Internet

Mike Gdovin | December 1, 2008
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Is Information on Wikipedia Reliable?

Wikipedia is a informative website that allows anyone to provide information on any topic making a web-based encyclopedia that is a collaboration of everyone’s knowledge. However, many educators and other skeptics do not believe that Wikipedia is a viable source of information and do not allow students to use it for research papers.

However, I believe that because the fact that anyone can post, edit and add information that wikipeida allows informationm to be fact check by anyone and edit it so that the most accurate information is posted. I believe it is ignorant for educators to not accept the new trend in information and not allowing students to utilize it. Personally, I use Wikipedia evertime I need information quick because it has alot of information on a wide variety of topics from a wide range of perspectives.

Category: Internet, Media, Technology |
Mike Gdovin | November 24, 2008
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Online Backup: The Ultimate Backup Service

Every computer user has important data on their computer that they would be in trouble if they loose in the case of a hardware failure or software crash.  Every computer expert recommends that you should backup all your crucial data to an external device like a external hard drive, thumb drive or optical disk. However, what happens if there is a natural disaster or fire burning down your residence and making your backup totally useless. Plus, you would have to setup backing up even if you have a program, you would have to set it up yourself and pay for the media to put it on. This whole process is a total chore and still is not a perfect backup method.

However, if you sign up for a online backup service, you can set your computer to upload everything as files change and be sure that it is safe even if your residence is destroyed. The two services that I have used are Jungle Disk and Mozy.  Jungle Disk uses Amazon’s S3 service and charges a mere 15 cents per Gigabyte. However there are also some setup fees and uploading speeds also. Mozy on the other hand, has a free account that has 2 GB of free storage, and then an unlimited storage account for only $5/month per computer.  I decided that was the better service because as it backs up, it puts all the data online and secure from harm. The one disadvantage, is that with Jungle Disk you can upload from as many computers and mount the storage as a disk drive on your computer. However, Jungle Disk requires you to buy a backup application for an additional one time fee of $20, however there is a 30 day trial to start you off.

I have replaced localized backups with using Mozy’s unlimited service, and their included applications makes it so easy and I don’t even think about backing up my data but, I know it is safe!  I reccommend everyone using online backup because, the data is always safe and takes no thought or effort!

Category: Cloud Computing, Computers, Internet, Technology | Tags:
Mike Gdovin | November 17, 2008
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Offfice Of The Future

Anymore, I do not see the need for having office work done on paper or manually, since the dawn of new, more reliable technologies that can make office life simpler and much more productive. Paper can be damaged, lost, stolen and destroyed, while moving digitally, could prevent the problem of if the office burns down, the business goes with it!  Computers have been more utilized in recent years but I believe that in the future, offices will go completely digital and offices would be completely based on computers.

As an example, I will list the general things that offices need and list their digital replacements:

File Cabinets- Computer hard drives, Web Storage, Internal storage server

Paperless offices are great, despite the fear involved by some people who are computer-phobic might be worried but, as long as data is backed up frequently and off-soite all your data will be safe and much easier to access.

Phones- Skype/VOIP

Skype as I have mentioned before is a much more affordable replacement to landlines and could save offices lots of money and calls can be made anywhere in the world!

Messages/Memos- Email

As for internal company messages just move it all to email, Gmail has a great enterprise solution and could be a great replacement

This is just scratching the surface of the paperless office and although it may be scarry, it is worth it for new companies starting up, along with old companies as a system update for the best.

Category: Business, Computers, Internet, Technology |
Mike Gdovin | November 12, 2008
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Adagio Teas

People who know me best know that my favorite beverage in the world is tea. I usually drink about 6 cup each day and all of the tea I buy currently,  is from Adagio.com. Adagio sells a lot of loose leaf tea and some tea that comes in bags too although not as much variety is offered. Adagio has starter kits that allow new customers to sample a variety of teas and provides them with everything they need to make it for around $20.

I began ordering about 6 months ago and have enjoyed it a lot. Adagio offers a wide variety of teas and at very affordable prices. Another great part of adagio’s website is there is a social network aspect that lets you define friends and share your favorite teas with your friends to help suggest teas they might be interested in. Also, if you remain a steady customer you get about 10% of the money you spend back in savings in future purchases which helps keep customers coming back.  You also can review teas that you have purchased in both video and text and Adagio also gives savings for that as well. Adagio also allows their customers to make their own custom blends online and allow others to buy these blends and by doing so raising some money for the creator as well. Here are my custom blends please try them they are very good. I really love Adagio tea and I plan to write reviews of my favorite teas in future blog posts because I really love tea and I love Adagio.

