computerutilitiez

Hack to get free WiFi on Virgin America flights exploiting Chrome Book promo (Save $12.95)

2011-12-26T19:00:00.000-08:00

So I’m currently a couple thousand feet up in the air on a Virgin America flight to San Francisco from Boston and Google are doing this cool thing where they loan you a Chrome Book for the flight, apart of this, you get free wifi on the Chrome Book, whilst on any other device you need to pay like $12.95. I figured out by faking the User Agent to be that of the Chrome Book, you can get free wifi.

TL;DR : Set your browser User Agent to this:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS i686 1193.117.0) AppleWebKit/535.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/16.0.912.66 Safari/535.7

On Safari do it like so, make sure the Develop menu bar item is enabled (Do this in the Advance tab in Safari Preferences), then click on the Develop menu, then into User Agent, click other and copy and paste in the above browser agent string.
This tricks whatever is handling the wifi into thinking your computer is a Chrome Book and gives you free wifi as apart of the programme they’re running with Google!

Boycott Companies that Support SOPA and Protect IP

2011-12-23T08:53:00.000-08:00

It's all about money. Boycott the goods and services of the companies that support SOPA and Protect IP.

SOPA
(For Info on Protect IP, visit http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-s968/money for now. I will try to incorporate this.)

Also, it has been suggested that you should support organizations and companies that express concern with these bills. If you do patronize these organizations, you should let them know that you appreciate that they are opposed to SOPA and Protect IP. Otherwise, they’ll just think it’s a good season for business.
http://www.cdt.org/report/list-organizations-and-individuals-opposing-sopa

Organizations and companies that support SOPA sent this letter to congress.
http://www.theglobalipcenter.com/sites/default/files/pressreleases/letter-359.pdf

Start boycotting these goods and services immediately and let these companies know that you will continue to do so until they actively withdraw support for SOPA.

Here's links to contact info for each company. Try to make your message make sense. If you're not a lawyer, don't threaten to boycott a company that makes law practice software. It's better to tell them that you're disappointed in their decision to support SOPA and that you will tell anyone who will listen about their attack on free speech. Maybe even mention that you'll tweet about it or post their decision on your Facebook page.

I recommend doing the following. Be polite, and call each of the companies. Here’s a sample script:

“Hi. I am calling because I found out that your company supports the Stop Online Piracy Act. This legislation is an attack on freedom of speech. I’ve decided to stop purchasing/watching/using your product/show/service until you actively withdraw support for the SOPA. I really enjoy your product/show/service, but I don’t want to support companies that support dangerous legislation. I plan to tweet and Facebook about your support of SOPA. Thank you for your time. Good bye.”

Writing hand written letters to these companies is also extremely effective.

Company List:
(Note: sometimes I include a link to Hoovers rather than the corporate site because it’s easier to find the mailing address and phone number on the Hoovers page)

1-800 Contacts, Inc. - 801-924-9800
https://www.1800contacts.com/ExternalRelations/ContactUs.aspx

1-800-PetMeds - 954-979-5995
http://www.1800petmeds.com/help.jsp

3M - 1-888-364-3577
http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/WW2/Country/Corp/Contact3M/

ABRO Industries, Inc. (automotive supplies) - (574) 232-8289
http://www.abro.com/contact-us/

Acushnet Company (Titleist and Footjoy golf) - (800)225-8500
http://www.acushnetcompany.com/contact.html

adidas America - (800) 448-1796
http://www.adidas.com/us/shared/help/help_contact-us.asp

AstraZeneca plc - 1-800-236-9933
http://www.astrazeneca-us.com/about-astrazeneca-us/contact-us/

Autodesk, Inc. - 415-507-5000
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=1073074

Beachbody, LLC - 310-883-9000
(P90X, Insanity Videos)
http://www.hoovers.com/company/Beachbody_LLC/rjtthki-1.html

Bose Coporation - (508) 879-7330
http://www.bose.com/controller?url=/contact/index.jsp

Burberry - 800 284 8480
http://us.burberry.com/store/customer-service/contact-us/

Business Software Alliance Members:

Adobe - 408-536-6000

http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/contact.html

Apple - 408.996.1010

Tim Cook, CEO

http://www.apple.com/contact/

Autodesk - See individual listing.

AVEVA - Houston Office: 713-977-1225

http://www.aveva.com/Contact.aspx

AVG - 978-319-4460

http://www.avg.com/ww-en/contacts

Bentley Systems - 1-800-236-8539

http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Corporate/Contact+Us/

CA - 800-225-5224

http://www.hoovers.com/ca/--ID__10383--/freeuk-co-factsheet.xhtml

Cadence Design Systems - 408-943-1234

http://www.cadence.com/cadence/contact_us/pages/default.aspx

CNC Software – Mastercam - 800-228-2877

http://www.mastercam.com/AboutUs/ContactUs/Default.aspx

Compuware - 313-227-7300

http://www.compuware.com/about/contact-us.html

Corel - 613-728-0826

http://www.hoovers.com/company/Corel_Corporation/ctyksi-1.html

Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corporation - France +33 1 61 62 61 62

http://www.3ds.com/contact/

Dell - 512-338-4400

http://www.hoovers.com/company/Dell_Inc/ryrsyi-1.html

Intel - 408-765-8080

http://www.hoovers.com/company/Intel_Corporation/rykxki-1.html

Intuit - 650-944-6000

http://www.hoovers.com/company/Intuit_Inc/rjffri-1.html

Kaspersky - 866-328-5700

Apparently Kaspersky doesn’t like SOPA. Thank them.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57336961-38/kaspersky-dumps-trade-group-over-sopa/

McAfee - 408-988-3832

http://www.hoovers.com/company/McAfee_Inc/rhxkhi-1.html

Microsoft - 425-882-8080

http://www.hoovers.com/company/Microsoft_Corporation/rcrtif-1.html

Minitab - 814-238-3280

http://www.minitab.com/en-US/company/contact-us/default.aspx

Progress Software - 781-280-4000

http://www.progress.com/en/about/contact.html

PTC - 781-370-5000

http://www.ptc.com/company/contacts/index.htm

Quark - 303-894-8888

http://www.quark.com/Contact_Quark/

Quest - 800-306-9329

http://www.quest.com/company/contact-us.aspx

Rosetta Stone - See individual listing.

Siemens PLM Software, Inc. - 800-498-5351

http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/

Sybase - 1-800-792-2735

http://www.sybase.com/contactus

Symantec - 650-527-8000

http://www.hoovers.com/company/Symantec_Corporation/rcxhif-1.html

TechSmith - 517-381-2300

http://www.techsmith.com/contact.html

The MathWorks - 508-647-7000

http://www.mathworks.com/company/aboutus/contact_us/

Callaway Golf Company - 800-588-9836
http://www.callawaygolf.com/Global/en-US/CustomerService/ContactUs.html

Caterpillar Inc. - 309-675-1000
http://www.cat.com/cda/layout?m=37324&x=7

CBS Corporation - 1-212-975-4321
http://www.cbscorporation.com/contact.php

Chanel USA - 1.800.550.0005
https://secure.chanel.com/en_US/customer-service/at-your-service.html

Coach - 1-800-444-3611
https://www.coach.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet//ContactUsView?storeId=10551&catalogId=10051

Columbia Sportswear Company - (800) 622-6953
http://www.columbia.com/contact-us/Contact_Us,default,pg.html

Comcast Corporation - 215-286-1700
http://www.hoovers.com/company/Comcast_Corporation/ryfyci-1.html

Coty Inc. - 212-479-4300
http://www.hoovers.com/company/Coty_Inc/hhkcri-1.html

CVS Caremark - 401-765-1500
http://www.hoovers.com/company/CVS_Caremark_Corporation/rfsxci-1.html

Dolby Laboratories, Inc. - 415-558-0200
http://www.hoovers.com/company/Dolby_Laboratories_Inc/ckcshi-1.html

Dolce & Gabbana USA, Inc.
http://store.dolcegabbana.com/localize.asp?page=help/contactform&

Electronic Arts, Inc. - (650) 628-1500 (they open at 8am PT)

Fender Musical Instrument Company - 480.596.9690
http://www.fender.com/contact_information.php

Ford Motor Company - 800-392-3673
http://corporate.ford.com/owner-services/customer-support/contact-ford/contact-ford-address-phone

Gibson Guitar Corp. - 1-800-444-2766
http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Support/

Harley-Davidson Motor Company - 1-800-258-2464
http://www.harley-davidson.com/en_US/Content/Pages/Utility/contact-us.html

Johnson & Johnson - (732) 524-0400
https://secure-www.jnj.com/wps/wcm/jsp/contactUs.jsp

Juicy Couture, Inc - 1-888-908-1160
http://www.juicycouture.com/Juicy-Couture-Customer-Service/customer-service,default,pg.html

kate spade - 866-999-5283
https://www.katespade.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-Kate-Site/default/CustomerService-Show

Lacoste USA - 1-800-452-2678
https://shop.lacoste.com/contactus?skipSignIn=true

Leatherman Tool Group, Inc. - (800) 847-8665
http://www.leatherman.com/about/contact

Lexmark International, Inc. - 1-859-232-2000
http://www1.lexmark.com/en_US/about-us/company/contact-us.shtml

Liz Claiborne, Inc - (212) 354-4900
http://lizclaiborneinc.com/web/guest/contactinformation

L'Oréal USA - 1-212-818-1500
http://www.lorealusa.com/_en/_us/tools/contact/contact.aspx

Lucky Brand Jeans - 1-866-975-5825
http://www.luckybrand.com/Customer-Care/customerCare,default,pg.html

Major League Baseball - 212-485-3444
http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/help/contact_us.jsp

Marmot - (707) 544-4590
http://marmot.com/contact

Monster Cable Products, Inc. - 415 840-2000
http://www.monstercable.com/service/contact.asp

National Basketball Association (NBA)
http://www.nba.com/email_us/

National Football League (NFL)
http://www.nfl.com/contact-us

NBCUniversal - 212-664-4444
http://www.nbcuni.com/contact-us/

Nervous Tattoo Inc., dba Ed Hardy - 323-785-4460
http://edhardyshop.com/contact.html

New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc. - (636) 326-1024
http://www.newbalance.com/help/

New Era Cap Co Inc - 1-877-632-5950
http://shop.neweracap.com/infoPages/contact.php

NHL Enterprises, L.P. - 212-789-2000
http://www.nhl.com/ice/feedback.htm

Nike, Inc. - 1-503-671-6453
http://nikeinc.com/pages/contact-nike-inc

Nintendo of America Inc. - 425.882.2040
http://www.nintendo.com/corp/contact.jsp

Oakley, Inc. - (800) 431-1439
http://www.oakley.com/customer-care/customer-care-info

Peavey Electronics Corporation - 601-483-5365
http://www.peavey.com/support/contactinfo/

Perry Ellis International - 1-800-994-0073
http://www.perryellis.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-perryellis-Site/default/CustomerService-ContactUs

Petzl America - 801-926-1310
http://www.petzl.com/en/corp/contact_info

Pfizer Inc. - 1-212-733-2323
https://www.pfizer.com/contact/mail_general.jsp

PGA of America - (561) 624-8400
http://www.pga.com/about/contact

Philip Morris International - 804-274-2000 or 800-343-0975
http://www.philipmorrisusa.com/en/cms/contact_us/default.aspx

PING - 1.800.474.6434
http://ping.com/about/contactus.aspx

Ralph Lauren Corporation - 888-475-7674
http://www.ralphlauren.com/helpdesk/index.jsp

Red Wing Shoe Company - 1-800-733-9464
http://www.redwingshoes.com/customer-service

Reebok International Ltd. - 781-401-5000
http://corporate.reebok.com/en/about_reebok/contact_us/default.asp

Revlon - 1-800-473-8566
http://www.revlon.com/Revlon-Home/Revlon-General/Contact.aspx

Rite Aid - Home Office: (717) 761-2633
http://www.riteaid.com/contact_us/

Rolex Watch USA Inc. - 665 5th Ave, New York, NY10022 - Tel: (212) 758-7700 - Fax: (212) 223-7443

Rosetta Stone Inc. - 1.800.280.8172?
http://www.rosettastone.com/global/contact

Shure Incorporated - (847) 600-2000
http://www.shure.com/americas/about-shure/contact-us/index.htm

Sony Electronics Inc. (try 1-800-222-7669)
http://news.sel.sony.com/en/corporate_information/contact_us

Sony Music Entertainment - (212) 833-8000
http://hub.sonymusic.com/about/feedback.php

Sony Pictures Entertainment - 310-244-4000
http://www.hoovers.com/company/Sony_Pictures_Entertainment_Inc/hjyjki-1.html

Spyder Active Sports, Inc - 303-544-4000
http://www.spyder.com/about/contact

Taylor Guitars - 619-258-1207
http://www.taylorguitars.com/contact/support/

Taylor Made Golf Company, Inc. - 1.866.530.8624
http://www.taylormadegolf.com/customer-service/contact-us

The Dow Chemical Company - 800-258-2436
http://www.dow.com/financial/contact.htm

The Estee Lauder Companies - 877-311-3883
http://www.esteelauder.com/customer_service/contact.tmpl

The Timberland Company - 603-772-9500
http://www.timberland.com/category/index.jsp?categoryId=4039631

The Walt Disney Company - 818-560-1000
http://corporate.disney.go.com/investors/shareholder_contact.html

Tiffany & Co. - 1-800-843-3269
http://www.tiffany.com/service/policy_con.aspx

Time Warner Inc. - 212.484.8000
http://www.timewarner.com/contact-us/

Toshiba America Business Solutions, Inc. - Corporate Offices (949) 583-3000
http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/support/jsp/navShell.jsp?cf=su_contact

Ultimate Fighting Championship - (702) 221-4780
http://www.ufc.com/contact

Viacom - (212) 258-6000
http://www.viacom.com/contact/Pages/default.aspx

Wal-Mart - 479-273-4000
http://walmartstores.com/AboutUs/9505.aspx

Warner Music Group - (212) 275-2000
http://www.wmg.com/contact

World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. 203-352-8600 (see bottom of their link for corporate)
http://www.wwe.com/help/contactus

Xerox Corporation - 1-800-275-9376
http://www.xerox.com/perl-bin/world_contact.pl#0

Zippo Manufacturing Company - 888.442.1932
http://www.zippo.com/customercare/contact_us.aspx

NOTE: Working on more... (Focusing on companies that sell products instead of associations) Gotta do some work. Be back later.

Dollar General Corporation
Eli Lilly and Company
Fortune Brands, Inc.
GlaxoSmithKline
HarperCollins Publishers
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Kenneth Garrett, photographer for National Geographic
LVMH Moët Hennessy
Louis Vuitton
Macmillan
Merck & Co., Inc.
New Levels Ent. Co. LLC
News Corporation
Ramsay Corporation
SoBe Entertainment
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)
Underwriters Laboratories Inc.
Universal Music Group
Uniweld Products Inc.
Vibram USA, Inc
W.R. Case & Sons Cutlery Co.
Wolverine World Wide, Inc.
Woolrich, Inc.
Zumba Fitness, LLC

Workspace:

2b1 Inc
Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed)
Allen Russell Photography
Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers
Alliance of Visual Artists (AVA)
Altria Client Services
American Apparel and Footwear Association
American Association of Independent Music (A2IM)
American Board of Internal Medicine
American Federation of Musicians
American Gramaphone LLC
American Made Alliance
American Mental Health Counselors Association
American Photographic Artists
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP)
American Society of Media Photographers
American Society of Picture Professionals
American Watch Association
Anatoly Pronin Photography
Andrea Rugg Photography
Anti-Counterfeiting and Piracy Initiative (ACAPI)
Applied DNA Sciences
Art Holeman Photography
Association of American Publishers (AAP)
Association of Equipment Manufacturers
Association of Independent Music Publishers (AIMP)
Association of Test Publishers
Australian Medical Council
Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association
Baker & Taylor Ent.
Bay State Psychological Associates
Beam Global Spirits & Wine
Blue Sky Studios, Inc.
Braasch Biotech LLC
Brian Stevenson Photography
Brigid Collins Family Support Center
Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI)
C. F. Martin & Co., Inc.
Cascade Designs Incorporated
Caveon, LLC
Cengage Learning
Center for Credentialing & Education
Center Stage Photography
CFA Institute
Christopher Semmes Photography
Church Music Publishers Association
CMH Images
Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy (CACP)
Commercial Photo Design
Commercial Photographers International
Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System
Consumer Healthcare Products Association
Copyright Alliance
Copyright Clearance Center (CCC)
Council of Fashion Designers of America
Country Music Association
CropLife America
Cross-Entertainment LLC
CSA Group
D'Addario & Company, Inc.
Dan Sherwood Photography
Danita Delimont Stock Photography
Dayco Products, LLC
Deluxe Entertainment Services Group
Dennyfoto
Derek DiLuzio Photography
DeVaul Photography
Direct Selling Association (DSA)
Directional Insight
Distefano Enterprises Inc.
Doriguzzi Photographic Artistry
Dolby Laboratories, Inc.
Dollar General Corporation
Don Grall Photography
Dunford Architectural Photography
Eagle Rock Entertainment
Ed McDonald Photography
Educational & Industrial Testing Service
Electronic Components Industry Association (ECIA)
Eli Lilly and Company
Englebert Photography
Entertainment Software Association (ESA)
ERAI, Inc.
Eric Meola Studio Inc
Evidence Photographers International Council
Ex Officio
Exxel Outdoors
FAME Publishing Co., LLC.
FAME Recording Studios
Far Bank Enterprises
Fashion Business Incorporated
Federation of State Boards of Physical Therapy
Footwear Distributors & Retailers of America (FDRA) Ford Motor Company
Fortune Brands, Inc.
Fred J. Lord Photography
GAR Associates
Gelderland Productions, L.L.C.
Gemvision Corporation
GlaxoSmithKline
Gospel Music Association
Governors America Corp.
Graduate Management Admission Council
Graphic Artists Guild
Greeting Card Association (GCA)
Greg Nikas Photography
Guru Denim
H.S. Marketing & Design, Inc.
HarperCollins Publishers
Harry Fox Agency
Hastings Entertainment, Inc.
ICM Distributing Company, Inc.
IDS Publishing
IEC Electronics corp.
Images Plus
Imaging Supplies Coalition (ISC)
Independent Distributors of Electronics Association (IDEA)
INgrooves
Innate-gear
International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC)
International Trademark Association (INTA)
IPC-Association Connecting Electronics Industries
Ira Montgomery Photography
J.S. Grove Photography
James Drug Inc.
Jaynes Gallery
JCPage Photography
Jean Poland Photography
Jeff Stevensen Photography
John Fulton Photography
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Julien McRoberts Photography
K&R Photographics
Kekepana International Services
Kenneth Garrett, photographer for National Geographic
Killing Jar Productions LLC
Light Perspectives
Linda Olsen Photography
Little Dog Records
LVMH Moët Hennessy
Louis Vuitton
Macmillan
Major League Baseball
Marcia Andberg Associates LLC
Mark Niederman Photography
Marmot
Marona Photography
McLain Photography Inc
Merck & Co., Inc.
Messy Face Designs, Inc.
Michael Stern Photography
MicroRam Electronics, Inc.
Minter Works of Art
Mira Images
Monster Cable Products, Inc.
Moose’s Photos
Morningstar Films LLC
Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA) MotionMasters
Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association
MPA - The Association of Magazine Media
Mr. Theodor Feibel (sole proprietor)
Music Managers Forum-U.S.
Nashville Songwriters Association International
Natalie Neckyfarow Actor/Dancer/Singer
National Association of Broadcasters
National Association of Manufacturers
National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM)
National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO)
National Basketball Association (NBA)
National Board for Certified Counselors
National Board for Certified Counselors Foundation
National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA)
National Football League (NFL)
National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA)
National Retail Federation (NRF)
NBCUniversal
Nervous Tattoo Inc., dba Ed Hardy
New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc.
New Era Cap Co Inc
New Levels Ent. Co. LLC
News Corporation
Next Decade Entertainment, Inc.
NHL Enterprises, L.P.
Nicholas Petrucci, Artist, LLC
Nike, Inc.
Nintendo of America Inc.
Nissle Fine Art Photography
North Dakota Pharmacists Association
North Dakota Pharmacy Service Corporation
Oakley, Inc.
One Voice Recordings
OpSec Security, Inc.
Outdoor Industry Association
Outdoor Power Equipment Institute (OPEI)
Outdoor Research, Inc
Pacific Component Xchange, Inc.
Party Killer Films LLC
Pearson Clinical Assessment
Peavey Electronics Corporation
Perry Ellis International
Personal Care Products Council
Peter C. Brandt, Architectural and Fine Art Photography
Peter Hawkins Photography, Inc.
Photojournalist Dave Bartruff
Picture Archive Council of America (PACA)
Pigfactory Music
PNW Images
Premier League
Production Music Association (PMA)
Professional Photographers of America
Quality Float Works, Inc.
Raging Waters Music
Ralph Lauren Corporation
Ramsay Corporation
Rebel Photo
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
Red4 Music/Doogs Rock Inc
Reebok International Ltd.
Reed Elsevier Inc.
Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA)
Revlon
Richard Flutie Photography
Rite Aid
Robin Davis Photography, Inc.
Rodger Scott Craig, a member of Liverpool Express, The Merseybeats, Fortune, Harlan Cage, 101 South, and Mtunz Media
Roger Smith Photography Services
Romance Writers of America (RWA)
Saddle Creek
Sage Studios LLC
Sam D'Amico Photography
Schneider Electric
Sean McGinty Photography
Secret Sea Visions (Photography)
SESAC, Inc.
SG Industries, Inc.
Shure Incorporated
SIGMA Assessment Systems
Six Degrees Records
Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council
SMC Entertainment
SMT Corp.
SoBe Entertainment
Society of Sport & Event Photographers
Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA)
Soul Appeal Records and Music
SoundExchange
Southern Gothic LLC
Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA)
SPI (The Plastics Industry Trade Association)
Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association
Sports Rights Owners Coalition
Spring Fever Productions LLC
Spyder Active Sports, Inc
Stenbakken Photography
Stephen Dantzig Photography
Stock Artist Alliance
Stuart Weitzman Holdings, LLC
Student Photographic Society
Studio 404
SunRise Solar Inc.
Taylor Glenn Photographs
Taylor Guitars
Taylor Made Golf Company, Inc.
Tednologies, Inc.
The Cambridge Don
The Collegiate Licensing Company/IMG College
The Donath Group, Inc.
The Dow Chemical Company
The Estee Lauder Companies
The McGraw-Hill Companies
The Music People! Inc.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)
The Recording Academy (National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences)
The Timberland Company
The Walt Disney Company
Tiffany & Co.
Time Warner Inc.
Tony Bullard Photography
Toshiba America Business Solutions, Inc.
TRA Global
Tricoast Worldwide
Trio Productions, Inc. / Songscape Music,
Twist & Shout, Inc.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Ultimate Fighting Championship
Underwriters Laboratories Inc.
Universal Music Group
Uniweld Products Inc.
VF Corporation
Viacom
Vibram USA, Inc
Virtual Chip Exchange USA, Inc. Voltage Pictures, LLC
W.R. Case & Sons Cutlery Co. Walcott Studio, LLC
Wal-Mart
Warner Music Group
Wendy Kaveney Photography
Western Psychological Services
Westmorland Images, LLC
Wild & Associates, Inc.
Wild Eye Photos LLC
William Sutton Photography
Willis Music
WindLegends Ink LLC
Winestem Company
Winslow Research Institute
Wolfe Video
Wolverine World Wide, Inc. Woolrich, Inc.
World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.
Xerox Corporation
Zippo Manufacturing Company
Zumba Fitness, LLC

How to watch streaming internet videos on any TV using just your computer.

2011-12-17T20:13:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of great set top boxes out there that let you watch streaming TV and movies via the Internet, but maybe you’re not interested in spending the money or you’re just looking for a very simple way to hook your computer up to your TV and watch videos from popular websites like Hulu or different web sites. Here are five different ways you can connect your computer to your TV and watch streaming internet video….

The first thing you need to check is if you have a newer TV and computer which will let you use an HDMI cable to connect the two (don’t worry, there are still ways to do it if you don’t).
Once you get a HDMI cable, just connect your computer to your TV, use your remote to select ‘HDMI’ input and with any luck you should see a mirror image of your computer screen on your HD TV. Now you have a very simple inexpensive way of watching Internet content on your TV.

But what if you have an older TV or an older computer that doesn’t support HDMI?

If you have a standard definition TV, you won’t be able to use HDMI, but if your TV and computer have S video jacks and you have S video cable, you can follow the above steps to hook everything up.

But what if you have a real old TV or real old computer that doesn’t have any fancy inputs or outputs?

Just about all TVs made in the last 30 years have RCA inputs. These are the red, white and yellow jacks that you see on the back of your TV which were commonly used to hook up VCRs, DVD players and video games.
And just about all laptop computers ever made have what’s called an external VGA port that can be used to connect the laptop to a monitor.

Luckily, there are number of PC to TV converters which plug into the VGA port on your laptop and the RCA inputs on older TVs.

But what if you have a really, really, old TV?

And on the chance that you have an even older TV, maybe one made in the 50’s or sixties, you can use a RF modulator in conjunction with a converter and still watch streaming Internet television on your TV using the coaxial antenna connection.

The downsides of using your computer instead of a set-top box to watch videos on your TV

All of the above options help you connect the video output to your TV. This means you’ll either need to listen to the audio on your computer speakers or plug your computer into your stereo or entertainment system, or a simple set of amplified speakers. Also since you’re using your computer and not a specialized set top box, it’s possible that the video quality might not be as good or might not completely fill your TV screen, but this really depends largely on how fast your computer and graphic card is and the web site you are visiting.

Tip: when you’re watching Internet videos, be sure to look for the ‘full-screen’ icon on the video player which maximizes video to the largest possible size.

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Building your own XP Service Pack 4

2011-12-01T04:26:00.001-08:00

Building your own XP Service Pack 4

Susan Bradley By Susan Bradley

Starting today, Windows XP users will have 860 more days of official Microsoft support — and on every one of those days, many of those users will continue to run the operating system that just won't die.

Want to extend the life of your Windows XP Service Pack 3 as long as possible? You can do so by installing Microsoft hotfixes as needed.

It's ironic that the official Windows XP End of Support Countdown Gadget runs only on Vista and Windows 7. Perhaps Microsoft will offer a paper-based advent calendar for its XP users. Regardless of Microsoft's schedule, a significant number of people will continue to use XP well past the deadline. Their practical reasons range from line-of-business needs to the economy to "It still fills all my needs."

According to Microsoft, XP SP3 is the end of the line — there will not be an SP4. But that doesn't mean you can't build your own virtual version of SP4. Just use the hotfixes Microsoft develops over the remaining years of official support.

As far as Windows is concerned, hotfixes are essentially the same as the Windows updates you regularly receive from Microsoft. There are, however, some practical differences: for example, hotfixes are not put through the same level of rigorous testing that the standard updates get. (Yes, I can hear you chuckling. As we all know too well, updates have issues — despite that rigorous testing.) Also, some hotfixes are downloads and some are changes you configure manually. Updates are always downloaded patches. (A hotfix isn't the same as a Microsoft Fix it, which is typically temporary and often limited to Windows Registry or permissions changes.)

Like most updates, hotfixes are designed to repair a specific problem. However, Microsoft warns users that they should install a hotfix only if they know they have the specific problem the hotfix addresses. That said, as long as I've backed up my system (or can check the hotfix on a test system), I don't have any greater concerns about applying a hotfix than I do with an update — as long as the hotfix can be uninstalled. Some (such as KB 954550, listed below) cannot be removed with Windows' Add and Remove Programs utility.

Picking through the list of Windows XP hotfixes

There are dozens of available hotfixes, and you won't need — or want — them all. A Microsoft TechNet blog has a comprehensive list for XP SP3 systems. Again, not all of them will apply to your specific system, and you should install only those that fix a specific problem already afflicting your PC. Here's my short list of potential XP problems — ones you might see yourself — with published hotfixes:

948239: Your XP-based computer locks up when you click the Cancel button in a dialog box.

951126: When you resume from system hibernation, a multiprocessor computer running Windows XP hangs and displays a black screen.

953979: After installing SP3, Windows' Device Manager does not show devices, and Network Connections does not list any network connections.

954550: You're missing Microsoft XML Paper Specification (XPS) features; this hotfix adds them to Windows XP.

961555: Your computer randomly crashes.

968967: When an application or service uses MSXML 6.0 to handle XML requests, CPU usage climbs to 100 percent.

969744: Underlines are missing on printed documents.

970048: You have slow printing performance when using the Line Printer Remote (LPR) print protocol.

970922: TIFF documents are corrupted when you rotate them in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer.

971455: A Windows XP SP3 machine cannot authenticate a wireless router that uses Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) technology (designed to add devices to a network easily) because the router is configured for Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP).

972828: When you're copying files from a Windows Server 2008-based remote computer to a local Windows XP SP3 system via Remote Desktop Connection 6.1, the files become corrupted.

981669: During installation, a Microsoft Windows Installer package hangs. In this specific case, the Installer package is made up of smaller, chained-together packages and the installer has custom actions.

2454533: After installing the security update in MS Security Bulletin MS10-066 (KB 982802), Windows XP SP3 no longer displays the description of a shared folder that is mapped to a network drive.

How to request a hotfix from Microsoft

For many MS Hotfixes, you'll find a convenient Hotfix Download Available icon and a link (shown in Figure 1) in the upper-left section of their online-support pages. (You won't find a simple download link — you have to send an e-mail request to Microsoft support. The hotfix will then be sent to you.)

Retrieving the full hotfix
Figure 1. The hotfix-available indicator.

For hotfixes that don't come with that handy link, here's a neat trick: grab the URL for a hotfix that does have the icon, paste it into your browser, and then edit the KB number. For example, take

http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=981669&kbln=en-us

and change the 981669 to 2454533 — or 953979, or any other hotfix lacking the download-link icon.

Bottom line: There are still a couple of good years left in Windows XP. Undoubtedly, it'll be used right up to the end of its official, extended-support phase (April 8, 2014) — and beyond, whether Microsoft likes it or not. (For more on Windows XP lifecycles, check out the operating system's support lifecycle chart.)

How to watch streaming internet videos on any TV using just your computer.

2011-11-23T17:56:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of great set top boxes out there that let you watch streaming TV and movies via the Internet, but maybe you’re not interested in spending the money or you’re just looking for a very simple way to hook your computer up to your TV and watch videos from popular websites like Hulu or different web sites. Here are five different ways you can connect your computer to your TV and watch streaming internet video….

The first thing you need to check is if you have a newer TV and computer which will let you use an HDMI cable to connect the two (don’t worry, there are still ways to do it if you don’t).

What is an HDMI cable? Basically, a HDMI cable is a special type of cable HDTV’s use for high quality video input. Just about all HD and flatscreen TVs have HDMI inputs. Here’s what they look like…

Most newer laptops have HDMI outputs or in the case of Apple products like the Macbook, have adapters you can use to connect an HDMI cable to.

Here are 2 examples. The first one is a picture of a standard HDMI output on a PC notebook, the second one is the MiniDisplayPort output on a MacBook which can be hooked up to an adapter to connect to a HDMI cable.

Once you get a HDMI cable, just connect your computer to your TV, use your remote to select ‘HDMI’ input and with any luck you should see a mirror image of your computer screen on your HD TV. Now you have a very simple inexpensive way of watching Internet content on your TV.

But what if you have an older TV or an older computer that doesn’t support HDMI?

If you have a standard definition TV, you won’t be able to use HDMI, but if your TV and computer have S video jacks and you have S video cable, you can follow the above steps to hook everything up.

But what if you have a real old TV or real old computer that doesn’t have any fancy inputs or outputs?

Just about all TVs made in the last 30 years have RCA inputs. These are the red, white and yellow jacks that you see on the back of your TV which were commonly used to hook up VCRs, DVD players and video games.

And just about all laptop computers ever made have what’s called an external VGA port that can be used to connect the laptop to a monitor.

Luckily, there are number of PC to TV converters which plug into the VGA port on your laptop and the RCA inputs on older TVs.

But what if you have a really, really, old TV?

And on the chance that you have an even older TV, maybe one made in the 50’s or sixties, you can use a RF modulator in conjunction with a converter and still watch streaming Internet television on your TV using the coaxial antenna connection.

The downsides of using your computer instead of a set-top box to watch videos on your TV

All of the above options help you connect the video output to your TV. This means you’ll either need to listen to the audio on your computer speakers or plug your computer into your stereo or entertainment system, or a simple set of amplified speakers. Also since you’re using your computer and not a specialized set top box, it’s possible that the video quality might not be as good or might not completely fill your TV screen, but this really depends largely on how fast your computer and graphic card is and the web site you are visiting.

Tip: when you’re watching Internet videos, be sure to look for the ‘full-screen’ icon on the video player which maximizes video to the largest possible size.

ConnecTV, is coming soon!

2011-11-22T21:01:00.000-08:00

Something big is cooking in portable TV in the US. It's possibly the equivalent of a Hulu (in that it is owned by content owners), but from a group of broadcasters who have already identified themselves as being behind the ATSC M/H Mobile DTV services: but this time the subject is both social TV and over the top (OTT) content.

It looks as if this cluster of players got together and realised that there was strength in numbers, whether ATSC M/H takes off or not, and went around looking for projects to continue the collaboration.

The broadcast groups include Barrington Broadcasting, Belo Corp, Cox Media, EW Scripps, Gannett Broadcasting, Hearst TV, Media General, Meredith Corp, Post-Newsweek Stations and Raycom Media. When you combined all of these you get 201 TV stations which are mostly affiliates of ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, CW and Warner Brothers, covering 45 of the US's top 50 markets for TV. Nine of these had already put their names down to be part of Pearl, a partnership behind the ATSC M/H-based Mobile DTV in the US.

The vehicle they have chosen to collaborate around is from ConnecTV, described as a social TV system designed entirely for watching TV, or at least for watching, voting, talking about and looking up stuff about TV. Think of it as a version of iMDB but about current TV programmes, put together with Facebook or Google+. ConnecTV has on-board executives who have worked at TiVo, MobiTV, Gemstar-TV Guide and TVN Entertainment, and until now has been operating for two years in stealth mode.
Social TV...for why?

One of the questions we have always had about social TV is why on earth anyone would want to engage in a dialog about TV, on a TV. Early IPTV system, to a certain extent later cable inventions, and now connected TV all seem to make that same mistake. Discussion needs to be private but viewing does not always need to be.

Social TV has to be able to cope with two or three things. The first thing is that little Johnny does not want his parents to know what he watches on TV, and when he makes a comment about how is Father is hogging the TV for Monday night football, he doesn't want to be overhead. So privacy is key, which is why it belongs on a tablets, not the TV screen.

Secondly how does a group of friends get to watch the same programming at the same time and deliberately log on to one another? In different parts of the US different shows are on at different times or at least on different channels. Whatever social network brings them together, also needs to point them in the right direction for their region and set up an open comment channel.

Thirdly, if you've gone to all that trouble of setting that up, then it might just as well be a viewing party over a VoD piece of content too – so that online rights need to be sorted out and a revenue share basis for the content owners for the social network viewing and any advertising that can be played on it.

In other words. it‘s tough to adapt existing social networks to social TV, and despite the fact that Google is working hard to incorporate this into Google+, the local stations do have an edge in bringing it all together. They also have a lot of weight with the stations they are affiliates to such as ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC, as long as there is a potential revenue share for the national networks. In fact it is likely that the prime movers here are in fact the collective national networks, but they want to see what their affiliates can do with it before declaring their interest.

Our first thought when hearing about this move with the Pearl group is that this would be related directly to the ATSC M/H stations that these same organisations (with the exception of Barrington Broadcasting) have already launched. But we are told this is not the case. Their big problem remains (actually their only problem) is getting a major device maker to offer a way of viewing these networks on a tablet. ATSC M/H requires a specialist chip and although it is true that people want live TV on a handset (or tablet), they won't have it if comes with a monthly price tag or needs special unsubsidised devices.
How would it work?

Right now US citizens can buy a stand-alone device which will output the signal as local Wi-Fi video and that way TV can be viewed on all tablets, but it's still not as good as if it came as standard built into all Android and iOS devices – at that point mobile TV in the US would take off in a heartbeat.

We can‘t help thinking that however unrelated this ConnecTV service is to ATSC M/H, it has the potential to become related to it in the future, at the very least as two technologies this group is pushing. Perhaps the major broadcasters use one technology to push the other, for instance not giving permission to access Metadata from their TV programmes for use with ConnecTV, unless the broadcaster in question has already set up Mobile DTV broadcasting.

The broadcasters say their stations cover 76 million US households (out of roughly 111 million) and now have a long-term commercial partnership with ConnecTV, which lets viewers interact with other fans watching the same TV program and provides a broad range of related content and promotional opportunities which are synchronized with programmes being viewed.

There is obviously some work to integrate and synchronise the programming within ConnecTV, but then they plan to advertise it on air and online. As we suggested the advertising inventory inside ConnecTV will be synchronized and also used to promote key programs. Some of these broadcasters have made an undisclosed investment in ConnecTV.

In effect this is US broadcasters finding a way to create their own online service and social network, so they get internet revenues. Invariably the content services they have alluded to will be VoD services served through an application or portal, (the same content as is broadcast in ATSC M/H), we suspect.

