Practical Technology

for practical people.

November 27, 2011
by sjvn01
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Internet TV Shootout: Apple TV, Roku and Sony Blu-Ray DVD Player

When people talk about Internet TV, I’ve noticed that they usually talk about either Apple TV or Roku. Both are fine devices, but you may be over-looking that are many other ways to get Internet video to your TV. Many of these are still too complicated for general use and others, like Google TV, are still half-baked. But, besides Apple TV and Roku, many Blu-Ray DVD players now come with Internet video built-in. If what you want this holiday season is a Blu-Ray DVD player and Internet streaming, one of these all-in-one players may be just what you need.

So, which one is right for you? Well, here’s what I’ve found in my years of watching Internet TV on my television. These days I use an Apple TV, a Roku 2 HD and a pair of Internet-enabled Sony Blu-Ray players for my TV watching pleasure. Indeed, a few months ago I cut the cord to my cable company and now the only TV I watch comes up either the Internet or from one of my own network media servers.

First, before you buy into any of these, you’re going to need a robust Internet connection. You’ll need at least a 3Mbps DSL Internet connection to make watching Internet video worthwhile. I’ve tried it at slower rates, and you’ll only end up getting ticked off at the crappy video.

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November 21, 2011
by sjvn01
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Linux Mint 12’s Three Desktops

The popular Linux distribution, Mint, will be giving its users three different distinct flavors of the GNOME for their desktop in its next release, Linux Mint 12, Lisa.

Like any Linux you can, of course, switch it to your own choice of desktop. Many, indeed, offer users a choice of desktops. Mint, for example, while primarily a GNOME-based distribution, also offers its users a version that uses the LXDE desktop for its interface.

By and large, though, Mint is best known GNOME-based desktop Linux. In particular, its most recent claim to fame that while Ubuntu has moved on to its controversial Unity interface, Mint stuck with the older and well-liked GNOME 2.32 interface… until now.

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November 18, 2011
by sjvn01
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The most popular Linux is…

Trying to figure out what the most popular Linux distribution is isn’t easy. We can safely say that Red Hat’s Rat Hat Enterprise Linux is almost certainly popular server Linux. You don’t close in on a billion in annual revenue without a lot of users. You could argue that it’s Android since there are over two hundred million Android smartphones out there, but I was thinking of PCs. So, which distribution do most individual people use on their computers?

For years, Ubuntu has been the number one end-user Linux, but, somewhat to my surprise, it looks like Ubuntu has to face not just a challenger, but indeed it appears that Ubuntu has already been dethroned by Linux Mint, my own current favorite Linux desktop distribution.

I say that Linux Mint seems to be number one now because on the site that tracks all Linux distributions DistroWatch’s, Page Hit Ranking list, Mint has been number one for the last week, the last month, and, indeed for the last six months.

In the overall rankings over the last six months, Ubuntu remains number two, but recent updates of openSUSE and Fedora have knocked Ubuntu into 4th place in recent days.

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November 17, 2011
by sjvn01
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Google Music: Your Great Music Locker in the Cloud (Review)

I’ve been using Google Music since it was in beta. At first, it didn’t interest me that much. Yet another way to save my music to the cloud? How much good really was that? Well, after using it for several months, and now that Google Music is open for everyone in the US to use, I’m here to tell you that Google Music has proven to be a great way for me to listen to my music wherever I am with whatever computing device I have at hand.

Why? Well, let’s start with the basics.

Google Music enables you to you store your music on the cloud. While Google will now let you buy music from the Android Store, it’s really more of an online music storage locker than a competitor with Apple’s iTunes Store.

Unlike other cloud music and storage services, Google doesn’t give you a fixed amount of storage space. Instead, you can it to store up to 20,000 songs. On the Google Music Web page, Google provides a counter to let you know how close you are to hitting your limit. At an estimated 5MBs a song that works out to about 100GBs of storage. The cost? Not one red penny.

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November 16, 2011
by sjvn01
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How Google–and everyone else–gets Wi-Fi location data

When I wrote about Google making it possible to opt-out of their Wi-Fi access point mapping program, I made a mistake. I thought Google was still using its StreetView cars to pick up Wi-Fi locations. Nope, Eitan Bencuya, a Google spokesperson, tells me that Google no longer uses StreetView cars to collect location information. So, how does Google collect Wi-Fi location data? They use you.

Or, to be more exact, they use your Android phone or tablet. But, it’s not just Google. Apple and Microsoft do the same thing with their smartphones and tablets.

I’d missed this, but earlier this year Apple, Google and other companies got into hot-water because they’ve been collecting location data from your devices for some time now. These days, it seems, it’s the only way any of the big companies pick up Wi-Fi location data.

How it works, according to Google, is that the Android Location Services periodically checks on your location using GPS, Cell-ID, and Wi-Fi to locate your device. When it does this, your Android phone will send back publicly broadcast Wi-Fi access points’ Service set identifier (SSID) and Media Access Control (MAC) data. Again, this isn’t just how Google does it; it’s how everyone does it. It’s Industry practice for location database vendors.

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