sync Data” that has your encrypted data, if you open the folder you can see that the files are stored in folders with letters and don’t make much sense (this is because they’ve been encrypted). If you want to save files directly to the drive without encrypting them, you can do so as well.

File System - The hard drive comes formatted with the FAT32 file system which is more compatible across operating systems but does have limitations as far as maximum file size for a single file (it’s huge about 4GB, but if you’re storing movies, you can try NTFS). I decided to format my drive to NTFS which provides better security, larger file size, and supposedly is more stable. To format the drive as NTFS, I right-clicked on the drive and selected format (This step erases the data on the drive, just FYI, so copy over any existing data you want to keep before formatting. The step also will take a few hours).

After using the drive for hours and hours, it still stays relatively cool. You can feel the hard-drive whirl when holding the drive, but other than that, the drive is very quiet.

With its sleek, glossy design, portability, and ease of use, the Western Digital Passport is a great deal.

LogMeIn Remote Login to your Computer

Author Thomas | 29.03.2008 | Category Freebies, Web

I came across LogMeIn while trying to help a family member edit a video on a Mac. I needed to find a program that allowed me to remotely control an Apple computer from a Windows-based PC. I had a hard time finding anything until I stumbled upon LogMeIn.

First thing I love about LogMeIn is that it’s free. There are more advanced versions that you can pay for, but it meets all my needs for a remote connection. In essence, I can see the desktop of the other computer, open programs, type, etc.

LogMeIn can be used to monitor servers, your computers at home, connect computers together through a VPN, and as a backup service.

I noticed that my connections are encrypted at 256 bit encryption which very reassuring. I’ve set up my account so that it sends me an email if someone tries to access my account (a fantastic feature).

Multiple computers can be added to your account.

You can essentially reach your home, work, and other computers remotely from anywhere.

All that is required is to create a free account, and follow the simple steps to install the java plug-in for your web browser.

I remote through FireFox, and it works great!

Hope you enjoy LogMeIn!