"Our mission is for ConnecTV to be the social network that empowers entertainment, news and sports fans to share the greatest moments in television," said ConnecTV Co-Founder Ian Aaron. "The team at ConnecTV is thrilled to work with the leaders in local news and television across America as we bring to market an innovative and engaging second-screen experience for all TV viewers that works seamlessly across all programming genres and on all platforms. With over five billion TV viewers and the explosion of tablets and smart phones globally, we are truly at the beginning of a new way to watch TV."

ConnecTV is available currently in an "invitation only" sneak preview and will be launching to the public in early 2012. It was founded by Ian Aaron, former President of Gemstar-TV Guide and Alan Moskowitz, former senior engineer at MobiTV, with other team members from the engineering team at TiVo.

ConnecTV doesn‘t only have to be used with local entertainment and can equally be used with cable programming. It is available as a free application for tablets and for Macs and PCs. It‘s a bit unclear just how ConnecTV automatically identifies the show you are watching, but that‘s what the company boasts.

ConnecTV automatically logs in television viewers while they watch programmes and synchronises relevant content onto its screen, including latest news, celebrity information, trivia, polls and play-by-play sports stats. ConnecTV subscribers can see which TV shows their friends are watching, invite them to a "viewing party" and start a real-time conversation and they can also connect to share viewing moments using Facebook, Twitter and email and all this can work with up to 250 channels.

PlayLater Offers an Online Answer to the DVR

2011-11-05T18:45:00.000-07:00

An Online Answer to the DVR
By ANNE EISENBERG

SOME people who want to watch a movie at home wait for Netflix to mail it to them on a disc. Others click on a link at Netflix or other Web sites and immediately watch films, TV episodes or sports events streamed to them on the spot.

But streamed shows can be ephemeral — they depend on a good broadband connection, and they pass by as they are viewed, unlike downloaded videos that can be watched later offline. And some shows can’t be found again at a site that once provided them, because they are meant to have a limited run.

Now, for $5 a month, a new service called PlayLater lets subscribers copy streaming video as it shows up at 30 sites, including Netflix, Hulu, PBS, ESPN and CNN, so they can watch it later.

With PlayLater, viewers can stockpile episodes of their favorite television shows on their hard drives and thumb drives, just as they copy programs on a digital video recorder for later viewing.

PlayLater has many restrictions — it works only on PCs, and the videos made with the software may be watched only on the PC licensed by PlayLater to record the show, or on another PC that shares the license. And it doesn’t work with iPhones, iPads, or mobile Android devices, although Jeff Lawrence, the chief executive of PlayOn, the Seattle company that offers the subscription service, said these apps would be available soon.

The number of people who watch streaming video is climbing, said Radha Subramanyam, an executive at Nielsen, the ratings firm, “and so is the time they spend watching.” Netflix subscribers spent an average of nearly 8.5 hours doing so in June, she said.

“Everyone streams across all ages,” she said, “but some age groups stream more than others.” She said that there were strong numbers for both the 18-to-24 and 24-to-35 age groups.

PlayLater is among many new services that aim to take advantage of streaming’s popularity, said Dan Rayburn, a New York-based analyst at Frost & Sullivan, a market research firm, and an executive at StreamingMedia.com, a Web site devoted to covering the streaming media field.

Mr. Rayburn called the subscription service “a great idea” but said it had many weaknesses. “Most important,” he said, “it doesn’t work on Macs.”

I signed up for a free trial offered by PlayLater and installed the software on my PC — a painless process that took about 10 minutes. There is no central schedule of streaming choices at the bare-bones PlayLater home page. Instead, I went to each participating site and shopped for shows I might want to copy. The software records in real time, so it takes 30 minutes to copy a 30-minute show — though you can skip the commercials when you watch the recordings later.

I listed in a queue all the programs I wanted, then PlayLater recorded them one after another. But I couldn’t program the software to record on future dates, as can be done with DVRs. (Mr. Lawrence of PlayLater says the company is working on creating this feature.)

Streaming quality, of course, will be affected by the Internet connection. PlayLater’s site recommends a broadband connection of at least 1.5 megabits a second, the same speed that Netflix recommends.

Even with a decent connection, you should be sure that other people on your home network aren’t downloading large files or playing an online game, taking away needed bandwidth.

The quality is also affected by computer hardware. You’ll need a laptop or desktop PC bought within the last five years to avoid problems, Mr. Lawrence said. Each hour of video being recorded requires about one gigabyte of storage space.

The picture quality of the shows I stored on the hard drive was similar to that of the movies I stream from Netflix or Amazon — sharp and clear when tiny, and grainier when I enlarged the image. That is how it should be, said Ara Derderian , co-host of the HDTV and Home Theater Podcast.

“Don’t expect high definition, or the quality of a Blu-ray player,” he said. “The copy of what’s streamed should look identical to what you’d get if you were streaming it.”

SUBSCRIBERS might also be worried about the legality of copying video content. Mr. Lawrence said PlayLater is following the path set earlier by VCRs and DVRs.

“PlayLater is legal for the same reason that using a VCR and a DVR is legal,” he said. “There is a well-established legal precedent that consumers are allowed to record videos for time-shifted viewing.” (In time-shifting, people make copies for their personal use that they can view later.)

Denise M. Howell , an appellate, intellectual property and technology lawyer in Newport Beach, Calif., says she isn’t so sure that software like PlayLater’s will succeed without a legal challenge. She pointed out that the terms-of-service agreements that users have with companies like Netflix and Amazon limit a video’s viewing.

“If the streaming sites let this go, ignoring it, they will irritate the people who provide the content,” she said. “They are not going to be able to sit back and look the other way.”

5 Free Ways to Encrypt Your Files on the Go

2011-11-03T16:13:00.000-07:00

In our world, where information is constantly being plugged into one device after another and frequently changes hands, many people don’t realize how vital it can be to safeguard their digital information from sniffers and malware – destructive programs which can steal sensitive information. Here are 5 free software encryption tools for your on-the-go use.
1. How To Encrypt Your Files On The Cloud, e.g. Dropbox

clip image0041 5 Free Ways to Encrypt Your Files on the Go

It may be all smooth and easy going encrypting files on your own hard drives, but what about files on the cloud? As we become increasingly dependent on the cloud for storage, we also become more and more wary of the fact that all our personal, and potentially important files, are floating on some foreign server, exposed to the vulnerabilities of that server.

So if you have files on Dropbox, for instance, what’s a person to do? Thankfully, there’s BoxCryptor, a great free program which allows you to encrypt files even on cloud servers. The free version works great with the standard AES-256 encryption, but does not allow commercial usage and is only limited to encryption of files up to 2 GB. Still, that’s plenty enough for most of us, and is an excellent solution towards solving file encryption on the cloud.
2. What To Do If You Want to Encrypt Entire Hard Drives

clip image0021 5 Free Ways to Encrypt Your Files on the Go

The issue: Enabling encryption on one machine disables it from being read on another unless they both have the same encryption software installed; which is sometimes not practical when you have to constantly switch between PCs in an environment, such as a school setting.

Enter TruCrypt, a truly real-time encryption program which encrypts data as it is being written onto the file partition (e.g. folders), and decrypts it in real-time as it is being removed. Impressive feature aside, this gives you the peace of mind that you won’t ever find yourself stuck with an inaccessible file simply because you were trying to be careful.

TruCrypt also allows you to encrypt entire hard drives, which can be useful if you run your own company, and has a hundred and one other fancy uses such as enabling hardware acceleration during encrypting on modern processors. It is by far the most highly recommended free encryption software on the Internet, customizable for nearly all but the most specific uses.
3. How to Encrypt Your Entire USB Flash Drive Without Installing Anything

clip image0011 5 Free Ways to Encrypt Your Files on the Go

PenProtect doesn’t give you any excuse to not use file encryption while transferring files. There’s absolutely no hassle in using it – all you have to do is copy the downloaded file to the home folder of your USB drive – no installation required! It really doesn’t get any simpler than this, and it provides full 256-bit key AES encryption to your entire USB flash drive, hiding files from being interpreted by the host computer.
4. How To Plug In Your USB Drive With Peace Of Mind at Internet Cafés

clip image0031 5 Free Ways to Encrypt Your Files on the Go

By now, we should all already have recognized how dangerous it can be to plug in your flash drive into a port of a computer at a cyber café. Since you never know what the computer has been uploaded with, the potential for your information being compromised is mind boggling; there could be key-loggers to trace your passwords, malware to read your Word files, trojans to sneak onto your device… the list goes on and on…

Add to this the fact that most of the time, you don’t get administrator privileges in a computer at such places, disabling the option to install a “safe” encryption program on-the-spot. So what can you do? Well, there’s a solution with FreeOTFE Explorer, an encryption software which not only does not require installation, but works even on PCs where administrator privileges have been disabled! It works by creating a “virtual disk” on the computer in question, where everything that is written to that “disk” is encrypted securely before being stored.
5. How To Enable File Encryption using Tools Already Within Reach

clip image0051 5 Free Ways to Encrypt Your Files on the Go

Some people just don’t like having an extra program hanging around on their computer, especially something like encryption which isn’t visible enough to warrant having to stare at its icon every time you access My Computer. Well, did you know that you probably already have a fully sufficient encryption program sitting on your desktop?

7-Zip, the great file compressor, is also a decent file encryptor. Providing only AES-256, it’s really solid. Whether it’s sending work documents over email, or personal items to your loved ones, if you really don’t want to deal with the hassle of an extra program, 7-Zip may just be the perfect file encryptor for you.

Michael Hart, a Pioneer of E-Books, Dies at 64

2011-09-09T05:18:00.000-07:00

Michael Hart, a Pioneer of E-Books, Dies at 64
By WILLIAM GRIMES

Michael Hart, who was widely credited with creating the first e-book when he typed the Declaration of Independence into a computer on July 4, 1971, and in so doing laid the foundations for Project Gutenberg, the oldest and largest digital library, was found dead on Tuesday at his home in Urbana, Ill. He was 64.

His death was confirmed by Gregory B. Newby, the chief executive and director of Project Gutenberg, who said that the cause had not yet been determined.

Mr. Hart found his life’s mission when the University of Illinois, where he was a student, gave him a user’s account on a Xerox Sigma V mainframe computer at the school’s Materials Research Lab.

Estimating that the computer time in his possession was worth $100 million, Mr. Hart began thinking of a project that might justify that figure. Data processing, the principal application of computers at the time, did not capture his imagination. Information sharing did.

After attending a July 4 fireworks display, he stopped in at a grocery store and received, with his purchase, a copy of the Declaration of Independence printed on parchment. He typed the text, intending to send it as an e-mail to the users of Arpanet, the government-sponsored precursor to today’s Internet, but was dissuaded by a colleague who warned that the message would crash the system. Instead, he posted a notice that the text could be downloaded, and Project Gutenberg was born.

Its goal, formulated by Mr. Hart, was “to encourage the creation and distribution of e-books” and, by making books available to computer users at no cost, “to help break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy.”

Over the next decade, working alone, Mr. Hart typed the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the King James Bible and “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” into the project database, the first tentative steps in a revolution that would usher in what he liked to call the fifth information age, a world of e-books, hand-held electronic devices like the Nook and Kindle, and unprecedented individual access to texts on a vast array of Internet archives.

Today, Project Gutenberg lists more than 30,000 books in 60 languages, with the emphasis on titles of interest to the general reader in three categories: “light literature,” “heavy literature” and reference works. In a 2006 e-mail to the technology writer Glyn Moody, he predicted that there would be a billion e-books in 2021, Project Gutenberg’s 50th anniversary, and that, thanks to advances in memory chips, “you will be able to carry all billion e-books in one hand.”

Nearly all the books are in the public domain, although a relatively small number of copyrighted books are reproduced with the permission of the copyright owner. The library includes two books by Mr. Hart: “A Brief History of the Internet” and “Poems and Tales from Romania.”

“It’s a paradigm shift,” he told Searcher magazine in 2002. “It’s the power of one person, alone in their basement, being able to type in their favorite books and give it to millions or billions of people. It just wasn’t even remotely possible before; not even the Gideons can say they have given away a billion Bibles in the past year.”

Michael Stern Hart was born on March 8, 1947, in Tacoma, Wash. His father was an accountant; his mother, a cryptanalyst during World War II, was the business manager for a high-end women’s store. The couple retrained to become university teachers and in 1958 found posts at the University of Illinois, in Urbana, where his father taught Shakespeare and his mother taught mathematics.

Michael began attending lectures at the university before entering high school and, following a course of individual study on human-machine interfaces, earned a bachelor of science degree in 1973.

Work on Project Gutenberg proceeded slowly at first. Adding perhaps a book a month, Mr. Hart had created only 313 e-books by 1997. “I was just waiting for the world to realize I’d knocked it over,” he told Searcher. “You’ve heard of ‘cow-tipping’? The cow had been tipped over, but it took it 17 years for it to wake up and say, ‘Moo.’ ”

The pace picked up when he and Mark Zinzow, a programmer at the University of Illinois, recruited volunteers through the school’s PC User Group and set up mirror sites to provide multiple sources for the project.

Shrewdly, Mr. Hart included books like “Zen and the Art of the Internet” and “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Internet” to expand the audience for the project’s books.

Today, relying on the work of volunteers who scan and proofread without pay, the project adds to its list at the rate of hundreds of books each month.

Even in the project’s early stages, Mr. Hart envisioned it in revolutionary terms. Borrowing a term from “Star Wars,” he referred to e-books as just one form of replicator technology that would, in the future, allow for the infinite reproduction of things as well as words, overturning all established power structures and ushering in an age of universal abundance.

One hurdle on the road to the diffusion of knowledge was the Copyright Term Extension Act, passed in 1998. The act, sponsored by the California congressman and former pop singer Sonny Bono, removed a million e-books from the public domain by extending the copyright by 20 years. Under United States law, the average copyright now lasts for 95.5 years.

Lawrence Lessig, then a law professor at Stanford University (and now at Harvard), approached Mr. Hart to see if he would be interested in taking part in a constitutional challenge to the law.

He met Mr. Hart in a pizza parlor in Urbana, where, Mr. Lessig recalled in a telephone conversation on Thursday, Mr. Hart added a thick layer of sugar to his pizza while explaining that he saw the case as much more than a test of copyright law. It offered, as he saw it, a way to challenge the entire social and economic system of the United States.

Mr. Lessig, looking for a somewhat less visionary lead plaintiff, eventually enlisted Eric Eldred, the owner of Eldritch Press, a Web site that reprints work in the public domain. In 2003, in Eldred v. Ashcroft, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the copyright extension act.

Mr. Hart is survived by his mother, Alice, of Fort Belvoir, Va., and a brother, Bennett, of Manassas, Va.

How-to: Travel with your Roku Player

2011-09-09T04:41:00.000-07:00

Ever thought about taking your Roku player along on your getaway or family vacation? Traveling with your Roku can be a snap with a little bit of forethought; we’ll show you how you can bring your favorite black box along to some of your favorite destinations.

Planning:
Broadband Internet is relatively common these days, but you should still consider the following questions:

Will there be sufficient Internet bandwidth at the place I am staying?
How will Roku connect to the Internet? Will I need a router or laptop?
What type of TV will there be?

If you are staying at a friend’s or family member’s home, you can usually rely on a stable Internet connection and the ability to plug into a router or connect over a wireless network. You should let them know ahead of time that you will be using your Roku player –then tease them for not having one already *wink.

image courtesy of MoToMo on Flickr

Most hotels offer free Wi-Fi and it’s just a matter of plugging in your Roku and connecting to the wireless network.There are some however that require authentication beyond a password–like your room number and name, etc…. To share an Internet connection, even with the authentication, I use my laptop and an older Netgear wireless travel router (a travel router is just a smaller version of a typical router, and any brand should get the job done).

You will need to clone the MAC address from your computer to your router. It sounds scary, but it’s typically a check box that you select in the router settings menu, which tells the router to use the same address as your computer. As every router is different, you should refer to the proper documentation.

If you have a Wi-Fi hot-spot, your golden wherever you go. Just make sure you have a solid connection, and connect your Roku player as you would if you were at home.

What to bring:
It’s wise to pack HDMI, component, power and Ethernet cables–and don’t forget the remote. Left your remote behind? No worries, you can find a quick fix using your iPhone (or other iOS device) or Android device here.

Made by Waterfield Designs, this travel case should do the trick.

If you travel quite a bit and don’t feel like unplugging cables from the back of the TV every time you travel, you can find spare cables in our accessory shop and create a dedicated travel pack.

A few takeaways:

Internet usage at some hotels may require authentication, but once enabled, it’s usually good for a few hours.
You can use a travel router to share the Internet connection with your Roku.
Find smartphone apps to control your Roku on our blog.

Certificate cleanup for most personal computers

2011-09-08T07:29:00.001-07:00

Certificate cleanup for most personal computers

Susan Bradley By Susan Bradley

A little Dutch company potentially lets a flood of problems into our Windows machines.

The company manages digital certificates; after its recent break-in by hackers, security certificates for Mozilla, Yahoo, WordPress, and other sites are now suspect.

On a daily basis, no matter what our level of paranoia, we trust the companies we work with. … Well, at least our browsers and computers do. Inside all computers, both Windows and Mac, is a collection of digital certificates that everyone on the Net has agreed to trust. On Vista and Windows 7 systems, these root certificates (definition) are updated by the issuer automatically. But on Windows XP machines, they're updated manually.

Companies doing business on the Internet buy certificates linked to a root certificate and automatically become part of the chain of trust. Because your computer trusts the vendor who provided the root certificate, it automatically trusts all online businesses with associated certificates.

This process is the foundation for secure Web transactions such as shopping on Amazon, online-banking, and e-mail.

Many updates after breaks in the chain of trust

Typically, this system works well. But on the rare occasions it fails — when the chain of trust is broken — it can instantly affect thousands of PCs.

Such is the case with that small company in the Netherlands, DigiNotar. Reports from various sites indicate that hackers compromised the firm's servers and generated rogue certificates. In a Kaspersky Lab Securelist blog, lab expert Roel speculates that as many as 200 rogue certificates were generated before the hack was discovered.

With a rogue certificate in place, a hacker can make your system think it's using a legitimate, trusted certificate from well-known companies such as Google and Yahoo. The hacker can then intercept your Internet connection with the site you intended to use and redirect you to a fake site, where you are tricked into entering personal information such as your user name and password. Your computer still thinks it's connected to a trusted site.

Fortunately for most of us, this particular attack appears to have targeted Internet users in Iran — it's the only country where these rogue certificates were spotted.

Soon after the breach, browser vendors offered updates that removed the Dutch root-certificate holder from their browsers' list of trusted certificate issuers. An August 29 Chrome Online Security blog reported that Google had disabled the DigiNotar certificate authority in Chrome 13.0.782.218.

The next day, Firefox followed suit in a Mozilla Security blog, announcing the release of numerous updates for Firefox (versions 3.6.21, 6.0.1, 7, 8, and 9), Thunderbird (3.1.13 and 6.0.1), and SeaMonkey (2.3.2) that revoked the DigiNotar root certificate.

On September 6, Microsoft released an out-of-cycle update — KB 2607712 — for Windows 2003, XP, Vista, Windows 7, and Server 2008 that not only removed all DigiNotar root certificates from the trusted list but also moved them to the untrusted-certificate store. If you find any DigiNotar certificates in the Trusted Root Certification Authorities list, I recommend you install KB 2607712.

If you do not see these certificates in your trusted-root store, you probably ignored all previous root-certificate updates. You can safely wait until the next Patch Tuesday to install the patch.

Manually removing the certificates from XP systems

Windows XP users have the option of deleting the certificates manually or merely looking over the list of certificates installed to see whether the DigiNotar cert. is there. Here's how:

Start out by clicking on the start button and typing mmc.exe. into the Run box, as shown in Figure 1. You'll see a window pop up typically labeled Console1.

Launching MMC
Figure 1. Opening up the mmc snapin

Click File, then Add/Remove Snap-in. In the Add/Remove Snap-in box, click the Add button, select Certificates (see Figure 2), and then click Add again.

Add Standalone Snap-in
Figure 2. Adding the certificate snap in

Yet another dialog box will open, with three choices. Select Computer account and click Next. Select Local computer (the computer this console is running on) and click Finish. Now close the Add Standalone Snap-in box. In the Add/Remove Snap-in box, click Okay. That returns you to the certificate-management console.

In the left-hand pane of the console, you should now see Certificates (Local Computer) with a small + next to it. Click on the + to expand your selection. You'll now see numerous folders, starting with Personal and including Third-Party Root Certification Authorities, as shown in Figure 3.

For more information on what folders you might typically see, check out the superuser post, "What are the Windows system certificate stores?" (In my example, the Windows XP system is a client of Windows Home Server and thus has a WHS certificate folder you probably will not see on your XP machine.)

Console Root certificates
Figure 3. Reviewing the list of certificate types

Now expand the Trusted Root Certificate Authorities folder and click on the certificates folder underneath. You should now see a list of certificates in alphabetical order (see Figure 4). Find any DigiNotar Root CA certificates and remove them from your computer.

An alternative way to remove certificates is through Internet Explorer. In IE, click Tools/Internet Options/Content and then Certificates. Click Trusted Root Certificates. Find the listings for DigiNotar Root CA (there are two in Figure 4) and remove them by clicking the Remove button. Click Yes to the warning that removing these certificates may prevent Windows from working properly. Then click Close and Okay.

Removing the DigiNotar root certificate
Figure 4. Removing the DigiNotar certificate.

If you don't see these two certificates in your trusted-certificate store, it's because you've probably used the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule of updating and thus ignored previous root-certificate updates. (I found one system without the DigiNotar certificate, and when I installed the latest root certificate — KB 931125 — the rogue certificate appeared.)

Think you're safer running the Apple platform? Guess again! Apple also included DigiNotar in its trusted root certificate program. In Apple it's a little more complicated to remove this rogue cert — a FairerPlatform blog has the details. Apple will most likely release a patch for its platform soon.

This issue exposes the vulnerable underbelly of trust of certificates, a process we may really need to start questioning. The listing of certificate authorities includes companies from countries that aren't always friendly to one another — and companies that have already been in the news for security breaches. If one small certificate authority in the Netherlands can be used in this type of potential spoofing attack, I hate to imagine what mischief can be done with a larger organization.

Needless to say, I may recommend holding off on future root-certificate updates until they have been examined more closely. In some cases you might be better off editing your existing root certificates rather than blindly adding updates.

Bottom line. If you have the DigiNotar certificate in your trusted-root certificate store, I recommend installing KB 2607712. On XP and Server 2003 systems, this will force a reboot — so plan accordingly. If you do not have the DigiNotar certificate in your trusted-root certificate store, simply wait for the next Patch Tuesday and apply it then.

PlayOn Thoughts Four Weeks Later

2011-08-14T06:23:00.000-07:00

PlayOn Thoughts Four Weeks Later
Posted by mike on July 12, 2011

It’s been about 4 weeks since I used PlayOn to get my Daily Show fix. Since then, I’ve signed up for a month more of PlayOn service to keep getting this and a few other shows like Burn Notice and White Collar without paying for Amazon Instant Video. My feelings about the service have shifted some in that time.
PlayOn Better With Tweaking

I’m still finding that PlayOn gets the job done. With some tweaks to the various providers, it seems to get the job done quite admirably most of the time. It’s been a delightful bridge to get Hulu on my TV via my Roku box and has brought some unexpected benefits like closed caps on the Roku box. A few tweaks that have proven quite nice:

Turn on Hulu closed caps: In Hulu, go to Privacy & Settings and click the “Automatically turn on closed captions if available.” checkbox
Use the Hulu queue: To avoid navigating the crazy-large menus, use the Hulu website to queue up shows then go directly to your Hulu queue for quick viewing

Places To Improve

It’s not all roses, however. The interface, in general, is still clunky. For channels that don’t have queues, it’s downright painful to navigate on my Roku. I’ve used the PlayOn iPad app, and that is manageable. I’m holding out hope that the upcoming Roku refresh will give PlayOn both the motivation and the technical ability to make a more robust Roku interface. I’ve also, on occasion, had playback issues. PlayOn will spontaneously reset the video feed to the beginning of the show (yes, before the first advertisement) during some Hulu viewings. I blame my increasingly erratic internet connection (AT&T, your number’s up), but I’ll still be sending in a support request to see how PlayOn responds.
PlayOn Is A Recommend

After a month of use, PlayOn has a place in my setup. I’ll finish out my current month subscription and, if we get this Hulu video reset under control, pick up a year of service for $39.99.

I do have one aside on the PlayOn pricing. I like a good deal, but I think that the annual subscription is the best deal in the package. Because of how MediaMall structured the annual service, with each extra year costing $19.99, I have a hard time recommending the lifetime subscription. Looking at the pricing:
8 Months 1 Year 2 Years 3 Years 5 Years
Monthly Rate
($4.99 / mo) $39.92 $59.88 $119.76 $179.64 $299.40
Annual Rate
($39.99 first year)
($19.99 second+) $39.99 $39.99 $59.98 $79.97 $119.95
Lifetime Rate
($79.99) $79.99 $79.99 $79.99 $79.99 $79.99

If you’re going to use the service beyond dabbling with it, the breakeven point for the annual service is around 8 months. Subscribing to the annual pass and getting 33% off after 1 year seems like a no-brainer to me when I like the service. It takes more than 3 years to break even on the lifetime rate and, in this industry, that is a lifetime. In the end, pick what works for your household budget and run with it.

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PlayLater Beta DVR on your computer

2011-08-14T06:19:00.000-07:00

PlayLater: Cool, But Why Do I Want It?
by mike

A little while ago, I got a chance to take MediaMall Technology’s PlayLater for a spin as part of their public Beta. PlayLater reuses the PlayOn technology (of which I’m a huge fan) to DVR online TV shows and movies, recording them on a computer for later playback. Let’s take a look at it.
PlayLater Basics

PlayLater allows users to record streaming video from a variety of internet sources like Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, and many others. Users can then watch the video at their convenience, even if the internet is down. From the PlayLater website:

PlayLater is groundbreaking new technology that gives you the freedom to record your favorite online videos and enjoy them on your schedule, even if you aren’t connected to the internet. As more and more of you are getting your favorite shows online, we felt that it was time the rest of your entertainment technology caught up. After all, the same reasons that apply to recording TV shows and movies in the old world apply to the new world, right? Convenience, access, and frankly — sometimes you don’t have an Internet connection available and that shouldn’t bar you from watching your favorite shows. The future of entertainment is online and now you can record the future.

The PlayLater installation is quite painless and went without a hitch. I was quickly hunting for the Daily Show and downloading videos. I was able get some downloading going. One thing that quickly caught my attention was that PlayLater really was a DVR platform. After living with the internet a while, it didn’t even cross my mind that PlayLater would take 30 minutes to record a 30 minute TV shows. It could download it faster, right?! Unfortunately, not so much. The technology under the hood re-encodes the video as it plays, so it’s just like my TV in that the show has to play in real-time to record it.

The 30 minutes aside, PlayLater delivered on what they claimed. I managed to record and later watch a Daily Show on my PC. At the time of my review work, PlayLater could only play back on a PC. They have since merged the technology with their PlayOn platform to allow videos to stream to any PlayOn compatible device.

Although PlayLater did deliver on the main claim, this is obviously a beta product. It seems like a lot of careful thought has been put into the DVR technology, but the user interface is less than ideal. This is definitely not a Tivo. Resizing the main window causes visual artifacts. A list view of shows where the description would seem when I hovers over the name would be great to allow fast queuing.

All little things, but Apple has shown that polish matters. These are user interface issues that can easily be squeezed out before the beta closes. The core technology appears solid and is ripe for building up upon. All of this doesn’t answer the more fundamental question: why do I want it?
But Why Would I Want PlayLater?

I have yet to understand what niche PlayLater is serving. It’s cool technology, but what problem are they solving? Their stated reason for bringing this out is summed up by:

After all, the same reasons that apply to recording TV shows and movies in the old world apply to the new world, right?

The problem is that the same reasons don’t apply. I originally got a DVR because my favorite TV shows came on at a specific time that was inconvenient for me. I was tired that night, or my daughter wasn’t going to sleep and I was in her room, or it’s a daytime show and I’m at work. None of these apply to streaming video. Daily Show episodes two weeks back are available on Hulu at my whim. I can watch them when I want. Anything on Netflix is available when I want it. The only reasons I’ve come up with to justify PlayLater are:

I’m about to travel or take my computer somewhere without the internet and I want to watch a show. This seems legitimate but strikes me as a very small market.
The streaming channel is about to drop the show and I want to record it for later. This requires a lot of foresight for the instant gratification crowd.

I can’t help but think that MediaMall is dangling this out there to see if something emerges.
Conclusions on PlayLater

PlayLater delivered on what they set out to do. They created a DVR system for online videos. The technology has potential once the rough edges are sanded down. What’s missing is PlayLater’s reason for existence. Streaming video is based on the “cloud” holding the videos until I’m ready to watch, and that’s in place right now.

I can’t wait to see what the PlayLater team will do as they exit beta and put a polished product into the market.

Blockbuster Wants Unhappy Netflix Subscribers to Switch – But is it a Good Idea?

2011-07-16T08:24:00.000-07:00

Blockbuster began rescuing upset Netflix customers by launching a limited time, nationwide promotion for all Netflix customers who switch to Blockbuster Total Access™.

Blockbuster Total Access provides benefits Netflix doesn’t offer: availability of many new releases 28 days before Netflix; unlimited in-store exchanges; games for XBOX 360®, Playstation3™, and Nintendo Wii™, and no additional charge for Blu-ray™ movies.

As part of Blockbuster’s ongoing efforts to provide the ultimate in convenience, choice and value, Netflix customers who switch to one of Blockbuster’s two most popular Total Access plans will receive a 30-day free trial. After the free trial, customers will continue to receive Total Access for a new everyday price of only $9.99 per month for “1 Disc” at a time or $14.99 per month for “2 Discs” at a time.

“Blockbuster quickly responded to the cries of Netflix customers,” said Michael Kelly, president of Blockbuster. “Blockbuster Total Access is Netflix ‘without the wait.’ The combination of DVDs by mail and unlimited in-store exchanges provides more than 100 million people living near Blockbuster stores immediate convenience and unparalleled choice.“

Many Netflix customers have voiced their frustration about the Netflix price increase on Twitter by posting “Goodbye Netflix, Hello Blockbuster!”

“We find it shocking that anyone would raise rates as high as 60 percent,” Kelly added. “In contrast, Blockbuster has worked hard over the past few months to deliver value in entertainment to consumers in this economy and has even reduced in-store movie rentals to as low as 49 cents.”

This special offer for Netflix customers is available through Sept. 15, 2011, in participating stores and at Blockbuster’s website (http://ww.blockbuster.com/helloblockbuster) or bring in the tear-off from their Netflix mailer to a participating Blockbuster store.
Blockbuster Plans Netflix Plans
Blockbuster offer 3 different subscription plans with low monthly prices to meet your entertainment needs and your budget:

1-out Unlimited - 5 Free Exchanges – $11.99 per month
2-out Unlimited - 5 Free Exchanges – $16.99 per month
3-out Unlimited – 5 Free Exchanges – $19.99 per month

Selection Includes:

Movies
Games
Purchase pre-owned movies
Rent by Mail without a Subscription
You don’t need a subscription to rent movies and games by mail from Blockbuster.You can order from more than 100,000 titles online or in store.
See available devices
Return rentals in the postage-paid mailer or to a participating store.

Blockbuster doesn’t offer a streaming plan. Its On Demand movies are charged per use, with variable pricing ranging from $1 to $5 per rental.

You can also purchase On Demand movies from Blockbuster, which are then kept in a digital locker from which you can re-stream the movie at any time.
Unlimited Streaming

For only $7.99 a month, you get unlimited movies & TV episodes instantly over the Internet to your TV or computer. There are no commercials, and you can pause, rewind, fast forward or rewatch as often as you like. It’s really that easy! (see available devices – my suggestion is Roku Player)

Monthly DVD Rentals via Mail

1 DVD out at-a-time $7.99
2 DVDs out at-a-time $11.99
3 DVDs out at-a-time $15.99
4 DVDs out at-a-time $21.99
5 DVDs out at-a-time $27.99
6 DVDs out at-a-time $32.99
7 DVDs out at-a-time $37.99
8 DVDs out at-a-time $43.99

Monthly Unlimited Streaming Plus DVD Rentals via Mail

Unlimited Streaming + 1 DVD out at-a-time $15.98
Unlimited Streaming + 2 DVDs out at-a-time $19.98
Unlimited Streaming + 3 DVDs out at-a-time $23.98
Unlimited Streaming + 4 DVDs out at-a-time $29.98
Unlimited Streaming + 5 DVDs out at-a-time $35.98
Unlimited Streaming + 6 DVDs out at-a-time $40.98
Unlimited Streaming + 7 DVDs out at-a-time $45.98
Unlimited Streaming + 8 DVDs out at-a-time $51.98

Monthly Limited Plans

1 DVD out at-a-time (limit 2 rentals a month) $4.99
Starz Play Only (no DVDs) $6.99 a month

Blu-ray movies and are adding more as they are released by the studios. You can add access to Blu-ray discs to your account at any time for an additional $2 a month.
Bottom Line

Netflix is still a better choice with the added feature of Netflix Instant at only $7.99 a month, but, it is not the cheapest. If you have a Blockbuster or another video store nearby just get the Netflix streaming plan for $7.99 a month and rent your movies from your local retailer.

The Rise & Fall of RIM

2011-07-15T06:00:00.000-07:00

Research In Motion is in the midst of a major transition in every sense of the word. Publicly, the company is portraying a very defensive image — one that is very dismissive, as if RIM is profitable and class-leading, and the media is out of line to criticize its business, as are investors. Internally, however, there’s a different story to be told. It’s a story filled with attitude, cockiness, heated arguments among the executive team and Co-CEOs, and paranoia. We’ve spoken to multiple ex-RIM executives at length about their experiences with the company over the past few years. While most speak highly of RIM and their time in Waterloo, they also each left the company due mainly to RIM’s lack of vision and leadership. Read on for an exclusive inside look at a company teetering on the edge between greatness and collapse.

Lightning in a bottle.

“Lightning in a bottle.” That is how one former executive described Research In Motion in its early days. “This came together at the right time, the right place, with the right technology, and Jim and Mike are extremely brilliant individuals.” Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis are two irreplaceable leaders who were largely responsible for RIM’s success, our source continued. But as time progressed, Mike did not listen to the marketplace. This is obvious from the outside view, though the details surrounding why RIM is no longer a market leader — and why RIM will most likely not be able to regain its leadership position in the near future — are most interesting.

Let’s rewind a few years. Picture yourself sitting in an executive briefing at Research In Motion. You’d hear Mike Lazaridis unequivocally state time and time again that BlackBerry smartphones would never have MP3 players or cameras in them because it just does not make sense when the company’s primary customers were the government and enterprise. “BlackBerry smartphones will never have cameras because the No. 1 customer of ours is the U.S. government,” Mike Lazaridis would say in meetings. “There will never be a BlackBerry with an MP3 player or camera.”

There will never be a BlackBerry with an MP3 player or camera.

The fact is, that RIM didn’t only miss the boat in terms of product features and device trends as we now know, but the underpinnings of the company’s consumer failure began all the way back in 2005 with bold statements like these, combined with a lack of research and development in numerous key areas.

Mike Lazaridis would say that the most ridiculous idea was to name a phone with a marketing-derived name, like the Motorola RAZR. “BlackBerry will never do that, it will always be a model number,” he said to executives. “A BlackBerry with a name is ridiculous.”

“Here we are, as young, brazen people, and we’re just like, ‘Mike, you’re missing out. There’s a trend here; it’s a social and collaborative scene in certain media circles’,” one former executive said, describing the general feeling among other executives at the company. “Now look at what’s happened 4 or 5 years later — an MP3 player, camera, name, all done reluctantly.”

“When I would work with our major carriers, I would have to go to Mike’s product development team, and ask what are we going to bring to [redacted],” and it was never a cutting edge product, one former executive told me. There wasn’t ever a three-year roadmap. Mike was always focused on small, granular features like how to make the speakerphone in a BlackBerry the best speakerphone on the market. Mike would say that people were going to buy a BlackBerry because of the speakerphone… “because they wouldn’t need a Polycom anymore.”

The three-year roadmap for RIM products focused on refining the technology in phones had already been released, rather than looking at where to add major new componentry or trying to identify or even shape future trends. “One of the main reasons RIM missed the mark with the browser was because
they were always proud of how little data usage a user would use,” a former executive said. “There was no three-year plan at RIM.” RIM would be proud of the fact that someone would only use 1MB of data in a month in 2005, and as a result, there wasn’t ever any extensive R&D done within the browser space. Over time, that misstep affected BlackBerry tremendously as competing devices began to deliver desktop-like Web experiences. “Mike Lazaridis couldn’t imagine that consumers would be spending hours watching and streaming video to their devices, he couldn’t understand it,” the former exec continued. This is why we don’t see RIM excelling in spaces like camera technology, or displays — because the company never even attempted to anticipate the smartphone trends we’re seeing today. “RIM is a reactionary company.”

A BlackBerry with a name is ridiculous.

I remember going to sit with the CMO of one of the largest wireless carriers, and we would deliver features like “increase battery life by 40%” in the next model, and we would get a blank look on the other side of the conference room. The executives would think, ‘so your telling me with this device I am going to sell 40% less car chargers’, there was a blank stare. “They want the flavor of the week, and the carrier’s loyalty is to their customers and what their customers want. Then try and delivery that.”

