For nearly two years now I’ve been a Netflix member, during that time I’ve only had one really bad experience with an otherwise flawless company.   My problem was a DVD that arrived in two pieces, mailed it back and got another one in two pieces, mailed that one back and the third one showed up in 5 pieces.  Ready to give up, I marked it as damaged and returned it to finally get an in tact disc, sadly the movie was terrible.  In any event, their system just works.

Several months ago I showed you how to stream movies from your Mac to your TV and that’s how I’ve been enjoying the vast majority of movies from Netflix as of late, even reducing my plan down to the 1 disc at a time deal as I can fill the void between sending and receiving movies by streaming them.  Streaming works great on my FiOS broadband connection and I rarely have any issues, except for the night before last.

Not thinking anything of it, I passed it off as a glitch in the Netflix servers and went on with my evening.  I was pretty happy when I opened my email last night to see this:

How nice of them.  A company admits they had a problem and offers a discount without me even contacting them.  This may be a reason why Netflix stock trades at about $37 a share right now and other companies, like GM for example are hovering closer to $1.

This is a guest post by Keith Lemery, a professional chef, network administrator, husband and father.  It was written to compliment and follow up the complete list of of websites to stream full tv shows and movies from.

Several months ago my wife and I decided to cancel our Time Warner cable television service.  We had the digital cable package with DVR, remote, and HD Tier.  All together this package cost us just around $100 per month.  We then added a Netflix subscription for $8.99 per month, which includes mailed DVDs, as well as unlimited streaming.  This reduced our overall television bill by at least $80 per month, or almost $1000 per year!

I had been dabbling with internet television for a while.  Hulu, Justin.tv, TV.com and NBC.com on my iPhone.  When we made the switch, it was a little awkward, but after some tweaks, we don’t miss cable at all, and if anything, wonder why we hadn’t made the switch sooner!

Here is our setup:

A four year old Toshiba A55-S106 laptop, hooked up to our 32″ Westinghouse HDTV, via the SVGA out port.  This cable I had bought on eBay a couple years ago for less than $5.  To do this on a Mac, check out Mike’s article utilizing Understudy and Front Row.

My iPhone serves as a remote control.  I am using Air Mouse Pro by RPA Tech, Inc. which is available on the iPhone App Store for $5.99.  It controls the laptop by using the iPhone as a touchpad and also has a soft keyboard.

When opening FireFox, three tabs open up.  Yahoo.com, Hulu.com, and NetFlix.com.  I could add any number of channels we watch, NBC, CBS, Disney, but these suffice on startup.

Hulu is amazing.  We have several subscriptions to programs we watched regularly on television.  We usually DVR’d the programs to watch at a later time, so the fact that the programs are posted to Hulu a day or two after showing doesn’t bother us in the least.

As for NetFlix, we keep our DVD queue active, and use the unlimited streaming feature to it’s fullest.  I subscribe to the NetFlix new release RSS, so I get updates of new releases on my iPhone through Google Reader.  When I see a program or movie I like, I open the Phone Flix iPhone application, and add it to my queue.  It’s a seamless process.  Something I never imagined I would be doing a year ago.

Local channels and programming is somewhat hit or miss, but most new televisions can pick up local HD channels.  There are some great YouTube videos on building your own HD antenna from coat hangers if you are out of range as we are, but the only thing we ever watched locally was the news.

I don’t miss the …coming up after the break cliffhangers and three minute commercial segments at all.  I can easily check the web for local news if I have the desire.

My wife and I have no intention of ever going back to paid cable service, ever.  It seems that soon enough all television networks will have an internet presence, if they don’t already, and will put most if not all of their programming online as ad revenue for online programming increases.

And the best part of all, we can watch an hour long program in around 41 minutes, and a half hour program in 21.  So roughly 30% of the time a program is on is given to advertising.  Sure, Hulu has commercials, but they are usually 15 to 25 seconds.

