Feb10

Showtime Shows

by Marcus on February 10th, 2012 at 10:07 am
Posted In: Uncategorized

Posted by Hyman Weeks

You guys seen a new Showtime show called Homeland? It’s really one of the best new shows I’ve seen in years and I don’t usually like things like that. It’s all about a prisoner of war who comes back to the states and everyone wonders if he’s actually working for the terrorists and the acting is just great. It’s also set in Washington DC which is where I live so I think it’s really fascinating watching them run around town. I recently went to http://www.tvbydirect.com/ to get some extra channels and sprung for the premiums and I’m really glad I did. Showtime in particular has a lot of really great original series that I would’ve been missing out on otherwise. I consider myself sort of the TV aficionado in my family so it’s important for me to find out what the good shows are and then let everyone else know. They count on me for that information so as trivial as it sounds I take my responsibility as a family media guru seriously.

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Jan09

CHASING INTERNET AT THE NEAREST COFFEE SHOP

by Marcus on January 9th, 2012 at 3:00 pm
Posted In: Guest Post

Guest written by our friend Gladys Fuentes

We usually visit my grandparents in Orlando at least once a year. They moved to Florida from New York when they retired and love it. My kids love to visit too because they are just the age that they really enjoy Disney World. When we visit each year, we try to alternate parks at Disney. We also will take the kids to Universal Studios and Sea World. There are a ton of things to do. The only problem is that I have to have good access to the internet. I work from home and my grandparents don’t have the internet. I would find myself running to the nearest coffee shop to check e-mail and send things back and forth to work. I finally convinced my grandparents to check into getting wireless internet Orlando and they did. Now, I am looking forward to the visit because I will be able to spend more time with my family on vacation. I won’t have to be running back and forth chasing internet service for work!

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Jan09

Website Hosting Review

by Marcus on January 9th, 2012 at 2:58 pm
Posted In: Reviews, Technology, Website Resources
Over the past few years I have built a few basic websites and have tried some different providers to host websites. My wife used Go Daddy to make her websites. She was quite happy with them although they are expensive. It wasn’t until I started building websites did I find out how really expensive they are. Go Daddy charges for a number of services that are included with other hosting companies such as email, Word Press…

Tackle the Web with $5.99 .COM's from Go Daddy!

I tried iPage first as their cost was very low. Unfortunately in this case, you get what you pay for. IPage was very unreliable when it comes to email and just plain keeping your website up and running. Many times a technical service representative would send me an email and I wouldn’t get it for another 45 minutes. It wasn’t just their emails as I would send emails for them not to be received for an hour if they were received at all. That is no way to do business! Many times my website wasn’t even up and running. This was especially embarrassing when you are meeting with someone to build their website and your’s isn’t working.
iPage Affordable Web Hosting only $2.95/mo

 
I did build a website through Fat Cow. Their setup is very similar to iPage, but they do have a website builder that works pretty good although there are limitations. Many of the other website builders available in the back office are so limited like iPage because they expect to make extra money on you upgrading your tools.
FatCow $3.15/mo.Plan

I signed up for an account with 1and1.com. 1and1 is very inexpensive for purchasing domains as it is only $4.95 for the first year and $9.95 a year after that. That price includes privacy security where all other companies charge an extra $5 to $10 a year for it. 1and1 is trying to be a one stop shop, but unfortunately their back office is very slow and the tools are very limited. So I use them for my domain registration.
www.1and1.com

Host Gator is my favorite for hosting my websites. They have an abundance of tools and Host Gator prides themselves on their reliability. Yes, they have a few items they try to make additional money on, but the tools available that are included are quite good. I purchased 3 years of hosting for about the same cost of 2. Host Gator’s technical support is quite good as they have helped me solve every issue I have had in a short time. Their hold times are pretty good too.

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Dec27

HTC Thunderbolt ROMs

by Marcus on December 27th, 2011 at 1:18 am
Posted In: Cell Phone, Reviews, Technology

My battery really is not an issue unless I leave bluetooth on A couple of months ago I purchased a couple of used HTC Thunderbolt, one for my father and the other I used to replace my Samsung Droid Charge. My father appreciated the bigger screen and video chat capabilities of it versus his HTC Incredible. I was happy that it didn’t have the physical buttons like the Droid Charge. I really appreciated that the phone worked perfectly without the lag of the Charge.