“Mike is really brilliant, and superior beyond his years, and what he’s doing with Stephen Hawking and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics is compelling,” he continued. “There are hundreds of millions he’s put into it, but that doesn’t have anything to do with what RIM’s facing, and what’s in front of them, and the market is asking for them to change their ways.”

“Back a handful of years ago, if someone had a phone at work that wasn’t a BlackBerry they paid for it,” another executive who no longer works at Research In Motion said. “I was at a Fortune 500 organization a few weeks ago, and people were carrying a corporate issued BlackBerry in their left pocket and their own personal iPhone in the right pocket.” He continued, “The fact that people are spending their own money to buy the iPhone, when their company is giving them a ‘free BlackBerry’ sends quite a message to RIM,” says one of our sources.”

The market is asking for them to change their ways.

They were both stunned that someone could have a corporate-issued phone that could handle some consumer needs, but still walk around with two devices. There were and are many paradigms at RIM. In the corporate world, especially at large companies, the senior executives would buy a BlackBerry as soon as it came out. They would then give their old devices to employees beneath them, and these BlackBerry phones would eventually make their way down through the corporation. This isn’t the case anymore, and now those people that used to receive the hand-me-down BlackBerry devices are asking for shiny new phones.

Jim and Mike got along very well, I was told by multiple current and former RIM employees. The interesting thing, however, is that when they have disagreements, Mike wins all of the internal arguments. “Jim, given his background, doesn’t have the pedigree to compete with Mike on an academic level.” As a result, perhaps, I was told that things have slowly deteriorated between the two co-CEOs. Jim and Mike have “titanic” arguments in the halls of RIM headquarters on various subjects, and we’re told it’s quite open. Stories of explosive fights bleeding out into the hallways and even lunch spots in Waterloo have filled Research In Motion. It used to be that only vice presidents or above would get the privilege of listening to Mike and Jim debate — behind closed doors or in the boardroom. Regular employees now hear the arguments as well, and “they aren’t insulated for that. It’s unnerving. It makes for a nervous environment, and many employees are looking to jump ship. Most people are just uncertain as to what the future holds [for RIM].”

Most people are just uncertain as to what the future holds for RIM.

“When you hear Mike talk about the latest and greatest, it’s been the same thing for ten years: security, battery performance, and network performance. RIM has positioned battery life and network performance for years. People are not concerned with iPhone battery life,” one source told me. Network performance, to Mike, trumps any innovation a device like the iPhone offers. “Mike is convinced people won’t buy an iPhone because battery life isn’t as good as a BlackBerry,” a different source said. Mike apparently is in disbelief that people can use over 15GB of data on their iPhone and Android devices, and he feels that people will buy smartphones based on network efficiency, even though carriers with tiered data plans in developed markets love customers who use monstrous amounts of data.

While RIM has always viewed carriers as customers rather than end users, carriers have long been trying to find a different partner that doesn’t charge network fees. Since all BlackBerry devices use the BlackBerry NOC, RIM gets a piece of the data plan users pay on their bills each month. And RIM is the only manufacturer whose products are configured in such a way. “Carriers have always tried to negotiate the fees they pay RIM. They try everything to get that dropped or lowered, but that has been the one holy grail of RIM that has not been touched. ”

An ex-executive who had been responsible for a number of carrier partners for RIM recently told me that the data network fees paid to RIM were definitely the number one cause of heartburn from carriers, and a big point of contention.

There was no three- year plan at RIM.

If you look at RIM’s global revenue today, the story it paints isn’t a good one as far as driving new business and revenue channels. “They essentially just channel stuff,” a former exec said. For instance, when RIM wants to sell to a new market, it will go to two or three primary carriers and make those carriers purchase a set amount of devices up front to stock the channel for what is typically the remainder of the calendar year. Then RIM will sell those devices at full margin. It’s a great quick and easy profit from the channel. So RIM has now opened up three new carriers in a new country, let’s say, and it had them each purchase “X” thousand units each. Now, RIM can report to the Street that it shipped 700,000 devices at full market value.

After multiple sequential quarters of opening up new countries, there’s obviously a lot of volume there. Though the consensus of many is that RIM is nearing capacity with this strategy. The company now has to rely on the old school model of growth within these existing channels, and just as we’re seeing in North America with the tide changing now that long-standing BlackBerry customers are moving to other platforms and devices, that will happen in countries outside of the U.S. and Canada that have been stuffed with BlackBerry phones. Growth will slow to a stall in these markets, one source told me, and the problems will be compounded by the fact that a lot of these devices are not being sold through to end users. “They’re selling a screen with a giant calculator attached to it. It’s not a cool device anymore.”

As far as the PlayBook is concerned, RIM’s initial 500,000 shipments weren’t even sold at full margin. “RIM’s thought process was that they hoped if they put a product in a carrier’s hands that was less than full margin, it would entice the carriers to apply whatever number of discounts against that to bring it to market at an even lower price — a subsidy on the tablet. RIM isn’t making any money on the PlayBook.” To complicate matters, however, Jim Balsillie told the carriers at the 11th hour that the PlayBook wouldn’t have native email and would require the Bridge app in order to receive emails and provide calendar functions. “RIM is notorious for dropping these bombshells at the 11th hour on the carriers, and the PlayBook not having native email was a shock to the carriers.” They were all expecting a BlackBerry with a bigger screen. RIM was hoping to blow through the 500,000 units and have carriers take orders for millions of additional PlayBooks, but that has not happened yet. Mike Lazaridis looks at it as, why aren’t people buying this tablet when it has the most powerful engine with respect to multitasking, and supports Flash? But consumers have spoken pretty loudly a number of times, and Mike unfortunately leads the product side and continues to miss the mark with the masses, a former RIM executive told me. “I don’t even see anyone in Waterloo walking around with a PlayBook that doesn’t work for RIM,” another former RIM employee said.

Mike is convinced people won’t buy an iPhone because it doesn’t have a battery as good as a BlackBerry

“People really think Mike has lost his touch and vision. He’s paranoid. It’s not uncommon to see him walking around campus with bodyguards in tow,” one source told me. “This is a small community of folks in Waterloo. There’s what? 100,000 people and 30,000 of them are students, and it’s an understated place. Sure there are millionaires but no one drives anything fancier than a 5-series BMW. For Mike to be on campus with bodyguards is very peculiar. It’s very Orson Wells-like.” Another former employee I spoke with doesn’t find the fact that Lazaridis has bodyguards to be odd at all due to his stature. RIM’s other Co-CEO, however, is a completely different person.

“Every year, Jim Balsillie and COO Dennis Kavelman would take all the executives to Redtail golf course for a day of R&R with great meals, great VIP service, and every year one executive would not ever go.” Mike could not understand why everyone would go and have a golf day. In fact, he supposedly hated it and he never showed up on purpose, I was told.

“Jim chasing the NHL teams, that caused some separation between Mike and Jim,” one former executive stated. When Jim was in the midst of buying an NHL team, the NHL hired a large group to work on the project, and it had countless former RIM executives called for testimony on what Jim Balsillie was really like — all of the “TMZ dirt,” as one source described it. One executive BGR spoke to refused to talk to the NHL when they reached out, however many others were happy to open up. While this former exec did not have an issue with Jim, it was hypothesized that those with an axe to grind lobbed some dirt at the NHL and it’s most likely one of the reasons they didn’t allow him to proceed with a purchase.

They’re selling a screen with a giant calculator attached to it. It’s not a cool device anymore.

Multiple former executives also spoke of a notable divide between Mike, an internal product guy, and Jim, who focuses more on external partner relationships, in how they each react to leaks from inside the company. “I remember this one time when we had a new device coming out and it leaked to BGR.” Mike lost his mind for a few weeks. He couldn’t fathom how something like this would happen, and he constantly threatened to fire any employees who leaked any information. “He had this ‘you’re either with us or against us’ attitude, and he went off the rails. Every product is Mike’s baby”. On the other hand, Jim would try and spin things, I was told. He would get everyone excited, “you know, here it comes, he’d roll with it and have the attitude that they’re boosting the hype of the device, they’re pre-selling it for us, and so on. That was the message Jim would take.”

RIM seems to be doing damage control in a bunch of areas right now. One such area is the PlayBook and trying to mitigate the negative response to that product, and I was told the company is even going so far as to selectively block different media and even social networking sites from being accessed by employees. One of my sources said he anticipates RIM always having a niche market in the enterprise and government spaces, but he doesn’t think RIM has the potential to become a true market leader with consumers due to several shortfalls. “You’d honestly think RIM is more than a year or two behind in [the consumer market],” one source told me. “There will most likely be another heavy reduction in the workplace later this year or early next year. I don’t see the stock getting back to where it was. There are no real market impact executives coming into RIM, times have changed since Robin came in from Motorola, that ‘stock’ incentive isn’t there any more.”

iPhone keeps record of everywhere you go

2011-04-20T18:29:00.001-07:00

Privacy fears raised as researchers reveal file on iPhone that stores location coordinates and timestamps of owner's movements

Apple’s iPhone saves every detail of your movements to a file on the device. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Security researchers have discovered that Apple's iPhone keeps track of where you go – and saves every detail of it to a secret file on the device which is then copied to the owner's computer when the two are synchronised.

The file contains the latitude and longitude of the phone's recorded coordinates along with a timestamp, meaning that anyone who stole the phone or the computer could discover details about the owner's movements using a simple program.

For some phones, there could be almost a year's worth of data stored, as the recording of data seems to have started with Apple's iOS 4 update to the phone's operating system, released in June 2010.

"Apple has made it possible for almost anybody – a jealous spouse, a private detective – with access to your phone or computer to get detailed information about where you've been," said Pete Warden, one of the researchers.

Only the iPhone records the user's location in this way, say Warden and Alasdair Allan, the data scientists who discovered the file and are presenting their findings at the Where 2.0 conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. "Alasdair has looked for similar tracking code in [Google's] Android phones and couldn't find any," said Warden. "We haven't come across any instances of other phone manufacturers doing this."

Simon Davies, director of the pressure group Privacy International, said: "This is a worrying discovery. Location is one of the most sensitive elements in anyone's life – just think where people go in the evening. The existence of that data creates a real threat to privacy. The absence of notice to users or any control option can only stem from an ignorance about privacy at the design stage."

Warden and Allan point out that the file is moved onto new devices when an old one is replaced: "Apple might have new features in mind that require a history of your location, but that's our specualtion. The fact that [the file] is transferred across [to a new iPhone or iPad] when you migrate is evidence that the data-gathering isn't accidental." But they said it does not seem to be transmitted to Apple itself.
iphone-data-map Map shows location data collected from an iPhone that had been used in the southwest of England

Although mobile networks already record phones' locations, it is only available to the police and other recognised organisations following a court order under the Regulation of Investigatory Power Act. Standard phones do not record location data.

MPs in 2009 criticised the search engine giant Google for its "Latitude" system, which allowed people to enable their mobile to give out details of their location to trusted contacts. At the time MPs said that Latitude "could substantially endanger user privacy", but Google pointed out that users had to specifically choose to make their data available.

The iPhone system, by contrast, appears to record the data whether or not the user agrees. Apple declined to comment on why the file is created or whether it can be disabled.

Warden and Allan have set up a web page which answers questions about the file, and created a simple downloadable application to let Apple users check for themselves what location data the phone is retaining. The Guardian has confirmed that 3G-enabled devices including the iPad also retain the data and copy it to the owner's computer.

If someone were to steal an iPhone and "jailbreak" it, giving them direct access to the files it contains, they could extract the location database directly. Alternatively, anyone with direct access to a user's computer could run the application and see a visualisation of their movements. Encrypting data on the computer is one way to protect against it, though that still leaves the file on the phone.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at the security company Sophos, said: "If the data isn't required for anything, then it shouldn't store the location. And it doesn't need to keep an archive on your machine of where you've been." He suggested that Apple might be hoping that it would yield data for future mobile advertising targeted by location, although he added: "I tend to subscribe to cockup rather than conspiracy on things like this – I don't think Apple is really trying to monitor where users are."
iphone data The data inside the file containing the location and time information. This is used to plot the map above

The location file came to light when Warden and Allan were looking for a source of mobile data. "We'd been discussing doing a visualisation of mobile data, and while Alasdair was researching into what was available, he discovered this file. At first we weren't sure how much data was there, but after we dug further and visualised the extracted data, it became clear that there was a scary amount of detail on our movements," Warden said.

They have blogged about their discovery at O'Reilly's Radar site, noting that "why this data is stored and how Apple intends to use it — or not — are important questions that need to be explored."

The pair of data scientists have collaborated on a number of data visualisations, including a map of radiation levels in Japan for The Guardian. They are developing a Data Science Toolkit for dealing with location data.

Davies said that the discovery of the file indicated that Apple had failed to take users' privacy seriously.

Apple can legitimately claim that it has permission to collect the data: near the end of the 15,200-word terms and conditions for its iTunes program, used to synchronise with iPhones, iPods and iPads, is an 86-word paragraph about "location-based services".

It says that "Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device. This location data is collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you and is used by Apple and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. For example, we may share geographic location with application providers when you opt in to their location services."

Get wired performance from your Wi-Fi network

2011-04-14T20:00:00.000-07:00

By Becky Waring

Although the Wi-Fi arms race isn't going to let up any time soon, wireless can never be as fast and reliable as wires.

So why fight it? Get the best of both worlds with a hybrid Wi-Fi and powerline network, perfect for streaming high-def video.

Why Wi-Fi doesn't cut it for streaming video

Recently I was asked to redesign a home network for a client who couldn't get reliable wireless Netflix streaming to his home theater. He was also frustrated by the feeble throughput in much of his house, despite investing in four (count 'em, four) 802.11n Wi-Fi routers.

Although his was an extreme case, with a 5,000-square-foot house spread over two wings and a central connector, his network challenges were typical of those upgrading from older Wi-Fi routers: how to get reliable and dropout-free throughput for media streaming as well as faster overall performance for high-bandwidth tasks such as network backup and storage.

You might think dropping U.S. $150 on the latest 300Mbps 802.11n router should do the trick, but in many cases even the fastest Wi-Fi routers can't deliver smooth streaming video where it's needed, and network backups might take hours or even days to complete.

Wireless throughput drops rapidly with distance from the router and is also subject to interference from a myriad of sources — from cordless phones and microwaves to neighboring Wi-Fi nets. Even momentary glitches in a video stream can be enough to ruin the movie-watching experience.

My client's Wi-Fi issues were compounded by the fact that his house is made of bricks, which along with stone, concrete, water tanks and pipes, stucco siding, and ceramic tile are very effective wireless-signal eaters. (Stucco siding has chicken wire inside that creates a Faraday-cage effect, blocking signals going in or out.)

His existing network was a mesh of four routers running in Wireless Distribution System (WDS) mode with three remote routers acting as wireless repeaters, receiving signals from the others within range and rebroadcasting them.

This system was adequate for ordinary Web surfing and e-mail, but it failed entirely when it came to streaming video to the TVs. By the time the Wi-Fi signal had hopped access points to the farthest corners of the house, it was degraded to practically nothing. The only place he could get a solid video stream was in the same room as the main router connected to his cable modem.

Today, with an added investment of about $300, he's got robust video and data everywhere in the house, and I have a happy client. Read on to find out how we brought wired performance to his Wi-Fi network.

The secret sauce: powerline network adapters

The secret to success? I ditched the wireless mesh design and connected each of the routers to the network with four new 500Mbps powerline adapters from Netgear.

By using powerline gear, which turns home electrical wiring into an Ethernet network, we turned a sketchy wireless network backbone into a rock-solid wired one without having to run new Ethernet cabling all over the house.

Although older 75- and 200Mbps powerline gear has been around for years, it has never really broken through to the mainstream due to both cost (about $75 per adapter, far more than Wi-Fi adapters) and the relatively slow throughput compared to Ethernet cabling.

The new 500Mbps standard finally breaks the elusive "Ethernet-equivalent" speed barrier, with real-world transfer rates of 70–80Mbps in one direction and more than 100Mbps in both directions at once, thanks to built-in gigabit Ethernet ports.

Perhaps more to the point, 500Mbps powerline gear can comfortably deliver 40Mbps streaming 1080p video (as from a ripped Blu-ray disc), the current gold standard. And it doesn't suffer the vagaries of wireless reception.

Thus far, only Netgear and TRENDnet are shipping 500Mbps adapters, with Netgear being the best performing, according to a SmallNetBuilder review. But expect many more products soon from other powerline vendors such as D-Link and Cisco Linksys.

The Netgear Powerline AV 500 Adapter Kit XAVB5001 we used (info page, about $140 retail) consists of two adapters. One plugs into your main router via Ethernet as well as into a wall power outlet, and the other plugs into a power outlet in the remote location where you'd like to deliver an Ethernet port. (See Figure 1.)

Netgear XAVB5001 Kit
Figure 1. The two parts of the Netgear Powerline AV 500 Adapter Kit

The kit is plug-and-play — no setup is required. You can also buy adapters individually. You can use up to a total of 16 adapters around the house, although you probably need them only in strategic locations such as your home theater or basement office.

In my client's case, I simply connected one powerline adapter to each of the four routers that covered the two wings of his house, then changed the wireless setup in the three remote routers so that each was creating its own Wi-Fi net rather than using WDS. (Each was already set in bridge mode, which turns routers into access points only — you can have only one true router per network.)

By using precisely the same SSID (Wi-Fi network name), password, and encryption type (use WPA2-PSK with AES if you can — it's the most secure) in each router/access point, I created a roaming Wi-Fi net where mobile clients such as laptops and smartphones see only one network. They simply connect to the access point with the strongest signal.

It's easiest to create a seamless roaming network with identical routers because manufacturers have varying encryption and channel-selection options that may not quite match up. However, you should be able to accomplish the same thing I did with most modern routers. I recommend the Cisco Linksys E4200 or E3200, which are the current performance and feature leaders in their price classes. (See Figure 2.)

Cisco Linksys E4200
Figure 2. Cisco Linksys E4200 Maximum Performance Wireless-N Router

Both have simultaneous dual-band 2.4 and 5GHz radios, which give you even more network design flexibility. (The 5GHz band is typically much less noisy and crowded.) They also have gigabit Ethernet switches, QOS (quality of service) support for prioritizing streaming media, and USB ports for shared storage drives. At a $160 list price, the E3200 (info page) is slightly less expensive yet full-featured enough for most users.

The top-of-the-line E4200 (info page; $180) pictured in Figure 2 adds a UPnP media serving capabilities for attached storage (a handy feature that can stream media directly to many set-top boxes) and up to 450Mbps throughput on the 5GHz band (assuming you have a matching 450Mbps-capable client card).

Mixed Wi-Fi/powerline network-design strategies

Although most houses don't need four Wi-Fi access points to get full coverage, using powerline gear gives you the freedom to put your routers/access points in the places they do the most good. You can place them pretty much anywhere you have a power outlet.

In my client's case, we located one of the access points directly behind his home theater. This way, I was able to take advantage of the 4-port Ethernet switch in the back of the router to connect his Blu-ray player, Apple TV, and Wii. This strategy saved the cost of a wireless adapter for the Blu-ray player; it also gave all his streaming devices direct wired connections — and glitch-free video.

A huge side benefit is that no streaming video or Internet gaming traffic is competing for scarce Wi-Fi bandwidth because it never leaves the wired network.

I could also have attached a standard 5- or 8-port Ethernet switch to the powerline adapter to achieve the same result. In fact, Netgear has announced a 500Mbps home-theater powerline kit with a four-port switch built into one of the adapters. It should be shipping any day now.

Note that any devices plugged into one powerline adapter need to share the bandwidth through that port, so you probably wouldn't want to put multiple high-bandwidth devices such as NAS drives on one adapter. In the case of a home theater, only one set-top box should be actively streaming at a time.

A powerline adapter is also a great way to network a printer. Even so-called wireless printers usually have an Ethernet port, too; so if you can't get a good wireless printing connection in your desired location, try powerline.

Finally, conserve your powerline bandwidth by placing network backup drives in the location where your computers reside most of the time. For example, if you spend most of your time in the family room, connect your backup drive or NAS to an access point in that room.

Because they are both connected to the same access point, data will flow straight from computer to NAS, without ever going back down the powerline connection to the main router. As a bonus, you'll have a strong Wi-Fi connection in the room where you need it most.

Using your Powerline gear successfully

Although powerline gear is plug-and-play, that doesn't mean it's infallible. Because it's dependent on your home electrical system, line noise from hair dryers, cell phone chargers, and the cycling of microwaves and refrigerators (as well as certain AFCI breakers) can all affect performance.

In addition, if you have very old wiring (I still have a bunch of knob-and-tube wires in my 100-year-old house) or a mixture of wiring and breaker panels, you could have problems.

So always buy powerline gear from a vendor with a good return policy, and test it immediately after you get it to be sure it works in your particular environment.

Fortunately, the Netgear kits are very easy to test. When you plug them in, the middle powerline light glows green, amber, or red. Green signifies a nominal link rate greater than 80Mbps, amber a link rate between 50–80 Mbps, and red a rate below 50Mbps. You can keep trying outlets until you find the best ones.

In my tests, amber was usable for light Web surfing, printing, and e-mail but not for video or heavy file transfers. Red was simply not satisfactory. On the other hand, green was great — it felt like regular Ethernet.

In my client's house, we ended up with three green locations and one amber. But in one room, the first three outlets we tested were red before we got a green signal. Luckily, the room in which we couldn't do better than amber was not a location for which we needed high throughput.

If you get a lot of amber results, make sure that you are not near sources of noise. Chargers, power supplies, or other devices plugged into nearby outlets can be culprits. If these are interferences for you, move them as far away as possible, or use a filter. Netgear also makes powerline adapters with a filtered outlet for problem devices (info page).

Another thing to remember is that powerline adapters need to be plugged directly into the wall, never into a surge suppressor, which wreaks havoc on the powerline signals.

Also, if you already have older powerline gear, don't mix it up. While 500Mbps powerline gear is backwardly compatible with the 200Mbps standard, you'll get greatly reduced performance. With powerline, it's best to stick with one vendor and one speed to avoid the inevitable finger-pointing when things go wrong.

Finally, if you live in an apartment building or other location where you may share electrical circuits with someone else, use the buttons on the side of the Netgear adapters to change the encryption key from the default so that no one can snoop on your powerline network. Press the encryption buttons on your adapters within two minutes of one another, and they will pair up.

Cord Cutters Survival Stories

2011-03-26T07:59:00.000-07:00

Cord Cutters Survival Stories: Middle of the Road
By Beau Bredow Mar. 26, 2011
What’s it like to cut the cord from pay TV? What’s working, what’s missing, and what kind of equipment does the best job of replacing the cable box? In our weekly Survival Story series, we’re asking cord cutters to tell us about their experiences. This week’s featured cord cutter is Beau Bredow, who will save close to $1000 this year thanks to ditching cable.

About six months ago, I started messing around with what it would take for my family to cut the cord on cable and save about $80 a month.

I started researching what channels come through clear via DTV and how to watch shows we normally would DVR or watch on cable. At first, it didn’t look good. I couldn’t figure out what antenna would work, and [there was] no ESPN or sports in general, which was a big letdown.

Just before Christmas, we took the plunge. Here are the devices and the process we took to make it happen:

1. Cut the cable. Our cable lines worked perfectly to provide all the over-the-air digital channels for us. We have two LCD televisions with digital tuners built in.
2. Kept Internet service. Went middle-of-the-road, at about $50 a month.
3. Use Clicker.com to queue up all shows online for easy access. Not all the shows we watch are on Clicker, so we still have to go to some of the websites to watch some shows. We bookmarked them for easy access.
4. Bought 35 ft. VGA 3.5mm cable to play Internet TV shows on my TV. I tried other servers and wireless options, but nothing beat the hard wire as far as keeping picture quality.
5. Bought WD TV Media Player Live Plus. We use this to play movies from our DVDs we’ve ripped, and for quick access to home videos and pictures.
6. Bought a 2 TB hard drive and placed all movies on it, as well as pictures, home videos and music.
7. Bought a wireless router with USB port to network hard drive for easy access and playing through WD TV.
8. Installed apps on my Android phone to use it as a remote and control my laptop and WD TV.

All in all, [it's] well worth the $80 [a month] we’re saving. It would be nice to do some other things, but I haven’t found the right solutions for it yet:

* Instead of using Clicker, I’d like to queue TV shows from network websites to the WD TV and play them. (Flingo might be going in this direction.)
* RSS feed to see when new shows are available from TV network websites.
* ESPN could be nice, as well as an option to replay Sports Center.
* Wii could use some upgrades to act as a media player.

I bought all my hardware for the cost of two months of cable, and so far, [it] works great. I don’t like the idea of renting movies, so I typically buy used ones on eBay, Half.com or yard sales. I want the rights to what I pay for.

Beau Bredow works as a minister in Lakeland, Fla. The views expressed in this guest column are entirely his own and do not necessarily represent the views of GigaOM. His story should not be understood as a how-to.

Should Netflix Offer a Way for Users To Control Streaming Bandwidth?

2011-03-22T13:21:00.000-07:00

With broadband providers capping bandwidth and schools limiting it, should Netflix offer an easy way for customers to easily control the amount of data streaming uses? From the comments Tom points out the Netflix Canada enables users to control bandwith:

Netflix Canada has an option to use lower quality streams to reduce bandwidth, it'd be nice if net admins could contact them and get that flag turned on for anyone using their network. I suggest they call and see what can be done.

There are some "secret" controls for streaming, like CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-M on Silverlight streaming that enables you to view player info and control the buffering rate, but should Netflix make it easy and a standard way across devices?

Comments
Jeff

The Roku has had a "secret" bitrate setting for a long time. From the home screen, press Home Home Home Home Home Rewind Rewind Rewind FastForward FastForward [that's 5 Homes, 3 Rewinds (<<<), 2 FastForwards (>>>)] to bring up the screen to manually select the bitrate you want.

Posted by: Jeff | March 22, 2011 at 03:52 AM
rjejr

CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-M

Do people even watch NF on their PC's anymore?

Wii, Xbox360, PS3, Roku, iPad, internet ready tvs and blu-ray players

I'll admit I still have a PC hooked up to my tv for the occasional Hulu viewing but can't even remember the last time I used it (still searching for V).

Bumps in the road to IPv6

2011-03-17T04:40:00.000-07:00

By Woody Leonhard

Although the consequences aren't as dire as it sounds, the Internet ran out of IP addresses (roughly analogous to telephone numbers) last month.

While the Web won't come crashing down anytime soon, you're going to be affected by the new numbering scheme — and some details may catch you unawares.

Last October, Fred Langa talked in his LangaList Plus column about the changes under way. Simply put, the Internet has run out of IP addresses under the old IPv4 scheme.

This is no namby-pamby upgrade. The current 32-bit IPv4 scheme can handle just under 4.3 billion different Internet addresses. And we've used them up. (That represents an astounding number of networked devices potentially in use.) The new, 128-bit, IPv6 numbering method can accommodate 340 trillion trillion trillion addresses. It's, ahem, unlikely that we'll need that many addresses anytime soon.

But IPv6 incorporates much more than added addresses. There's a complex scheme of layering, protocols, security, and communication enhancements buried in the standard. For the most part, you won't have to worry about the details. But there are a few areas where you can help — and where you can be taken in. Caveat surfor! (Web-surfer, beware!)

Moving to a new format for IP addresses

An IP address identifies a specific piece of hardware on a network — one device, one unique IP address. And the Internet has grown into a mighty big network — with far more devices attached to it than anyone could have imagined back in 1977, when IPv4 was invented.

IPv4 addresses are expressed in four groups of numbers between 0 and 255. For example, 74.208.121.252 or 192.168.1.0. No doubt you've struggled with them at some point.

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) assigns IPv4 addresses in blocks of 16 million addresses to each of five Regional Internet Registries. There are RIRs for Africa, the U.S. and Canada, Australasia, Latin America, and Europe/Middle East/Central Asia. Each RIR in turn assigns blocks of addresses to Internet Service Providers and other organizations. On Feb. 1, IANA gave out the last blocks of IPv4 addresses to its five RIRs.

That does not mean we're facing an imminent crisis. It'll take years for all RIRs to allocate all numbers, and there are tricks that can shuffle numbers around (prompting worries of a possible black market in IP addresses). But the writing's clearly on the wall — we're running out of the Internet's phone numbers.

(IP addresses should not be confused with MAC addresses. IPs are issued to networked devices by the Internet service provider. In most home networks, the IP address is dynamic — it can change when you connect to an ISP. Mac addresses are assigned by the device manufacturer and are essentially a unique, fixed identifier for the device's network interface — and thus for the device.)

To handle the vast number of computers and other devices now connecting to the Internet, the IANA and ISPs are in the process of rolling out IPv6. The new IPv6 addresses appear as a group of eight numbers, each with four hexadecimal digits, such as:

2001:cdba:9abc:5678:ffff:ffff:face:b00c

Clearly, we aren't going to wake up one morning to find the Internet working with IPv6. Instead, there will be a period of years — probably many years — where IPv4 and IPv6 need to peacefully coexist.

And that's where the so-called dual stack comes into play.

Testing for dual-stack compatibility

Running IPv6 on Windows is a piece of cake: IPv6 has been built into Windows since XP Service Pack 2. If you are using HomeGroup on Windows 7, you already have IPv6 up and working between your homegrouped PCs. Similarly, all modern versions of Linux and Mac OS speak IPv6, as do most smartphone operating systems.

The problem isn't on your desktop, laptop, or phone. The problem lies in all of the gear between you and your destination. You may or may not be able to get through on an IPv6 connection because your router or your ISP's equipment can't handle it. That's why, for the foreseeable future, most major websites will be running dual stacks, which allow you to get into the site on either an IPv4 or IPv6 connection.

If you're running only IPv4, you'll be just fine for the foreseeable future; your equipment speaks IPv4, and the Internet location you're connected to still speaks IPv4 (and IPv6 with a dual stack).

A problem arises, though, if your router or your ISP's equipment thinks it can handle IPv6 and really can't. Your PC tries to connect via IPv6 but something gets lost in the communication. You might experience delays of a minute or more while your PC battles with the site's IPv6 stack, can't get through because of intermediary problems, gives up after a while, and finally falls back to IPv4.

For that reason, the international Internet Society (ISOC) is throwing a World IPv6 Day on June 8 — 24 hours for website owners, ISPs, and network users (that's us) to take an IPv6 test flight. ISOC has arranged for Google, YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo, and a hundred other sites to turn on their IPv6 stacks. Two of the biggest Internet plumbing organizations, Akamai and Limelight Networks, will also enable IPv6 on that day. The idea is to test all the intermediaries — ISPs and other network operators, plus router hardware manufacturers — to see which of them will fall over when dual stacks become commonplace.

On a Facebook blog, Donn Lee put it this way:
"Testing IPv6 is important because recent studies indicate about 0.05% of Internet users (1 in 2,000) can't reliably connect to websites that enable both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses (known as "dual-stacked" websites). This has resulted in a classic chicken-and-egg puzzle right now: websites don't want to enable IPv6 because a small number of their users may have trouble connecting."
As June 8 rolls around, you might want to let your friends and colleagues know that they're going to be part of a huge test. Have them go to one of the test sites and see whether the connection goes through. If it fails, have them complain — loudly — to their Internet Service Provider.

You don't have to wait for June 8, though. ISOC has a website set up to perform a one-off test of your current configuration. Go there now, and you'll receive a report like the one in Figure 1.

IPv6 Test Resulrts
Figure 1. ISOC's test page tells you in advance whether you're going to have trouble on June 8.

Make sure you buy IPv6-capable routers

Incredibly, some router manufacturers are peddling goods that aren't yet IPv6-compatible. If your ISP provided the router you're using now, you don't need to worry about it — sooner or later, they'll have to ensure it runs IPv6 and the swap-out shouldn't cost you anything. (Not directly, anyway.)

But if you're buying your own router, be very aware of the fact that most consumer routers don't run IPv6. Julie Bort at InfoWorld reported that, as of a month ago, none of Cisco's consumer Linksys routers runs IPv6. For a follow-up story, Cisco stated that "Linksys routers being launched this spring will have IPv6 support" and that the "Linksys E4200 router we launched in January will have an [IPv6] firmware upgrade planned for April." But there's still no word about which, if any, of the zillions of legacy Linksys routers will run IPv6.

If you're thinking about buying a router and want to make sure it'll run IPv6, you can look on the box to see whether it's certified by the IPv6 Forum. If you want the full details, though, check whether the router is listed on the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) Broadband CPE analysis site. Bet you'll be a little bit surprised — and not pleasantly.

How to Remove Palladium Pro

2011-02-13T11:10:00.000-08:00

Coat Hanger HDTV Antenna!

2011-02-08T19:10:00.000-08:00

Cheaply, easily an quickly build an HDTV antenna that outperforms amplified store bought antennas! Download the PDFs for these projects at www.makezine.tv

Hulu Reworks Its Script as Digital Change Hits TV

2011-01-29T07:18:00.000-08:00

By SAM SCHECHNER And JESSICA E. VASCELLARO

Just as the digital wave transforms the television industry, Hulu, a pioneer of Internet TV, is in internal discussions to dramatically transform itself.

The free online television service has become one of the most-watched online video properties in the U.S. and a top earner of web-video ad dollars since its 2008 launch.

But its owners—industry powerhouses NBC Universal, News Corp. and Walt Disney Co.—are increasingly at odds over Hulu's business model. Worried that free Web versions of their biggest TV shows are eating into their traditional business, the owners disagree among themselves, and with Hulu management, on how much of their content should be free.

Fox Broadcasting owner News Corp. and ABC owner Disney are contemplating pulling some free content from Hulu, say people familiar with the matter. The media companies are also moving to sell more programs to Hulu competitors that deliver television over the Internet, including Netflix Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc.

And in what would be a major shift in direction, Hulu management has discussed recasting Hulu as an online cable operator that would use the Web to send live TV channels and video-on-demand content to subscribers, say people familiar with the talks. The new service, which is still under discussion, would mimic the bundles of channels now sold by cable and satellite operators, the people said.

Hulu's managers say tumult is natural in such a fast-changing industry. "When we blaze trails, which is what Hulu is about, it takes time," said Jason Kilar, Hulu's chief executive, in an interview. "That is not for the faint of heart, and we understand that."

When it launched three years ago, Hulu was the networks' answer to Google Inc.'s video-sharing site YouTube. It provided an easy—and legal—way for viewers to watch new TV shows online whenever they wanted for free. It now offers more than 30,000 television episodes, and its new Hulu Plus subscription service lets users watch on Internet-connected TVs and portable devices like the iPad.

But the digital landscape is changing so fast that Hulu's future is unclear. The networks are grappling with a dilemma facing all entertainment companies: how soon to release movies or shows online without destroying their value in other lucrative "windows" such as DVDS or reruns on cable TV—and at what price.
Journal Community

After upending the music and publishing industries, the digital revolution is poised to shake up TV in earnest this year. As more viewers watch TV and movies on the Internet, industry executives say a generation of TV watchers may never sign up for cable or satellite television, turning off the spigot of monthly fees that have helped support TV for over 30 years. Broadcasters such as those behind Hulu, cable TV operators, and even TV hardware makers such as Sony Electronics are scrambling to figure out their role in the new Internet television universe.

The number of U.S. households that pay for TV service from cable, satellite or phone companies dipped for the first time last year after decades of growth, with 335,000 fewer households paying for service between the first and the third quarters, according to research firm SNL Kagan.

Hulu's owners are worried that free Web versions of their biggest TV shows are eating into their traditional business. Hulu has launched a new paid service, Hulu Plus.

In last year's fourth quarter, the number of people between ages 18 and 49 watching any kind of TV on a traditional set was down about 1.3% from the previous fall, according to Nielsen Co, the biggest decline in at least four years.

At the same time, Internet viewing has increased. U.S. consumers watched about three billion videos on websites offering TV shows in December, up 96% from a year earlier, according to comScore Inc. Hulu alone saw the number of videos it showed double in that period.

Hulu's owners all agree that "consumer behavior is changing" toward more time on Internet-connected devices, said Mr. Kilar. "If you're a content owner, you're at risk of being left behind."
[HULU_jmp]

But they can't agree on the best way to capture the new audience.

"It remains unclear what the business model is" for Hulu, said Bruce Rosenblum, head of the television arm of Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. studio. "At some point, if enough people turn off cable, then you've got a complete disruption of the business model," he said.

When Hulu was created in 2007, NBC Universal and News Corp.—which also owns The Wall Street Journal—were concerned about the growing influence of YouTube and pirated copies of their programs showing up on the Internet. Hulu aggregated the networks' TV shows online and made money by selling advertising.

The partners hired Mr. Kilar, former general manager of Amazon.com Inc.'s North American media business, giving him autonomy to chart a new course. Mr. Kilar, 39, was determined to create an independent corporate culture closer to the tech world than the tradition-bound television business.

The company built a Silicon Valley-inspired startup in a low-slung office park in Santa Monica, a few miles west of its Hollywood owners. In the break room, engineers modified a refrigerator to house a beer keg, cutting a hole in it to fit a special tap in the shape of Hulu's logo.

Mr. Kilar gave new hires a culture manifesto, an 1,100-word document that paints Hulu as a frugal meritocracy where "Fruity Snacks boxes hold up our monitors," but where everyone has a "neurotic focus on quality."

In an office expansion, Mr. Kilar and senior managers gave up their offices to sit at desks in an open floor plan among hundreds of employees, underscoring Hulu's egalitarian approach.

It wasn't long before the new venture clashed with owners' established ways.