We are really enjoying having all of this control over what we watch, as well as the savings.  For us it was a simple decision, one that we should have made a long time ago.

How about you?  Are you still paying for cable television?  Could you use the extra $1000 a year savings?

For the last 2 years or so my community has been trying to rally Verizon to bring in DSL, gaining over 50 signatures and sending them in, they seemed to have cared less.  A few of us even talked with a local interent service provider about bringing in one really fast commercial connection and sharing it but the cost to build the infrastructure was insane, as were the monthly costs.  All of this changed at the end of April.

I came home from a typical day of work and noticed spray painted lines in my front yard, my neighbors had them too, and some had white and blue as well.  While walking my dog I asked my one retired neighbor what was up, he said we were getting new internet and pointed to a small trailer with what appeared to be orange stuff wrapped around it down the street.  I walked down; sure as shit it was fiber!  Over the next nearly 3 months, workers came and went, running fiber optic cable underground and then up to each of our houses.  A notice on my door from Verizon said they were installing FiOS, and they would follow up when service was available.  I naively thought it would take 4-6 weeks to do; it was closer to three and a half months till the service was available.

About three weeks ago while walking Bella before work I ran into a neighbor who said Fios internet was finally available and they were coming to install it at his house in 30 minutes.  By the time I got home from work, he was hooked up with one of the fastest packages they offered and loving life.  I called to subscribe to one of the lower cost packages offering 10/2, that is 10Mbps down and 2Mbps up and had them come the following Saturday morning.  Install was about four hours long and everything is neatly tucked away in my utility closet.  When installation was done, they setup the wireless router that comes with the service for free, this took less than 5 minutes and I was online.

Real world speed tests indicate that I have blazingly fast internet.  How fast?  This week I’ve been watching 480p HD TV shows on Hulu.com while downloading music and shows via bittorrent and have yet to see a single show skip or buffer.  I also downloaded a 1.7gb file in just less than 25 minutes.  But what about numbers?  Check out the speed test I did last night to confirm just how fast my internet is.

I checked several servers and all showed speeds faster than 10Mbps and about the same upload, so I’m getting everything I’m paying for.  Now that I finally have a real internet connection, I’m looking into the Netflix Roku and / or building a computer / buying a Mac mini to hook up to my Plasma to stream TV, act as a DVR and be a multimedia center.  I’m also kicking around the idea of putting a network video camera in my home so I can watch my dog while I’m at work or away.

Dollar for dollar I’m actually saving about $10 / month with FiOS as I don’t need or use my home telephone line anymore and the craptastic one-way cable has also been canceled.  If and when Verizon installs FiOS in your area, I’d hop on it.  For those who do serious downloading, they offer a 50/20 connection [at least in my area] that can be had for around $150 / month.  That’s 34 times faster than a commercial grade T1!

Yippee yay, it’s earth day!

Earth day was created in 1970 as a global environmental awareness initiative. It is now observed in 175 countries and supported by progressive action organizations such as the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and the Earth Day Network. (Thank you Wikipedia.)

Some great, green + fun websites for earth day and beyond:

