Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category
Apr
13
Netflix Logo
One of the things that I like to do here, aside from how-to articles, scripts, tips and tidbits, etc., is to share things that I have run across that I find useful or fun, a good value, and so on. One such thing recently has been Netflix. Now, unless you have been living in a cave somewhere, I am sure you have heard of Netflix before. Their claim to fame is DVD rental by mail with no late fees. It works, works well, I have used the service in that capacity and been quite happy with it. However, that is not what this post is about. No, in this day and age of instant gratification, this post shows off a new feature that Netflix offered up, which is the ability to watch movies and TV shows instantly, over the ‘net. Bing!
You can do this a couple of different ways, using your computer (this is how I do it) and streaming the content via your web browser, or using a special device that connects to your TV and streams directly to your set. I haven’t used the special TV device, and I don’t know anything about it, I will just be talking about the browser based service.
For a nominal fee, ($8.99/month) you can get both DVD by mail service and unlimited instant service (over the Internet). To me, this is a pretty good deal. That’s a rental or two and you can watch all you want, nice. What’s the catch, you ask? Well, naturally you have to have some type of broadband connection. I haven’t actually tried it on dial-up, but I can’t imagine it would be fun. The other thing is that their instant content selection isn’t near as vast as their physical DVDs, something like 12,000 instant viewing titles versus over 100,000 DVDs that they can send via mail. That being said, I haven’t had any trouble finding something to watch. Yeah, I have found a few things that was only on DVD or what not, but there is still lots of good stuff to choose from and they are adding more all the time.
All in all, I think this is a good deal if you spend a lot of time at your computer (check), and like to watch TV and movies (check), and want the versatility to change it up and watch one thing one day and something else the next without having to buy a truck load of DVDs (also check). For the record, I am not affiliated with Netflix in any way, I get absolutely nothing if you go sign up (although, Netflix, if you want to send me gifts feel free! :]). I simply wanted to share something I found to be good with my audience. Feel free to post your own thoughts and/or experiences in the comments.
Jan
31
XanaNews Screenshot
I was looking for a good, solid and preferably open source news reader (usenet client) whilst booted into Windows XP on my laptop earlier, and I found a dandy. I found a lightweight client called XanaNews, which although lightweight, not over burdened or bulky, it is also solid and easy to use. Throw in that it is open source and free, and it’s a nice application.
I looked at the screen shots and it looked like it was along the lines of what I wanted, so I decided to download it and give it a try. After running the installer I easilly configured my news server (Giganews, if you aren’t using them and you want AWESOME usenet access, check these guys out! Like NOW!) and off I went, effortlessly subscribing to groups and reading posts on procmail. That’s what I was working on at the time.
Well, I liked XanaNews so much, that I decided to install it on my main machine running Ubuntu. I fired up Wine and ran through the same install steps and it again worked like a charm. So now I can use this dandy little news reader on Windows and Linux. I felt like I just had to share with everyone, because it seems like good usenet clients are hard to find unless you want to try and use something bundled into a web browser or email client which I usually don’t. Give me an app made especially for what I want to use it for, and it’s probably going to do a better job of it every time. Not always, but most of the time I would say. Hope you enjoy it!
Dec
30
Description and Problem:
Google Gears is a plug-in that extends your browser to create a richer platform for web applications. There are many Web applications that currently make use of Google Gears. Some of these include Google Docs, Google Reader, MySpace, Picasa, Zoho and (the reason for this post) now even WordPress. Google Gears, or simply just Gears as it is now known, not only enables offline browsing of supported sites, but it can also greatly improve the performance of these sites and web applications like WordPress. This makes working with supported web applications much nicer.
Now, my problem (and many others of you out there) has been that I am running 64-bit Ubuntu (8.04 Hardy Heron) and Google has not made a 64-bit version of their Gears software. They cite lack of time and testing resources, but my guess is it’s not that important to them since there probably aren’t too many 64-bit users out there. Luckilly for us, Gears is an open source project. This is now a prime example of the beauty of open source software, in that some really smart people created an “unofficial” patch that allows you to install and run Gears on 64-bit Linux in Firefox. In my case it’s Ubuntu and Firefox 3.x, but I have read folk that have had success with SuSE and others as well. It only took me about five minutes once I found the patch.
Here are the steps I took to get this installed, up and running:
Grab the latest version of the Gears binary that has been patched for 64bit at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~swolchok/gears/, I used this command:
wget http://www-personal.umich.edu/~swolchok/gears/gears-linux-opt-0.4.9.0.xpi
Open Firefox and choose File->Open File and browse to where you saved the file you just downloaded. It should open an install window, you want to press the “Install Now” button to start the install.
Once the install is complete, press the “Restart Firefox” button to restart Firefox and complete the installation.
Summary:
For me, upon the initial restart, I got an error about this addon not being compatible with my architecture. Despite that it seems to work fine, and I haven’t gotten any more errors since then, so I would suggest you simply ignore that error.
Lastly, go to a site that is supported, add it to Gears and enjoy! If you have any questions or comments, post ‘em below.
Oct
15
Hello all, I have circled back around and added some new extensions or addons to the “Must Have Firefox Extensions” page. The ones that I have listed there are, in my opinion, still rock solid choices. However, some new stuff has come out and I wanted to add some goodies to the list. So, head on over and take a look, you might find something you didn’t know was out there. Don’t forget that we do update our information, so come back and check on it now and then to see what’s new!
Oct
6
A new feature has been added to the site, it’s for anyone that wants to use it and it’s totally free. I call it Short Links, and basically it’s a web site redirector. We all know it’s a pain in the rear to send those really long links to friends and family because they get wrapped and all munged up in the email and then don’t work. Then you are trying to copy and paste in notepad and put it all together or explain all this over the phone when mom calls and is clicking but not working. Yeah, we’ve all been there. So, what you can do here is enter your long web site link, hit the button and get a short one back. The short one you can send to whoever you want and when they go there it will re-direct them to your long link. It makes life easier all the way around. Simply go to our Tools section and click on the Short Links item from the list and go crazy. I hope you all enjoy this new feature!
Aug
5
Here is a tip for anyone like me that is running 64 bit Ubuntu on AMD processors and wanting to install Skype. This is what I ran into recently and I found a solution so I wanted to share. This is a one liner that will take care of it for you, or at least it did with me on 8.04 Hardy Heron.
sudo apt-get install ia32-libs lib32asound2 libasound2-plugins;
wget -O skype-install.deb http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-ubuntu;
sudo dpkg -i --force-all skype-install.deb;
See? That’s all there is to it! This installs some supporting libraries as well as Skype itself. I broke this into multiple lines at the semicolons so it would display properly, but you can run it all as one big command or seperately. Enjoy!