Hulu competitor Netflix also charges a monthly fee.

In 2008, ad-sales executives at both Fox and NBC complained to their bosses that Hulu was cutting into sales on the networks' own websites like Fox.com or NBC.com.

The protests fell on deaf ears. News Corp.'s then-president and chief operating officer, Peter Chernin, and NBC Universal's Chief Executive Jeffrey Zucker defended Hulu as part of a larger strategy to build their online business.

The strategy drew viewers. A slick commercial in the February 2009 Super Bowl jokingly revealed Hulu as an extra-terrestrial plot to turn human brains to mush from excessive TV consumption. Hulu's traffic skyrocketed, reaching 397 million U.S. video views in April, up 58% from January, according to comScore.

Mr. Kilar needed more content to show all his new customers. Hulu turned to Disney, offering the entertainment giant an equity stake in return for access to ABC programming. After months of wooing by Messrs. Chernin, Zucker and Kilar, Disney came on board in the summer of 2009. The company provided two years of exclusive access to TV shows—including "Grey's Anatomy" and "Lost"—on the Web free with advertisements.

Soon, the stage was set for a showdown. News Corp. had announced that Mr. Chernin, an original creator of Hulu, would leave the company at the end of June. News Corp. named Chase Carey to be its new president and chief operating officer.

Mr. Carey had a very different vision for Hulu, according to people familiar with the matter. The former head of satellite operator DirecTV, Mr. Carey was a big believer in the subscription-TV business. He worried that online video would train a generation of people to expect entertainment for free with advertising. He thought Hulu should be supported by both subscriptions and ads, those people said.

The strategy conflicted with Hulu's initial business model. While Mr. Kilar had talked about adding subscriptions since Hulu's launch, people close to him say he thought the best way to build the business was to increase the audience by keeping much of the content free, supported by advertising.
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Among broadcast networks, pressure was building to increase revenue. Having seen their audience migrate to cable for years, the networks were becoming increasingly insistent about seeking monthly fees from cable and satellite operators who used their broadcast signals. The networks needed the fees to help pay for soaring production and sports-rights costs. But in tense negotiations, the cable and satellite operators had a big objection: Why would we pay you for content you make available free on the Web?

In 2009, Mr. Kilar hashed out a subscription model that would become Hulu Plus. The idea was a compromise: New TV shows would remain free with ads. Paying subscribers would be offered additional content, as well as the ability to watch Hulu on devices other than their computers.

At a meeting of Hulu owners at News Corp.'s Manhattan headquarters last April, Hulu's management said it wanted Hulu Plus to offer access on multiple devices to full seasons of shows like ABC's "Desperate Housewives," leaving the most-recent episodes free with ads.

Some attendees said that didn't go far enough. At one point, Peter Levinsohn, head of digital distribution for Fox Filmed Entertainment, contended the new paid service was not differentiated enough from the existing free one, according to people familiar with the meeting.

Andy Forssell, Hulu's head of content acquisition and distribution, replied that Hulu would lose advertising if it restricted access to free new episodes.

Despite its privileged access to content, Hulu's revenue is still small compared to the bigger TV ecosystem and emerging competitors such as Netflix. In 2010, Hulu reported revenue of more than $260 million, up from $108 million in 2009. Netflix, which also rents out DVDs, had revenue of $2.16 billion last year.

Hulu's management prevailed that time. But owners and management would continue to differ on strategy.

In April, Disney unveiled software for Apple's new iPad tablet computer, offering free access to some ABC television shows with advertisements. The service raised a conflict: Hulu already was planning to offer the paid Hulu Plus service on the iPad.

Some Hulu board members and staffers were stunned. Mr. Kilar called Disney's chief executive, Robert Iger, to express concern, say people briefed on the call.

By last summer, eager to raise money to secure more content, Hulu management began discussing the idea of an initial public offering.

Hulu managers flew to New York in August to talk to investment bankers, some of whom estimated the company could go public at a valuation of around $2 billion. But to get such a handsome number, Hulu would need to lock up long-term access to its owners' programming.

The owners, however, wanted to first nail down their own new license deals with Hulu, which are set to expire this summer. They didn't want to conduct those negotiations while Hulu was under pressure to impress markets.

Board members, including Mr. Kilar, tabled the IPO in the fall and are now discussing raising capital through other methods. Hulu has asked the owners to invest more themselves, say people familiar with the matter, although it's unclear whether they will do so.

By October, as Hulu Plus was about to launch to a wide audience, Mr. Kilar clashed again with the owners.

Hulu's CEO worried that rival video service Netflix was gaining traction with a feature that allowed subscribers to stream movies and TV shows online on demand. Mr. Kilar proposed dropping Hulu Plus's monthly subscription rate to $4.99 from $9.99.

In a conference call, Mr. Kilar told the media executives how critical his proposals were: He indicated he was prepared to leave when his contract expired if owners didn't follow his recommendations, according to people familiar with the matter.

Both sides eventually compromised, and the owners agreed to a smaller 20% cut to $7.99 a month.

Hulu's owners are now preparing to start negotiations for their new licenses. Discussions have included such concerns as whether giving Hulu exclusive content restricts the owners unnecessarily. News Corp. and Disney are also each mulling whether to wait two weeks or more after a TV episode airs before making it available free online, according to people familiar with the matter.

Meanwhile, the media companies have all struck deals to license TV shows to Hulu's competitor, Netflix.

When NBC Universal recently gave new episodes of "Saturday Night Live" to Netflix, Mr. Kilar complained in a phone call with NBC's Mr. Zucker, people briefed on the conversation said.

NBC Universal is being forced to relinquish its Hulu management rights as part of government conditions on its takeover by Comcast Corp. NBC Universal may be obliged to start making more deals with Hulu competitors as part of those conditions.

ABC, for its part, has quietly built a potential subscription-based service that could mirror the selection of ABC shows in Hulu's subscription offering, according to people familiar with the plans. It remains unclear if it will launch the service.

Hulu's owners are now considering management's proposal to create a "virtual cable operator," according to people familiar with the talks. If they decide to move forward, some form of Hulu's free service would likely remain under such a plan. It is possible Hulu Plus could be folded into the new service, one of the people said.

Online Content Is Exciting

2010-12-26T15:20:00.000-08:00

By Ramin Vaziri Dec. 25, 2010, 12:01am PDT 2 Comments

What is it like to cut the cord from pay TV? What’s working, what’s missing, and what kind of equipment does the best job replacing the cable box? In our new weekend series, we’re asking cord cutters to tell us about their experiences. This week’s featured cord cutter is Ramin Vaziri, who uses not one, but two laptops to bring video to his TV.

Two years ago, I began supplementing my cable service with online video by hooking my laptop up to my 32″ LG flat screen with a VGA cord and stereo speakers. I began watching more and more online content, and four months ago I cut the cord entirely. I cut the cord partly to save money but mostly because my favorite content exists only on the Internet.

I now have two different hookups:

Laptop number one.
Wired Connected Laptop. After using my HP laptop for five years, I decided to buy a new laptop. This left me with a spare laptop. So I keep my extra laptop (HP Pavilion) connected to my LG 32″ LCD TV.

I’m using a VGA cord for the video and laptop speakers with subwoofer for audio. I keep an Ethernet connection plugged in to this laptop so the Internet speed is better than I can get wirelessly. I use a wireless Logitech mouse to control the laptop from across the room.

Wireless Connected Laptop. The new laptop I purchased was a Toshiba Satellite E205 with the Netgear Push2TV Wireless Display adapter. The Netgear adapter is connected to the TV via HDMI.

Laptop number 2.
The HDMI is great because it transmits my audio and video, so the audio plays right through my TV speakers. This hookup lets me stream whatever is on my laptop screen wirelessly to my TV so I can browse on my laptop, select a video and stream it to watch on my TV. I love having access to a browser and 100% of all online content.

There is definitely no shortage of content. I can find my favorite cable broadcast shows streaming online; I bought the NBA League Pass; and I have a Netflix subscription for movies. But what gets me most excited about online video are the new Internet-only content creators. The Young Turks, VBS.TV, MaxBoxing – The Next Round, ThisWeekIn, Wine Library TV, and The Real News Network are some of my favorites.

I also rely on curators like Music Video Jam, Gawker TV, Guyism and Huffington Post to suggest videos. ChannelStack helps me navigate between these favorite bookmarked sites. I think as people discover the great online content creators and curators, they will find that their traditional broadcast/cable programming is replaceable and be tempted them to cut the cord.

Ramin Vaziri is the founder of ChannelStack, a site that aims to be something like the Netvibes of online video. You can find his personal ChannelStack page here.

They Won. And Then What?

2010-12-21T19:27:00.000-08:00

An update on past winners of the Journal's Innovation Awards
By WILLA PLANK

Innovation is an accomplishment in itself, but it's just the beginning of a bigger story. So what happens next? Here's a look at how things have gone so far for some recent Innovation Award winners.

TOUCH BIONICS

LOCATION: U.K.

AWARD: Overall Silver, 2009; Medical Devices category winner

INNOVATION: The company won for the i-Limb, a prosthetic hand that is more lifelike than others in appearance and performance.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Touch Bionics began offering its second iteration of the prosthetic, called the i-Limb Pulse, in May. It gives the user an adjustable grip that can be up to 25% stronger than the original i-Limb. The Pulse allows objects to be held longer and offers better control over fine motor skills.

In December, the company unveiled motorized prosthetic fingers called ProDigits. Mark Ford, vice president for North American operations, says the market for ProDigits has the potential to far outstrip that for i-Limbs.

Touch Bionics has sold nearly 1,200 of the original i-Limbs and more than 100 of the i-Limb Pulse. About 100 ProDigits systems have been sold, each system consisting of one or more fingers.

DATADYNE.ORG
LOCATION: Washington, D.C.

AWARD: Health-Care IT category winner, 2009

DataDyne's EpiSurveyor in the field

INNOVATION: This nonprofit won for developing EpiSurveyor, mobile-device software that can be used by organizations to gather and send health data on commonly used phones in remote areas of developing countries.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? EpiSurveyor has more than 2,400 users collecting data in more than 120 countries. Users include the government of Canada, Unicef and Boston-based health-care consulting firm John Snow Inc. Some are exploring new uses for the software, including the collection of economic data and information on the health of farm animals.

DataDyne.org co-founder and Chief Executive Joel Selanikio says he expects the program, funded in part by the United Nations Foundation and the Vodafone Foundation, to be self-sufficient through paid subscriptions in two years. The group offers a premium subscription that allows unlimited data collection for $5,000 a year. Basic users, who pay nothing, are limited to 20 distinct forms, or lists of questions to be answered in the field, and 500 completed questionnaires for each form.

DataDyne.org also has developed another program called the Mobile Information Platform. It allows information to be sent from a central location, for example a government agency, to locals through text messages on basic phones.

One pilot MIP project sends weather information to farmers in Chile. Another helps provide continuing education for community health-care workers in Peru via text messages.

QD VISION INC.
LOCATION: Watertown, Mass.

AWARD: Materials and Other Base Technologies category winner, 2009

An LED bulb using QD Vision technology

INNOVATION: QD Vision won for turning harsh light from light-emitting diodes into a warmer-colored beam through the use of quantum dots, which are semiconducting nanocrystals. A warmer light, more like the glow of an incandescent bulb, is seen as essential to the widespread adoption of energy-efficient LED lighting.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Nexxus Lighting Inc. has been selling screw-in LED light bulbs with QD Vision's quantum dots since March. The bulbs are designed for use in hotels and retail spaces.

According to Seth Coe-Sullivan, QD Vision's co-founder and chief technology officer, the bulbs being sold by Nexxus last for 50,000 hours—the equivalent of about 17 years at eight hours a day—and burn about one-fifth of the energy consumed by comparable halogen bulbs, most of which last no more than about a year at the same rate of use. The LED lights are more costly upfront—one LED bulb costs just under $100, while a halogen equivalent is about $5. But Mr. Coe-Sullivan says an LED light pays for itself in 12 to 18 months from the energy savings.

QD Vision is working with a lighting company it declines to identify to make another commercial bulb and is collaborating with display makers in Asia on LED screens for devices from handsets to television sets.

VMWARE INC.
LOCATION: Palo Alto, Calif.

AWARD: Software category winner, 2009

INNOVATION: VMware won for its virtualization software suite called vSphere, designed to make it easier for a company to turn its existing data centers into a private cloud—an array of IT services delivered throughout a company over its own computer network—that's secure, reliable and easy to manage.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? VSphere, VMware's flagship virtualization and cloud infrastructure platform, is used in more than 170,000 deployments at companies around the world. The latest version of the software, called vSphere 4.1, is designed to expand the capacity of the platform and lower its operational cost. VMware revenue for the first half of 2010 was $1.3 billion, an increase of about 41% from $926 million for the first half of last year.

SERIOUS MATERIALS INC.
LOCATION: Sunnyvale, Calif.

AWARD: Environment category winner, 2009

INNOVATION: This building-materials maker was recognized for a drywall substitute called EcoRock made of recycled material. The product requires 80% less energy to make than standard gypsum-based drywall and is termite and mold resistant, according to the company.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? EcoRock remains in the testing stage with projects in California, due to the slowdown in new construction, says the company's chairman and chief executive, Kevin Surace. Meanwhile, Serious Materials has refocused its resources on energy-efficient windows, an area of growth. The company has nearly doubled its number of employees to about 400.

Serious Materials is supplying more than 6,000 windows for the Empire State Building, a project that is planned for completion in the fall.

APPLIED MATERIALS INC.
LOCATION: Santa Clara, Calif.

AWARD: Energy category winner, 2008

INNOVATION: This manufacturing-equipment maker won for its SunFab production line, which was designed to manufacture large solar panels using thin-film photovoltaic material more quickly and cheaply than traditional production methods. It promised to drive down the cost of solar power, which would make it more competitive with traditional electricity sources.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? The SunFab line was discontinued in July, due to the weakness of the economy and a reduction of government incentives for solar energy, according to Applied Materials spokesman Matt Ceniceros.

Meanwhile, Applied Materials' sales of equipment used in the crystalline silicon solar-energy business are strong, driven by demand from China. And the company intends to focus as well on opportunities in LED lighting.

SONOS INC.
LOCATION: Santa Barbara, Calif.

AWARD: Consumer Electronics category winner, 2006

View Full Image

Sonos
Sonos music-networking gear

INNOVATION: This company won for a user-friendly digital-music networking system that allows music to be streamed wirelessly to speakers in different rooms of a home.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? The company is five times bigger than it was in 2006 in terms of revenue, according to co-founder Tom Cullen. And it continues to expand its product line. Among other things, it has developed software that allows a Sonos network to be controlled from an iPhone or iPad. The company also has expanded its expertise by hiring staff with acoustics knowledge.

In 2006, Sonos was just beginning to tap the European market; now about half of its business is outside the U.S., mainly in Europe, with Asia being the next target.

And Tomorrow's Winners Will Be...

2010-12-21T19:24:00.000-08:00

By CHRIS GAY

It's one thing to know what innovations are winning awards today, but what if you could know what will win in, say, five or 10 years?

We don't have a crystal ball, but we have the next best thing: the informed opinions of people who are either innovators themselves or who study innovation in various fields.

Here are some of their thoughts on which areas—and possible companies—will see the most innovation in the years ahead:

Space Travel and Habitation
"Commercialized space travel will see a lot of innovation," says Jeffrey Baumgartner, founder of the JPB innovation consultancy.

"Much of it will be incremental in nature, but the result—low-cost, easy travel to space and potential bases on the moon and, in the longer term, Mars—will involve substantial innovation."

Some firms to watch, says Mr. Baumgartner, are Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, Virgin Galactic LLC and Bigelow Aerospace LLC.

Human habitation in space so far has taken place in rigid vehicles like the International Space Station. Bigelow, based in North Las Vegas, Nev., is developing inflatable modules that should be easier and cheaper to launch. Bigelow already is orbiting two unmanned, expandable prototypes and says it is planning assembly of four new spacecraft by 2015.

"The key here," says Mr. Baumgartner, "is that aeronautics is leaving government control and being taken over by industry, where cost-cutting and profitability, rather than contractors milking the state for as much as they can get, will lead to a lot of innovation, affordability and efficiency."

Heavy-Lift Launching
A critical obstacle to any sort of space-based future is getting some rather sizable objects beyond the reach of the Earth's gravity.

But Langdon Morris, a partner with the InnovationLabs LLC consulting firm, notes that while state-invested companies in the U.S., Russia and Europe have developed "heavy lift" launch capabilities, one private firm is moving to surpass them all in terms of payload capacity—an innovation that could slash launch prices and make larger payloads commercially viable.

SpaceX, of Hawthorne, Calif., says it hopes for a 2013 launch of its Falcon 9 Heavy rocket, which is designed to carry payloads of up to 70,000 pounds into low Earth orbit, about one-third more than the Space Shuttle, which is the largest-capacity launch vehicle now in operation.

"Cost-effective heavy-lift launch will enable new space commerce industries," says Mr. Morris.

Space-Based Solar Power
"Once heavy-lift launch is solved, space solar power will be close behind," says Mr. Morris. "Space solar power could transform the Earth's economy."

The idea is for satellites in geostationary orbit to collect the sun's energy and convert it into radio waves for transmission to surface stations, where it will be converted into electricity for local power grids.

Mr. Morris thinks there are several companies that could achieve this.

One is Manhattan Beach, Calif.-based Solaren Corp., which last year reached an agreement to sell 200 megawatts of electricity a year to California's largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., for 15 years, starting in 2016. Solaren says it plans to test key systems and deployments in space in 2014, and launch its Space Solar Power Plant into geostationary orbit in 2016.
A competitor, Switzerland-based Space Energy Group, says it hopes to launch a test satellite within three years, assuming it gets expected funding.

Nano-Scale Medical Devices
With advances in nano-scale engineering, medicine is about to redefine "minimally invasive," says Francis Collins, former leader of the Human Genome Project and current director of the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Collins notes that Johns Hopkins University researcher David Gracias and his colleagues are developing a new class of nano-scale tools for surgery and drug delivery.

"The drug-delivery devices are small enough to fit through a hypodermic needle, thereby facilitating minimally invasive implantation and guidance in hard-to-reach microspaces," says Dr. Collins.

New Treatment for Blindness
Dr. Collins also sees possible breakthroughs in the work of Ehud Isacoff, John Flannery and their colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, who are working on a novel therapy for blindness.

Their technique involves introducing light-sensing molecules, or "photoswitches," into retinas that have lost photoreceptor cells. The photoswitches can be used to control the activity of proteins in the eye that are essential to transmitting information from the outside world to the brain in normal vision.

One such protein, the glutamate receptor, has been put under the control of a photoswitch and introduced into the retinas of mice. The photoswitch turns the glutamate receptor on or off by changing its shape depending on the wavelength of light used—a technique that's been shown to induce light sensitivity in blind mice. Mr. Isacoff says technologies of this type could one day treat blinding diseases in humans such as retinitis pigmentosa.

"The downstream retinal neurons that receive and process information from photoreceptor cells are preserved for years after the onset of blindness," says Dr. Collins, "giving hope that visual sensitivity might be restored by allowing the artificial input of information to these surviving cells."

Several retinal prosthetic devices have been under development, but their optical resolution has been poor and they present challenges in achieving long-term compatibility with host tissue, Mr. Isacoff says.

Breakthrough Fuel Technologies
Two firms could provide significant breakthroughs during the next few years in the search for cleaner fuel technologies, says Andrew Shapiro, founder and president of GreenOrder, a unit of consulting firm LRN that promotes corporate environmental sustainability.

In the race toward off-the-grid, personalized power stations, Sun Catalytix Corp., of Cambridge, Mass., is challenging the dominant notion of batteries as a means of electrical energy storage.

The company is developing a system that would use power from solar panels to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, then store both in tanks for use in generating power when the sun goes down.

Meanwhile, Amyris Inc., of Emeryville, Calif., is developing genetic-engineering technologies that change the way microbes process sugar, turning them into "biorefineries" that could provide alternatives to products derived from petroleum.

The company has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to raise about $120 million through an initial public offering of shares, and it recently received a corporate innovation award from the Aspen Institute.

Adaptive Learning
Education, like most other services, could become more tailored to individual needs. That's difficult in the low-tech, labor-intensive context of the traditional classroom, but "adaptive learning" could change everything, says Michael Horn, co-founder and executive director of the Innosight Institute, a nonprofit think tank.

The technology—an amalgam of computer science, education and cognitive science—uses both desktop and Web-based programs that in some ways mimic the interactivity of human teachers.

"Start-up companies like Knewton and Grockit as well as stalwarts like Kaplan are starting to push in this area," says Mr. Horn, "and there promise to be breakthroughs in the next five years."

One breakthrough could be a platform that tracks and analyzes the progress of individual students, allowing teachers to customize lessons to the individual. There's no clear leader here, says Mr. Horn, but outfits like Agilix Labs Inc., Nixty, L Point Solutions Inc. and IQity & Co. are making early waves.

Most Innovative Technologies 2010

2010-12-21T19:20:00.000-08:00

The Winners, Category by Category
From Computing Systems to Wireless, the Most Innovative Technologies
By MICHAEL TOTTY

This year the Innovation Awards judges chose winners in 17 categories. Here's a look at the winning entries.

Lightfleet Corp., based in Camas, Wash., won in this category for a novel way of connecting computer processors, using beamed light instead of copper or fiber-optic wires.

In big data centers, even the fastest servers get slowed by bottlenecks in the connections between microprocessors, or nodes. Lightfleet's technology aims to eliminate the bottlenecks by replacing the wired switches typically used to manage these connections with a device that sends a data-carrying beam of light to all the nodes at once. The faster transmission of data promises to make it possible, for example, to run Wall Street's high-speed trading operations more efficiently.

The company, founded in 2003, delivered a prototype of its first product earlier this year to Microsoft Research, the R&D arm of the computer giant, which will test how it handles different applications. A Lightfleet spokesman says the company expects the first commercial sales by the middle of next year.

RUNNER-UP

Marvell Semiconductor Inc., U.S.: A small, low-power networked home server, called the Plug Computer, that can deliver data and applications to a variety of devices.

Consumer Electronics
Industrial Technology Research Institute , winner of the overall Gold award, won in this category. (See " Paper-Thin Screens With a Twist ")

RUNNERS-UP

NanoLumens Inc., U.S.: Lightweight digital displays that are flexible, thin and energy efficient. The first product, a 112-inch display, weighs less than 90 pounds, is less than an inch thick and consumes less energy than five light bulbs.

Ford Motor Co., U.S.: MyFord Touch, an instrument panel for cars that replaces traditional buttons, knobs and gauges with voice commands, customizable LCD screens and five-way controls on the steering wheel similar to those on cellphones and MP3 players.

Nokia Corp., Finland: An "augmented reality" browser for mobile devices, called Point & Find, that lets users get information about real-life objects by pointing a camera phone at the object.

E-Commerce
New Orleans-based Receivables Exchange LLC won in the e-commerce category—the first winner in this group since 2004—for its online marketplace where small and midsize businesses can auction their receivables.

Smaller companies don't have the same access to financial markets that their larger counterparts do, so it's especially difficult for them to raise short-term working capital. Taking out a loan backed by receivables—known as factoring—is common in some industries. But for most small and midsize businesses, a factoring deal can be costly and often takes a long time to arrange.

Receivables Exchange aims to make it much easier for a company to tap the cash locked in its receivables. A company posts its unpaid invoices on the exchange, which screens the seller to make sure it has a certain minimum revenue and has been in business for at least two years. The screening can be completed within 24 hours and the invoices can be posted the next day. Bidders offer to buy some or all of the posted receivables, and the exchange takes commissions from the buyer and seller.

The company was launched in 2007 by Justin Brownhill, a former investment banker who is now Receivables Exchange's chief executive, and Nicolas Perkin, its president. The exchange hosts between $1 million and $5 million in trades each day, a spokeswoman says; it doesn't reveal its revenue.

Energy
InEnTec LLC, based in Bend, Ore., won in the energy category for a process that uses high-temperature plasma gasification to produce synthetic fuel from municipal and industrial waste.

The technology offers a cleaner alternative to using incinerators to burn garbage.

The company's Plasma Enhanced Melter heats the waste in a super-hot plasma. This produces a synthetic gas that can be converted to ethanol, methanol, clean diesel and other transportation fuels. Ash from the process is captured in molten glass, producing an obsidian-like material that can be buried in landfills or used in construction materials. Metals are captured separately and can be recycled.

Plasma gasification isn't a new technology; companies have used it for more than a decade to break down industrial and medical waste. Other companies are planning plasma-gasification plants to convert municipal waste, and a pilot plant from U.K.-based Advanced Plasma Power has been in operation since 2007. But InEnTec says its technology is more energy efficient than other plasma-gasification systems.

InEnTec was formed in 1995 by researchers who had studied and improved the technology in a collaborative effort between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Last year, the company created a joint venture with Houston-based Waste Management Inc. to build and operate plasma-gasification facilities using InEnTec's technology. The first, planned for Arlington, Ore., is scheduled to open by the end of the year, with the capacity to handle 25 tons of waste a day.

RUNNERS-UP

Enphase Energy, U.S.: The Enphase Microinverter System, which converts the direct-current output of solar panels to the alternating current used in homes and businesses. The system includes a meter that collects information about panels' performance and sends it to a website where customers can view the data.

Idaho National Laboratory, U.S.: An efficient, environmentally friendly process for making high-quality biodiesel from waste fats, oils and greases.

Solexant Corp., U.S.: Ultrathin-film inorganic solar photovoltaic cells.

Environment
Desalination promises to deliver virtually unlimited quantities of water to a water-constrained world. But for it to succeed, researchers are going to have to reduce the huge amounts of energy needed to make salt water drinkable.

NanoH2O Inc., based in El Segundo, Calif., was voted best in the environment category for a nanotechnology-based reverse-osmosis membrane that promises to reduce the cost of running a typical desalination plant by as much as 25%.

Reverse osmosis, which separates salt and other impurities from salt water by forcing it through a membrane at high pressure, is increasingly favored as a desalination technology. But the pumps that push water through the membranes consume large amounts of energy, and traditional membranes easily are clogged by impurities, reducing their efficiency.

NanoH2O, using technology based on research at the University of California, Los Angeles, weaves nanoparticles into its membranes. The nanoparticles are more permeable to water molecules than the material in traditional membranes, and they resist fouling by bacteria, salt and other contaminants. As a result, the company says, its membranes enable desalination plants to maintain the same levels of production while reducing energy consumption, or to produce 70% more fresh water at current energy levels.

The company says it has begun producing membranes and complete reverse-osmosis modules, which incorporate the membranes and can replace the filters already used in existing desalination plants. It delivered the first products in August.

RUNNERS-UP

Active Water Sciences LLC, U.S.: A portable, self-contained wastewater-treatment system, the Water Phoenix, that can convert municipal wastewater into effluent that meets U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards in less than 24 hours, producing little to no sludge.

Ceracasa SA and FMC Foret SA, Spain: A porcelain tile, BionicTile, with a photocatalytic glaze that reduces levels of nitrogen oxides and nitric acid in city air.

ClimateWell AB, Sweden: SolarChiller, a solar-powered air-conditioning unit that delivers heating, cooling and hot water to buildings without using electricity.

Health-Care IT
Software called Connect, developed by more than 20 federal agencies led by a program of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, won in this category for technology that enables health-care providers to exchange health information electronically.

The health-care industry is moving, albeit slowly, to replace patients' paper records with electronic files that can be easily shared among physicians, hospitals, health-care agencies and others. Two roadblocks stand in the way, though: The cost of electronic records systems and the need to ensure security and patient privacy.

Connect addresses both problems. The software was devised to meet all requirements for maintaining the security and privacy of medical records, including rules for federal agencies that are stricter than those for private health-care companies. And the Federal Health Architecture program, which coordinates health IT activities for several federal agencies, distributes the open-source Connect software free to both government and private health organizations.

In one of the first deployments, the Social Security Administration worked with the state of Virginia's regional health-information network to streamline the process of determining eligibility for disability benefits. Instant access to patients' records cut the time it takes to process disability applications to 46 days from 84.

Though there is other software for exchanging medical records, the Innovation Awards judges praised Connect for its ability to put the technology in the hands of lots of medical providers. The developers "were one of the few people who could move the needle on adoption of these things," says Barry H. Jaruzelski, one of the judges and a partner at Booz & Co.

RUNNERS-UP

Life Image Inc., U.S.: A cloud-based platform for sharing and storing diagnostic images, such as X-rays.

Ingenix, U.S.: Disease Precursor Identification software, which can identify people at risk of developing costly, difficult-to-manage diseases, such as diabetes.

Materials and Other
Base Technologies
Cement production pumps a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. U.K.-based Novacem Ltd. was recognized in this category for a new cement-making process that takes in more CO2 than it emits.`

The secret is using magnesium oxides instead of calcium carbonates, the main ingredient in Portland cement, the most common type. Magnesium-oxide cements have been around for a long time, but their quality wasn't as good as that of Portland cement, and their manufacture still emitted a lot of CO2.

Novacem, spun out of Imperial College London in 2007, says its cement is as durable as traditional materials and the production process can absorb 100 kilograms of CO2 for each metric ton of cement produced—compared with the roughly 800 kilograms of CO2 emitted in the production of each metric ton of traditional cement.

Novacem plans to begin construction next year of a plant to produce up to 25,000 metric tons of cement a year using the new technology, and to open the first commercial-scale plant by 2015.

RUNNERS-UP

Cambrios Technologies Corp., U.S.: A coating material made of highly conductive silver nanowires that can be used to create a transparent, less costly, bendable thin film for touch screens and other electronic components.

Bolt-A-Blok, U.S.: A building system that uses steel-reinforced concrete blocks that can be easily assembled into houses and other structures by unskilled labor.

MicroGreen Polymers Inc., U.S.: A method for reducing the cost of recycled plastics by adding a gas that expands the length and width of solid polymer sheets.

Medical Devices
Zoom Focus Eyewear LLC, winner of the overall Silver award, won in this category. (See " A Different Kind of Eyeglasses ")

RUNNERS-UP

MIT Mobility Lab, U.S.: The Leveraged Freedom Chair, a wheelchair designed for use in developing countries that can travel on virtually any terrain.

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Abbott Laboratories
Abbott Labs' MitraClip for heart-valve repairs

Abbott Laboratories, U.S.: The MitraClip System, a catheter-based device designed to repair damaged heart valves without open-heart surgery.

Aribex Inc., U.S.: The Nomad, a hand-held dental X-ray device. It's rechargeable, can be taken anywhere and allows the operator to stay with the patient during the procedure.

Medicine-Biotech
Counsyl Inc., winner of the overall Bronze award, won in this category. (See " A Genetic Test for Prospective Parents ")

RUNNERS-UP

CardioDx Inc., U.S.: Corus CAD, a genomic test designed to help clinicians determine, from a simple blood sample, whether a patient with chest pain has a significant blockage in the coronary arteries.

Pacific Biosciences, U.S.: A DNA sequencer, which reads individual molecules of DNA as they replicate in order to determine an organism's precise genetic code in real time—producing results 20,000 times faster with less overall cost than other systems.

DuPont Qualicon, U.S.: Tests using DuPont's BAX System to detect pathogens in fish and shellfish and E. coli O157:H7 in beef and fresh produce.

Network/Internet Technologies/Broadband
Vidyo Inc., based in Hackensack, N.J., won in this category with its technology for delivering high-quality videoconferencing over the Internet or cellular networks at a fraction of the cost of dedicated "telepresence" systems.

Internet videoconferencing has been around for a few years, but the calls typically are characterized by jerky, low-resolution video. More-realistic, high-resolution videoconferencing systems generally require dedicated communications lines and expensive equipment, limiting their use.

Vidyo uses a new video-compression standard to produce a high-definition videoconferencing product that can work on desktop or laptop computers, tablets and smart phones and travel over the Internet or 3G and 4G cellular networks.

The company introduced its systems, which can include routers and other hardware in addition to software, in 2007. This summer, it licensed software to Hewlett-Packard Co., which will use the technology to extend its Halo telepresence service to desktop computers and to conference rooms not already set up with dedicated systems.

RUNNER-UP

Microsoft Corp., U.S.: An experimental Internet application, called Pivot, designed to help users to explore, organize and visualize collections of data quickly by showing relationships between the information.

Network Security
The Internet is thick with malware—viruses, worms, spyware, Trojan horses. The judges awarded Symantec Corp., based in Mountain View, Calif., the top prize in the network-security category for a new way to head off these threats: "reputation-based" technology that examines the usage patterns of millions of computers to spot dangers that traditional security products typically miss.

In general, security software identifies malicious software by looking for distinguishing patterns of code or watching for bad behavior—a computer's inexplicably connecting to an unknown server, for example. The problem is that there are so many new malware variants constantly appearing, some of them targeting only a small number of computers, that those techniques can't always spot them before they do mischief.

Symantec's new technology examines the software running on the computers of millions of volunteers, who remain anonymous, to spot possible threats. Based on what these patterns show about a program's source, age, prevalence and other characteristics, the technology assigns a "reputation rating" to every piece of software that it comes across. The technology had been known initially as Quorum but will soon be renamed.

Symantec says that the technology, first incorporated in the company's Norton 2010 security suite that was released in late 2009, is detecting about 10 million new threats a month that are invisible to traditional security methods.

RUNNERS-UP

Panda Security, Spain.: Panda Cloud Antivirus, a free, cloud-based antivirus solution.

Symplified Inc., U.S.: Symplified SinglePoint, a cloud-based service that enables organizations to apply and enforce security policies and controls on cloud applications.

Physical Security
Surveillance cameras generate a prodigious amount of video; unfortunately there's not enough time and manpower to watch it all.

The winner in this category, Israel-based BriefCam Ltd., has developed a fresh solution to the problem: Video Synopsis, which enables a viewer to browse a day's worth of recording in just a few minutes by creating a summary of all the activities captured by a camera.

Other video-surveillance technologies address the too-much-information problem by fast forwarding through recordings or capturing images only when something happens—using motion detectors, for instance.

BriefCam takes a different approach. Its patented technology pulls out activities recorded over the course of a day—vehicles driving through a security gate, people walking in and out of a building—and compiles the images into a highlight reel in which each vehicle, for instance, follows immediately the one that preceded it through the gate, regardless of how much time actually elapsed between their arrivals. Each vehicle's image carries a time stamp to show when it was recorded, and the user can click on the time stamp to call up that section of the video.

"Five hours of video is not five hours any more," says Shmuel Peleg, developer of the technology and the company's chief scientist. "It's five minutes."

Video Synopsis, licensed from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where Mr. Peleg is a faculty member, was launched in 2009.

Robotics
Liquid Robotics Inc., based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is the winner in this category for developing an unmanned seagoing craft propelled by the power of ocean waves.

Most unmanned ocean craft can remain at sea for only a short time, relying on batteries to power propellers or pumps. The heavier their payload, the less time they have.

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Liquid Robotics, Inc.
Liquid Robotics' Wave Glider

Thanks to its propulsion system, Liquid Robotics' Wave Glider avoids those limits.

The craft, which consists of a surface buoy and a submerged glider with wing-shaped panels, converts the up-and-down motion of waves into forward thrust, making it possible to propel the buoy indefinitely without relying on batteries or other power sources.

The craft can be controlled remotely via satellite over an Internet connection. Instruments are powered by a solar panel on the surface of the floating buoy. Innovation Awards judge William Webb says the technology is "simple, novel and very workable."

The vehicle originally was designed by co-inventor Roger Hine, a Silicon Valley engineer and now the company's chief executive, to monitor the activities of humpback whales. It can also be used for tsunami warnings, observing weather and ocean conditions, and national-defense applications. The first craft was sold in 2009.

This summer, BP PLC deployed two Wave Gliders to the Gulf of Mexico to monitor water quality near the site of the well that exploded in April and spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf.

Semiconductors
InVisage Technologies Inc., based in Menlo Park, Calif., took the prize in the semiconductors category with QuantumFilm, an image sensor for digital cameras that uses semiconducting nanocrystals to capture far more light than traditional sensors.

Inexpensive digital cameras rely on sensors made from silicon that are limited in the amount of light they can capture. This is especially an issue in the smaller sensors used in cellphone cameras.

InVisage replaced silicon in the sensor with quantum dots, semiconducting crystals that are nanometers in size. The product, InVisage says, captures more than 90% of the available light, compared with 25% for a silicon-based sensor.

The technology taps research from the University of Toronto by Ted Sargent, a nanotechnology researcher and InVisage's founder and chief technology officer. The first QuantumFilm prototypes were unveiled in March, and the company says it will deliver sample chips to smart-phone makers by the end of the year; these chips will be used to build prototype devices. The chips could be available in consumer products as early as the end of next year.

RUNNERS-UP

Industrial Technology Research Institute, Taiwan: Slim, flexible sensors. ITRI envisions use of the sensors in such things as electronic musical instruments and weight scales embedded in luggage.

STMicroelectronics, Switzerland: The iNemo family of smart multisensor devices, which can be used in new ways to measure movement, pressure, temperature and altitude.

Nanosys Inc., U.S.: QuantumRail, a component that delivers more vibrant color and brightness in notebooks and mobile devices as well as increased energy efficiency.

Software
San Francisco-based Unity Technologies won in this category for a set of game-development tools that make it cheap and easy to create three-dimensional interactive content, including games, training simulations and medical visualizations, for a range of devices from cellphones to game systems.

