The war to be the best streaming music site is on. In April the announcement of Amazon’s Cloud Player and last month Google’s cloud based music service Beta called Google Music. I sign up for Cloud Player. I also requested an invitation to the Google service last month and just got the invitation today and logged in. After messing with it for a few minutes I found Google Music to be easier then Amazon because you can automatically add a lot of free songs so you can begin streaming right away. Read More→
Archive for cloud
Google has just announced the new Chromebooks to being made by Samsung and Acer. They’ll be sold by Amazon and Best Buy beginning June 15th.
The idea behind these computers is everything on the web. Use Gmail instead of Outlook, use Google Docs or Windows Live Office. Watch video on YouTube or Vimeo. Even watch TV with Netflix and Hulu. I just found these today! Do 3D modeling with TinkerCad. Read More→
The new notebook computers with the Chrome OS will be available for purchase June 15th. Last year we started talking about the new toy that Google was giving away the CR48 notebook computer. It looked pretty much like a regular computer but when you took a closer look you found it only have one program. That’s right the only program was the Chrome web browser. Read More→
By now you’ve heard about the Google Chrome notebook. I thought it sounded intriguing and quickly went to their site to check it out. It would be nice to have a notebook that is lite, starts quickly and has great battery life. I tried a dell net-book the Mini 10. I didn’t like it at all so I returned it. Read More→
Jungle Disk is an application that lets you store files and backup data securely to Amazon.com’s S3 ™ Storage Service. S3 does not have an application So Jungle Disk provides you with one. Jungle Disk creates a network drive in your computer and you just drag folder and files over or you can setup an automatic backup. I’ve been using Jungle Disk foryears and it is outstanding. Jungle Disk use to cost $20 and you could use it on as many computers as you wished but now I think it is some sort of monthly subscription. I think it’s $3 dollars a month. The data backed up via Amazon S3 is very cheap as well.
Carbonite is an online data backup solution. I’ve been using Carbonite to backup the data on my desktop for a years because of the price and all the data you want for $54.95 per year per computer. I have a lot of MP3s and photos to back and the all you can eat pricing is great if you have a lot of data.
Have you recently moved to Gmail but still have a most of your contacts and all of your Email still in a program like Outlook on your Windows computer. The Google Email Uploader is what you need. The Gmail Uploader will take those contacts and messages preserving your folder structure and import them right into Gmail.
Backupify is one of the coolest services that I have seen. Backup all of your online life in one place. Enter all of your cloud accounts (Flickr, Twitter, Delicious, Zoho, Google Docs, Photobucket, WordPress sites, Basecamp, Gmail, Facebook, Friendfeed, Blogger, Hotmail and coming soon Youtube, Xmarks and Tumblr) and Backupify will backup your data on those sites to an Amazon S3 server so you know it’s safe. Backup the cloud on the cloud. How cool is that?
The Roku players are settop boxes the brings all of your favorite content from the Internet to your television. Simple setup; I didn’t even look at the instructions. Roku players have built in wireless but I used the ethernet. After I connected the player to my home theater system and plugged in the ethernet I connected the power. I selected the connection type ethernet. You select the media source with the remote. If you have a Netflix, Flickr or Pandora account it will give you a codes to enter into those accounts via Internet. Don’t worry the Roku player walks you true it. You can now play unlimited online content from Netflix or Amazon Video with a payed account. Play podcast and other programing for free from Mediafly, blip.tv, Revision3, TWIT and many others. You can hear great music from Pandora. View your photos on Flickr and much more. Being a big podcast consumer I haven’t enjoyed a gadget this much in a very long time. I love TWIT.TV, Revision3 and others on the Roku very much. I am having a ball!
The Roku SD (Standard Definition) is $79.99.
The Roku HD (Hi Definition) is $99.99.
The Roku HD XR ( Hi Def with Wireless N) $129.99.
I just told you in the two previous post about alternative software but increasingly I am turning to the Cloud (or Internet) for many of my applications. Here are just some of my favorites:
- Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Live Mail – alternatives for your traditional ISPs email with an email program like Outlook Express.
- Google Docs, Zoho, Microsoft Office Live – alternatives for Microsoft Office
- Mint – alternative for Quicken
- Quickbooks Online – alternative to Quickbooks software