Category: Internet |
Mike Gdovin | November 10, 2008
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My Opinon of the Revision3 Layoffs

Two weeks ago, Internet Television pioneer, Revision3, laid off nine of their workers much to the up roar of their fans.  They also let go of five of their shows, two of which were a syndication of already popular shows.  The reason given for these drastic actions was because there was not enough of an audience for these shows and because of the current economic crisis, money is tight and they wanted to make sure Revision3 could last and continue to produce high quality videos for their fans.

Due to those circumstances, the following shows met their end: Pop Siren, Pixel Perfect, and Internet Superstar, in addition, the two syndicated shows, Epic Fu and Wine Library TV were also removed from the network line-up. In my opinion the cancellation of some of theses shows were warranted, like Internet Superstar which I though had very little value especially after the reformatting. Pop Siren was in it’s earlier days a great show that  thoroughly enjoyed but, when they moved to the 2.0 format it lost it’s value and lost my viewership. Pixel Perfect in my opinion was at the core of what Revision3 was supposed to be, a Internet version of what Tech TV was, which was high quality, technology programming. By cutting Pixel Perfect, Revision3 took one more step closer to becoming another G4. As for the syndicated shows, it was really unwise to begin the syndication in the first place and they put money in it  that they really should have used that money to invest in developing more high quality shows. Gary Vaynerchuk, host of Wine Library TV, even said that he totally agreed with cutting the shows because it was not the right move for Revision3 to spend resources on shows they do not produce.

With all that said, I think that there are still shows on the network that are not worth continuing and should have been canceled instead of Pixel Perfect. The one show I would cancel is The Digg Reel, although it is easy to produce because it is mostly video off of the Digg Video section, mixed with the host commenting on and introducing the videos. That provides very little value to the viewer and really does not deserve to be produced while Pixel Perfect got the axe.

It is unfortunate that these shows had to be canceled and talented people like Sarah Lane and Martin Sargent lost their jobs however. my hope is that Revision3 uses these cancelations as a refresh of the network. I hope they will go back to their roots and go back to informative shows instead of some of the junk they have been producing in recent times.

Category: Business, Internet |
Mike Gdovin | October 30, 2008
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Hulu- Another nail in Cable TV’s Coffin

Anymore, I seldom watch my favorite television shows when they actually air on cable for the first time. This is for two reasons: first, I have recently cut back on how many shows that I watch but also,  I have began watching the shows over the internet from the network’s websites and other joint ventures like the one I am going to talk about today. As I mentioned in a prior post,  I love for buying shows off the Unbox On-Demand Video Store from Amazon, but, I also like save money watching by watching TV shows from Hulu, which is a joint-venture between several production companies. This service allows people to stream TV shows and movies for free with only brief advertisements. This is a great service,  because no one wants to pay for every single episode they want to watch in most cases just once, plus the shows can be watched anytime they want, although shows do “expire” at some point but, for the most part shows usually stay up for the whole season. Another advantage of watching shows on Hulu is you actually save time, a 30 minute show is only 23 minutes on Hulu and allows you to enjoy your shows more together instead of having four  2-minute commercial breaks breakingup the show making it more much more disjointed and harder to follow.

This is a great way to try out new shows that you might be interested in or are unable to sit down and watch because of your busy schdule. Hulu allows the viewers to pick the time that is best to watch and enjoy the show at their lesiure. Also, by watching on your own computer screen, you get a better quality image because it is usually higher resolution than a television. I believe that as more and more networks put their shows online, the new generation will begin to not pay for a cable television subscription and will instead watch as many free shows on Hulu as possible and then buy shows their either really like or cannot get on Hulu. I believe that this is the future of Television and between the shift of regular networks putting their content online and the further development of Internet-based video networks cable will cease to exist

Category: Internet |
Mike Gdovin | October 29, 2008
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Why Landlines Belong in the Past

In this highly computerized world I truly do not see the point of a person having a landline phone number. Anymore, everyone has a cellular phone that they carry around with them anywhere. Plus, if they want a phone line that they can have at  home Skype is a great option as are many voice-over-IP or VOIP solutions could be a great replacement. Not only can you access you VoIP from anywhere over the Internet but, you can also save a lot of money, Skype out, or making a call from VOIP to a regular phone number is $2.99 a month for UNLIMITED calls to the US and Canada and for Unlimited calls worldwide that is only $9.99/year. Plus to get a phone number coming in to your computer for receiving calls is $60/year. That is only $96/year and you can take that number anywhere you go and if you want to call unlimited internationally, then it is still about $180/year. That is still probably a major savings over your regular phone bill and can go anywhere!

The one disadvantage, is that you cannot make emergency service calls but, cell phones are. Plus, you are now relying that your Internet service is not down when you need to make the crucial business call. Also if you have a cell phone, then you can take your phone with you anywhere.