The software for creating 3D online universes typically requires teams of engineers who spend years creating and refining these tools. As a result, they're often too complex and expensive for small-scale or amateur game developers.

Unity's software simplifies the process of building 3D games and other programs. It includes an easy-to-use editor that can take prefabricated components—rain or falling crates, for example—and combine them with other features to create full game environments.

The software also makes it possible to deploy games on a range of computer systems: Macs or PCs, game consoles from Sony Corp., Nintendo Co. or Microsoft Corp., and Apple Inc.'s iPhone and iPad.

The tools are simple enough for hobbyists or start-up developers; two developers used it to make the popular Zombieville USA app for the iPhone. They also are powerful enough for the largest game developers. Electronic Arts Inc., for example, used Unity to create its Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online game. "What you can create in a short time frame with a low learning curve is pretty revolutionary," says Robert Drost, a computer architect and one of the Innovation Awards judges.

The first version of the software was introduced in 2005, and it currently is being used by more than 200,000 developers. In October 2009, the company began offering at no cost its entry-level version, normally priced at $200 and intended mainly for hobbyists and small, independent game developers.

Technology Design
The efficient and compact storage of cookware may not be one of the world's great problems, but for anyone who has tried to put away a stack of awkwardly shaped pans with their lids and protruding handles, it's definitely an unmet need.

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Gavin Thomson Design Ltd.
Gavin Thomson Design's nesting pans

Gavin Thomson Design Ltd., based in the U.K., won this category with an elegant solution to this daily annoyance. Mr. Thomson designed a set of three saucepans that nest one inside the other. The largest pan snugly holds the next smaller pan, which holds the smallest one; each permanently attached handle rests inside the hollowed-out grip of the next larger pan, and the lids all fit on top.

The patented design was licensed to Stellar brands, a unit of Portugal-based Silampos SA, and the first products, called Eazistore, were introduced in March in the U.K. Mr. Thomson's firm is negotiating with housewares brands in North America and Asia to distribute the pans in those regions.

RUNNERS-UP

Smart Lid Systems, Australia: A disposable coffee-cup lid that changes color from brown to red when hot.

Panasonic Avionics Corp., U.S.: An in-flight entertainment system that integrates a touch-screen monitor with a thin, lightweight economy-class seat.

Wireless
Ubiquisys Ltd., based in the U.K., won in the wireless category for a low-priced femtocell—a small cellular base station for use indoors.

Femtocells are designed to address two big, related problems: the poor cellphone coverage typically found inside a house, apartment or office building, and the growing congestion on cellular networks, aggravated by the explosion of data use on the latest smart phones. While femtocells have been around for a few years, their adoption has been limited by their high cost.

The company's G3-mini, introduced in December, is the first femtocell to be sold at a wholesale price under $100—a price that makes it possible for carriers to provide them to customers free of charge.

Ubiquisys keeps the cost down by providing software that's already proven to work on the leading carrier networks and delivering hardware blueprints to consumer-electronics makers, which can take advantage of their high-volume manufacturing lines to turn out lower-priced gear.

Tokyo-based Softbank Mobile Corp. began offering free G3-mini devices to consumers, retailers and small-office customers in the spring, and the first units were shipped in August.

RUNNERS-UP

Motorola Inc., U.S.: The iSIM, a thin, flexible wafer that attaches to the SIM card in a mobile device. The iSIM enables a host of new mobile applications built by third-party developers.

Shared Spectrum Co., U.S.: Technology that permits two or more networks or applications to share the same radio-frequency band by using channels when they are idle.

Pyxis Mobile Inc., U.S.: Application Studio, which allows companies to create applications for BlackBerry, iPhone, Android and Windows mobile devices from a single configuration with no coding.

Correction & Amplification

In one of the first deployments of the Department of Health and Human Services' Connect software, the Social Security Administration worked with a private regional health-information network in Virginia to streamline the process of determining eligibility for disability benefits. A previous version of this article incorrectly said the health-information network was run by the state of Virginia.

Google Goes to the Cloud for New Idea in PC System

2010-12-21T18:50:00.000-08:00

Google Goes to the Cloud for New Idea in PC System
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG

In the personal-computer industry, where things change fast, one fact has been a constant for years: There are two major, mainstream operating systems for consumers. One, Microsoft Windows, runs on many brands of hardware and dominates sales. The other, Apple's Mac OS X, runs only on its maker's Macintosh computers, and has had a resurgence in popularity in recent years. Other contenders, such as various versions of Linux, have remained on the fringes.

Google's new Chrome OS aims to do everything online, turning the entire PC into a giant browser. There are advantages, Walt Mossberg says, as well as disadvantages. For example, a Chrome OS computer can't do much when it's not connected to the Internet.

Next summer, however, Google hopes to add a third broad-based computer-operating system to challenge the duopoly. It's called Chrome OS, and is based on Google's Chrome Web browser. With Chrome, Google isn't just aiming to elbow its way into the OS business. It's hoping to change the entire paradigm. Instead of storing most programs and files on your computer itself, the Chrome OS will mainly run programs from, and require you to keep your data in, the cloud—remote servers located on the Internet. In effect, it turns your entire computer into a giant Web browser, instead of treating the browser as just one among many local programs.

The Chrome OS isn't finished, and isn't ready for broad public testing. Google readily concedes it has lots of bugs and rough edges. But the company has designed a small test laptop with the new operating system installed and distributed "a few thousand" of them to outsiders to try.

I have been using this machine, called the Cr-48, for about a week, and have some explanations and first impressions to share. This isn't a formal review; that will have to wait till the product is finished and is on commercial computers.

I focused mainly on the software, which is built on a Linux underpinning. That's because Google doesn't ever intend to sell the Cr-48 hardware, an all-black, unbranded laptop with a 12-inch screen, a rubbery surface and a large, buttonless touchpad that resembles those pioneered on the Mac.

In my tests, I found this early Chrome OS machine to be fast, with decent battery life and almost instant resumption from sleep. It handled most Web sites fine, and worked almost exactly like the very nice Chrome browser on Windows and Mac.

I also liked the one hardware feature worth mentioning: a radically redesigned keyboard. Instead of function keys, or various legacy keys such as Caps Lock, Chrome OS keyboards feature dedicated browser-oriented keys, like ones for moving back and forth among Web pages and windows, refreshing a page, entering full-screen mode, or quickly opening a new tab and beginning a search.

The Chrome OS will have a big advantage. Because it is mainly a front-end-to-cloud service, if you lose your laptop, you can get another one and just sign into your cloud accounts. You should be able to find all your stuff waiting for you.

However, users of the Chrome OS will have a huge adjustment to make. They will have to give up the rich, local programs they have spent years learning to use and tweaking to their liking. You can't install local programs on a Chrome OS computer. Instead, Google provides a Web Store inside the browser that allows you to download icons for "Web apps"—mostly websites designed to look and work like standard programs.

Some of these, like Gmail, are familiar and popular. Others are newer. For instance, the New York Times and AOL already designed Web-based news apps for Chrome OS, and there is a Web-based version of the TweetDeck program for Twitter. These apps, and the store's own icon, appear on the new Tab screen of Chrome OS (and also are available in the current Chrome browser.)

In my tests, I found these apps generally worked fine. But most aren't as rich and versatile as local Windows and Mac programs. For example, there was no way to play my local, personalized iTunes music collection, unless I spent many hours uploading it to some Web-based service.

I also had to settle for Web-based productivity programs—like word processors and spreadsheets—with many fewer features than standard local ones, such as Microsoft Office.

And I ran into plenty of frustrations. At this stage, Chrome OS can't do anything with USB flash drives or SD memory cards, and can't synchronize phones. And it has a very limited ability to store, or allow you to do anything with, email attachments or other files you might download and prefer to keep locally rather than on a server controlled by somebody else.

Printing was a chore, requiring a complicated setup on a Windows computer that Chrome used as a conduit to a printer.

Plus, Chrome OS is hardly stable yet. I suffered numerous crashes of Adobe's Flash player, and even Google's own Google Talk instant-messaging service, which appears in a little pop-up window on top of the browser. The company says it hopes to fix these problems by next summer.

Finally, the biggest downside: Because it's a cloud-oriented system, Chrome OS is almost useless if you lack an Internet connection. Google says it plans to offer some limited offline functionality, and to encourage makers of Web apps to do the same. It will also eventually be able to make some use of some files stored on external hard disks. But the basic operating mode will require you to be connected to the Internet.

To help with this, the Cr-48 has a Verizon cellular modem built in, to supplement its Wi-Fi connectivity. Verizon is offering 100 megabytes of data free, but that is a small amount, and you have to pay for more.

Like the Mac OS, but unlike Windows or Google's own smartphone operating system, Android, the Chrome OS will be deeply integrated with hardware. So, Google doesn't plan to distribute or license the new operating system to every hardware maker—at least not at first. You won't be able to install it on an existing computer. It will be available in 2011 on a limited number of computer models from selected manufacturers.

Google says this is because security is a high priority and requires special hardware designs that tightly bond with the software.

Also, Chrome OS computers will, in some respects, be more like iPads than laptops. They won't have hard disks, just a limited amount of flash-memory storage, and they won't have DVD drives.

They are an attempt to realize the old idea of a "network computer," or one which is mostly a front end for network services.

Of course, many people already spend most of their time with their PCs and Macs connected to the Net. Many use Web-based email programs or streaming music programs instead of local software.

So the time may be right for a cloud computer, a change in the paradigm. Google certainly hopes so.

4 Ways To Convert YouTube Videos Into MP3 Files

2010-10-20T09:29:00.000-07:00

Just several years ago, it would have been impossible to imagine a one-stop solution for all our media needs; and yet today, YouTube practically fulfils every part of it – from searching for our favourite music videos, to catching up with the latest media gossip.

But what if there was a certain song you wanted to listen to on your portable music player, or a business podcast you wanted to carry around in audio format – instead of watching it as a video online? Fret not, for here are a few magical ways to transform that YouTube video into an audio mp3 file for your convenience:
1. How To Convert Youtube Videos Online And Download Them Instantly

By far the easiest way to obtain an MP3 file from a Youtube video is to have all the work done for you beforehand, so that you can use it instantly with no extra hassle. This is probably the preferred method for most laymen, since it’s as simple as click-and-go in most cases.

Video2MP3 is personally my favourite site for online video conversion. All you have to do is copy and paste the Youtube URL of the video you want to convert into the text bar, select whether you want the MP3 file in standard or high quality (higher quality usually takes longer to download), and press the convert button. You’ll have to wait awhile for it to convert and download, but it’s mostly an automated process in which you don’t have to lift a finger otherwise.

If you like this kind of instant conversion, other sites to consider include VidtoMP3, FromVideo (which also supports Vimeo!) and YoutubetoMP3.
2. How To Convert Videos Locally On Your Computer Straight From YouTube

The first method converts the YouTube videos into MP3 files on a third party’s computer, then allows you to download them; but what if you wanted to skip the download and head straight to the conversion step? One reason you may want to do this is perhaps for security reasons, so here’s a way to bypass the third party and keep the process strictly between your computer and YouTube.

DVDVideoSoft provides a large warehouse of free conversion software, but by far their most useful offering is their free Youtube To MP3 Converter. As the name implies, the software extracts and converts Youtube videos directly on your computer, so you’re assured of a safe MP3 file if you’re cautious about viruses. The interface may not be as pretty as more recent software, but the entire process is easy to understand and user-friendly, with a straightforward guide to help you out in case you need some hand-holding.
3. How To Download Videos First, And Then Convert Them At Your Convenience

If you’re like me, then you probably won’t want to just convert the videos into songs, but would like to store a collection of the videos themselves as well. To do this, you’ll have to take two steps: firstly, to download the videos to your computer, then convert them into MP3s yourself.

To download the videos to your computer, you can either choose to download them via online downloaders, or use local software to do the job. Some of the online video downloaders include KeepVid and SaveVid, while the free Youtube Video Downloader is installable onto your computer. If you use Mozilla Firefox, you’ll be happy to know that Download Youtube Videos + offers a secure solution for downloading Youtube videos right from within your browser.

Next, you’ll want to convert the videos you’ve downloaded into MP3 files. If you’re using Windows, the free Freez Flv to Mp3 Converter works well to convert the downloaded Youtube videos (.flv) into MP3 files.

And there you have it, your untouched downloaded Youtube videos and converted MP3 audio files, all in one setup!
4. How To Download Videos & Convert Them Into MP3s On a Mac

If you’re on a Mac, then you’ll have to use slightly different software to perform the above steps, but the process is mostly the same. The reason behind this is because Macs are unable to run the FLV codec natively, so you have to download them as H.264 videos instead and use the appropriate software to convert them into MP3s.

Videobox offers a nifty solution for downloading Youtube videos to your Mac. In tech speak, it downloads Flash videos and converts them into H.264 format so that you can play them on Quicktime – but for the layman, it downloads them so that it just works on your Mac.

After you’ve downloaded the video, the next step is to convert it into an MP3 file. FfmpegX is an amazing conversion software which works exceedingly well and has independently amassed glowing reviews, and is by far the best conversion software I would recommend. In fact, codec fans will be happy to note that FfmpegX handles a wide variety of formats, so its conversion capabilities are not confined to merely converting videos into MP3 files.

The Traveling Internet

2010-10-18T20:10:00.000-07:00

Looking for free or cheap Wi-Fi while traveling? Thankfully there are a number of ways to get it now. And while cheap wireless Internet isn’t available everywhere, it is easier than ever to plan ahead for your connectivity needs.

Let’s start with airports. Several airports offer free Wi-Fi some or all of the time. (Just don’t be fooled by, or sign in to, a network with the SSID “Free Public WiFi”)

The Zombie Network: Beware 'Free Public WiFi'
It's in your airports, your coffee shops and your libraries: "Free Public WiFi."

Despite its enticing name, the network, available in thousands of locations across the United States, does not actually provide access to the Internet. But like a virus, it has spread — and may even be lurking on your computer right now.

Wireless security expert Joshua Wright first noticed it about four years ago at an airport.

"I went to connect to an available wireless network and I saw this option, Free Public WiFi," he remembers. "As I looked more and more, I saw this in more and more locations. And I was aware from my job and analysis in the field that this wasn't a sanctioned, provisioned wireless network, but it was actually something rogue."

Free Public WiFi isn't set up like most wireless networks people use to get to the Internet. Instead, it's an "ad hoc" network — meaning when a user selects it, he or she isn't connecting to a router or hot spot, but rather directly to someone else's computer in the area.

Though it doesn't actually provide Internet access, the network has spread across the country thanks to an old Windows XP bug.

How It Works

When a computer running an older version of XP can't find any of its "favorite" wireless networks, it will automatically create an ad hoc network with the same name as the last one it connected to -– in this case, "Free Public WiFi." Other computers within range of that new ad hoc network can see it, luring other users to connect. And who can resist the word "free?"

Not a lot of people, judging from the spread of Free Public WiFi. Computers with the XP bug that try to connect to the Internet will remember the name, create their own ad hoc networks and entice other users wherever they go.

Microsoft is aware of the issue and says it has eliminated the network in more recent versions of Windows. It also created a fix to the problem for the older version of Windows XP — Windows XP Service Pack 3 — but many people still haven't updated their computers.
How To Protect Yourself

"Free Public WiFi" isn't inherently harmful, but if you connect or unintentionally create the ad hoc network you could expose yourself to hackers. Here are two steps you can take:

Step One: Regardless of whether you're on a Mac or PC, or which version of Windows you're running, resist the urge to connect to "Free Public WiFi" or other unknown wireless networks.

Step Two: If you're still running Windows XP, make sure your computer is up to date so that you won't unintentionally broadcast the ad hoc network in the future. Here's a statement from Microsoft:

"This issue was fixed in Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. Customers who wish to install Windows XP Service Pack 3 can do so by visiting this site.
Learn More At Wlanbook.com

That means, Wright says, the network continues to spread across the country like something from a horror movie — the kind "where a zombie takes a hold of one person, bites them and they become infected by this zombie virus."

It's not the only zombie network out there, either. Others you may have seen go by such alluring names as "linksys," "hpsetup," "tmobile" or "default."

A Trick That's A Treat For Hackers

No one knows for sure where Free Public WiFi began. One theory, Wright says, is that someone may have set it up as a joke. It might have been created to trick a friend into connecting "so he would get a Web page with some kind of a gross image or childish prank."

Unintentionally creating or connecting to the ad hoc network isn't inherently harmful, despite its virus-like spread. It does, however, provide an access point for hackers to come in and check out the user's files.

Part of Wright's job is to hack into a company's wireless network in order to expose vulnerabilities. When he sees Free Public WiFi, he says, "we break out the champagne."

"Because I know at that point I will be able to get unlimited access to internal resources just from that one starting point."

The site Wi-Fi FreeSpot offers a directory showing airports with free access around the country. Don’t see your airport on there? Remember that last year Google and others sponsored free airport Wi-Fi at several locations for the holiday season. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that happen again this year starting some time in November.

http://www.wififreespot.com/airport.html

What about on the plane? A ZNF friend recently posted on the travel site Upgrd about a deal from Gogo on in-flight Internet access. While Gogo normally charges a fee of $12.95, if you’re heading across the country on a red-eye, the company offers a “FlightNite Pass” for only $5.95. You know, in case you’re not planning to sleep anyway.

Once you’re grounded, there are the standard free hotspot locations to look for, and the options are expanding all the time. Starbucks is always a good bet. You can also cozy up to a Cosi, a Panera, or even (in many cases) a McDonalds. Several ISPs also offer free access to their own hotspots while you’re on the go. On the east coast, Comcast just radically expanded available Xfinity hotspots in the New Jersey and Philadelphia regions.

If all else fails, and you still need connectivity, there’s always that credit card in your wallet and a hotel lobby nearby. Or you can plan ahead and get a USB modem with a 3G or WiMAX subscription. Clearwire is launching 4G WiMAX service in several new cities (New York, LA, San Francisco) before the end of the year.

Roku box developer has a sixth sense about video

2010-10-16T19:11:00.000-07:00

In the late 1990s, Anthony Wood created one of the first DVRs. Now, with a device that streams movies and television shows to TV sets via the Internet, he's banking on a continuing shift away from DVDs.

Michael Hiltzik

October 13, 2010

As the last century waned, scarcely a day passed without someone showing up in our newsroom offering a demonstration of a new dot-com service or consumer device. ECommerce sites for T-shirts and sandals, search sites paying jackpots to lucky users, you name it.

One day a team from a company called ReplayTV wheeled in a television set wired to a box with a hard drive inside. They hooked it up to our cable jack to show how we could use it to pause, rewind and fast-forward live TV.

I still remember that day because it was the only time I ever left one of those pitch meetings thinking, "That will change my life, and I must have it." Today such devices, known as digital video recorders, are commonplace — a survey last year estimated that 36% of all U.S. homes have at least one, many provided by their cable or satellite company.

The man who conceived the ReplayTV device was Anthony Wood. Now 44, he is also the man behind the Roku box. This device, the size of a couple of decks of cards, is one of several allowing Netflix subscribers to stream movies and television episodes directly to their TV sets via a home Internet connection, without waiting for a DVD to arrive in the mail.

That makes Wood possibly the only man alive to have placed two digital inventions in my house — a historical footnote, to be sure (if that), but one that hints at his remarkable instinct for the consumer market.

A serial entrepreneur, Wood has experienced almost everything that can happen in the high-tech business since he founded his first company in high school in Houston to sell software: He made almost $1 million with one company, got turned down by dozens of venture firms with another, then landed backing from a big firm and got shouldered into the background by his investors. He's been bought out and spun off, and he's still here to tell the tale.

Privately held Roku Inc. is Wood's sixth startup company (the name means "six" in Japanese) and its working environment is right out of the form book: offices in a Silicon Valley industrial strip, no receptionist in sight, packing materials stacked here and there, whiteboards in the conference rooms covered with inscrutable flowcharts. Wood met me at Roku's Saratoga headquarters not long ago dressed in baggy jeans held up with suspenders.

Wood started ReplayTV in 1997 after leaving Macromedia Inc., to which he had sold a precursor to the leading Web authoring program Dreamweaver. (Macromedia later was acquired by Adobe Systems Inc.)

"I'd had the idea for the DVR for a long time," he told me. "But I'd look at the prices for hard drives and at compression technology and it was not practical." Initially, no venture firms would back his proposal for a consumer TV player, so he funded ReplayTV from his own pocket and money from private angel investors, and started hiring engineers to make his idea a reality.

ReplayTV found itself in competition with TiVo, which was employing a different business plan to market a similar device. Where ReadyTV charged full price for its box — as much as $1,000 in the early days — TiVo sold its unit for less upfront but charged a monthly or annual subscription fee to make up the difference.

Both companies cut deals with entertainment companies, but TiVo was more "industry-friendly," as Wood puts it. For example, ReplayTV had a 30-second skip-ahead function, which drove broadcasters nuts because it allowed users to avoid seeing commercials; with your TiVo box you could only fast-forward through the ads, not miss them completely.

ReplayTV bested TiVo for video best in show honors at the Consumer Electronics Show in 1999. But TiVo beat ReplayTV to the IPO stage, raising $88 million that same year. By the time ReplayTV was ready to go public, the market had crashed and the IPO window shut tight. ReplayTV was eventually acquired by DirecTV for its patents. TiVo still exists, but it has lost money in nine of the last 10 years.

Wood launched Roku in 2002 to market home digital devices. Its first products included a unit to display photos and art images on HDTVs, which were still novel, and Soundbridge, which allowed you to stream your digital music files or Internet radio stations to speakers around your house.

Meanwhile, Netflix was trying to figure out how to sell video via the Internet. In 2007 it brought Wood into the fold as vice president of Internet TV. He built the team that developed what became the Roku box as well as applications allowing PC users to stream Netflix movies onto their computers. Differences of approach soon surfaced — for example, Wood wanted to offer streaming services to video distributors such as Amazon, which he says made Netflix uneasy. Netflix didn't see itself as a hardware company, so it spun Wood's engineering team back out to Roku, retaining the rights to license the technology to others.

Roku duly signed up Amazon — for a fee you can rent or buy movies and TV episodes from Amazon to view via the box — along with other partners such as Major League Baseball. Roku's Channel Store also offers 75 channels developed by outsiders, much as Apple's App store offers third-party apps for the iPhone and iPad.

Sales have soared as consumers get used to the idea of streaming TV and to the technology. This year Wood expects revenue to reach $50 million to $60 million, up from $33 million last year and $17 million the year before that.

Yet Roku is the kind of company that may never be out of the woods (so to speak). Netflix has licensed its streaming technology to makers of Blu-ray DVD players and for game players such as Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo Co.'s Wii, all of which compete with Roku.

The device Wood says he worries about the most, however, is Apple TV, introduced by Steve Jobs last month. That device also affords access to Netflix, as well as to movie and TV episode rentals. On the other hand, it sells for $99; Roku's two cheapest units offer similar if not superior services for $59 and $79. On the horizon is Google TV, which will roll out later this year but will be available, at first, only in a $300 box.

Wood says he's counting on video distribution continuing to move away from cable transmission and the DVD and toward Internet delivery. "That trend is what will make Roku successful," he told me. "We think the one box to rule them all will be the Roku box."

Considering that video is the most rapidly evolving entertainment market, that's an audacious prediction. Still, given Wood's track record, whatever he thinks about the future, I'm willing to listen.

Google Search Tricks

2010-10-13T03:55:00.000-07:00

Google is an amazing search engine. Most of us use it to find websites with information, but Google is so much more than a search engine. There are hundreds of built in features and these are 10 of the most useful ways to get common information directly from Google.

Movies Times

Enter “movies” followed by your town/city/postal or zip code and you’ll see some movie times for a couple popular movies along with a link to get the full list of movie times for your area.

Track Packages

Just type in a FedEx, UPS or USPS tracking number and Google will give you a link to see the shipping details.

Track Flights

Enter the airline and flight number and search. No more clicks, the info will be right there.

Find the Best Price

Enter the model name or number of a product you’d like to buy. Then click the “shopping” link at the top and Google will show prices at online retailers. To ensure you get the lowest price, you can sort by price (including shipping). There will likely be some retailers that you’ve never heard, so you can sort by reviews as well.

Define a Word

Lets say some fancy pants uses a big word and you don’t know what it means, you could go to your favorite dictionary site, or you could type “define simple” into Google search.

Unit Conversion

Whether you need to convert cups to gallons or you need to go between metric and imperial units, Google’s conversion engine can help.

Currency Conversion

Just type in the value and the currency to convert from and to, example: 100 Euros in Australian dollars

Time

You think you’re doing a nice thing, calling somebody far away to make sure they’re well and give them a familiar voice to talk to. Then they answer the phone as if you woke them up in the middle of the afternoon, but you forgot that’s 4am in Tokyo. You can easily avoid this by checking the local time before calling.

Weather

Should you pack shorts or pants for your weekend getaway? Get a 5 day forecast in seconds.

Stock Quotes

Just enter the stock symbol and click search.

There are many more of these features and I’ll be sure to share more. In fact, I discovered an undocumented one tonight too.

How to Watch Blocked Internet Videos

2010-10-07T10:57:00.000-07:00

By Chad Upton | Editor

The internet is a great place to catch TV shows and clips that you or your PVR missed.

Unfortunately, a lot of websites only allow their video content to be viewed in their service area. It’s not because they’re mean, it’s for legal and cost savings reasons.

That’s right, it’s expensive to stream video over the internet to thousands or hundreds of thousands of people in a reliable way. You need a lot of servers and bandwidth, both of which are expensive, especially in large quantities. If a broadcaster only services one country, they’re not likely going to speed money to reach customers outside of their service area, although they may allow it if there are no legal restrictions and the advertisers are willing to pay to reach those users.

Secondly, they may not be legally allowed to broadcast outside of their broadcast area. Broadcasters buy distribution rights for the shows and other content that they air. These distribution rights are usually sold by country. That means a broadcaster who airs a show in the US is not allowed to distribute that show over the internet to another country since they have not bought the distribution rights required to broadcast in that country. In fact, another broadcaster in that country likely has paid for the rights to broadcast that same show there.

There are also legal agreements with members of various guilds and unions that may prevent content from being distributed in certain areas or for a finite time after the original air date.

Broadcasters can identify which country you’re in when you access their website. They use various methods to determine your location, but the most popular is something called Geo-IP look up. Basically, when you navigate to their website, the network address of your computer is sent to the web server. They can look up that address in a database to see the country that address is registered to. This method is accurate most of the time and in some cases they can actually narrow down the part the city that you live in.

Although there may be legal and ethical issues with it, there are ways to circumvent some of the methods that are used, potentially allowing you to view content from outside their intended region of distribution. These methods may be illegal in your country, so verify the legality of doing this before attempting them.

I think there is at least one ethical use for circumventing regional lockouts. For example, I was in Canada a couple weeks ago and I wanted to catch up on one of my favorite shows. I normally watch the show on network TV and all of the advertising is relevant to me. I wasn’t able to watch videos on the broadcaster’s website from Canada, so I employed the following method to make it work:

1. Install this Firefox plugin: http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/967 (requires Firefox browser)
2. In Firefox, Go to “tools” > “modify headers”
3. From the drop down box on the left select add
4. Then enter: “X-Forwarded-For” in the first input box without the quotation marks
5. Enter one of the following IP addresses in the second input box without the quotation marks (choose the country where the content is accessible from)
USA – 12.13.14.15
Canada – 207.245.252.27
UK – 193.35.131.194
6. Leave the last input box empty, save the filter, and enable it (should look like this: http://imgur.com/Feb4.png )
7. Click the “Configuration” button on the bottom right then proceed to check the “always on” button.
8. Close the Modify Headers box, restart the Firefox browser and visit the intended website.

I should note some websites that the above method does not work for:

* cbs.com
* cwtv.com (the CW)
* hulu.com
* sho.com (showtime)
* tnt.tv

There are at least four times that many sites that DO work, although I’d rather not single them out for legal reasons. There are also a few other methods, but this is by far the easiest to setup and use. If you have IP addresses for other countries, let me know and I’ll add them.

Also, it takes a lot of people and money to make these great shows, be sure to support them by purchasing them when they come out on disc and renting them from iTunes, Netflix, etc.

How to share your email address online without getting hit by spam

2010-08-29T06:34:00.000-07:00

Put your email address online and you’ll be at the mercy of spam bots and email harvesters. These are automated robots which troll the internet looking to add to their ever growing spam mailing list. So how do you share your email without getting hit?

Scr.im is a free service which helps put a layer of security around a short URL so that spambots will not be able to find your email address easily.
Sharing your email

Simply just type in your email and pick your short URL for easy reference

5 Tips and Tricks: USB Video on the Roku

2010-08-17T14:01:00.000-07:00

One of the big selling points for the XR version of the Roku is the addition of a USB port. And although there’s no official Roku support for USB video playback yet, there is a private USB channel available thanks to citizen-coder Nowhereman. (Submit your own channel in Roku’s developer contest by September 7th.) The channel is easy enough to set up with Nowhereman’s detailed instructions, but there are some quirks to watch for. If you want to try it out, arm yourself with a few tips and tricks first:

1. Be prepared to convert video files for playback on the Roku, as the USB channel only supports MP4 video (plus MP3 audio, and PNG and JPG photos). Luckily, you can grab transcoding software for free off the Web. Try downloading the open-source HandBrake transcoder if you need format conversion.
2. You can use a USB flash drive with the Roku’s port, but it likely won’t work if you try to hook up your 500 GB Western Digital external drive. Rule of thumb: if it needs to plug into the wall, it probably won’t work with the USB channel.
3. Frame rate matters. Encode your video files at 29.97 frames per second rather than the standard 30 fps. Otherwise, be prepared for a lot of buffering.
4. Bit rate matters. Encoding at a bit rate that’s too low will create blockiness in playback, particularly with action scenes. Start with a rate of 2.5 Megabits per second. The trade-off in file size is worth it.
5. Get a bigger USB drive. It’s amazing how much space a movie can take up when you’re encoding at 2.5 Mbps. Luckily, thumb drives are pretty cheap these days. You can grab a 16 GB drive for a measly $25 or $30 on Amazon.

Preparing Windows XP for the long haul

2010-08-12T04:39:00.000-07:00

Microsoft's support for Windows XP may be fading, but a loyal horde of XP users plans to stick with this venerable OS for as long as possible.

If that's your long-term goal, there are a number of steps you can take now to ensure a finely tuned XP system for months — possibly years — to come.

Windows XP is almost a decade old, which in both computing and dog years makes it very long in the tooth.

Microsoft has officially dropped support and security updates for all XP versions through Service Pack 2. The only version of 32-bit XP that still qualifies for Microsoft's security patches and major bug-fixes is the Service Pack 3 edition. (The relatively rare 64-bit flavor of XP is a special case. See Microsoft's explanation.)

XP has had a long and excellent run, but SP3 is the end of the line.

That said, XP is not dead, and it's still the best OS for older hardware designed with XP in mind. (I have XP on several of my older systems.)

If you're still using an XP box by choice (or necessity), there's lots you can do to keep things humming along until you eventually move to new hardware — which will almost assuredly come with the excellent Windows 7 already installed.

Here are some key steps you can take to get — and keep — your XP system running great! And if you move to Windows 7 (or are also running Vista machines), many of these techniques can also help you.

Start with a thorough XP system checkup

► Check the hardware. Hardware? Yes! No operating system can be better than the hardware on which it's installed, and older systems are prone to age-related problems. One often-overlooked problem is dust buildup, which can cause chips and drives to overheat and malfunction. These hardware errors can masquerade as software problems, causing you to waste time troubleshooting the wrong thing.

It's easy to clean your PC. Consult my how-to article, "Getting the grunge out of your PC." (It's a few years old, but still completely apt.) While you have your PC's case open, make sure that all plug-in cards and socketed chips are fully seated and all cables firmly connected.

► Check your hard drive's "physical" health. Most new and XP-era drives are equipped with Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology, also known as SMART reporting. SMART data is stored within the hard drive itself and can often alert you to impending problems before they get serious.

It's easy to check the SMART data. Two tools I like are PassMark's DiskCheckup (info/download page) and Active@ DiskMonitorFree (download page). Both programs are free for personal use and also come in commercial versions for organizations.

► Check your hard drive's "logical" health. Run chkdsk.exe to check the integrity of your hard drive's files and to repair any errors.

Click Start and Run, then type chkdsk c: /f into the Run dialog box. Hit OK.

Chkdsk may tell you that it can't check the drive because the drive is in use. It will then offer to check the drive at reboot. Type Y (yes) and hit the Enter key.

Repeat for all drives/partitions on your system.

► Correct driver errors now, while you can. Just as Microsoft is providing less support for XP, third-party vendors are withdrawing support for older hardware. Someday soon, you may discover that the drivers you need are no longer available. Fix problems now!

Boot XP and right-click My Computer. Select Properties, Hardware, then Device Manager. (Or, click Control Panel/System/Hardware/Device Manager.) Click View and select Show hidden devices to make sure you're seeing everything.

Correct any problem indicated by a yellow exclamation mark or a red X; in most cases, you should get correct or updated drivers from the hardware vendor's site.

It might also be wise to save copies of any special drivers your systems needs; burn 'em to a CD or DVD, and tuck the disc away in a safe place.

Review and update your PC's security system

► Patch and update XP and apps. Starting with Windows Update, make sure your operating system is fully up-to-date with all necessary patches, fixes, and updates. Do the same for all your non-Microsoft software, visiting the vendor sites to download any new updates and patches for your applications and utilities. A tool such as Secunia's outstanding, free-for-home-use Personal Software Inspector (PSI) (download page) can make this step a breeze.

► Verify system security. Regardless of the antivirus and anti-malware tool(s) you're using, visit a competing vendor's site and run their free live or online scan to verify that nothing slipped past your usual defenses.

Next, check that your firewall is providing the protection it should. There are many good, free, online firewall-test sites, such as Hackerwatch, Gibson Research ShieldsUP, and AuditMyPC.

Give your computer a thorough file cleaning

► Take out the trash — all of it. Needless file clutter makes a system harder to use and slower to operate. For example, AV scans and Windows' indexing both take longer when they have many junk files to process.

Start by deleting old $NtUninstall{xxx}$ files from XP's C:\Windows folder; these files can occupy a shocking amount of space! You need these files only when a Windows Update fails and you (or the OS) have to roll back your system. If your system is working fine, $NtUninstall files serve no purpose.

Next, wade through your hard drive, folder by folder, making sure files are where they're supposed to be and that you're not storing needless duplicates or other useless files.

Next, uninstall obsolete or unused software.

Finally, use a tool such as Piriform's free CCleaner (site) to rid your drive of useless junk files and broken or obsolete Registry data.

► Rein in XP's three worst space-hogs. System Restore, the Recycle Bin, and browser caches are like black holes for data, and your system can run better if you limit their voracious appetites.

System Restore is at best a limited recovery tool, so I don't feel it's worthwhile to devote vast amounts of disk space to it. The Kellys-Korner article, "System Restore for Windows XP," tells you how to manage it.

Windows' default Recycle Bin can consume hundreds of gigabytes on a large drive. Pare this down to a reasonable size by right-clicking the Recycle Bin and selecting Properties. Reduce the size of the Recycle Bin to a smaller percentage of the total disk space. (Click the disk tab — e.g., Local Disk (C:) — to determine its reserved Recycle Bin space in gigabytes.) I set it to around 500 MB (0.5GB) on large disks and 250MB (0.25GB) on smaller ones.

To reduce Internet Explorer's cache size, click Tools and Internet Options. Then, under the Browsing History section, click Settings and adjust the cache size downward to, say, 50MB.

For Firefox, click Tools/Options and then click Advanced. Under the Network tab, look for the settings box in the Offline Storage section.

Chrome's cache-size adjustment uses the command line, as described on a Chrome Help forum page.

► Defrag. Once your disk is rid of all unnecessary files and is organized the way you want, run your defragmentation tool to reorder your files for optimal performance. If your disk was badly fragmented, it may take several iterations of defragging to achieve maximum benefit. (Paid subscribers can read an in-depth discussion of defragging in my Aug. 5 column.)

Use disk imaging to preserve your new setup

Once you've worked through all the above, your XP system should be lean, clean, defragged, and fully up-to-date. Wouldn't it be great if you could somehow preserve your PC's current software state so that, should you ever need to in the future, you can bring it back to this nearly perfect condition in just minutes?

You can! Use a disk imaging tool to create a perfect, complete, working copy of your current setup. You'll never again have to rebuild your system and reinstall all your software from scratch!

XP requires third-party disk-imaging software (Win7 has it built in) such as Acronis' U.S. $30 True Image (info page), Norton' $70 Ghost (site), or — my personal favorite for non-Win7 systems — Terabyte Unlimited's geeky-but-powerful $35 BootItNG (info page).

All three programs make disk images and bootable recovery discs that can be used to restore a complete, everything-installed-and-working setup — even to a raw, unformatted drive.

There's plenty of free disk imaging software available, too. For example, see Freebyte's page titled "Free disk image software;" TheFreeCountry's list of "Free hard disk and partition imaging and backup software;" or OptimizingPC's how-to, "Create free bootable Windows XP image disk."

Run through the above steps once or twice a year to keep your system in tip-top shape, and make a fresh disk image from time to time — especially if you make any significant changes to your hardware or software. Store your disk images in a safe place (off the hard drive), such as on CDs or DVDs stored away from your PC.

With this kind of routine maintenance, your XP system will most likely run well for as long as you need it. And, should the worst (major crash, hard drive failure, etc.) happen, you can use your disk images to rapidly restore your system to the near-perfect state you just created.

