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Blog Archives
Go To This Site When You Can’t Find Your Phone [Web]
Posted on October 25, 2010
DeviantART Muro is an HTML5 Drawing App that Works On Your iPad [Drawing]
Posted on August 10, 2010
HTML5 online painting app Muro is a surprisingly capable drawing app that doesn't require Flash, plug-ins, or anything else—just a browser that supports the latest technologies. More »
Five Best Personal Web Hosts [Hive Five]
Posted on May 23, 2010
The web’s full of services happy to host your photos, blog posts, and other online data, but if you’re control- or privacy-minded, you can do better. If you’re thinking about hosting your own site, check out these five popular personal web hosts. More »
Hive Five – Hosting – Web Design and Development – Security – Privacy
7 Ways to Watch TV Online For Free
Posted on November 28, 2009
Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.
I’m a senior in college, and for the first time since I was about 6, I don’t have cable TV. Who knows why: some combination of cheapness, laziness, and some subconscious desire to actually do productive things sometimes. If you know me, you know that’s a bit of a problem: I have approximately 59 shows I must watch every week always, or people start losing limbs.
Believe it or not, though, I don’t miss cable. Thanks to these seven websites, I can waste every bit as much time watching TV, and never (ever) miss an episode of my favorite shows.
Here’s where I get my fix:
Network Websites
ABC, CBS, NBC and many other networks all have their own websites, where they put up recent episodes of most of their shows. The upside of these sites is that they’re usually the first to have the show, it’s usually great quality, and it’s a decent way to support the shows you like. The downsides: the websites are usually ridiculously slow, and you’ll probably see a lot of ads.
Hulu
Unless your favorite show is on CBS, it’s probably on Hulu. Hulu’s got deals with most major networks, meaning the shows it has are good quality, and they’re supporting the show and network. Hulu’s also an excellent website, and full of content—it’s where I look first for any show I want to watch.
Fancast
Fancast is a lot like Hulu—except nobody knows about it. It’s a Comcast website, and has a huge number of TV shows and movies for you to watch—including CBS, for some reason. There’s basically no difference between Fancast and Hulu, except the Hulu interface is better and the videos are slightly higher quality. Between the two, odds are great you’re going to find what you’re looking for.
Justin.tv
Justin.tv is tough to navigate, but awesome when you get it working. I can’t tell you a lot about it, because I only really use it for one thing: live sports. Sports were, for a while, the only reason I still had cable, but now I can mostly do without it. When there’s a game on that I can’t get on TV, odds are great that someone’s streaming it on Justin.tv—just search for what you’re looking for, and enjoy!
SideReel
SideReel’s a combination of information, reviews, and discussion about TV shows, all alongside links to episodes. No videos are actually hosted by SideReel—it just keeps links out to tons of shows and movies, including every episode, ever, from a lot of TV shows. It’ll often point you to slow, crappy-looking videos, but it’s as complete a database as I’ve found, and works great in a pinch, even offering links to buy from Amazon or iTunes if you’re really in need.
Surf The Channel
Surf The Channel’s basically the same as SideReel, except it’s better at letting you pick which site you want to go to, and prioritizing the best ones. If the episode’s available on Hulu, STC will tell you to go there first—it also indexes the network websites and a few others, meaning its got an enormous world to search through for episodes of your favorite shows.
South Park Studios
South Park Studios does only one thing, and does it mind-blowingly wonderfully: it plays South Park episodes. Every single one. From every season. In all their poorly-drawn glory. I’m just getting into South Park recently, and I can safely say it’s the greatest thing in the history of the universe. No exaggeration.
Where do you watch TV or movies online? Movies, in particular, are harder to find for free—where do you look?
7 Ways to Watch TV Online For Free
How Fast is Your Internet Connection? [Reader Poll]
Posted on August 25, 2009
DSL and other high-speed internet services feel like dial-up more often than they should. According to a new study, the U.S. ranks 28th in terms of fastest broadband speeds behind Japan, Sweden, Holland, and other industrialized nations. Where do you rank?
The admittedly partisan labor union group Communications Workers of America compiled a list of broadband speeds for U.S. states (and its territories). Based on the data, America’s average broadband speeds clock in at about 5 megabits per second, with Delaware registering the fastest stateside speeds, averaging 9.91 mbps. For its part, Puerto Rico had the slowest rates at 1.04 mbps.
Though the study should be taken with a grain of salt since not all territories were included, among other variables (the article itself notes that the study is not entirely scientific), it does highlight the wide disparity in broadband speeds, both within the U.S. and abroad. South Korea, Japan, Sweden, and Holland, for example, all fared better than America.
This report got us wondering what kind of speeds our readers are used to enjoying (or pulling their hair out over), so head over to one of the previously mentioned bandwidth speed tests (we’re quite partial to the classic Speakeasy speed test), give your connection a workout, then let us know how spry your downloads are:
How Fast Is Your Internet Connection?(online surveys)
Update: We accidentally dropped a zero on our initial poll; this new poll should be a touch more useful for measuring it out.