1. Buy local foods, support local farms. Visit Local Harvest to find local farms and farmers markets. Go pet a goat and feed some ducks.
2. Carpool. Check out eRideShare to find local peeps that are looking to share rides. You can even search for someone to carpool across the country with.
3. Remove yourself from junk mail lists. Check out GreenDimes, sign up to be removed from junk mailings and in turn they’ll send you a dollar, plant a tree on your behalf, or send you a free green ‘zine. Everybody wins! (FYI: When you sign up for this they will ask for credit card information to verify your identity. Sort of like what paypal does. It’s been a few months since I signed up and so far no funny business.)
4. Once you go black, you never go back… take a walk on the dark side: Blackle is Google powered and eco-friendly.
5. Recycle your goods and get new ones at freecycle. This site will hook you up with a local group that supports the reuse of anything and everything. Although the site seems a little difficult to navigate, once you’re in there seems to be a lot of activity going on in each of the different areas. There’s a slightly loved television stand in York, PA with your name on it.
6. Go zero! The Conservation Fund will help you measure your very own carbon emissions and tell you how many trees you need to plant to offset your consumption. I’ve got 16 trees to plant this year to outweigh my emission consumptions. I had better get started. You can do it yourself or they allow you to make a donation for whatever the cost comes out to be to plant your trees.
7. Get free stuff (by paying for it) at the Sierra Club. Right now, $15 will get you a membership (usually around $35), and a handy backpack for a thank you gift.
8. Be a green person/dog/baby. I bought my dog these organic treats in the shape of little cupcakes that he refuses to eat from a store I found on Green People. They also have eco friendly and holistic business listings for people too. And their travel section has some really neat stuff.
9. Save on gas. With gas prices expected to hit $4 this summer, be sure to get your daily feul economy tips for some serious advice on saving money at the gas tank and saving the environment.
10. Read up. Eco Chick’s blog is as sassy as it is green. And I don’t use the word *sassy* often. Starre Vartan’s website is funny, smart and earth friendly. And how could a girl named Starre not be cool? Be sure to read her list of what not to do for Earth Day. As she says, because mother earth is a woman. Yeah!

It is true, we all need to be a little greener. Without the earth we won’t be here.

April 22 also happens to be the democratic primary in PA, so get out and vote all you registered Pennsylvanians. Polls are open 7am – 8pm, your local polling place is usually within walking distance to your house. Brody and I will be on our way to our designated voting center bright and early wearing our Obama buttons. See you there.

All over the internet today and even my the front page of the business section of my local paper are articles about Starbucks ditching long-time internet supplier T-Mobile and joining with AT&T to offer free Wi-Fi.

Non-cardholding customers can pay $3.99 for two hours — which, of course, will incent customers to get the debit card. Monthly membership will cost $19.99 per month, and will enable access to AT&T’s 70,000 hot spots in 89 countries.

That quote came from an article titled, Starbucks announces free Wi-Fi. I’m sorry, maybe I’m missing something here, but $19.99 per month for two hours of internet allowance a day or $3.99 for two hours for those of us not in the cool club is not free. As a consumer, I feel that I was misled.

I really wish writers would stick to the facts. There is not a whole lot of difference to the wallet of those who sit in Starbucks and want access to the internet. The only thing changing is who provides it.

I’ve really started to dislike how most drinks from Starbucks taste, but I do like their atmosphere and on occasion have sat there with my laptop and written articles for Randomn3ss or edited photos. I’m lucky though, the Starbucks a few miles from my house is in small strip mall, two doors down is a Panera Bread that offers free Wi-Fi to all customers, just agree to their TOS and deal with them blocking a few sites.

A note to Starbucks:

I, your customers agree to order coffee in those stupid names you give cups instead of small, medium and large. I also agree to pay three and four times the amount for your brown, burned tasting water that you call espresso. I will not agree to pay your bloated price to gain access to the internet when your competition less than 50 feet from you gives it away. Take notes.

I just logged into MySpace today to, well to check MySpace out and saw something kind of unusual an Amber Alert. Back in January I told you that MySpace was going to add Amber Alerts, Right above where it says Hello, Mike Panic (once you are logged in, above your default photo on the left) was a link that said,

ATTENTION: There is an Amber Alert in your area.
Please CLICK HERE to find out more information.

Now I’m very aware that MySpace is far from secure and peoples accounts get hacked or taken over on a daily basis, usually due to password phishing, but I know I didn’t login anywhere unusual. Intrigued, I clicked the link and the screenshot to the right came into view. Please note that the screenshot I took is real, those kids are missing, it is not false information.