You're now set for the long haul!

Have You Hit the Netflix 500 Title Queue Limit?

2010-08-04T04:50:00.001-07:00

You're limited to 500 streaming titles, but one way around the 500 title limit for DVDs is to setup multiple profiles. You can have up to 5 different profiles for each Netflix account, for a total of 2,500 titles, but only the main account can have a streaming queue.

To setup a new Profile, go to Your Account & Help, and under Preferences select Account Profiles.

Help Key: Watch Netflix from outside the U.S.

2010-08-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

You Americans have all the good stuff. Stuff like BP pumping oil in the Ocean and guns, lots of guns. And then you have Netflix. Sweet Netflix. Us foreigners are wondering what it feels like to have a service like that. Now I know.

In Europe we also have online movie services. They are completely useless unless you are prepared to pay 3€ ($5) for a single movie for 24 hours. The content of these services is not very satisfying either. This is of course not an option for people who know that such things as Netflix exist. In Germany for example there are lawyers who make a living off scouting torrent trackers to see if you download a single MP3 or a movie. If they get you they will try to get your name and address from your ISP. First your ISP will refuse to hand your data to the rats. This leads to a pile up of legal costs. Finally 3-4 months later you will find a letter in the postbox saying that you have to pay a 1000€-5000€ + penalty because you downloaded something plus the legal fee that they spent on suing your ISP to give them your personal data. This has happened to many in Europe and while my solution is certainly not the best at least it’s not illegal (at least the swine will not come after you). So let’s get started.

Even to be able to open Netflix.com you need a decent VPN service. Fortunately you can give in any address in the U.S. and you don’t need a matching credit card. I pay $11.50 per month for the HydeMyAss pro VPN service and so far I’m satisfied with it. They have Linux/OSX/Win7 clients and they work pretty well. Now the trick is that if you want to have a decent picture quality you can’t use a VPN since it will slow down your connection pretty much.

Once you have a Netflix subscription and a VPN service subscription, do the following:

1. Connect to you VPN service to a server in the U.S.
2. Open your browser
3. Go to Netflix
4. Choose a movie and click Play Now
5. Wait until you see the “Downloading Movie Information” message in the movie player
6. Disconnect from the VPN service and you are now using your full bandwidth

Now I’m able to watch Netflix in HD from Germany (or from anywhere else). You can do the trick with WMC and this should even work with the Xbox 360 extender although I didn’t try. Also when you are watching series you can stay in the session; you don’t have to do the trick every time you want to watch the next episode. Just click play next. Overall the whole thing costs $9 for the unlimited Netflix subscription and $11.50 for the VPN pro monthly. That’s just over $20. Cheaper than a 5000€ fishing expedition.

This way you can watch many other online services. For example Top Gear on BBC2 or Hulu. The speed trick, however, only works on Netflix. Be sure to experiment though.

YouTube URL Secrets

2010-07-25T12:59:00.000-07:00

It used to be, when you wanted to share a video, you’d attach it to an email and send it out to your friends.

Now when you want to share a video, you find the video on youtube and send a link — that keeps everybody’s inbox from filling up.

Change the Starting Position

Sometimes, you’ll want to make sure your friends see exactly what you’re talking about. To start the video at a specific spot, you can append “#t=MMmSSs” to the end of the url (link). You’ll replace the uppercase Ms with the number of minutes and the uppercase Ss with the number of seconds in the video where you want playback to begin.

For example, if I want to jump to the 2 minute, 39 second point in a video, then I would add “#t2m39s” to the end of the URL (example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_HkH8huuzA#t=2m39s)

This trick also works for embedding a video. Although, when embedding use “&start” instead of “#t” and it’s in seconds only. (example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_HkH8huuzA&start=159). Try playing the following video, it will start near the end.

High Definition

Many YouTube videos are now available in HD. To ensure you link to the HD version, append “&fmt=22″ to the end of the url. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_HkH8huuzA&fmt=22)

Download Video

Maybe you want to transfer a video to your iPod or laptop for offline playback. If you load a video in youtube, you can swap out “youtube” for “keephd” in the URL. If there is a forward slash “/” after “watch” then you may want to remove that as well. This new url will take you to keephd.com and it will give you links to download the youtube video.

Copy machines, a security risk?

2010-05-24T19:29:00.000-07:00

This is really scary!

Run your PC from afar — securely and easily

2010-04-15T05:47:00.000-07:00

By Susan Bradley

Your office PC is miles away, when suddenly you realize you forgot that all-important file — what to do?

Luckily, there are free tools (including one possibly residing in Windows) that give you remote access — or even full-scale remote control — of your PC, as if you were sitting right in front of it.

By day, I work as a server admin for my clients; by night, I become a support tech for my sister and dad. But when problems arise at some inconvenient hour, the last thing I want to do is hop into the car and drive to the troubled PC (or server). Instead, I pull out one of my many remote-connectivity software tools and access the ailing PC from afar.

With remote-access software running, I see their screens on my monitor. I control their cursors with my mouse. I use my keyboard to enter commands and text into their systems. It's as if I were sitting at their PCs without ever having left my house.

That's pretty cool, but there are many good reasons for using remote access/remote control software beyond family tech support. You can also use it to access your personal or office PC when you're away — pull down that file you left behind, synchronize data between your notebook and desktop computers or your home and office PCs, or run applications you have on one machine but not on another.

Look to Windows first for a remote connection

Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) is found in most versions of XP, Vista, and Windows 7, and it's relatively easy to use. (See list below.)

RDC, like most applications of its kind, has two main components: a host (or server) app and a client app. Communication between the host and client is one-way — a client PC controls the host, but not the other way around.

To establish a remote connection, you launch the host RDC app on the remote PC and the client app on the local system (the one you're sitting at).

Starting with XP, all versions of Windows have the RDC client software and thus can connect to an RDC host.

However, only certain versions of Windows include the host side of RDC. Even though RDC has a myriad of home and non-business uses, Microsoft sees its remote-control utility as primarily a business-oriented tool. So only the business-oriented and higher-end editions of Windows have the RDC host software built in.

Here's how it breaks down:

* XP: XP Home contains only client software; XP Professional contains both client and host software. See the MS article, "Get started using Remote Desktop with Windows XP Professional."

* Vista: The Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate editions all have client software; the Business and Ultimate editions also have host software. See MS's Vista RDC FAQ and article.

* Windows 7: Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate have client software; Professional and Ultimate also have host software. See the Win7-specific article, "Connect to another computer using Remote Desktop Connection."

In all Windows versions, you can click Start/Help (or its equivalent in your edition of Windows) and search the Help system for the phrase Remote Desktop. The local Help system will show you authoritatively what your copy of RDC can do — and even more important, how to configure and use it.

Non-RDC alternatives offer more flexibility

RDC is good — I use it all the time — but it's not the only game in town. Many third-party alternatives bring host capability to the Windows editions lacking RDC host-mode support.

For example, LogMeIn's software, available in free and paid versions, lets any current Windows version act either as a LogMeIn host or client. LogMeIn also offers a Mac version, opening up interesting options for cross-OS remote sharing and control. (See more on Mac connections below.)

Similar solutions include RealVNC, Copilot, GoToMyPC, CrossLoop, and many more.

Microsoft also may end up competing against itself with a new cloud-based sync/share service called Live Mesh (site).

(If you know of other tools or have had experience with any of the ones I've mentioned, please visit this story's thread in the Windows Secret Lounge and share your thumbs-up or -down recommendation!)

Making connections across the Internet

In general, setting up and using these tools is fairly straightforward. Start by configuring the host system to receive inbound connections, and leave it turned on when you're away. When you need remote access, connect your local computer to the Internet and launch the client app. The exact method varies from product to product.

For example, with Microsoft's RDC, the client software asks at startup what you want to connect to. You enter the network address of the target host PC. (On a LAN or intranet connection, you can alternatively use the machine's local network name.) RDC negotiates an encrypted connection and then takes you to the familiar sign-in page on the host system. Enter the username and password you usually use on the host PC, and you're in — just like that. (See Figure 1.)

There's one caveat for this to work reliably: the host computer must have a static IP address (one that does not change). Most businesses have static IPs, but most homes do not. So connecting to your work PC should not be a problem.

If your company requires a virtual private networking (VPN) connection to the office computers and servers, you must first establish the VPN link and then launch your remote-control software.

Remote Destop Connection sign in screen
Figure 1. To connect to a remote PC with Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection, simply enter the system's IP address.

I use still another option at my workplace: Remote Web Workplace (RWW), which is built into Windows Small Business Server. RWW provides secure remote access for the office staff without using VPN.

For home-to-home connections, use one of the alternatives to RDC, such as LogMeIn — which uses an intermediary computer to manage connections.

With LogMeIn, you set up the host software on the remote machine and then connect it to a password-protected, LogMeIn central server. When you launch the client app on your local PC, you do not connect directly to the remote system but rather to that same LogMeIn server.

Once the LogMeIn server has checked both host and client PCs' credentials, it establishes a connection between the two. Windows' own security still comes into play — the client operator must enter a valid username and password for the host system. It's not as hard as it sounds — usually, setting up a connection takes only a few minutes, and the better remote-access tools have good FAQs and help files.

If your client computer is a Mac, Microsoft's Remote Desktop Client for Mac (download page) works almost identically to the Windows version. It gives my MacBook Pro remote access to my Windows workstations and servers — both at work and at home. (My home-based HP MediaSmart Servers included remote desktop software.)

You can also work the other direction — I use ReaLVNC to control a Mac from my Windows PC and LogMeIn to sign in remotely. (Many third-party remote-control apps have Mac versions.)

Support for Apple products extends beyond the Mac. For example, while sipping coffee at Starbucks, I can still connect to my remote PCs and servers — through my iPhone! Yes, you read that right. There are remote desktop clients such as LogMeIn for smart phones. And yes, it works: the relatively tiny screen of a smartphone makes it a bit cumbersome to scroll around your full-sized Windows desktop, but it doable.

On that Apple's iPad is out, Wyse has announced a version of its PocketCloud app (info page) for the iPad. As a user of the iPhone version, I can atest that PocketCloud is a nice remote desktop client for checking servers and responding to emergencies.

Windows Mobile also supports a version of Remote Desktop Connection called "Remote Desktop Mobile." It's built into some Windows Mobile phones and can be downloaded into most others. MakeUseOf.com's article, "How To Control Your PC from Windows Mobile Cell Phone," provides a good overview. The Microsoft Windows Phone forum's thread, "Remote Desktop Mobile," includes additional information and a link to download the Remote Desktop Mobile software.

So you can see there are many, many options. The next time you need access to a system miles away, look around — chances are good one of your local PCs, Macs, or smartphones can make the connection!

WeaKnees Cracks The TiVo Premiere Code

2010-04-14T08:17:00.001-07:00

WeaKnees has cracked the TiVo Premiere code, and is now shipping upgraded units with larger drives. Whereas the base Premiere integrates a 320GB drive, WeaKnees offers DVRs with up to 2 terabytes of internal storage which should net you nearly 320 hours of HD recording capacity. But wait, there’s more. If you don’t mind an external drive (I do), WeaKnees can provide an additional 2TB of storage.

When the WeaKnees crew emailed the good news earlier this week, I asked for photos of their work space and some sort of discount we could provide to our readers. They delivered — the pics speak for themselves and code ZNF saves you 5% on any Premiere (upgraded or stock) through the end of the month.

Folks don’t generally purchase drives from WeaKnees or DVRUpgrade to save money, they do it for convenience. But the Premiere upgrade technique is currently exclusive to WeaKnees. Meanwhile, as the hacker community continues to dissect the new TiVo, Omikron has made an entertaining discovery:

For some reason the “Killer Joke” from Month Python is buried deep within the TiVo Premiere’s PROM code. It brought a smile to my face when I found it. Premiere may not do everything, but I don’t know of any other DVR out there can kills Nazis.

IIS Smooth Streaming in Silverlight 4

2010-04-06T14:29:00.000-07:00

by Sock Puppet
Silverlight 4 should be out of beta very soon, Scott Guthrie will launch Silverlight 4 at the Silverlight Conference in Las Vegas on April 12, so it should be available for the consumer too (or soon after). I strongly encourage everyone to update to version 4 (linked here for your convenience).

(IMO I strongly recommend you first uninstall silverlight 3 or earlier before installing version 4, its not required... but I've always believed in doing clean installations.)

The improvements and new technologies in 4 are really worth it. For instant watching, the improvements to adaptive streaming and use of IIS smooth streaming made a tremendous improvement to the quality.

I hope that Netflix incorporates (if they have not already) all the tools into their own player, the one tool makes seeing data much easier and informative.

Click here to see a sample of smooth streaming video where you can also play with the stream to see how nicely the adaptive functions work. If anything its a cute video and I suggest watching it all the way to the end, cause its funny after the credits roll.

The video is also a convenient tool to test your PC/Mac to see how strong the connection is and how consistent it is as well, which is why I hope Netflix adds the tools to their player.

NComputing U170 USB-connected Virtual Desktop Kit

2010-03-21T15:57:00.000-07:00

New Site Explains How to Publish Video on Wikipedia

2010-03-17T18:36:00.001-07:00

A new website aptly named Videoonwikipedia.org aims to get more users to contribute video clips to Wikipedia by demystifying some of the issues related to the site’s video format. Videoonwikipedia.org was launched today by the Participatory Culture Foundation, which is also known for its Miro video player, in cooperation with the Open Video Alliance, the Mozilla Drumbeat Project and open source video platform provider Kaltura.

The main idea behind the site is obviously to enrich Wikipedia, which currently doesn’t feature many articles with videos, but the Participatory Culture Foundation also sees this as a chance to showcase HTML5 video and the open video codec Ogg Theora. “Wikipedia is the most popular site in the world that posts video exclusively in open formats,” the organization’s co-founder Nicholas Reville wrote in a blog post, adding: “By encouraging more people to post videos in Wikipedia articles, we can bring theora video played in html5 to a very large audience.”

The new site offers its users a quick and very basic step-by-step guide for posting videos on Wikipedia, which includes converting them to Ogg Theora, signing up for a Wikipedia account and enabling video upload capabilities on the site.

The Participatory Culture Foundation aims to simplify the encoding and converting issues with a new and as of yet unannounced tool dubbed the Miro Video Converter. Users of the converter can simply select Theora as the output format of choice, drop a video file onto the application and wait for the file in question to be converted.

Video on Wikipedia has been a long time coming, with the Wikimedia Foundation announcing plans to embrace video in early 2008. However, the site’s strong commitment to open formats has somewhat slowed down the adoption process, as it took a while until browsers capable of playing Flash-free video via HTML5 became available.

However, part of the delay apparently has also to do with internal issues, as representatives from Wikimedia and its technology partner Kaltura told me earlier this year. Kaltura’s VP of Business and Community Development Shay David said back then that Wikipedia editors took a while to get comfortable with video. “People needed to understand that video is an important aspect of Wikipedia,” he told me, adding: “That needed some time.”

Doxie Scanner Sends, Shares, Stores on the Cloud

2010-02-12T18:13:00.000-08:00

Doxie offers crisp and clean paper scans in a small, portable USB-powered package. With no power cables or irritatingly impossible to install drivers (though we do have workarounds available) - Doxie works with a simple app and a touch of a button. Which makes us wonder, "Why can't all scanners be this easy?"

The little scanner offers scans up to 600dpi in 24bit color and scans as fast as 12 seconds per page. The package is pretty sweet too - it comes with the Doxie scanner, companion software, even a carrying case. Just plug her in, fire up the software, and turn your paper into PDFs, JPGs or lossless PNG files - straight into Doxie's own cloud service, which features plenty of integration into existing services out there like Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, Evernote and Google Docs for OCR scanning.

But the real caveat here is the price. You can grab the entire package for around $129. Available later in March.

Please Do Not Use Bananas to Clean Your Netflix DVDs

2010-02-12T13:04:00.001-08:00

Please Do Not Use Bananas to Clean Your Netflix DVDs

Unplggd has an interesting trick for removing scratches from DVDs using a banana and toothpaste, but I beg you to to only use this trick on your own DVDs, lest we have fruit-scented Netflix mailers.

Netflix recommends using using liquid soap or window cleaner, and if that doesn't work they'll send you a replacement.

AMAZING Rolltop Computer

2010-02-08T16:30:00.001-08:00

Cord-cutters Are Hulu, Redbox and Netflix Junkies

2010-02-04T06:09:00.000-08:00

The threat of cord-cutting is real, but not as big as one might expect, according to new research from Parks Associates. The Dallas-based market research company is estimating in its new “All Eyes on Video” report that less than 8 percent of U.S. households are thinking about canceling their pay-TV subscription in favor of online services. However, cable companies shouldn’t celebrate just yet: Cord-cutters seem to be trendsetters, who not only watch way more online video, but also rent a ton of DVDs.

The new findings from Parks Associates come only two days after Strategy Analytics released its own study about the value perception of cable TV, which painted a slightly different picture, stating that less than 22 percent of cable’s customers were thinking that they were getting their money’s worth from their subscriptions. Taken together, both studies seem to signal that the real winners of any move towards cord-cutting could be paid services like Netflix.

Parks Associates is estimating that about 5.5 million U.S. households are seriously considering cutting the cord, down from 2008, when that number stood at 11 percent. And the number of people who actually follow through seems to be even lower: Park believes that only 0.5 percent, or 350,000 homes, have cut the cord so far.

And households considering cutting the cord watch 10 hours of online video per week, which Parks calls “much higher than typical video consumers.” Potential cord-cutters also rented a median of 18 DVDs during the last six months, compared to two DVDs for customers willing to stick with cable.

What explains the discrepancy? Netflix, of course, a service with its high turnover rate for rentals, and possibly Redbox with its ultra-low rental prices, according to Parks Associates research director John Barrett. “Nobody is going to rely on online video alone — households likely to cancel their TV services are going to use a mixture of online video, free-to-air broadcasts, and DVDs,” he said, adding that the threat of cord-cutting was “real but misunderstood” because people tend to focus on online video alone and ignore DVD rentals.

The Strategy Analytics report released earlier this week suggested that two-thirds of cable customers wouldn’t think twice about saying bye-bye to their cableco if someone offered them a better deal. Park Associates is now reporting that potential cord-cutters are very interested in accessing pay-TV online, a sign that the company views as encouraging for TV Everywhere.

Of course, it’s also good news for Netflix. The company has been pushing hard to make its Watch Instantly feature more attractive to its customers, but Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has said it will likely continue to rent out physical discs for decades to come. DVD rentals plus a growing online library for a price point much below your average cable bill — sounds like a potential cord-cutter’s dream, doesn’t it?

USB TV Tuner: No Cable Replacement

2010-01-30T10:59:00.000-08:00

It’s time, I think, to get rid of my cable TV service. It’s over-priced and under-used in my house. These days, I can find most of the shows I like on Hulu or iTunes, anyway. Most, but not all. And there are times when I want to watch live TV. I like the Super Bowl, for example. And I want to watch the season premiere of Lost when it happens — not a day later, when ABC gets around to posting it online.

That’s why I thought a USB TV tuner might be the perfect solution: I could hook it up to my computer and view HD content on my shiny new 20-inch monitor. I’d pay only once — the upfront cost for the TV tuner — and could kiss cable bills goodbye forever.

As it turns out, though, paying cable bills might not be so bad after all, if the few days I’ve spent testing Hauppauge’s WinTV-HVR 1950 USB 2.0 Hybrid TV tuner are any indication. This $149 device has plenty of potential — and in the right circumstances, could prove useful — but it didn’t work well enough in my house to make me think about cutting the cable.

The WinTV-HVR 1950 is actually a small box, slightly smaller but thicker than a CD case, that connects to your computer via USB 2.0. It can capture analog NTSC and digital ATSC channels, as well as ClearQAM (unencrypted cable) channels. You also can connect external video sources (like DVD players) using the tuner’s S-Video and composite video inputs.

Hauppauge recommends connecting an external antenna when scanning for over-the-air channels, but, unfortunately, the company does not supply one with the device. Even a small, portable antenna, like the one included with the company’s WinTV-HVR-950Q I tested a few years ago, would have helped. When I connected the tuner in my home office and scanned for ATSC channels, it found zero. My computer is next to a window, and there are no tall buildings in my neighborhood to block transmission, but when used without an antenna, the WinTV-HVR 1950 was not able to pick up any channels.

When I tried the tuner on my laptop, in a downstairs room in my house, I had better luck, and was able to pick up a handful of over-the-air stations. Still, if you want to use this product on a desktop computer that’s in a fixed location, you’ll need to purchase your own antenna. Unless you happen to have one sitting on your roof, that is. The user manual notes that a roof-top antenna will deliver the best picture, but let’s be serious: who has a roof-top antenna these days? And who’s willing to hook one up just to use a TV tuner with their computer?

Not me. That’s why I switched to scanning for ClearQAM channels. To do so, you need to connect a cable line-in to the WintTV-HVR 1950, so you’ll, presumably, need a cable subscription. You could get by with paying for only the most basic service, I suppose, but doing so defeats my stated goal of going without cable entirely.

But the tuner did find plenty of ClearQAM channels; after scanning for just a few minutes, it identified more than 600 channels. That number was made even more overwhelming when I started watching them on the included WinTV software, and found that the way they were numbered made absolutely no sense. The HD broadcast of what is usually Channel 2 appeared as Channel 12203. Channel 4 was channel 63.10451. Only a few of the stations had names with them; most were represented as only a baffling series of numbers.

None of the channels had any programming information with them either, all of the shows were labeled “Unknown.” That means that if I wanted to record them using the WinTV software, which is actually pretty slick, I’d have to do so manually.

The good news is that all of the channels I was able to watch, both the ClearQAM stations and those that I was able to receive over-the-air without an antenna, looked great. HD picture quality was excellent, and even standard definition programs looked relatively clear. That’s why I think that Hauppauge’s USB TV tuner does have potential. If your computer is portable, or in an area that gets good reception, this device could prove to be cost-effective. But for the rest of us, Hauppauge needs to include an antenna. Until then, I guess I’m stuck paying for cable.

How to Shut Windows down in the blink of an eye

2010-01-24T07:06:00.000-08:00

OK. I think most of people do not know this method. They can actually shut down their Windows XP in a blink of an eye. No I am not joking! And the fact is you don't need any software's or updates or anything to do this. I'll show you step-by-step.

[Note: This method only works in Windows XP]
1. Click Crtl + Alt + Delete on your keyboard.

By doing this you will get a Dialogue box.

2. In this dialogue box click Task Manager.

3. Close all your programs.

[Read Carefully Now]

4. Click on the Shut Down Menu.

There is this List showing "Stand by" "Hibernate" "Turn Off".........

5. Press and hold the Ctrl Key [Control Key] on your keyboard and click on "Turn Off" [note: do not release the Ctrl key from your keyboard]

click on turn off by pressing and holding ctrl key on your keyboard

OK. That's all !

Its safe to turn off your UPS

There you go. The computer is already shut downed.

Your Guide to Cutting the Cord to Cable TV

2010-01-22T06:07:00.000-08:00

Background

Anyone who gets cable TV or satellite in the U.S. has noticed a pronounced trend over the years: their monthly bill keeps going up. Sure, you can get lots of channels, plus HD channels and DVR functions, but those usually cost extra. According to research from Centris (PDF), the average digital cable bill was nearly $75 last year, and the average monthly satellite TV bill was $69.

What's causing those bills to skyrocket? A lack of competition among cable and satellite providers, and the rising costs of programming. The most recent programming dustup happened when News Corp. demanded carriage fees from Time Warner Cable, and settled before any channels were dropped. Time Warner is planning an upcoming rate hike. Like other traditional media, TV networks (both cable and broadcast) are being squeezed by lower advertising income, and think they can just keep raising the cable bills indefinitely.

Unfortunately for the cable TV industry, they've picked a bad time to raise their rates. Centris found in a separate report (PDF) that due to the economic meltdown, eight percent of U.S. households were likely to cancel their pay TV in the third quarter of '09, and nearly half of households contacted TV providers for discounts or cheaper packages.

Thanks to the rise of Netflix, Hulu and hardware like the Roku box and Apple TV, cutting the cord to cable TV doesn't mean cutting yourself off from your favorite shows and channels. While past experiments at bringing together the web and TV (such as WebTV) have failed, the recent recession has pushed people to pursue their own convergence projects that enable them to watch web content on their TV. Depending on various living room setups and viewing habits, making the changeover from cable to online TV can be complex and maddening. But you're sure to save a bundle of money.
Hardware and Services

The first thing to do when cutting the cord is list the shows you watch regularly, and your favorite TV channels. Next, do a little online research to find out whether those shows appear on the channel's streaming sites (such as NBC.com, CBS.com, etc.) or on Hulu or YouTube. Many shows on pay channels such as HBO don't appear until much later, and usually must be bought via a service such as iTunes.

In addition to what's available online, you might be surprised at the quality of over-the-air broadcast channels since the digital switch-over last year. Many newer TVs only require an antenna to get local broadcast channels, while older TVs need a converter box, which runs from $40 to $80. Plus, some of the programming includes HD content. To find out which digital channels you can get over the airwaves, input your location at the AntennaWeb site.

(Note: Broadcasters recently announced at CES that they would be offering "mobile DTV" so that people could pick up digital broadcast TV on laptops, smartphones and tablets.)

Below is a rundown of some of the more important elements to enjoying TV content via the web. You won't need to get all of them but you can mix and match those that will get you what you need. Most cable quitters find they can get about 95 percent of the TV content they used to watch on cable via the various services below.

Hardware

Roku
This is the box most cable quitters seem to like. It connects to your TV and your computer network, let's you watch Netflix streaming movies, and offers some free and pay options for additional content. It costs $79.99 for SD and $99.99 for an HD model.

AppleTV
It's basically a front-end device to iTunes, letting you download movies and music and play them through your TV. Problem: No TV tuner or DVR functionality.

Digital converter box
If you want to get the digital over-the-air stations in your area, you'll likely need an antenna for newer TVs or this box for older TVs. Cost: $40 to $80.
wdtv.jpg

WD TV

WD TV
This small box connects your TV to an external hard drive, letting you play movies, TV shows, photos or music you have downloaded. The standard WD TV is about $79, while the WD TV Live that lets you watch Net content is $119.

eyeTV hybrid
It's a TV tuner for a Mac, letting you watch digital over-the-air channels on your Mac, or even on your iPhone with an extra $4.99 app. Cost: $149.95.

Game consoles
Netflix will let you play movies through your XBox 360 or PlayStation 3. There are also a wide variety of TV tuners and other devices that can turn game consoles into home entertainment systems.

Note: If you prefer simply connecting your computer directly to your TV set without any other hardware, you can do that, too. Here's a great video explaining how:

How To Connect Your Laptop To Your Television on Howcast

Services and Sites

Netflix
The granddaddy of the DVD-by-mail services, Netflix has also become a huge entryway for people who want to dump cable and get TV shows later when they're available on DVD. Netflix also offers unlimited streaming of some movies and TV shows, which works well with a Roku box or other Netflix-ready devices. Cost: $8.99/month for 1 DVD plus unlimited streaming, with various higher cost plans for more DVDs.

Hulu
The free U.S.-only TV show service is a joint venture between NBC Universal, Fox, and Disney. You are forced to watch commercials before and during TV shows and movies. While it has been an especially popular service for those dumping cable, there has been chatter that Hulu might charge for content at some point. Cost: Free (for now).

iTunes
Apple's poorly named digital media buying service started out selling music downloads. Then it added a podcast directory, and now sells TV shows and rents/sells movies. Downloading TV shows at $1.99 per episode can get pricey, though there are discounted "Season Passes" and some limited free TV show offers.

YouTube
The most popular video site on the web also can be accessed through various devices in order to view its content on your TV. These devices include the Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 3 and TiVo.
amazon on demand.jpg

Amazon on Demand

Amazon on Demand
Trying to compete with Netflix and iTunes, Amazon offers quick downloads of various TV shows at similar prices to iTunes. They are playable on Macs or PCs, or on devices that connect your computer to your TV.

Boxee
Free software that helps you organize TV and movie content on your computer. Currently in beta, the Boxee software will soon come on a special Boxee Box from D-Link for under $200.

PlayOn
Windows software that lets you play Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, etc. from your computer on your TV via a PlayStation 3, Wii or XBox 360. Cost: $39.99 after 14-day free trial.

BitTorrent
Popular free file-sharing software for people who trade TV show and movie files. You'll need to search your own conscience to decide whether to download copyrighted material from sites that utilize the torrent system.
Sample Setups

Here are a few sample setups of people who get TV content without subscribing to cable.

Roku + Netflix and Amazon

Who: CancelCable.com bloggers

Setup: Roku box that plays Netflix and Amazon content; digital TV converter box.

Quote: "Since we need to be more proactive and select shows from Netflix or Hulu, we read a lot more reviews and tend to sit down and watch complete movies rather than just switching around hundreds of channels."
eyetv setup.JPG

Dan Milbrath's setup with eyeTV

eyeTV + Mac Mini

Who: Dan Milbrath, product manager, San Francisco

Setup: eyeTV hybrid to get broadcast channels on a Mac Mini; projector for movies; Netflix.

Quote: "I'm intrigued by on-demand, online TV options like those being offered by Amazon and iTunes but I think the pricing is still a bit too steep. $1.99 for a one hour episode of 'Mad Men' is about double what I think they should charge."

AppleTV + PlayStation 3

Who: Leo Prieto, founder of online community Betazeta.com, Santiago, Chile

Setup: AppleTV with iTunes and Boxee; PlayStation 3 playing BitTorrent content, podcasts.

Quote: "I spend less than $30 a month on content, and it's all stuff I decided to watch (and not just 'what was on' or 'what I remembered to record on my DVR'). I also have Boxee on the Apple TV installed, which lets me access lots of public and free podcasts or web shows that aren't available on Apple TV (all free and legal)."

Hulu + laptop

Who: Carla King, author and tech editor, Pt. Richmond, Calif.

Setup: Laptop watching Hulu; uses projector for some movies on Netflix or iTunes.

Quote: "The availability of content of all kinds on the Internet is a terrible distraction for me from tasks at hand and health in general. Whereas before I could cancel my magazine subscriptions and choose not to buy cable TV to keep myself on task with personal and professional goals, I find that today I need to develop my willpower to the utmost."
What's Missing

For many people, the biggest barrier to canceling cable is the loss of live sports. While MLB.com has a package of games you can stream online, and CBS has offered a popular March Madness on Demand stream, many other leagues have been slow on the uptake. Plus, there are often restrictions and blackouts with some online season pass deals. For example, the NBA League Pass Broadband does not include nationally or locally televised games. So if you're living in Boston, you won't be able to see Celtics games online if they are also on TV at the same time (whether they are home or away).
Leo Prieto.jpg

Leo Prieto

The same goes for other live events, such as awards shows. "Mainly, live TV content is impossible," said Leo Prieto, who gave up cable in 2005. "And most of that live TV content isn't available to download on iTunes later. For example, the Oscars or some sports event. In that case I have to go to BitTorrent and get the show afterwards. I would love iTunes or YouTube to offer live content."

Multimedia reporter Sean Mussenden is also living the cable-free life, and says he believes TVs will eventually come with direct Internet capabilities. He had an interesting take on how his discovery of programs changed without cable.

"When you rely on cable, the easy access to thousands of shows tends to limit your willingness to explore further," he said. "But there are far more options for informative and/or entertaining content beyond cable. Not having having cable has made me more willing to explore. For example, at the moment I'm really enjoying watching talks on Ted.com and MIT's OpenCourseWare. I don't think I'd have discovered either of them if I still had cable."

In many cases, people who have canceled cable still get to see their favorite TV shows, but often much later than those with cable. If they can deal with being a bit behind, and don't mind the tech hassle of setting up a Net-to-TV connection with gear, they're often happy to save money and watch what they want.
More Reading

If you want to read more about cutting the cable TV cord, check out these sites and stories:

CancelCable.com

Cable Freedom Is a Click Away at NY Times

You Don't Need Satellite TV When Times Get Tough at News.com

Cancel Cable and Save with Free Internet TV at Digital Trends

Ways To Watch TV Without Paying An Arm And A Leg For Cable Or Satellite at Bible Money Matters

Turn On, Tune Out, Click Here at WSJ (paid subscription required)

Cancel Cable TV by Paul Kedrosky

Cable TV's Big Worry: Taming the Web at NY Times

Who Will Win the Cable Wars? Not You. at Slate

Broadcast TV Networks Want Your Money at The Atlantic

More Fees For Broadcasters Could Hurt Cable Networks' Growth at Dow Jones

Why the Roku Netflix Player Is the First Shot of the Revolution at NY Times

Netflix Agrees To Warner's New Release Delay In Exchange For More Streaming Rights at PaidContent

*****

Have I missed any important elements to cutting the cord? Have you cut the cord and if so, what's your setup? Share your thoughts in the comments below, and I'll update my story with any gear or services I missed.

UPDATE: There has been a lot of commentary on this story when it was linked on the PBS Facebook page. I thought it was worth addressing a few of those comments here:

> Michael Lindemann said, "Interesting that no one mentions cable Internet access as being an upshot to cable access. Interesting article, but it misses at least one key point: The fastest and most reliable way to get home Internet access is through the cable company! In my area, the cable Internet subscription is bundled with the cable service at a discount." That's true. For many people who cut the cord to cable TV, they still are likely to end up paying for Internet service from the cable company.

> Prashant Shah said, "The missing option in the article is the public library, where I've always found not-so-recent shows. Newer shows you need to wait a bit, but then I'm in no hurry." True enough. The public library in many communities offers up free borrowing of TV shows and movies on DVD. The selection can vary from library to library, but the price is right: free, as long as you return them on time.

Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

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33 comments so far, Add Yours

Shawn Bouchard said:

January 8, 2010 10:43 AM

Great post Mark! Thanks for putting all these resources together in one place. I use EYE TV and Apple TV but haven't cancelled my cable subscription just yet since our 4 year old would really miss the kids programming and I would miss live sports. I agree with Dan Milbrath's note about pricing for tv shows. Considering this content is available for free from other sources I'd like to see costs lowered. Alternatively, I'd be interested in a Network pass that would enable me to download all the shows I like from a particular network/IP owner. So, if I wanted to subscribe to everything HBO produces it would auto download to my Mac/Apple TV.

Mark Glaser said:

January 8, 2010 12:07 PM

Thanks, Shawn, glad you liked the piece. I think the next step will need to come from content producers such as HBO to decide if they want to continue the model of getting paid for premium cable and DVDs, or whether they want to go direct to consumers via Net distribution. Cable co's say content prices are getting higher, but that seems to go agains the trend of content production and tools getting cheaper and democratized.

peggy treiber said:

January 8, 2010 12:49 PM

there's justin.tv for live sports, too

John Johnson said:

January 8, 2010 12:59 PM

Very nice article.
I'm not sure if this is what Mussenden means by "direct internet capabilities," but there are TVs available now with Netflix and other capabilities built in. Check the Netflix site as a starting point.
Another point of interest is, from what I've experienced, the ad content when watching online is much less than when watching over the air, or on cable. Maybe 2 minutes for a 20 minute show, versus 10 minutes over the air.
Unless its recorded on my MythTV so I can skip commercials, I can't bear to watch regular TV now with its inane commercials.
One final note: I recently called Charter to cancel the video portion of my cable package (Very basic cable TV + Internet = $72/mo). They gave me a deal whereby I have the same services as before, but $10/mo less. Interestingly, the price was the same with or without TV.
It's definitely worth anyone's while to call and tell them you're about to bail and let them work to keep your business.

Tim Halle said:

January 8, 2010 1:27 PM

A couple of downsides here: The quality from netflicks and amazon download and hulu and for that matter everythig else Ive seen is crap. So until such time as we get something close to a consistant 19.4 Mb/sec or enough speed and storage to load up a 25 gig movie, this isnt an option I want. Of course there's good old terrestrial ATSC.
Furthurmore, I see the Comcast merger as a tacit acknowledgement that the jig is up with the standard approach to cable TV and that the future belongs to content owners and people with fast pipes. What really concerns me is that the cable lobby just might get their "High speed lane on the information superhighway" and thereby (for example) Comcast owned NBC content looks just fine but content from other broadcast outlets (especially independant ones) looks like crap or that Comcast (and Cox and Cablevision and the rest of them) require fees from distributers for access to their high speed pipe. From everything I've ever seen of the cable business, this is exactly the kind of thing they'd try to do.

anthonydpaul said:

January 8, 2010 1:31 PM

True, live content is one thing missing. However, the second is content you otherwise wouldn't discover.

For instance, a classic movies channel shows films you've never heard of and would never search for, but they have been hand-picked by someone who knows their stuff. Another example is the concept of channel-surfing, annoying so some, but a way of jumping into the middle of something you don't know the name of, but think is interesting enough to stop on and sit through before going back to watch the first half.

Both of these have become natural ways in which we sort through content. Replacing that with a grocery store of sorts assumes A: we know what we are looking for, and B: our tastes are similar to the populace if we want to be able to use ratings as a compass.

There is a big future in having content on demand, but there is also something to be said for live streams of non-live content people can tune into and put their trust into the VJ for.

