Get Free TV Shows from Hulu

Maybe, you already knew about www.hulu.com, but I recently read an article on the site in Wired magazine and realized that I was behind the curve on this site. Of course, I was aware of all of the really great videos on YouTube and I knew that Apple was selling TV Show and Movies online through its ITunes store, but I had not heard of Hulu before.

Apparently, Hulu is one of the fastest growins sites on the net since its launch in March. Nielson ratings show that the site hit 83 million in June, up from 63 million in April.

The site is a joint venture between NBC and Fox and has much of both network's video content. The shows have commercials embedded in them, but they are less frequent and shorter in length then the shows when they were originally aired on TV.

According to Hulu's own site:
- Hulu is focused on quality and convenience and strives to create the best possible online video experience
- Hulu is easy to use and share. Simply go to www.hulu.com, and click on a video to watch right away (there is no additional software required)
- Hulu is free and legal through an advertising supported model.

In addition to the content hosted by Hulu, the search engine also allows you to find and watch videos from many other sites as well.

The company has reportedly already sold out of ad inventory and streams are up 31 percent over the last three months.

I myself tried the site out at lunch time today. I missed half of the season premier of NBC's Life and so I got caught up by watching the episode today. I found the site to be very easy to use and provided a quality video picture. Apparently, the site has the ability for you to embed their videos in your site as well.

Happy watching!

New Google Phone

T-Mobile launched the new G1 phone as a competitor to the Apple iPhone. The G1 runs Google's Android operating system and has launched with a large collection of free open source applications for the phone. For a feature comparison between the iPhone and the G1 check out this link. They are basically comparable in price, so there is a big question as to how the G1 will stack up against the very popular iPhone. For some pictures of the phone you can go to this page.

For an interesting information about some of the applications and features that android will bring check out this page.

CNET also has quite a bit of information about the phone.

Digital TV

Are you ready for the switch to digital TV (DTV). Most people by now realize that the federal government has mandated that all television broadcasts be converted to digital signals instead of analog by February 17, 2009. Among the reasons given are clearer pictures, more programming options, and more frequency available to emergency responders. However, probably the largest reason is that the federal government was then able to sell the frequency spectrum that will be made available due to digital signals requiring less bandwidth then the analog version.

However, I did witness the advantages of DTV this weekend. I was at my sister's house on Saturday for a family birthday party. There were a number of football games and my sister is one of the people around that still use rabbit ears (you don't need a DTV converter box if you have cable or satellite TV). The game that I was most interested in (GT vs. VT) was fairly fuzzy due to poor reception on channel 4. I was talking to my brother-in-law and I realized that he had already purchased two digital converter boxes using the government coupons which are available plus an additional $15. However, my brother-in-law thought that you could not use the converter boxes until next February. I explained to him that was the mandatory date, but all of the local stations are already broadcasting digital signals. In a matter of minutes we had the digital converter box hooked up and we were able to watch a crystal clear TV signal on all channels. As a matter of fact, they had more channels then before thanks to some of the broadcasters which are using multiple channels now (i.e. ETV/PBS is broadcasting 3 different channels all with different programming).

I recently read this review from CNet of the available DTV converter boxes available. They have some definite recommendations, but of the top few that I clicked on, none appeared to be available from online retailers yet.

If Wikipedia Was a Professor

I found this video from Gizmodo entertaining - especially in light of our class discussion about not using Wikipedia as a cited reference for our class papers. It is a pretty effective criticism of Wikipedia. Let me know what you think.

Free Software

I found an interesting article from Lifehacker that discusses free software alternatives to other commercial software. I am always looking for free rather then expensive software options and I found this article to be very informative.

I have used OpenOffice as a free alternative to Microsoft Office and I have been pleasantly surprised at how closely these free apps match the Microsoft versions. It includes free applications that replicate Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. I was also impressed at what a good job OpenOffice does of Opening Microsoft files. Sometimes there are some formatting issues, but for the most part they open flawlessly for me.

I have also used AVG as a free anti-virus program for family and friends. No computer should be without a good anti-virus program and I have found that AVG works quite well and seems to get anti-virus updates just as often as Norton/Symantec that I use at work.

Thirdly, I would like to endorse Mozy as a back-up solution for your computer. So many of us do not ever take the time to back-up important files on our computer. This is getting more and more important as so many of us keep important financial documents and digital pictures on our computer. A friend of mine was recently devastated when she lost a year's worth of digital pictures of her family. One of the nice features of Mozy is that it is easy to use and automatic. Another important feature is the fact that the files are stored remotely at their data center facility. The nice thing about that is that you do not have to worry about theft, fires, and hurricanes (important where I live) destroying both your computer and your back-up. The free version gives you several Gigs of storage and a paid home version for more storage is priced very reasonably.

I hope you enjoy the article and enjoy using some of these programs. If you have any questions or suggestions of other free apps feel free to add your comments to this post.

New Web Browser from Google

I don't know if you have heard the news or not, but Google just release a beta copy of a new web browser that they developed. The new web browser is named Chrome. It does not appear that the new browser will have any major new features that the current top browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari) do not have. As a matter of fact, some of the same developers that contribute to Firefox work for Google and have been involved in development of Google's browser. However, it does appear that Google is trying to cut Microsoft out of another area of software. Google is saying that the new browser is "streamlined and simple," and that it will be much better at running web based applications.

The browser was first officially announced on Google's own blog which is hosted on blogspot as well.

Since Google has been going beyond their original search engine dominance to expand into other areas such as web based applications, they have been encroaching on Microsoft's turf more and more.

If you are an early technology adopter and want to check out Google's latest web browser, the beta version of the software can now be downloaded here. The software is of course open-source and free.