This is a great thing for MySpace to offer to utilize this system, there are millions of people online daily and hopefully this will bring more attention to child kidnappings. It is sad to see it actually in effect now though.
Offical Amber Alert website: http://www.amberalert.gov/

As of about 10:50am EST, Google’s web based email Gmail is dead is not responding. What makes it worse is that Google Groups are giving a 500 Internal Server Error when trying to view them. It took more than 10 minutes to get my email to load properly, trying to send a message has resulted in this cryptic message.

Searching Google for this term has proved all but useless, since the first 10 pages of results are links to Google Groups pages, which are dead as well. If someone kicked the plug out of the wall that runs the Gmail & Groups servers, please plug it back in.

AIM, also known as AOL Instant messenger, is still my instant message software of choice; I’ve been using it for what seems like forever and have several hundred contacts in it. Google’s Gmail has a chat feature built in, no need to download software, so this works in a pinch, but only if the person you are talking to has Gmail and is logged into their email account and / or has a chat client that supports Google Talk. But what if you want to talk to someone on AIM but don’t have the client software installed on the computer you are sitting at, say at work, because your network nazi has prevented you from installing time wasting software.

Don’t fear! Google has integrated AIM into their Chat program, allowing you to login to your Gmail account and contact people on your AIM buddy list. No software to download, it just works. They do suggest you have Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 2 installed in order to get all the features and functions to work properly, skip IE and go for Firefox.

Radiohead, one of the world’s most popular and critically acclaimed groups, finished their contract with EMI with their 6th release, “Hail to the Thief”, in 2003. The band has just announced that their 7th recording “In rainbows” will be available for download only from their website inrainbows.com on October 10th, for any price you choose, really. The band has refused all offers from record labels and has chosen to release the album on their own with the help of their PR company Nasty Little Men. Live performances of several of the new songs are available on YouTube and can be accessed through this TimesOnline article, which also provides interesting commentary on Radiohead’s “honesty box” album sales. This is yet another blow to the music and recording industry who have been steadily loosing profits to the filesharing programs Limewire , Kazaa (the most downloaded program file on the web… ever), Bearshare or the newer and more complex Bittorrent and it’s affiliated Pirate sites. Warner Music Group reported a record 74% loss in profits last year, while EMI (Radiohead’s old label) managed a 13% increase by harnessing digital download sales of such bands as Coldplay, Gorillaz and Robbie Williams. The future of music is online, but with bands as massive as Radiohead taking on the world of digital downloading without the help of a record company, one wonders if these record companies, as we have known them, have any future at all.

Oh, and go get the album, it sounds amazing.

In my daily job of network administration and IT hell, I have to report a lot of errors to outside vendors for web-based products. Usually this will include a screenshot of some sort to visually show them what I am talking about. Up until a few weeks ago, this usually meant hitting the Print Screen keyboard button (on Windows) and then opening up some sort of image editing program, usually Photoshop. This method works fine, however launching Photoshop can be somewhat slow on my work computer and I needed to crop out my computer’s taskbar and any other information I didn’t want to send to the vendor. Using the Print Screen function also limited to what was seen on the screen alone, even though I’m running 1280×1024, often times I need to capture an entire web page that might be two or three pages worth of scrolling, Print Screen won’t work here.

My solution is Pearl Crescent Page Saver, a Firefox add-on. This small add-on adds an icon to the Firefox toolbar that is not intrusive and can also be controlled by keyboard shortcuts that are 100% user defined. The two main options for screen shots are

• Save image of viewable portion as…
• Save image of entire page as…

These two options will fit just about any need you have for grabbing web-based content. It does not capture your browser, desktop, Windows taskbar, etc., and will save the output in nearly any format you choose, I prefer .png. This eliminates the need for launching Photoshop or other image editor, thus saving you time and making you more productive.

Currently there are two ways to install the add-on, the basic version, which I use, and a paid Pro version that adds the ability to live crop what you need from the web page. I have not yet found a need for this feature and belive that the free version will work for nearly everyone.

Keep in mind that this add-on will only capture what is in your Firefox browser, if you need screen captures of other items, like your desktop or programs running, this won’t help.