Joseph Hayes said:

January 8, 2010 8:22 PM

I've rarely had quality issues with Hulu or Netflix, and when it does happen a quick reload usually fixes the problem. I just have two connections to my TV: a PC, and a $40 antenna in the garage that's hooked up through my former cable-TV wiring. Instant access, better picture than I ever got from Bright House, and since I have to have Internet access anyway, free TV!

rick kelley said:

January 10, 2010 2:48 AM

Being an expat living in Ireland, I've adopted many of the suggestions in this article in order to consume some of my favorite US programming. What would prevent me from cutting cable or satellite cold turkey is the quality of streaming video on my 46 inch tv. For example, watching Slingbox or Hulu content that goes from my Laptop to my TV, there's a significant quality loss... and certainly none of the content is in HD.

I would think internet right to the TV might recoup some of the lost quality, but you're still dependent on fast enough web speeds.

Any advice on how to improve that level of quality from web to TV?

Mark Glaser said:

January 10, 2010 9:31 PM

Rick,
Thanks for the question. One thing I should have mentioned and should update in the story is that there have been some uneven experiences for some people in getting shows online. A lot depends on your gear, your connection quality and connection speed. Those are all improving but they still can vary greatly. For best quality, you're probably best off having a higher speed connection and going to sites that have servers in your country.

Phoebe said:

January 11, 2010 9:34 AM

I agree with anthonydpaul that beyond identifying the TV shows you already watch, you would ideally also be able to find new movies and shows you'll enjoy as part of a cable cutting set-up. I expect discovery services (like Jinni.com) that are separate from any delivery service and help you choose what to watch from the universe of options, then connect you to watch where you prefer (Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, etc.), will become increasingly important as the number and size of web content sources increases.

Greg said:

January 11, 2010 12:12 PM

This is all great resources, but there is only one that eliminates your cable and your need for a dvr, and that's http://www.myhomedvr.com You can record whatever you want and it's stored online where you then can watch via your PC or phone.

Andres Peluffo said:

January 11, 2010 12:46 PM

I live in Argentina and most of the offers (Netflix in my Xbox, Hulu, ABC.com) are not working here. Anyone knows something better than torrents or something like that?

James Woods said:

January 11, 2010 1:20 PM

LOL, cords and cables are so 2008! LOL

RT
www.anonymity-tools.ru.tc

Joe said:

January 11, 2010 1:40 PM

I cancelled cable 6 monnths ago in favor of Netflix (with roku box) and an OTA antenna. I have a 52" 1080P LCD TV. I have been very impressed with the picture quality out of the roku box. It is just a hair shy of the picture I get from my antenna and always worlds better than the standard def picture I got from the cable company. The only caviat to netflix streaming is that you need to have a fast connection to get a good HD picture. The picture will look really bad if you have a slow connection. On my cable company's 5-meg service, I have never had any issues with picture quality.

Bob said:

January 11, 2010 1:52 PM

Ugh. Justin.tv and ustream are useless for live sports. I've tried both of them. Once you actually find a working stream (since the guide is cluttered up by SPAM and garbage links) you have to rely on the stream continuing to function. I tried the Ravens & Patriots game yesterday and the ustream link pooted out about 5 minutes into the 1st quarter. Lame.

And for a lot of us out here in the boonies, an antenna just won't cut it. I have FIOS, but with an antenna we only get about 5 channels in English - the rest of them (another 5 channels) are all in Spanish.

Bittorrent is ok, but it's so 0-day.. and forget shows that are on HGTV or TLC. My wife is addicted to "Hoarders" and "Intervention" along with a few other shows that are on channels underserved by the bittorrent community.

Peter said:

January 11, 2010 2:26 PM

Thanks for the link to my article about how to watch TV without paying for satellite or cable! For a lot of the people mentioning the lack of quality here, you'd be surprised at how good the shows/netflix/hulu/etc look when streaming over the xbox 360..

JulieAnn said:

January 11, 2010 3:23 PM

@Mark This is spot on! However, for those who aren't ubertechs or don't want to live with the frustrations, we might need another option to bridge the gap. TV A La Carte.

It is time for a consumer led movement to bring competition and transparency back to the industry. Hundreds of folks have already signed up in San Francisco. No reason why other cities should be stuck with the same old status quo.

Also, there's a poll revealing which channels cost more... CNN or Fox News? Comedy Central or the Disney Channel? One thing missing is a reason why the average cable bill is $120 per month!

http://TVALacarte.org Join the movement.

Rex said:

January 11, 2010 5:20 PM

I never did understand why I should be paying for cable or satellite TV at all.

Given that 20 minutes of every hour of TV programming contains commercials, the content providers should be paying the cable and satellite carriers to take their material to get those commercials in front of my eyeballs.

Joe said:

January 11, 2010 7:43 PM

We used to rent a DVD maybe once every couple years. So we had no interest in Netflix. It was our deep dislike of Cox Communications (nonstop telemarketing, hard sell tactics, rate hikes, etc) that lead me to discover Netflix about 18 months ago.

I've read a lot of complaints about their on demand content being all old junk. But I think its at least as good of a mix as cable. Plus they're up to 17,000 or so titles. Plus its available on demand. Plus its commercial free. Plus we're paying less than 1/4 as much as we did with Cox. Plus they send us DVDs for free.

Cox never mailed me DVDs for free.

We are on the 2 DVD plan, so that's one for the kids and one for the grown ups. It is SO MUCH BETTER than cable. It took a little adjusting to get used to, but we love it.

If cox offered a much-better-than-basic package at under $10/month that might give me something to think about. Suffice it to say, we won't be going back. We might buy another Roku box some day though...

J-bob said:

January 11, 2010 8:25 PM

There are plenty of free to air channels available over satellite including sports channels and PBS, if you own an FTA receiver and know where to point your dish.
www.lyngsat.com

Ted Barington said:

January 11, 2010 9:32 PM

You're missing out on more global tv stations. If you want mainstream tv then yeah you can go with cable but other smaller channels or more international channels can't be had for free through cable companies, at least not without paying an arm and a leg.

Whereas services like http://www.freetubetv.net have few live stations that you can actually watch for free, of course it won't necessarily appeal to everyone but if you're not worried about experimenting than you can get a good deal (for the price of $0 you can't really complain).

Pau1 said:

January 12, 2010 2:51 AM

enjoyed the article, and enjoyed the comments even more.

My two cents (and worth every penny) to cover options that are more "free" than $79+

I recommend readers interested in freeing themselves from a paid subscription service investigate xbmc, boxee, and media portal (in my order of preference).

xbmc is a fantastic media portal player that covers every aspect of media (including music and photo management) that i am interested in outside of traditional broadcast TV.

yes, it is a bit on the technical side to tune to your preferences, but setting it up, using it, and obtaining the "wow" factor takes just a click of the mouse on the setup program.

runs on windows, mac, linux, and xbox.

Patrick Gunderson said:

January 12, 2010 7:22 AM

You noted MLB.com for live baseball. For football, you can buy games at midnight the day after they are played via NFL.com's Game Rewind https://gamerewind.nfl.com/

Jim said:

January 12, 2010 7:33 AM

Currently have the ROKU with Netflix, OTA antenna hooked up to my 60" projection tv & have been without cable/satellite for a year now. Have had to go to the pub occaisionally if I wanted to catch a sporting event that wasn't broadcast OTA. Ironically, met my local chapter of my alumni association by accident as a result. ROKU continues to add additional "channels" to their line up (MLB, Amazon, Pandora, etc.), and ESPN.com now has ESPN360 which has some events available for online viewing. Have three gaming systems set up also, the Opera browser on the Wii allows me to watch some video as well. My one drawback is living close to the airport, sometimes the air traffic scrambles my digital signal, quite annoying. But the Netflix streaming has allowed me to catch up on several tv shows I missed the first time around, DVDs tend to collect dust now.

anon said:

January 12, 2010 11:36 AM

What about windows media center? with a tv tuner hooked up to the over-the-air broadcast it makes perfect sense. As well as organizing media on the pc and the prospects of plugins for additional functionality.

Oski the Bear said:

January 12, 2010 5:23 PM

I'm really upset with the way comcast has treated me after being a long time customer. I've decided to cancel cable TV and build a media PC where I can download and watch movies anytime I want. Since I live on the west coast, I can watch tv shows at least an hour before it's shown on cable here.

Bye bye cable...

John Piel said:

January 13, 2010 8:49 AM

tvfool.com is the best website for analyzing your local over-the-air tv reception options.

You didn't mention the DTVPal DVR, an excellent, dual-tuner DVR for broadcast television that requires no monthly fees.

Since Vista, windows has offered their media center software as part of the operating system (along with free channel guide services via Zap2It.) I love my Home Theatre PC- what's better than free HDTV?

Constance said:

January 13, 2010 3:32 PM

Thanks so much for this article. I will be forwarding it to my friends. As women there really is not much in the cable packages we care about and we are sick of subsidizing men's sports. Some of the most offensive content is the "women's content channels" where it is impossible to figure what is more offensive, the shows or the advertising. Tivo helps alot but I look forward to cutting the cord.

Constance said:

January 13, 2010 3:36 PM

http://www.howcableshouldbe.com/

Check out this website, you can see how much your cable bill would be if you had cable choice. Of course that won't happen because some of the media cartels advertising venues would have zero subscribers.

Beverly Smith said:

January 13, 2010 4:09 PM

I have all along refused to pay for TV-- cable, or otherwise. In the beginning TV programs were always free. You might need an antenna, but you had access.
Now we are being bombarded in from every direction to connect to something with a monthly CHARGE!!! The FCC Director has made a LOT of dreadful changes which are not in the interest of those of us with low incomes!!!
Up until this last change to HD and satellite, I was getting at least 10 good channels. Since the change I have had nothing but trouble, even with paying for an HD box and an antenna!!
EVERYTHING is aimed toward charging a fee to everyone and his or her brother for watching ANYTHING. You suggest just one way around it, but.....
What about those with limited incomes???? What is available for them?

Don't mean to sound harsh, just truthful.

Beverly Smith
AZ

CW said:

January 13, 2010 9:05 PM

Here is another way cutting the cable helps me. I have kids in the house and if I subscribe to cable a lot of inappropriate content is force fed into my home. Reading about all this unwanted garbage on unwanted garbage channels and then parentally controlling it is a large waste of my time and of course still leaves me paying for the crap that wastes my time. So it would be a tremendous savings of my time if I could cut the cable and only have the shows I select available to the kids.

James said:

January 14, 2010 10:49 AM

For sports ESPN360 is pretty solid and Yahoo sports covers many CBS stuff as well. PLus CBS does basketball live during the tourney. But really ESPN 360 is a great free resource.

Eric Elia said:

January 18, 2010 12:23 PM

Great roundup, Mark. I'm thinking Mac Mini, ota HD antenna, EyeTV and a NAS backup for my own setup.

I think however that you are oversimplifying the "decision" that HBO and their peers has to make about cable distribution vs. direct or 'over the top.' Large programmers are receiving multi-billion dollar checks from cable MVPDs, that in turn creates predictable revenue to fund programs like The Pacific, that require feature-film level budgets. The shift you describe, despite consumers asking for it, has significant economic ramifications. Good complement to this piece on the economics behind the industry from Will Richmond here:
http://bit.ly/4IWueL.

IPhone saves life

2010-01-20T17:22:00.000-08:00

Man Buried in Haiti Rubble Uses iPhone to Treat Wounds and Survive
U.S. filmmaker Dan Woolley was shooting a documentary about the impact of poverty in Haiti when the earthquake struck. He could have died, but he ultimately survived with the help of an iPhone first-aid app that taught him to treat his wounds.

After being crushed by a pile of rubble, Woolley used his digital SLR to illuminate his surroundings and snap photos of the wreckage in search of a safe place to dwell. He took refuge in an elevator shaft, where he followed instructions from an iPhone first-aid app to fashion a bandage and tourniquet for his leg and to stop the bleeding from his head wound, according to an MSNBC story.

The app even warned Woolley not to fall asleep if he felt he was going into shock, so he set his cellphone’s alarm clock to go off every 20 minutes. Sixty-five hours later, a French rescue team saved him.

“I just saw the walls rippling and just explosive sounds all around me,” said Woolley, recounting the earthquake to MSNBC. “It all happened incredibly fast. David yelled out, ‘It’s an earthquake,’ and we both lunged and everything turned dark.”

Woolley’s incident highlights a large social implication of the iPhone and other similar smartphones. A constant internet connection, coupled with a device supporting a wealth of apps, can potentially transform a person into an all-knowing, always-on being. In Woolley’s case, an iPhone app turned him into an amateur medic to help him survive natural disaster.

Say what you will about the iPhone. This story is incredible.

Apple Sees New Money in Old Media

2010-01-20T16:34:00.000-08:00

By YUKARI IWATANI KANE And ETHAN SMITH

With the new tablet device that is debuting next week, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs is betting he can reshape businesses like textbooks, newspapers and television much the way his iPod revamped the music industry—and expand Apple's influence and revenue as a content middleman.

In developing the device, Apple focused on the role the gadget could play in homes and in classrooms, say people familiar with the situation. The company envisions that the tablet can be shared by multiple family members to read news and check email in homes, these people say.

For classrooms, Apple has been exploring electronic-textbook technology, these people add. The people familiar with the matter say Apple has also been looking at how content from newspapers and magazines can be presented differently on the tablet. Other people briefed on the device say the tablet will come with a virtual keyboard.

Apple has recently been in discussions with book, magazine and newspaper publishers about how they can work together. The company has talked with The New York Times Co., Conde Nast Publications Inc. and HarperCollins Publishers and its owner News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal, over content for the tablet, say people familiar with the talks.

New York Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger declined to comment in an interview Wedensday on its involvement in the new device except to say, "stay tuned."

Apple is also negotiating with television networks such as CBS Corp. and Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC, for a monthly TV subscription service, the Journal has reported. Apple is also working with videogame publisher Electronic Arts Inc. to show off the tablet's game capabilities, according to one person familiar with the matter.

Apple's strategy contrasts with how other technology companies are approaching media. Notably, Google Inc. offers content to consumers largely free on properties like its video-sharing site YouTube, making relatively little distinction between clips from users and that of professional media companies. Web sites like Twitter and Facebook also provide outlets for user-generated content.

Mr. Jobs has a longstanding strategy of devising new ways to access and pay for quality content, instead of reinventing the content. Apple's iTunes Store, for instance, became the world's largest music retailer partly by making it easy for people to buy music, most of it from major record labels, by the song instead of by the album. Its digital media receiver Apple TV was also designed so people can buy and rent movies and television shows.

Mr. Jobs is "supportive of the old guard and [he] looks to help them by giving them new forms of distribution," says a person who has worked with the CEO. "What drives all of these changes is technology, and Apple has an ability to influence that."

Apple's divide with Google over how it views media content also drives the wedge deeper between the two companies. Apple's iPhone, for example, currently closely integrates Google's mapping and search technology, but a person familiar with the matter said Apple was in serious discussions with Microsoft Corp. to incorporate its Bing search engine into the iPhone as the default search and map technologies. Microsoft declined to comment.

Details of how Apple charges for the content on its tablet couldn't be learned, but people familiar with the company's thinking say Apple could change conventional payment structures. One person familiar with the matter said the company was discussing with the New York Times how it could charge for news through iTunes. It's unclear how people will access content wirelessly off the tablet.

An Apple spokesman said the company "doesn't comment on rumors and speculation." Mr. Jobs didn't respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Jobs's effort to repackage and resell more media content is not without obstacles. He has already faced resistance from television companies and cable network providers over Apple's desire to license just their best content rather than all of it.

Many music executives complain that it has become a powerful gatekeeper between the labels and customers. What's more, the iTunes Store's music downloads haven't grown fast enough to offset the decline in CD sales for music companies.

On Monday, Apple sent out an invitation to a media event on Jan. 27 "to see our latest creation." The tablet, which Apple currently plans to ship in March, will have about a 10- to 11-inch touch screen, people familiar with the situation say.

Apple's tablet foray faces several obstacles. Analysts say demand will depend on its price, which some believe will be about $1,000. Apple must also convince consumers the product is worth buying in addition to an iPhone and a laptop computer. And Apple faces competition from cheaper netbooks and other devices such as Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle e-book reader.

The tablet's success will depend "on how this product can fit into the user's daily life... and whether you have enough content to make it important enough to use it," said Henry Lu, senior vice president of Taiwanese computer company Micro-Star International Co., which failed at selling a tablet computer a few years ago.

In the academic arena, Apple could face hurdles wooing universities if the tablet doesn't meet their needs or isn't compatible with other computing devices that students are using.

Amazon had been hoping to target the market with its 9.7-inch screen Kindle DX e-book reader, for example, but schools said the device wasn't sufficiently interactive and lacked basics such as page numbers and color graphics.

One person familiar with the matter said Apple has put significant resources into designing and programming the device so that it is intuitive to share. This person said Apple has experimented with the ability to leave virtual sticky notes on the device and for the gadget to automatically recognize individuals via a built-in camera. It's unclear whether these features will be included at launch.

Apple's content-related efforts heated up in the fall. In October, Apple sent representatives to the Frankfurt Book Fair, the industry's largest trade fair, according to one person familiar with the matter.

At the same time, Apple pitched media companies on a "best of TV" subscription service to television networks under which customers would pay a monthly fee for on-demand access to programs from a bundle of participating TV networks, giving consumers another way to readily access TV content.

At a meeting in New York with one network in October, an Apple executive said the company was specifically looking to access four to six shows per channel, said one person familiar with the meeting.

Apple has also been planning a revamp of its iTunes music service by creating a Web-based version of it that could launch as soon as June, say people familiar with the matter. Tentatively called iTunes.com, the service would allow customers to buy music without going through the specialized iTunes program on computers and iPhones.

People familiar with Apple's plans say a central part of the new strategy is to populate as many Web sites as possible with 'buy' buttons, integrating iTunes transactions into activities like listening to Internet radio and surfing review Web sites.

In November, Apple hired Tracy Augustine, a former executive at textbook publishers Cengage Learning Inc. and Pearson Education Inc., as the director of worldwide education. Ms. Augustine is responsible for "driving global strategy and revenue for the education online store for students," according to her LinkedIn description. Ms. Augustine didn't respond to a request for comment.

E-Mail? Free. Internet? That’ll Cost You.

2010-01-14T17:50:00.001-08:00

By JOE SHARKEY

EVERYBODY wants to be connected, and most major airlines in the United States have made bets that in-flight Wi-Fi Internet service will be a profitable sideline, or at least a worthwhile brand enhancer.

As the year started, about 700 commercial airliners were outfitted with Wi-Fi by Gogo, a product of Aircell, which is by far the leading provider of airline Internet connections. That is roughly a quarter of the domestic mainline fleet, excluding regional jets.

The number reflects robust growth for a service that started on an American Airlines plane in the summer of 2008. Gogo is now being offered (or will soon be offered) on eight airlines: American, Delta, AirTran, Virgin America, United, Air Canada, US Airways and Continental. (Southwest Airlines, meanwhile, has been working with another Wi-Fi provider, Row 44, to install a Wi-Fi system on its fleet.)

But no one knows how viable the market for in-flight connectivity can be, given that many passengers, particularly younger ones, resist paying for a Wi-Fi connection. The airlines with Wi-Fi connections have been charging up to $12.95 a flight, depending on the length of the trip, to cover their costs.

Most airlines decline to provide the so-called take rate, or percentage of passengers who choose to pay for the service. But from what I’m told, it has been running at 5 to 7 percent, and is spiking on some flights, like Virgin America’s routes between San Francisco and New York, which attract a lot of business travelers who work in technology industries.

In mid-December, Continental Airlines made a move that further clouded the picture. Continental, which had lagged competitors in embracing in-flight Wi-Fi, announced that it would install Gogo on its fleet of 21 Boeing 757-300 aircraft early this year.

But at the same time, Continental indicated that it was hedging its bets. Continental has also been installing a live in-flight television system, which is now available on 48 of its later-model 737s and is planned for its 757-300s by the end of the first quarter. Those are the same 757s, incidentally, where Continental has decided to install Gogo Wi-Fi.

Continental says it is experimenting with the market. The television system DirecTV offers 95 channels of live television and eight programmed channels, for about $6 a flight. (It is free in first class.)

The DirecTV system also offers a service — free to everyone — called Kiteline, which uses a tiny slice of the broadband spectrum for passengers to send and receive e-mail messages and instant messages. This bare-bones connection does not allow surfing of the Web. But it is free, whereas Gogo’s full-broadband service is not.

Continental’s question is, Will passengers who already have the option of watching television pay for a full broadband connection, or will they be satisfied with the limits of a free e-mail connection?

“Our goal is to try to understand what customers want, and what people are willing to pay for connectivity — which is something that customers are going to be looking for in air travel,” said Jim Compton, Continental’s executive vice president for marketing. “But what does connectivity itself mean?”

There is a lot of money riding on such questions. Aircell and its airline partners say they believe that demand for Gogo will keep growing, especially given the spurt in sales of Wi-Fi-enabled BlackBerrys and other smartphones, which are more convenient to use in cramped airline coach seats than full-size laptops.

“It is dependent to an extent, over time, on hand-held devices,” said Ron LeMay, Aircell’s chief executive. He said that after a sluggish period in the first half of 2009, Gogo was expanding rapidly again.

In the second half of 2009, he said, usage grew “over 10 percent a week, although admittedly a number of those sessions have been promoted sessions” — by which he meant promotional offers for Gogo by other companies marketing to airline passengers.

But he added that paid sessions and revenue had been growing recently by “over 5 percent a week.” Gogo is now looking for more businesses to subscribe to extended plans for traveling employees, rather than depending solely on single transactions in an aircraft cabin. He also said that regional jets, which are increasingly flying longer distances, could be a growth market.

It costs up to $100,000 a plane to install Gogo. Initially, Mr. LeMay said, Aircell paid those costs, but last year the model was changed to require airlines to pay for installation.

As to Continental’s long-term plans, we’ll see how the experiment works out.

“We’re certainly interested in far more than 21 airplanes, but what they’ve committed to at this point is 21,” Mr. LeMay said.

Who's Sorry Now? Nearly Everyone

2010-01-14T17:44:00.000-08:00

*
By ELIZABETH BERNSTEIN

Jane Angelich carried the guilt around for more than four decades. Years ago, she had been cruel to someone and had never acknowledged her actions. Often, she thought of the person she had hurt and wondered: Had he ever forgiven her?

Finally, she decided she could carry her burden no longer. So last winter she went online and looked up the person she had mistreated. Then she apologized for telling him to "drop dead" when he called her house back in 1961.

They were both 10 years old at the time.

"When something is nagging at you for 48 years, you need to clear it up," says Ms. Angelich, 58 years old, a pet-products company chief executive in Novato, Calif. "That was the meanest thing I ever did to anyone."

Along with helping people reconnect with old flames, childhood friends and even long-lost relatives, the Internet is giving rise to a newer phenomenon: the decades-late apology. The Web allows us to converse by email, a form of communication that often makes us braver and more impulsive—and occasionally even more thoughtful—about what we say. There are even Web sites, such as ThePublicApology.com and PerfectApology.com, dedicated to facilitating our quest for absolution.

Michelle Joyce holds her brother's old Cub Scout knife. He recently apologized for chasing her with it and pretending to attack her when she was 6 years old.

And among all those people we are finding from our past online, there is bound to be someone we wronged somehow, right?

In reporting this column, I heard tales of people asking forgiveness for everything from failing to return a library book to dating a college roommate's ex-boyfriend. One man apologized to his brother-in-law for telling his sister years before not to marry the man. Another told of contacting a university that had admitted him 13 years earlier and apologizing for never filling out the questionnaire they had sent him asking why he chose not to attend. "I just wanted to set things right," he said.

Not all tardy apologies come through the Web, of course. I heard from one woman who had picked up the phone to say she was sorry to her sister for confronting her about her weight gain, another who had called her mother to apologize for being resentful over being raised without a father, and a former employee who called her ex-bosses to apologize for writing a book trashing the company after being laid off.

Last spring, out of the blue, Michelle Joyce's older brother presented her with his old Cub Scout knife and said he was sorry for chasing her around the kitchen and pretending to attack her with it when she was 6 and he was 10.
Journal Community

What would you like to apologize for, years or decades later?

Mike Gerard, Ms. Joyce's brother, says his apology was inspired by a book that encouraged readers to think about the unresolved events in their lives, no matter how small. "As you get older, you realize that you spend your whole life trying to protect your younger sister, and that was one time I let her—and myself—down," says the 38-year-old former Army Ranger, who lives in Bixby, Okla.

Ms. Joyce, 33, who lives in Charlotte, N.C., and books corporate seminars for a living, says she didn't think the incident warranted an apology and felt bad to learn it had troubled her brother for years. "But I was touched that it meant that much to him to make it right," she says.

All this raises the question: Just because there is someone from our past we could apologize to, should we? After all, how effective is an act of contrition—whether proffered over the Web or otherwise—that comes many, many years late?

Consider my friend, who recently received a lengthy email from a guy she dated in college, apologizing for the way he treated her at a bar one night in 1987. He said he had always regretted his behavior. She says she had no idea what he was talking about.

(At this point I'd just like to say that if you are a man I dated—I won't mention names—and you think you owe me an apology: I promise you I will remember why. So feel free to beg forgiveness.)

Rachel Golden was unmoved when she found herself on the receiving end of a belated apology. After a good friend from high school got married five years ago, she sent a gift to the bridal shower because she couldn't attend. She never received a thank-you note, and she was not invited to the wedding. In fact, she never heard from the friend again.

Flash ahead 3½ years. One day Ms. Golden received a message, via MySpace, from her former friend: "I hope everything is well. Sorry about the shower. Here is my phone number."

Ms. Golden didn't reply to that message—or the next one she received six months later. "It wasn't only the lateness, although it was astronomically late," says the 27-year-old publicist, who lives in New York. "If she had been more sincere, if she had at least told me what had happened, it would have helped."

Ms. Golden's friend, Simone West, says she couldn't afford to invite all her friends to her wedding and that she had so much going on in her life at the time—wedding planning, honeymoon, moving apartments, new job and a new baby—that she didn't get all her thank-you notes written. "I didn't realize Rachel was so upset," says Ms. West, 28, a hairstylist in New York. "If I had, I would have taken the initiative to apologize way before I got in touch on MySpace."

Of course, some apologies—for things like theft or backstabbing a colleague—are serious and really should be made. But we live in a self-help culture, where therapists, 12-step program guides and talk-show hosts are forever reminding us that forgiveness and gratitude are the way to happiness (and sobriety). Many times, a long-overdue apology, much like a confession, does more for the person offering it up than it does for the one receiving it.

When an old high-school rival of Kathy Somes contacted her through Classmates.com last March, Ms. Somes, 46, apologized for her behavior years ago, which included putting gum in the girl's hair, shooting her with a rubber-pellet gun and blowing a trumpet into her ear during band practice.

"I didn't really care if she accepted my apology or not," says Ms. Somes, an investment analyst in Kirtland, Ohio. "I felt better." (And, she says, her classmate did accept her apology.)

Jane Angelich, who told her fifth-grade crush to drop dead in 1961, agrees. She explained in her email to him that she hung up on him because she didn't know how to talk to a boy at the time and was embarrassed that her mother was listening. He replied to her apology, she says, and said he did not remember the incident. "It was good to know, though, that luckily he wasn't scarred for life," she says.

Still, there are times when a little contrition can go a long way (like on a deathbed)—and sometimes it really is never too late to say you're sorry.

Laura Shumaker learned this last year, when a former classmate of her autistic son apologized to her for teasing the boy years earlier, when they were both in middle school. Although the young man, who is in his early 20s, hemmed and hawed, it was the acknowledgment of his behavior that mattered to her.

"I cried all the way home," says Ms. Shumaker, 54, a writer who lives in Lafayette, Calif. "In life you don't know what's behind the surface and why a person behaves a certain way, so you have to be forgiving."

So what do you do if you are overcome with the urge to apologize for something you did ages ago? Here are some tips:

• Make sure you are apologizing for the sake of the other person and not yourself. (The woman I interviewed who apologized to her sister—a year later—for mentioning her weight gain says her sister got upset all over again and accused her of "reminding her that she was fat.") If your motives are selfish, don't bother saying you are sorry.

• Resist sending an apology via a social-networking Web site. It's too flip. Use the phone. Or at least write an email, which demonstrates a little more thoughtfulness.

• Ask how your actions affected the other person. "The best gift you can offer is the willingness to finally hear exactly what the other person felt like as a result of your actions," says Karen Gail Lewis, a marriage and family therapist in Cincinnati.

• Be sincere. Explain why you did what you did, and why you are apologizing now.

• And—at the risk of sounding like your mother—try to apologize in a timelier manner next time. My 21-month-old nephew Zach did it last weekend, after throwing one of his toys at me. If he can do it, you can too.

Why the need to reboot after updating Windows?

2010-01-14T04:56:00.000-08:00

By Susan Bradley

Not so long ago, Microsoft promised that fewer Windows patches would require restarting the system to complete their installation.

Microsoft clearly hasn't delivered on that promise, so PC users need to take steps to ensure that they don't lose data due to unexpected post-update reboots.

Let's face it, we all hate rebooting. At best, rebooting requires that you start your work session over. At worst, if you've set Windows to update automatically, any open documents may close without giving you a chance to save your information.

In 2005, Microsoft started talking about a new restart manager to be built into Vista to ensure that fewer operating-system and application updates would require a reboot. In an Eweek interview at the time, Jim Allchin, former Microsoft co-president of the Platform Products and Services Group, boasted how much this technology would change the game.

But Microsoft's promises of fewer or no reboots were a lot of hot air. For example, let's look at Internet Explorer, although the same idea holds for any software you update.

When you update IE, the new software is written to disk. Any old code (such as dynamic link libraries or DLLs) already active in system memory usually remains untouched. Only when you restart do you flush out all the old code and load the new, updated software from your hard drive.

This is why in my experience, virtually all IE patches still insist on a reboot. Without a restart, you're still running the old code that contains whatever flaw the update was designed to correct.

And don't think that using Firefox gets you a pass on these updates: You have to update Internet Explorer because Windows uses IE for many other purposes. Thus malware can still reach your system through IE whether you open the program or not.

Predicting whether an update requires a reboot

Patches whose installation requires a restart are normally released by Microsoft only on the second Tuesday of the month (Patch Tuesday). However, Microsoft also distributes updates on the fourth Tuesday of the month. This is where the water gets muddier.

The descriptive text accompanying these updates states only that a reboot may be required. In these cases, some machines will need to reboot to complete the update installation, and some won't, but there's no good way to tell in advance.

Even Windows 7 is annoyingly vague in stating its update-reboot requirements. On my Win7 test machine, I reviewed several recent randomly chosen updates to determine whether the patches demanded a reboot. Each update used the vague wording that it "may" require a restart.

* KB976098 patches Win7's Date and Time applet and didn't need a reboot, even though the update indicated that it "may" need one.

* KB890830 for the Malicious Software Removal tool also didn't need a reboot but stated that one "may" be required.

* KB974431 is a monthly compatibility update normally delivered on the fourth Tuesday; it did require a reboot.

* KB975467 and KB974571 are security updates that forced a restart to complete their installation.

* KB976325 is an Internet Explorer 8 patch that — to my amazement — didn't require a reboot, although both the update itself and the related MS security bulletin MS09-072 warn that one may be necessary. (See Figure 1.)

Windows Update restart warning
Figure 1. The message accompanying some Windows updates warns that a restart may be required, but there's no good way to tell whether one will in fact be necessary.

Confused? As Ms. Palin would say, you betcha. The uselessly vague fudge-phrase "may need to restart" leaves you guessing. What's the story, Microsoft? I asked the company to clarify but haven't yet received a response.

Until we have clear word from Microsoft as to when reboots are truly required, it's generally wise to reboot after installing any Windows patches. It's the only way to be sure that all old code is flushed out of active memory.

Note that Windows XP lacks the restart manager and thus doesn't support "hotpatching." That's why reboot nags are so common on XP machines. However, even Windows 7 fails to live up to Jim Allchin's no-reboot promise.

Autosaving avoids data loss from forced restarts

You can do two things to minimize accidental loss of data due to files closing unexpectedly during a forced reboot. First, set your automatic-update options to either "download but do not install" or "notify me when updates are available."

Second, configure your applications to save files automatically.

Office 2007's "AutoRecover" function autosaves open files every 10 minutes by default, but you can reset Word, Excel, and other apps to automatically save your files more frequently. To do so, click the Office button and choose Options, Save. Make sure Save AutoRecover information every xx minutes is checked, and then adjust the time between autosaves to your liking. (See Figure 2.) You can also change the autosaved files' location so they're easier to find if you need to restore them manually.

Microsoft Word 2007 Autsave options
Figure 2. Use Word 2007's AutoRecover (autosave) features to ensure you don't lose data due to a forced reboot.

To change your autosave settings in Word 2003, click Tools, Options, Save. Make sure the Save AutoRecover info every option is checked, and then adjust the number of minutes. (See Figure 3.) As in Word 2007, you can also change the folder storing your autosaved files; in Word 2003, this option is found under the File Locations tab.

Microsoft Word 2003 Autosave options
Figure 3. Word 2003's autosave settings are found under the Save tab in the Options dialog box.

Is this sufficient protection? Not for me. I've gotten into the habit of clicking the Save button (or pressing Ctrl+S) every few minutes while I work. I also save all open files before stepping away from my PC, even if I expect to be gone just a few minutes.

If you use Windows 7, be extra-observant on the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month, when Microsoft releases most updates. Watch for a "shut down and install patches" prompt in place of the normal shutdown prompts around those days. If you get the prompt and want to postpone the patch installation to a later time, shut down by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete and choosing the direct shut-down option on the resulting screen. (See Figure 4.)

Windows 7 no-update shutdown
Figure 4. Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to shut down Windows 7 without installing downloaded updates.

With each passing year, we seem to spend more of our workday maintaining our systems rather than actually using them. I hope someday the people at Microsoft will realize we want to spend more time doing our work and less time doing theirs.

MagicJack's Next Act: Disappearing Cell Phone Fees

2010-01-09T07:40:00.000-08:00

MagicJack's next act: Making cell phone fees disappear? Carrier applause not expected

By PETER SVENSSON AP Technology Writer

The company behind the magicJack, the cheap Internet phone gadget that's been heavily promoted on TV, has made a new version of the device that allows free calls from cell phones in the home, in a fashion that's sure to draw protest from cellular carriers.

The new magicJack uses, without permission, radio frequencies for which cellular carriers have paid billions of dollars for exclusive licenses.

YMax Corp., which is based in Palm Beach, Fla., said this week at the International Consumers Electronics Show that it plans to start selling the device in about four months for $40, the same price as the original magicJack. As before, it will provide free calls to the U.S. and Canada for one year.

The device is, in essence, a very small cellular tower for the home.

The size of a deck of cards, it plugs into a PC, which needs a broadband Internet connection. The device then detects when a compatible cell phone comes within 8 feet, and places a call to it. The user enters a short code on the phone. The phone is then linked to the magicJack, and as long as it's within range (YMax said it will cover a 3,000-square-foot home) magicJack routes the call itself, over the Internet, rather than going through the carrier's cellular tower. No minutes are subtracted from the user's account with the carrier. Any extra fees for international calls are subtracted from the user's account with magicJack, not the carrier.

According to YMax CEO Dan Borislow, the device will connect to any phone that uses the GSM standard, which in the U.S. includes phones from AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile USA. At a demonstration at CES, a visitor's phone with a T-Mobile account successfully placed and received calls through the magicJack. Most phones from Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel Corp. won't connect to the device.

Borislow said the device is legal because wireless spectrum licenses don't extend into the home.

Despite Risks, Internet Creeps Onto Car Dashboards

2010-01-09T06:56:00.001-08:00

By ASHLEE VANCE and MATT RICHTEL

LAS VEGAS — To the dismay of safety advocates already worried about driver distraction, automakers and high-tech companies have found a new place to put sophisticated Internet-connected computers: the front seat.

Technology giants like Intel and Google are turning their attention from the desktop to the dashboard, hoping to bring the power of the PC to the car. They see vast opportunity for profit in working with automakers to create the next generation of irresistible devices.

This week at the Consumer Electronics Show, the neon-drenched annual trade show here, these companies are demonstrating the breadth of their ambitions, like 10-inch screens above the gearshift showing high-definition videos, 3-D maps and Web pages.

The first wave of these “infotainment systems,” as the tech and car industries call them, will hit the market this year. While built-in navigation features were once costly options, the new systems are likely to be standard equipment in a wide range of cars before long. They prevent drivers from watching video and using some other functions while the car is moving, but they can still pull up content as varied as restaurant reviews and the covers of music albums with the tap of a finger.

Safety advocates say the companies behind these technologies are tone-deaf to mounting research showing the risks of distracted driving — and to a growing national debate about the use of mobile devices in cars and how to avoid the thousands of wrecks and injuries this distraction causes each year.

“This is irresponsible at best and pernicious at worst,” Nicholas A. Ashford, a professor of technology and policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said of the new efforts to marry cars and computers. “Unfortunately and sadly, it is a continuation of the pursuit of profit over safety — for both drivers and pedestrians.”

One system on the way this fall from Audi lets drivers pull up information as they drive. Heading to Madison Square Garden for a basketball game? Pop down the touch pad, finger-scribble the word “Knicks” and get a Wikipedia entry on the arena, photos and reviews of nearby restaurants, and animations of the ways to get there.

A notice that pops up when the Audi system is turned on reads: “Please only use the online services when traffic conditions allow you to do so safely.”

The technology and car companies say that safety remains a priority. They note that they are building in or working on technology like voice commands and screens that can simultaneously show a map to the driver and a movie to a front-seat passenger, as in the new Jaguar XJ.