Of the 2 Thunderbolt, my father’s was stock and mine had a rooted rom. I was happy that I didn’t have to have all the bloatware that come with the stock rom. Unfortunately the camera does not work on the rom that came with the phone. After purchasing the rom manager, I try in a few different roms and I will tell you about it. The rom that was initially installed was BAMF. I found that there were features I liked better than the stock rom, but the camera would not take a picture. Killasense 3.5 wasn’t any better as the camera didn’t work either.

The camera did work on the BAMF Cube 1.9, but only after you install 1.8 first. The Cube rom was my favorite as I backed it up with rom manager and would revert back after trying different roms. It appears to be the same rom as what is on the HTC Rezound. I did have 2 problems with it though. The first was many times the phone would restart on it’s own when it was plugged into the charger.

The second was the horrible 4G LTE connection. Many times I had to restart my phone to regain any network connection. Many times I would be using 3G when my wife right next to me with the same phone had a perfect connection. This was ultimately the reason why I went back to the stock rom.

I also purchased the rom toolbox that allowed me to remove bloatware and make other changes. I changed the display in the notification bar and on a separate occasion I changed the boot animation. Each time I had to revert back to a saved backup.

Yes there is bloatware with the stock rom, but it works! My battery is not really an issue unless I leave my bluetooth on when I’m not using the phone. I would not ever recommend rooting your phone because you’re gonna have more headaches than it’s worth.

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Dec25

Samsung Galaxy Tablet vs Motorola Xoom

by Marcus on December 25th, 2011 at 5:45 pm
Posted In: Technology

I was looking forward to Black Friday to purchase a new tablet. I thought I wanted a Samsung Galaxy Tablet due to the overall quality of it. I was looking for the best deal, but the price just wasn’t coming down at all. It was a matter of which bundle you want. Toys R Us had a good bundle the Monday before Thanksgiving and CompUSA had the best Black Friday deal that included a bluetooth keyboard and case. Then we received the Thanksgiving paper with all of the ads.

Verizon finally did it! I refused to consider purchasing a tablet from Verizon for more than Best Buy and have to pay for a data plan. Verizon was selling the Motorola Xoom for $199 with a 2 year data plan. Being a business man, I have to look at the financial end of it. After one year, the cost will break even although during the year I will have Internet everywhere with the Xoom. But there is more…

The Samsung Galaxy Tablet has a slightly better screen and is slightly lighter than the other tablets. I considered the Asus Transformer due to the functionality of the keyboard accessory. But when you put it together, it looks like a laptop and weighs like a laptop. Yuck! Sony’s tablet did not work the couple of times I looked at it. Acer isn’t that close. Toshiba isn’t that pretty and was discounted quickly. So let’s Xoom on…

The Motorola Xoom is the only tablet comparable to the Samsung Galaxy Tablet. I did a Ben Franklin comparison where I drew a line down a piece of paper with the two tablets on each side. The Xoom has a Micro Sd expansion slot, HDMI output and USB access which the Samsung Galaxy Tablet does not. You have to buy adapters to use USB. Samsung doesn’t have a way to output via HDMI and no sd slot available. If you are buying it for business, it needs to work easily.

Another huge factor for me was that Google is purchasing Motorola mobile division. This means when there is an update, Motorola devices are likely to get it first. Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich just came out with the release of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and it will be Google’s first attempt to unify Android devices with one operating system. The Samsung Galaxy Tablet and the Motorola Xoom are both on the list to get the update, but…

I saw my last Samsung device (Samsung Droid Charge) get updated to Gingerbread last of all of the phones getting the update. It was very frustrating to wait 6 months for the phone to work better and it still didn’t use the front facing camera for Google Talk video chat! The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is the first to come out with Ice Cream Sandwich, but I would bet it will be the last to be fixed. Not like it is broken, but it has a HD display and the battery suffers for it. The Motorola Razr and Xoom will get updated before the Samsung devices especially since Google has a bigger influence on Motorola.

The Motorola Xoom was the first 10.1 inch tablet and it has not been outdone. And within the next few months the price will come down some as the Xoom 2 will come out in 2012. Less than a half of a pound heavier and slightly less screen quality is a small price to pay for something that is fully equipped. Save your money, get the Xoom for less and spend $20 on a Zagg screen protector and your Xoom won’t look ugly with fingerprints like the display at the store.

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