I believe that, landlines will evolve into VOIP and will then make the move to primary use of cell phones and then when worldwide WiFi is developed cell phones will switch to VOIP-based cell phones. I believe that these evolutions have already begun and will take full-spring in the next 5 years and then the second revision will come about in another 3-5 years depending on the availability of an omnipotent WiFi network.

Category: Communication, Internet |
Mike Gdovin | October 28, 2008
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What is Cloud Computing?

The concept of “Cloud Computing” has been floating around the internet for the past few years and I have mentioned it several time and posted about it several times but, realized that I haven’t addressed what  Cloud Computing is and what changes it will make to computing in general. Cloud Computing the concept of running applications and storing data on third-party systems apposed to storing data on computers physically accessed by the user and installing applications on those machines.

The benifit of this is that if the user has multiple computers, as many do, they have to transport their data between systems nor do you have to install, update application and in some cases, pay for licenses for all their machines. This also requires that the user would have to take their machine with them when they travel or go to school or work. With cloud computing people could use their documents from anywhere with an internet connection. This also opens the capabilities of collaboration and working with people who could be across town or across the globe and work together. There are some prime examples of this one being: Google Docs and Spreadsheets another great example is Projectpath which allows people to collaborate on work from anywhere.

There are still some disadvantages to going Cloud only, first of all, you need an internet connection which means if you are in Sticksville you loose acess to all you applications and data because a worldwide wifi connection does not exist yet and until then, backup applications and copies of data is a necessity. Another problem, is that the web-based applications are not as fully developed as local applications. The reason is that  web programing languages are not as well developed as local languages and cannot have as many features as the local applications meaning that if you need some of the more advanced features of the local application equivilents then, your choice is easy to stick to the local application. However, most users do not use all the features any given application has to offer because there is almost never a need for all the features. However, with the added collaboration it is a very useful tool when working in groups.

This is not the last mention that I will not make of Cloud Computing I will post, I plan to post frequently about cloud computing because I really think that in the next few years, Cloud Computing will blossom into a mainstream use and will be widely used soon. I think that as a blogger it is my responsibility to bring these services to the attention of the public and introduce them to a whole new wave of technology.

Category: Cloud Computing, Internet |
Mike Gdovin | October 16, 2008
One comment

Who killled Radio? The Internet

In this modern age where everyone is using a computer for their day-to-day life radio broadcasts have become more and more obsolete and Internet radio has made it even more useless.  The internet now has various different services that replace most of what Radio offers.

Podcasts are now availible which is talk radio shows distributed over the internet in MP3 format and on any variety topics and can be listened to when ever the viewer wants. The other advantage of pocasts is you can get the information much faster instead of having to sit through long advertising breaks and music breaks podcast has quick ads and no music can be distributed over that format so that you can get the information much faster and podcasts don’t have the FCC regulations that restrict content and foul language giving much more freedom. Podcasts can also be made by anyone with a microphone and internet connection so you can get a wide variety of opinons and perspectives.

As for music broadcasts the two main services are Last Fm and Pandora. They both allow you to enter your favorite song or musical artist and then builds a playlist of songs that you may like based on what you entered in as your musical preferences. This allows you to have your own radio station of songs that you like and not have to sit through long advetisements or songs that you don’t like. The internet is a great way to get music that you like and have a personalized playlist you can share with your friends.

By moving  to the internet for audio broadcasting not only gives the listener more freedom to listen to their music and shows but also allows them to share their favorite content over a variety of social networks and if they choose to they can create their own radio show by making a podcast allowing them to express their own ideas. With the continuing growth of internet broadcasting I predict very few people will be using radio in the next 25 years and think it will decrease even more in later years.

Category: Internet, Media |
Mike Gdovin | October 15, 2008
2 comments

Amazon Unbox Video

Amazon’s Unbox video on demand site has become one of my new favorite video websites becuase it give more freedom when you buy video online. Unbox is like Apple’s iTunes’ television and movie store but, even better because with Unbox you can buy the Television shows for:  $1.99, buy movies for $9.99 and rent movies for 24 hours for only $2.99, which is very competitive with iTunes’ prices but, instead of just being able to watch video on Itunes and on your iPod you also have the option to watch online in a Flash player so you can have access to your favorite shows anywhere you want.  Unbox has a large library of movies and shows and also has free videos available as well. The one downside to this service is that the desktop offline player is Windows only, meaning if you are a Mac or linux user then you wil only be able to watch your videos while you are connected to the internet.  The unbox video store is a great way to get video that you can watch it anytime and anywhere! This service make watching television on your computer extremly easy and enjoyable and could pose a threat to regular cable television and could force television netoworks to change their entire business model.

Category: Internet, Media |
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