Lessfeet » Internet

Let’s Build It

Mark — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 21:38:06 +0000

The US is not even among the top 10 nations when it comes to broadband speed. The reasons, greed and fear. Greed because it is more profitable for the big telecoms to spend less money on infrastructure. They can refrain from improving the network and stick the savings in their pockets. Fear because the telecoms don’t want you to download your movies instead of paying for premium channels on cable. The politicians are afraid because if they make a move to regulate the telecoms they may not get any of the that big telecom money for their campaigns. Consumers are afraid of their shrink funds and afraid they can’t to find away to shave a dollar from their expenses. Conservatives are afraid of the US becoming socialist. Liberals are afraid of sounding like liberals.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I’ve listened to experts and pundits. The proposal I think is best is “Let’s build it”. The cities, townships, villages, counties and states should put in fiber to every home. Sounds commy right? Here’s where the capitalism comes in. The people installing the fiber are private contractors. The governments are not the Internet Service Providers. All ISPs can connect to the fiber. By all I mean all! AT&T, Insight, AOL, Juno, Comcast, Time Warner, Earthlink and anyone else that wants to join the party. Think of the competition! What can be more capitalist? Just like the highway system, we pay taxes and we get roads. Everyone pays a tax on their low Internet bill to maintain and improve the system. This alone could create millions of new jobs. Any town that did this would become an instant target for companies wanting to relocate. This would spur construction so new jobs there. All of these people will need goods and services. We the consumer would get fast reliable Internet at a reasonable price.

I know budgets are strapped but this is an investment in the future that can help us now.

Everything On The Web

Mark — Sat, 14 May 2011 03:03:15 +0000

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. Lookout now! The killer app announced at Google IO this week Angry Birds online. Are you excited now? Do photo editing online with Picnik. You can create great zooming presentations with Prezi. This and much, much more.

Do you think you could do everything on the web?

WordPress.com Better Deal

Mark — Fri, 13 May 2011 07:44:35 +0000

I just moved this blog to Wordpess.com form my Godaddy hosting on WordPress software. WordPress.com is like the Energizer bunny. It keeps going and going with little effort by the user. WordPress.com takes care of the software and the network. You take care of the content. No administrating of the software or the database. Now I just write about hopefully interesting tech stories. The parent company Automattic is doing a great job.

By the way WordPress.com sites are cheap to free. They are free for everyone who doesn’t mind a ****.wordpress.com URL. WordPress charges for other services like a custom URL, more disk space and custom CSS.

Get your blog or website today.

YouTube Founders Aquire Delicious

Mark — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 04:56:05 +0000

I just found out that Delicious my favorite social bookmarks site has been purchase from Yahoo by the founders of YouTube Chad Hurley and Stave Chen. Yahoo annouced the acquasition by Hurley and Chen’s new company AVOS. No one seems to know much about AVOS but these guys are some real pioners and I think they will do some great things with Delicious after years of stagnation under Yahoo.

Roku Player Easy And Awesome

Mark — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 08:26:59 +0000

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.

Net Neutrality

Mark — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 08:44:00 +0000

Here’s a video to that tries to explain what Net Neutrality is but it is just one scenario.

To find out more learn how to help the cause go to SaveTheInternet.Com to see what action you can take. Also check put EFF.Org to see what other scary things The Man is doing.

Virtual Drives

Mark — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:06:31 +0000

I mentioned in the post Cloud Storage Overview that there are some services where you can store your precious files via cloud based storage (on the Internet). Here are a couple of options that will create a virtual drive on your computer as if it was an actual drive.

Dropbox is a service that gives you 2 gigabytes free with an option to pay a small amount for up to 100 gigabytes. For Windows, Linux and Macintosh.

Microsoft’s Skydrive gives you 25 gigabytes absolutely free but you need a third party program to make it a virtual drive. “Skydrive Explorer” is a free program that does this. It is really easy to setup.

Download and install Dropbox and Skydrive Explorer now.

The First Website

Mark — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 17:34:58 +0000

This is an archive of the first site on the “World Wide Web”. It is instructions to use the “WWW”. Lookout folks, it has links!