Browse the full link to see how your state ranks, then tell us if these findings match up with your own observations. How does broadband stack up where you live? Let us know in the comments.
15 U.S. States with the Fastest Broadband Internet Speeds [Los Angeles Times]
Wridea Is an Online Organizer for Your Ideas [Ideas]
Posted on May 20, 2009
If you’ve ever wanted a one-stop shop for saving, organizing, and sharing your ideas, web application Wridea might be just what you are looking for.
Once you've signed up and created a free account, you can add new ideas, categorize them, and share them with your friends using the very simple web interface—in fact, that's the drawback of using this tool instead of expanding your brain with Evernote or using OneNote as a powerful note-taking application—it doesn't have enough features for a power user used to tagging and sorting their thoughts.
On the other hand, it does have the ability to share ideas and feedback with your friends, an interesting developer API for third-party add-ons, and a unique "Idea Rain" visualization that drops your ideas into the screen—so it could be worth a look for anybody looking for a completely web-based solution to storing and sharing ideas.
For more ways to manage your great ideas, check out our five best mind mapping tools, or take a look at some of your best ideas from 2008.
Wridea [via Online Tech Tips]
XML Notepad 2007 is a Simple, Smart Editor for Web Code [Downloads]
Posted on February 24, 2009
Windows only: If you’re delving into XML programming for the first time, or want to tweak a few software files, Microsoft’s XML Notepad 2007 may be the no-nonsense editor you’re looking for.
It's not a beginner's tool due to lack of features or context—we're just assuming that most full-time or experienced programmers have their own platform preference for editing all sorts of code. XML Notepad 2007 is themed around the same kind of just-the-text-ma'am simplicity of Windows' Notepad, but does add relevant features for markup language hacking.
The left-hand pane breaks an XML document into a tree view of classes, tags, and their key values. All the text is color-matched to its identifier on the left, and writing in Tree View allows you to leave all the tag containers behind. If you want to see what your raw XML looks like, click “XSL Output,” and you’ll see what Internet Explorer would see when checking out the file. Copying and pasting are modified to ensure the nodes you shuffle around keep their contexts, and, well, that’s about it for basic features. There’s more to find in XML Notepad, but nothing more is required to get started.
XML editing gives one all kinds of powers over a system. We’ve detailed how XML tweaking can get your Firefox passwords into KeePass, help you roll your own timeline, and, to get your next level-up, build your own Firefox extension.
XML Notepad 2007 is a free download for Windows systems only.
XML Notepad [via Online Tech Tips]
TinyChat Generates Disposable TinyURL Chatrooms [Chat]
Posted on February 17, 2009
TinyChat is a no-frills service for creating disposable chatrooms. Each chatroom gets a unique TinyURL for easy sharing, and nobody involved needs special software to join in.
TinyChat is from the same people who brought you the Twitter-friendly TinyPaste service we reviewed last year. TinyChat generates a basic chat room that supports IRC-esque commands like the ability to /msg people in the room and use /me to emote—similar to another disposable chat service we've reviewed, Stinto. Share the URL with friends and all they have to do is click the link and pick a nickname to join in. You can save the logs as text files, send them via email, create a TinyPaste text clipping, or save them to Twitter. Great for creating discussion space outside official chat rooms, or organizing people across different IM services.
TinyChat [via Download Squad]
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Measurement Lab Checks if Your Connection is Being Throttled [Net Neutrality]
Posted on January 29, 2009
Google and a host of net-savvy partners have opened up a free set of web tools to help anyone determine if their net connection is blocking or throttling BitTorrent or otherwise limits their bandwidth.
At the moment, three tools are available—when their servers aren't jammed up, and they seem to be pretty popular at the moment. The Glasnost tool determines how your ISP is handling BitTorrent traffic and gives a readout on whether it’s being denied, throttled, or otherwise impaired. Network Diagnostic Tool covers other problems that might affect your upload or download speeds. And the Network Path and Application Diagnosis tries to reveal the routing, network tools, and other “last mile” issues that affect net performance.
The tests are fairly simple, and each seems to require a working Java plugin to run. The Glasnost test, for instance, creates a fake BitTorrent stream between your connection point and the test’s servers, then monitors what happens to the packets.
That’s one reassuring block of HTML.
It doesn’t take a senior analyst to see that Google is looking to shine some light on internet providers’ moves against net neutrality, such as Cox Communications’ “time sensitivity” throttling. In fact, the next two products due out of the “Measurement Lab” are DiffProbe and NANO, which will tell a user whether certain types of traffic, for specific applications or users, are getting priority over others. The side effect of the net giants’ tussle, though, are some handy tools that (should) tell the user exactly why they are or aren’t getting the speeds they paid for.