“We are trying to make that driving experience one that is very engaging,” said Jim Buczkowski, the director of global electrical and electronics systems engineering at Ford. “We also want to make sure it is safer and safer. It is part of what our DNA will be going forward.”

Ford’s new MyFord system lets the driver adjust temperature settings or call a friend while the car is in motion, while its built-in Web browser works only when the car is parked. Audi says it will similarly restrict access to complex and potentially distracting functions. But in general, drivers will bear much of the responsibility for limiting their use of these devices.

Computer chips and other components improve every year while dropping in cost, allowing carmakers to introduce more sophisticated devices. Harman, based in Stamford, Conn., and a maker of such systems for cars, has created a pair of high-end multimedia systems due out this year that use full-fledged PC chips from Intel and Nvidia. Such chips once consumed too much electricity to be used in cars.

“We have always looked at the PC market with envy,” said Sachin Lawande, the chief technology officer at Harman, which works with Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Toyota and others. “They’ve always had these great chips we could not use, but now that’s changing.”

A complex new dashboard console from Ford, which it plans to unveil Thursday, brings the car firmly into the land of electronic gadgets. The 4.2-inch color screen to the left of the speedometer displays information about the car, like the fuel level, while a companion screen on the right shows things like the name of a cellphone caller or the title of the digital song file being played. An eight-inch touch screen tops the central console, displaying things like control panels and, when the car is not moving, Web pages.

The system has Wi-Fi capability, two U.S.B. ports and a place to plug in a keyboard — in short, many of the features of a standard PC.

The automakers’ efforts are backed by companies that make chips for PCs and that want to see their processors slotted into the 70 million cars sold worldwide each year.

“Cars are going to become probably the most immersive consumer electronics device we have,” said Michael Rayfield, a general manager at Nvidia, a chip company that on Thursday plans to announce a deal with Audi. “In 2010, you will sit in these things, and it will be a totally different experience.”

The giants of the industry contend they are giving consumers what they want — and the things that smartphones and the Internet have trained them to expect.

“Customers are expecting more and more, especially business people who expect to find in the car what they find in their smartphone,” said Mathias Halliger, the chief engineer for Audi’s multimedia interface systems. “We should give them the same or a better experience.”

The muscle of the computer industry adds powerful new backing to efforts by carmakers to introduce new technologies as a source of profit. Once they promoted advanced stereos, but now navigation and integrated phone systems are the hot items.

“Carmakers assume, as most consumers do, that most cars are alike in terms of line quality and safety, and all the old attributes,” Art Spinella, an auto industry analyst with CNW Research, said. “Now the way to distinguish yourself is through higher tech.”

“But they’re totally ignoring one of the key issues of the future of driving, which is distracted driving.”

Awareness of that issue is growing. Even in 2003, when fewer people were multitasking in cars, researchers at Harvard estimated that motorists talking on cellphones caused 2,600 fatal accidents and 570,000 accidents involving injuries a year.

Charlie Klauer, a researcher at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, says motorists face a much greater crash risk when looking at a screen, even if it is just a simple GPS map. She says the overall danger for drivers will rise as screens deliver additional streams of data.

The longer a motorist looks away from the road, “the risk of crash or near crash goes up exponentially — not a linear increase, but exponentially,” Ms. Klauer said. “So when you start introducing things like e-mail, Internet access, restaurant options or anything like that, the risk goes up.”

Regulators worry about the developments, too. Ray LaHood, the transportation secretary, said the companies involved were on the wrong track.

“The idea they’re going to load automobiles up with all kinds of ways to be distracted — that’s not the direction we’re going, and I will speak out against it,” he said.

The companies contend that they are creating helpful systems that display crucial information. And they are quick to point out that more computing power could mean better safety technology as well, like sensors that try to predict dangerous driving situations.

Ford and Audi say they extensively tested and tweaked their systems to cut down on the amount of time that drivers spend looking at screens. Brad Stertz, a spokesman for Audi of America, said that this testing was voluntary.

“Because a lot of this is so new, there’s not a ton of regulatory testing that’s required, like would be required with crash testing,” Mr. Stertz said. He added that the company was also hoping to avoid legal troubles, saying, “It could be a legal issue if someone gets into a car accident and the cops blame the car company for a system that’s too elaborate.”

Darrin Shewchuk, a spokesman for Harman, said his company was working on safety technology like voice systems for listening to and composing e-mail messages. But he said that “generally speaking, the safety testing is really the responsibility of the automakers.”

HOW TO: Download YouTube Videos to Your Desktop

2010-01-08T16:09:00.000-08:00

DISCLAIMER: As some of you have pointed out in the comments, downloading personal copies of YouTube videos is not supported by the YouTube Terms of Service, which states:

“You may access User Submissions for your information and personal use solely as intended through the provided functionality of the YouTube Website. You shall not copy or download any User Submission unless you see a “download” or similar link displayed by YouTube on the YouTube Website for that User Submission.”

We want to stress that most of these tools do violate the ToS and that if you use them, you do so at your own risk. Also , if you’ve been tempted to download for a better browsing experience on the big screen, don’t forget YouTube has already got you covered on that with YouTube XL.

youtube logoIt’s been a while since we looked at ways to download YouTube videos to get local copies of your favorite vids, and we thought it might be time to take a look at which options are still left standing and what new apps are worth checking out.

For those of you new to the concept, you’ll need to know a couple of things. Many of these sites and tools simply grab YouTube (YouTube) videos in their native Flash format (FLV). To watch these files on your desktop, you’ll either need to get yourself an FLV player or convert the files into another format you can watch in your media player of choice (or on your iPod/iPhone, cell phone, or wherever the videos will ultimately end up).

Some of the listed tools include FLV players or file format converters along with the video download functions. Choose your poison according to your needs and patience level — if you do a lot of downloading it might be worth your while to check out the more full-featured apps.

And now, on with the list!
Web-based services

downloader9

Downloader9 – This plain and simple free site lets you paste in a video URL from YouTube, Metacafe, DailyMotion or Myspace (MySpace) and generates a download link for the FLV file. As with many of these bare bones options, you’ll have to rename the file to something.FLV and have your own FLV player to watch the vids.

KeepVid – KeepVid is a simple and free utility that’s not quite as slathered with ads as some in the free downloader playing field. Just paste the URL of the video (works with YouTube as well as several other video sites) and you’ll get an option to download it in either FLV or MP4 formats — the extra format option is a nice touch here, too.

Vixy – Vixy offers YouTube downloads in the following formats: AVI (DivX + MP3), MOV, MP4, 3GP and MP3. It’s easy to use and not as obnoxiously ad-laden as some of the options further down this list (it’s also survived since our previous feature on the subject).

Easy YouTube Video Downloader (Easy YouTube Video Downloader) – This one’s actually a Firefox (Firefox) extension that adds a download button option to the YouTube interface itself. Conversions are available to MP4 and 3GP, with HD quality options displayed where available.

iDesktop.tv – This freemium service supports YouTube downloads in the following formats: AVI, MP4, MOV, 3PG, 3PG2, WMV, FLV, EXE, ZIP and MP3 (paid plans only for MP3). You have a limited number of daily download credits under the free plan, with unlimited downloads and more file formats available under the $7 a month Downloader plan. They also provide a white label custom player service as well, which we reviewed back in February.

VideoDownloadX – This site made our last list and is still around. The plus side is it’s completely free. The downside is it’s so heavily ad-supported you have to tread carefully to avoid accidentally clicking on an ad, and you have to manually rename the files with a .FLV extension. You’ll also have to provide your own Flash FLV player to watch the downloaded videos.

SaveTube – Another simple paste and download tool in the vein of Downloader9 or KeepVid, SaveTube works fine but, like VideoDownloadX, is a minefield of ads to navigate.

VideoGetting – This one is free and supports conversion into multiple formats (WMV, MP3, MP4, MOV, 3GP, AVI, MPG, MPEG), but you’ll have to tolerate annoying pop-ups and ad traps to use it.

Windows Applications

moyea-flv-player

Orbit Downloader – This desktop app downloads videos from several sites including YouTube, plus offers downloading from streaming music sites like Pandora (Pandora), imeem, Myspace, etc., giving it a unique edge over some of the rest of the pack.

Moyea YouTube FLV Downloader – The free version of this app simply downloads YouTube vids as FLV files, while the paid app lets you convert them to MP4, 3GP, AVI, MOV, MPG, MKV, FLV, MP3, MKA, WAV, AC3, and M4A.

Vixy – The online tool Vixy we mentioned above in the web section also has a client available for download if you want to go the desktop app route.

VDownloder – Another survivor from our first round look at YouTube downloaders, VDownloder is a free app with support for a number of online video sites including a handful of (ahem) adult sites. It supports video search right from within the app and can save to AVI, MPG, MP$ (iPod/iPhone), PSP, 3GP, Nokia, VCD, SVCD, FLV and MP3.

Videoslurp – This attractively-named free app includes a built-in browser to find the YouTube vids you like and download them in one click. There’s a web-based online downloader version of Videoslurp also, but we couldn’t get it to work (if anyone else has luck with it, let us know in the comments).

Desktop YouTube Downloader – This $10 app has a 15-day free trial and comes with a bunch of features, including a built-in FLV player so you can watch videos without needing a separate Flash player or waiting for a file conversion. If you want the file conversion, this app covers that too, and can save the video to MPEG, WMV, iPod/iPhone or 3GP cell phone-typical file formats. It can also extract the audio track and save it as an MP3 or WAV file.

Mac OS X Applications

tubesock

TubeSock – This cross-platform app can both play YouTube videos and download them. Conversions are available to MP4, H.264 and MP3 formats, targeting the iPod/iPhone and Sony PlayStation Portable specifically. It also features a bookmarklet script for Safari (Safari) or Firefox that can automagically queue videos to TubeSock as you browse. The app is $15 and will only convert the first 30 seconds of video in the trial.

Vixy – The online tool Vixy we mentioned above in the web section also has a client available for download if you want to go the desktop app route. This one will work with both Intel and PowerPC Macs.

TubeTV – This freeware app provides search and browse tools as well as downloads and conversions. You’ll need to install the excellent Perian open source component to handle the conversions. If you’re a Mac user and don’t already know about Perian, it’s a great Swiss army knife-like codec utility that can also help solve a lot of compatibility problems trying to play back video files with Quicktime.

This is by no means a comprehensive list — we left out a number of sites and apps with nearly identical features to the items on this list. And though we included a few freemium and paid apps, we avoided some of the more costly tools in favor of the free and cheap in this set.

There’s also sure to be some apps and sites we just don’t know about yet — so if you have a favorite tool for downloading YouTube videos to your desktop, let us know in the comments! If you’re listing a paid app, be sure and tell us why it’s worth paying for.

3D Television

2010-01-08T04:51:00.000-08:00

It’s no wonder the 3D hype machine is out in full force. With the success of James Cameron’s “Avatar,” it's been a very good year for the format.

And starting Thursday, gadget makers, TV networks and movie studios at Las Vegas’ annual Consumer Electronics Show will ramp up the biggest home-entertainment technology push since high-def was foisted upon the populace a decade ago.

The message is clear: the next wave of entertainment lies in 3D television.

But what if the industry throws a 3D party and no one shows up? Though there could be product in the home by spring of this year, the hurdles in programming and infrastructure mean the format has a long way to go before it sees any kind of widespread use in the home.

*****************

In the month leading up to CES, a number of key 3D TV announcements were made:

* The Blu-ray Disc Association adapted unified standards to avoid a Beta/VHS-type format war.

* ESPN announced a dedicated 3D channel to kick off June 11 with World Cup Soccer.

* Discovery Communications, Sony and Imax announced plans for a dedicated 3D channel full of nature and science shows.

* DirecTV also will be trumpeting an all-3D channel.

Meanwhile, 3D-ready TVs already have started flooding the market – even if there’s nothing yet to show on them. So far, the only announced 3D Blu-rays are DreamWorks' "Monsters vs. Aliens," which will be bundled with select Samsung 3D-ready sets, and Sony's plan to release "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" this summer, along with its Blu-ray player.

Indeed, if the slow, cumbersome adoption of Blu-ray has taught us anything, it’s that mass uptake of expensive home entertainment systems is hardly a given, especially amid the worst Consumer Confidence Index since the Great Depression.

Consumers who just plunked down dough for nifty hi-def flat-panel TVs might not be willing to upgrade again so soon to the new 3D-ready monitors. The same for those early adopters, who in the last year purchased new Blu-ray players but will still need a newer, shinier one if they want to experience 3D.

(The Blu-ray Disc Association is set to announce at CES just how its new 3D standards will affect legacy 3D equipment.)

Just as challenging are the myriad technical issues involving such fun words as bandwidth and standards.

It’s one thing for ESPN to announce it’s going to put together a 3D channel, but quite another for the various satellite and cable carriers to step up and create the infrastructure needed to import the content into the home.

In fact, cable carriers are still struggling to accommodate the girth of HD within their pipes.

“Cablevision offers 834 channels, and only 120 of them are in HD,” said consumer electronics analyst Richard Doherty. “They had to really push recently just to add 20 (HD) channels.”

With 3D consuming twice the bandwidth of the typically robust HD channel, you do the math -- the wires are only so thick.

“We are still getting over the hurt of paying for HD equipment,” Fox Sports chairman David Hill warned at a recent 3D Entertainment Summit.
“There is no way the broadcast industry is going to step up and pay for the 3D infrastructure without a good fairy coming into the office to write us a check.”

Certainly, there’s impetus to make this all work – especially from the studios’ point of view.

Half of the highest grossing movies in North America last year were released in 3D. As studios release more and more of their product in the format, having 3D in their primary profit center is essential.

And, despite DVD’s recent downturn, that profit center is still the home.

“North of 50 percent of the revenue on a major film comes from home entertainment,” Greg Foster, president of filmed entertainment at Imax, said during a recent Digital Hollywood panel. “If that is not available on 3D, your primary revenue source becomes something that is not quite as strong as it was.”

Added Technicolor chief marketing officer Ahmed Ouri: “Studios are looking to amortize their 3D. Blu-ray is an immediate solution.”

It's also an immediate solution for the hardware manufacturers.

TV makers have watched the margins on flat-panel HDTV sets shrink to almost nil, with price points falling well below $1,000. With the entry-level price point for 3D-ready flat panels set at around $2,000, margins will once again be thick -- especially if you can offer "Avatar" in the home as a selling point.

And for cable networks and carriers eager to maintain their distribution system from the erosive forces of the internet, 3D TV represents a kind of last chance.

Sure, young, early-adopting consumers can shut down their cable and satellite services and still watch “Mad Men” and “True Blood” on their computers. But they can’t watch Portugal play Spain in the World Cup in 3D on the internet.

“Two years ago, people were still saying 3D TV probably won’t work,” Sony CEO Howard Stringer said in a conference call Tuesday, in support of the company’s joint initiative with Discovery and Imax. “The momentum of 3D in the last six months alone has been quite striking. And even though there are not hundreds of movies (in 3D), there’s a kind of rolling rhythm to this.”
Next in the revolution -- more 2D-3D conversions, no glasses and even an image right in your lap
By Carolyn Giardina
Published: January 07, 2010

In a record-breaking year at the box office, TheWrap graded seven movie studios on their 2009's. Find out who made bank, who merely survived, and who lost their shirts despite the bonanza.

While the new 3D Blu-ray players and flat screens are hogging the spotlight at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, technologists are already preparing for the next stages in the 3D revolution.

Down the line, that means taking off those bulky glasses … and even holograms (imagine watching Princess Leia's hologram beg Obi-Wan for help in “Star Wars” -- as an actual hologram).

But the first step: Providing more conventional 3D product to consumers – especially with providers like DirecTV, TK and TK devoting entire channels to the format.

On that front, the conversion of existing 2D programming to 3D is getting a lot of attention, especially as advancements push the price down. And for good reason: Not only would a flood of conversions provide instant content for 3D-ready homes, but it would breathe new life not into everything from recently released movie hits to classic TV series, such as “Star Trek” or even "CSI."

The technology has already been used to convert library titles such as “Toy Story” and “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas,” as well as Disney's upcoming “Beauty and the Beast” re-do.

“There is a lot of heat in this space,” said David Wertheimer, CEO of the Entertainment Technology Center at USC. “Virtually all of the companies that have great libraries are going back and doing projections on which titles might lend themselves to conversion. It is a very active area of discussion.”

The technique is also considered an option for new productions. Disney’s “G-Force” was the first new title to be made in 2D, then converted.

Challenges include pricing and quality. A year ago, conversion estimates ranged from roughly $50,000 per minute to more than $100,000 per minute, depending on the complexity of the content. As additional companies entered this market, pricing started to drop -- although rates still vary greatly as not all methods are created equal.

“You can automate the process, but to make it look really good, it is an artistic process,” Wertheimer told TheWrap.

Conversion techniques also have to create quality 3D that is comfortable to watch.

“The trend is that we are breaking the $20,000-a-minute range,” Joshua Greer, president of 3D provider RealD, told TheWrap. “Sub $10,000 or $5,000 -- we can unlock new content at those price points.”

All that may change.

JVC recently unveiled the prototype for an automated conversion box. If it actually reaches the market, JVC aims to sell the system for about $50,000. Total.

This mean that for an investment of $50,000, a network like ABC or Fox could inexpensively convert all its programming to 3D.

And that's just the beginning. In the not-too-distant future, it might be possible to finally remove the glasses.

Philips was instrumental in getting this dialogue started. Back in 2008, the manufacturer demonstrated the prototype of a 3D TV that didn’t require the use of glasses -- but earlier this year it made a surprising decision to abort further development. “Philips probably would have stayed in the game if they thought it was just around the corner,” said USC’s Wertheimer.

Most insiders generally agree that this technology is at least five years away from a consumer rollout -- but it is coming.

Marty Shindler, principal of industry consulting firm the Shindler Perspective, told TheWrap: “As 3D TV set penetration grows, those companies making TVs will start perfecting glasses-free products.”

“We’ll see it first for signage,” RealD's Greer said. “Right now, the content needs to be produced differently.”

Looking further into the 3D crystal ball, some experts conclude that there’s no question that not just glasses-free viewing -- but holograms -- are the future.

Offering an early glimpse at the potential, the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology in Japan demonstrated a moving hologram at this year’s National Association of Broadcasters convention.

Among 3D watchers, it was one of the exciting and most-discussed exhibits.
NICT intends to try to interest the broadcast industry in holograms for home entertainment -- although a company spokesperson admitted that this is probably a decade away.

“I think holograms will happen, but it is way out there,” Shindler said. “Just the regular 3D TV market is going to take a long time.”

Groups Plan to Launch 3-D TV

2010-01-06T06:34:00.000-08:00

Groups Plan to Launch 3-D TV
At Least Four Networks Would Offer Shows,Video-on-Demand Movies in the U.S.

By SAM SCHECHNER

At least four new 3-D television networks are in the works, as entertainment and electronics companies look to push 3-D movies, TV programs and sporting events into more American homes.

The new networks are part of a larger effort to surmount a chicken-and-egg problem that has long bedeviled 3-D's expansion into the home: how to convince consumers and media companies to invest in a technology when there is both little content and few people with the equipment to watch it.
[3DTV] Discovery Channel

The Discovery-Sony-Imax venture would feature series, such as 'Atlas 4D,' above, covering sites from the pyramids to the Great Wall of China.

DirecTV Inc. is planning to launch two 3-D channels and a 3-D video-on-demand service in the U.S., according to a person briefed on the project. The channels and service, which could be announced as early as Wednesday, would offer movies and other content, the person said.

A DirecTV spokesman declined to comment on the plans.

The DirecTV channels would join two 3-D television networks announced Tuesday. Discovery Communications Inc., Sony Corp. and Imax Corp. said they were forming a joint venture to launch one using their movies and TV shows in 2011. Meanwhile, Walt Disney Co.'s sports-TV unit, ESPN, said it would launch a network later this year that will air matches from the upcoming World Cup soccer contest, as well as from other sports.

Is the next big thing for home entertainment be 3D television? Sam Schechner discusses the scramble to provide content to match the technology.

The efforts come as a flurry of electronics companies plan to unveil new 3-D-enabled TV sets at the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas, and as Hollywood spends more to make movies like "Avatar" for the multiplex. ("Avatar" is distributed by Twentieth Century Fox, which is owned by News Corp., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.)

"You have all this capital being driven into the creation of this 3D content," said Richard Gelfond, chief executive of Imax. Studios "want to find a way to make back that money in the home," Mr. Gelfond said.

The new networks will face a significant hurdle as few people have the equipment to watch 3-D at home. In 2010, only about 1% to 2% of the 35 million flat-screen TVs that will be sold in the U.S. will be 3-D-enabled, estimates Riddhi Patel, an analyst for iSuppli Corp.

The companies behind the new channels believe they can help drive adoption. "I don't think there's a more powerful platform than sports to demonstrate what 3-D can do," said Sean Bratches, ESPN's executive vice president of sales and marketing.

The new Discovery-Sony-Imax joint venture could offer 3-D movies and TV series from Sony, nature and science series from Discovery, and 3-D movies that Imax has long shown in its big-screen theaters, the companies said. Unlike the ESPN channel, which will be available only when events are aired, their channel will be on the air 24-7.

Already, ESPN and the joint venture say they have had very early discussions to put the new 3-D services on channel lineups of major U.S. TV distributors. A spokeswoman for Time Warner Cable Inc. said the company had had preliminary discussions with some of the ventures.

"We've always been on a mission of having our programming be closest to real," said David Zaslav, chief executive of Discovery. "If there's demand for 3-D, the distributors are going to want to have it."

"We are very interested in developing 3D content for our platform and our customers," Derek Chang, DirecTV's executive vice president of content strategy and development, said in a statement supplied by a spokesman.

Both ESPN and Discovery were big early proponents of high-definition TV technology.

MagicJack far from enchanting

2010-01-05T16:46:00.000-08:00

MagicJack far from enchanting

By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | March 12, 2009

You've probably seen the ads on TV, especially if you're up late. Plug a little device called magicJack into a PC, then connect your telephone, and get unlimited calls throughout the United States for $20 a year.

To me, there was a whiff of sleaze about the whole thing. The aroma got stronger when I visited magicJack's gaudy website, which lacks a company name, phone number, or e-mail address, but provides an easy way to send your money.

So, of course, I had to buy a magicJack, find out just how awful it is, and warn readers. Surprise: magicJack works pretty well. I don't think it's a satisfactory replacement for standard phone service, but as a long-distance calling alternative, it could save you a nice piece of change.

You can buy a magicJack at any Best Buy store. The $40 price includes one year of unlimited phone calls. After that you'll pay $20 a year to continue the service. You can also get magicJack by mail through the company website, which touts a 30-day free trial. Another sleazy touch - the site says the free offer is only available today. Of course, when you go back the next day, it's still there.

Plug the magicJack into the USB port of an Internet-connected Windows PC or Apple Macintosh computer. There's no CD included, as magicJack software is built into the device. Once connected, it installs the code. The device features a standard telephone jack; just plug in an ordinary phone and you're ready to go. Or buy a headset with microphone and connect it to a computer's sound card. With this setup, dial magicJack's onscreen dialer with your computer mouse. You can also download a program that adds a toolbar to the address book in Microsoft Corp.'s popular Outlook information manager. Punch up an address book entry, click the toolbar, and magicJack will dial the number.

Next, go on the website to register the gadget and you're assigned a brand-new phone number. A voice mail service can also be set up to catch calls when you're not around. In addition, you can register a physical address for 911 calls, so first responders can find you in an emergency.

The process couldn't be much simpler - when it works.

On my first attempt to dial my new number from my cellphone, all went well. But on subsequent attempts, the phone wouldn't ring. Calls went directly to voice mail. Annoying as this was, magicJack's customer service was worse. The company relies almost entirely on an online chat service, where you type your complaints to some distant techie. That might be an adequate solution for minor set-up issues, but it's pretty much useless for more complex problems. The online helpers were courteous and diligent, but the endless typing nearly wore me out.

Eventually, some kindly soul dialed my cellphone. Over the course of 90 minutes, we discovered that my Internet firewall and magicJack didn't get along. After a bit of reconfiguration, everything began to work as advertised. Calls came through, and sound quality was as clear as a standard landline.

Still, I'd never use magicJack as my primary phone. I'm not prejudiced against Internet-based phone systems. I already use one, through my cable and Internet provider, Comcast Corp. But the Comcast system is more robust.

For instance, the cable modem that delivers the phone service has a battery that keeps the phone line alive for several hours if there's a power failure. Besides, the cable modem is independent of my computer. If my PC is switched off, I can still order pizza or call the police.

Not so with magicJack. It's useless without a steady stream of electricity, a running computer, and a live Internet connection. Shut off the computer overnight, and you've shut off your phone service.

MagicJack's 911 service doesn't inspire confidence, either. You have to enter your address into the magicJack software so the system knows where to send the fire department or the police. Because you can use magicJack on any PC or Mac, you can type in a different address when you change locations. Anyway, that's the theory.

MagicJack founder Daniel Borislow told me it takes a day or two for his device to correctly identify a user's location. That's some small comfort. But I'd feel safer relying on a standard landline for emergency calls, or even my Verizon cellphone with its built-in GPS locator.

Still, magicJack basically works, and it can save you money. Local phone company Verizon charges at least $45 a month for unlimited local and long distance service, although can get a basic Verizon local line for about $20 a month. By using magicJack for your long distance calls, you'd save $280 a year, and still have Verizon as an emergency fallback.

Borislow says his privately held firm has sold 2.6 million magicJacks, and I believe him. If he upgrades customer service, and abandons crude marketing gimmicks, he'll probably sell millions more.

Roku HD-XR Player

2010-01-03T18:38:00.000-08:00

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002SFDJMQ/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B001PIBE8I&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1KJZPAVHRAV187XNGK9Y
Price: $129.99 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Details
By Andrea L. Polk (Southern Oregon) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
First let me say I own a Roku and LOVE it! NetFlix and Roku are a marriage made in heaven as far as I'm concerned, and they are saving me tons of money and treks to the video store. The picture, ease of use, wireless capabilities, quality of video content... everything is great!

But as a consumer it's important to understand the differences between the 3 Roku offerings so you can make an informed decision on your purchase. It does seem odd that Roku has simply not put out one device at one price for everyone with all the bells and whistles, but for now, you have to choose one... based upon your needs and budget.

THE DIFFERENCES IN ROKU PLAYERS:
Roku HD Player is capable of wired or wireless hook-up, but not at the fastest speed available from a 'N' wireless network. HD content streams to this device flawlessly (if the content is available and your home network is sending a proper signal), despite not being 'N' network ready.

That being said, Roku came out with Roku HD-XR Player which WILL stream the fastest 'N' network standard, provided the rest of your home network is also working with the same standard. That being said, this device is not at all necessary if you don't have all the devices on your home network using the 'N' standard, because the speed will only go as fast as the device with the slowest connection which is probably the 'B or G' standard.

The third device is available on Roku's website. Roku SD, which streams in standard definition, will not stream HD content, isn't capable of surround sound audio like the other two and does not have a HDMI connection. It only supports the red/yellow/white (composite video and audio) connections, but it will connect wirelessly or can be hardwired to the internet, working on a 'B or G' network. The Roku SD is about twenty bucks less than the Roku HD and , so again, consider your needs before buying. **Anyone with a standard def TV and who doesn't plan to upgrade to an HDTV with HDMI ports any time soon, would probably want this version.

The Roku HD-XR Player is a jump up from the HD model in wireless capabilities. All the Roku offerings will give you years of enjoyment by boosting your NetFlix subscription, streaming Amazon On Demand media and boosting your viewing library. What the HD-XR has that the others don't: 'N' network capabilities and 1 USB port for firmware upgrades and possibly, other media hook-ups via USB, but at this time Roku doesn't even bring up the USB on their website so I tend to wonder about this being a selling point. Is it worth the extra cost? Only you know the answer to that question.

MY CONCLUSION:
The quality of the streaming video on my 'G' network is perfect; standard and HD content, via my Roku HD, but since I don't have a 'N' network, nor do I expect I will in the near future, I saved myself a bit of money and didn't buy this one.

The only reason I give this product 4 versus 5 stars is because of the price bump for the ability to use an 'N' wireless network when frankly I believe it should be considered a standard feature, not an extra. The USB port, whatever it's used for, should also be standard on all models. Again, it would be wonderful to have one Roku with all the potential connections and wireless ability, and perhaps in the future there will be, but for now you need to consider these three: Roku SD, Roku HD and Roku HD-XR.

To may your own informed choice, evaluate your needs and buy accordingly. While the Roku products are not media storage devices or DVR's, they can give you a tremendous boost in your enjoyment of NetFlix and expand your viewing library.

ROKU HD-XR PLAYER SPECIFICATIONS (per the Roku website):
*Note the USB port isn't even listed as a feature.

Networking
Wi-Fi (802.11N/B/G "dual-band") with WEP, WPA, and WPA2 support
10/100 Ethernet (RJ-45)
Video Outputs
Composite video (480i)
S-Video (480i)
Component video (Y/Pb/Pr - 720p/480p)
HDMI (720p/480p)
Video Modes
16:9 High Definition (HD)
16:9 anamorphic
4:3 standard
Audio Output
Stereo (L/R RCA)
Digital Optical (Toslink - Stereo/Surround)
Digital over HDMI (Stereo/Surround)
Remote Control
NEC protocol, supported by various universal remotes
Power Input
5V, 2.5A provided by included AC adapter
Power Consumption
6 watts peak, 4 watts in standby
Size
5 x 5 x 1.75 inches (130 x 130 x 41 mm)
Weight
11 oz (300 grams)
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88 of 91 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars You'll have to read this to believe it, December 3, 2009
By R. L. Hodges (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
The Roku HD-XR is fantastic. Even if you only have Wirless-G, what you see on screen still looks like a million bucks, and is truly HD, even if you have na HD TV or not. It's only actually 720P, and not 1080p, but unless you're using a large TV over 32", you'd never even notice anyway. Regardless, it still looks fantastic.

Before I gush over the features, however, I MUST tell you about the experience I had with getting it connected:

First, it took less than 5 minutes to pull it out of the box to watching movies on NetFlix. It's astonishingly no-brainer, and I'm dead serious when I say that. If you also have an internet-connected wireless laptop sitting in your lap during setup, drop the out-of-the-box-to-watching-movies time to 3 minutes.

Now this is where this little device knocked my socks off: I'm a computer network engineer, and I do not have a simple wireless internet setup in my house. I have a very complex enterprise network set up, consisting of servers and workstations, cabled and wireless, and connecting wirelessly to my network insfrastructure is required to make use of my internet proxy server. This is just like the same setup you find in corporate offices.

So to make a long story short, I was worried that the Roku would not be able to make use of my complex internet proxy server for internet access and that I'd have to return it. I thought the box would be to "dumb", or would not have the required configuration menus to make use of such complex networking architecture. If you know what internet proxy servers are, then you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Imagine my surprise when I entered my network wireless security information (so it could connect to SOMETHING at least), when it also automatically found my proxy server and AUTOMATICALLY CONFIGURED ITSELF to make use of it. All 3 of the Roku's on-screen indicators all lit up green and BAM! - I was punching right into our NetFlix queue, our queued movies already waiting to be watched. WOW! And I mean WOW!!! This little gizmo has the ability to hunt down proxy servers on local area networks and make use of them AUTOMATICALLY without further configuration! Did I say WOW!!!!???

Oh, and by the way: My wireless network is pumped through a Wireless-G LinkSys Access Point (WAP), which is what the Roku is talking to for connection t my network. And it works GREAT. So for the reviewer who said that it won't talk through LinkSys hardware - sorry, not true.

VERY happy with this device. Embarrassingly close to euphoric, in fact, simply because of it's configuration and connectivity capabilities alone! The fact that it connected so quickly and so incredibly on my network is reason enough for me to own this thing. Let alone how cool it is to actually use, watch and enjoy, the very reason you get one in the first place!

However, I simply must also add these additional review details:

The box itself is very small, the size of a small jewelry box, and blended right in with my home theater system. It's even pleasing to the eye to some degree, not the typical mess of cables you'd expect. It takes up virtually no shelf space and only has two cables connected to it if you're using wireless and HDMI: the HDMI cable itself and the power cord. That's it. The remote control itself is VERY small, be careful, it will slip down between couch cusions VERY easily. But it's very nice looking and very stupid-simple to operate, having only a few buttons for menu and playback control. The simplicity of the thing is so beautiful compared to the typical "slap a million buttons on it for cool factor" we're inundated with these days that I'm darned close to taking the thing out to dinner and a movie.

The device is extremely simple to use, no tech savvy-ness required. You will absolutely LOVE the simplicity of it. It is so amazingly simple that I'm going to risk sounding like an idiot by calling it an engineering masterpiece. And trust me when I say that I know technology. As much as I like to go full-blown geek on most things, this device is so refreshingly simple that I'm surprised at such a device can be so simple. I'm also surprised at myself for being so thrilled with it.

The included directions that come with it are incredibly simple. However, the device is so simple to hook up and use, I'd offer that the included quick-start instructions aren't even necessary.

My Roku is hooked up to a 52" Samsung HDTV at 1080p. The picture quality of the streamed content over the Roku is very impressive for a 720P device streaming compressed internet media content. Please understand that compression is required for internet streaming, and that you will notice some fuzz in the picture, especially if you have a big HDTV. That's the nature of internt streaming, and is not because of any shortcoming of the Roku product itself.

Even though the Roku has true HD mode, do not expect crystal clear "HD" content - remember, this device hooks up to ANY TV, not just HD. Imagine slightly better quality regualr TV on a giant screen. That's how it is watching a Roku on an HDTV, especially a big one, even with the Roku's HD display feature enabled. The menus are crystal clear in HD - the actual streaming media content you'll be watching will not be, it's like watching slightly enhanced regualr TV, at least on large TVs. On smaller TVs, 32" and smaller, it will look fantastic.

And the question many of you are wodnering: What if you will be using the Roku simultaneously with other computes or devices in your home on the same internet conenction? Simple: use common sense. You'll have no problems if all you're doing is email and web browsing while watching thigns on the Roku box. Online gaming and downloading giant files, however, might cause the Roku to kick picture quality down or pause for buffering or even stop it dead in its tracks altogether. I have had no problems whatsoever so far, but I make sure to keep computer use to "light duty" while watching content over the Roku. Use a little common sense and you'll have no problems. Surprisingly, it does a lot better than I thought it would.

Critical: for wireless use, the Roku needs to be at Wireless-G or higher. If you have a PDA or older laptop that only does Wireless-A or B, and your internet router is in mixed mode (allows A, B, G and N), most wireless routers/access points will kick down in speed to match the slowest device talking to it. This will basically stop the Roku dead in its tracks by pretty much dropping it's access to the itnernet down to virtually nothing. Don't use old slow wireless-A/B products if you're using your Roku wirelessly.

The most economical entertainment under the sun: NetFlix is only $10 a month, but you must understand that the Roku will only play the movies that NetFlix has made available in their "watch now" category, and that category really isn't all that impressive. Most NetFlix titles are still DVD-by-mail-only, so their entire catolog is not available to the Roku player. However, Amazon's On-Demand service, though it is pay-per-view and much more expensive at 1-3$ per movie viewing, has over 45,000 titles you can watch immediately on the Roku. Either way you go, this is an incredible entertainment system. As for me personally, we're subscribed to NetFlix and watch the occasional Amazon On-Demand title when a new release comes out we want to see. All total, we're probably spending no more than $20 a month to watch what we want to watch and when we want to watch it. This is at about 25-30% of a normal cable bill, and all while providing convenience, content and flexibility that cable or satellite can't even (currently) dream of. You just can't beat it.

This is how all cable and satellite service content will eventually be delivered. Until then, you get it all right now with the Roku.

And if you don't have Wireless-N in your home yet, and you're thinking about saving $10 and getting the lesser model, just get this one - you're going to soon have Wireless-N in your home anyway, so get it right the first time. Otherwise you'll just end up buying this model later anyway.

Also, this Roku box, when first plugged in, will download an update and then reboot itself. Afterwards, you will see the main menu for the first time and be pleasantly surprised to find that not only are NetFlix and Amazon On-Demand available to the Roku, but also several other music and video streaming services, such as Pandora, a NBL (baseball) streaming service, and several other trial services.

All "surprises" with this box were pleasant, no bad experiences, failures or complaints whatsoever.

I want to finish this review with the following statement: This by far - dead serious - the best $130 I have ever spent in my life. Bang for buck, I have never seen anything provide such incredible high-quality entertainment in such a well-engineered way in such an attractive, small, easy-to-use package. If you ever wanted to see magic in a little box, thsi is the product. Not often you get to see cool things like this come along, but here's a real winner of an example.

"Roku" is misnamed. It should be "Kudos".
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31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A great new toy, November 19, 2009
By AK (Kentucky) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
I am really enjoying my new Roku XR. The setup was extremely easy and intuitive. I am running the ROKU XR wirelessly off of an N-Router (Trendnet 633) located on the other side of the house. I am getting "4 dots and HD" (best quality) with no interuptions in play.

My only complaint is that I have to go to Netflix and enter movies I want to watch on the Netflix Instant Queue before the Roku XR will play the movie. So basically, I have to go to my computer, find my TV shows or movies, enter them into the Instant Queue on the computer then goto the ROKU and my selections will be available to watch. I really wish I could scan for movies and shows thru the ROKU.

Other than that, the setup and playback quality is excellent using HDMI. Recommended :)