New Technology is awesome!

For most people you only get relay excited during the Christmas season. The feeling you get opening something up and setting it up, or using it for the first time. Well I get that feeling every time I get a new tech toy and gadget!

I am now the proud owner of a super fast DOCSIS 3.0 Motorola modem. I upgraded from my old rented modem from my ISP for the past several months. I will say this. I should have put the money towards buying my own modem right from the start. I could have put that money to my new one. Something to think about. If you are renting a modem, that money could go and buy a modem that you can then sell later, if you ever leave or cancel your internet connection. If your renting, thats money gone, and you can't sell your modem later.

Thats settled now, moving on to the good stuff. So my new modem has boosted my overall speed performance for my home network. I have gained a increace to an average of 7 Mbps (Mega Bits per second) Now for most people that is something you would never even know happend. What I mean is, the average home user is paying for a 1Mbps to 5 Mbps connection. Some might have a 10Mbps, but even with a relitivly fast connection most home users only have a basic low level wireless / wired network at home. This would be discribed as a wireless B or G network. Wireless B, 802.11b, is only 11 Mbps. This works fine for checking e-mail and reading online posts. Wireless G, 802.11g, will output 54 Mbps. This will do all of what I listed already, and this will alow youtube and video streaming. Now I say this will alow, but it will be hit and miss. You will start a video but it will stop and need to buffer (load more video or data) more of the video before playback continues. This is what people refer to as freezing or even crashing of the video. This is not the case, the cause is the speed of the wifi connection, as well as the speed you are getting from your ISP. The third wireless standard is wireless N, 802.11n, This is the fastest wifi speed that the public can use. This speed is roughly 300 Mbps. Some routers will say 300+300 this means that there are two bands or signals being used to brodcast the 300 Mbps speeds more reliably.

The other very cool thing I now get to call my own is.......  A shiny new Bluetooth Logitech keyboard for my PS3. This thing is great. When I am using the web and searching things this makes it so easy. I also have a fast and great way to send messages through the friends chat online. Yeah this might be over kill but it is something that makes life just a little cooler. 

RSS does not stand for Randy's super sushi

What is RSS?

RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it.

Why RSS? Benefits and Reasons for using RSS

RSS solves a problem for people who regularly use the web. It allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually. You ensure your privacy, by not needing to join each site's email newsletter. The number of sites offering RSS feeds is growing rapidly and grows each day.

What do I need to do to read an RSS Feed? RSS Feed Readers and News Aggregators

Feed Reader or News Aggregator software allow you to grab the RSS feeds from various sites and display them for you to read and use.

A variety of RSS Readers are available for different platforms. Some popular feed readers include Amphetadesk (Windows, Linux, Mac), FeedReader (Windows), and NewsGator (Windows - integrates with Outlook). There are also a number of web-based feed readers available. My Yahoo, Bloglines, and Google Reader are popular web-based feed readers.

Once you have your Feed Reader, it is a matter of finding sites that syndicate content and adding their RSS feed to the list of feeds your Feed Reader checks. Many sites display a small icon with the acronyms RSS, XML, or RDF to let you know a feed is available

Thoughts on Technology

I've had lots of people ask me "what makes that so much better?" "why do you use that brand?" and many more questions about technology. I also get the person who hates anything but his old typewriter, well okay maybe not the typewriter, but you get the idea. Why does it seem that people draw a line in the sand about technology. Either live with it, or without it and that final? Well I have always lived with as much technology around me as I can. I am all for letting technology help me in my life any and every way I can. The polar opposite of this is of course the guy or girl who doesn't have an e-mail address, doesn't have a cell phone, has a computer but doesn't use it for anything, reads a actual paper. Okay the last one is still a useful way of getting news. but you see my point. We have come into an ever growing world of technology and that technology is what drives all the things we do in our daily lives.

I will be the first one to tell you. I almost go into a panic state if I forget my iPhone someplace or if the battery dies and I can't get to a charger soon. Being disconnected from the world makes me crazy. Not knowing if I have received a e-mail, not knowing if a twitter update or reply has come in. Sounds silly, but that is how half of my life is lived. I say half because in my field of work, e-mail and twitter and sometimes facebook are all ways I do business and get work done. I have just gotten a Google voice number as well and skype is being more of a tool to me then ever before (Google voice review coming soon).

Technology is only going to expand and grow every day, and even every hour. We can not escape technology and it will only prove to help our lives as we move forward towards the future.

So Excited, So excited.... oh not impressed

Apple had their press conference for iPhone OS 4.0 and as usual there could be some great things happening, but just as in the past, these great things will either not work as promised (like tethering) or they will dangle the cool thing we want in front of us but never give it to us. The list of features can be found here: gdgt has a great event coverage

On the flip side, my iPhone 3gs is jailbroken, and I can do all the things that apple has yet to release. I also have many other advantages that do not come with the "locked down" Apple OS.

But with both sides of this having possibilities, i'm still not sure where it will go. I see Apple feeling the pressure from other phone co. like Android to provide features the user wants.

Change is comming.... in a few years I hope

I can't take credit for the FCC info but I will provide links, but I want to pass along the info. The FCC has recently gone into a "lets fix this" mode and is starting a overall of America's internet and network speeds and access across the nation. Sounds like a revolution doesn't it. Well I hope so. The FCC has taken a look at how poor and expensive internet and networking cost have gotten. I for one have Charter Communications as my ISP (internet service provider) and for the cost of what they deliver.... well not exactly a good deal, but for what is available it is sadly the best option.

So quick look at what is available. Starting with High end first.

Fiber

Cable

DSL

3G/4G hotspot setups

Clearwir

Dial-up

So Fiber is the best if you can afford it. If you can have fiber ran to your house or business you will have ridiculous speeds but you will also have a ridiculous bill but you will have everything you want. Most ISP's run side lines off of a main fiber line for most neighborhoods which is why your speeds are poor or okay at best. But if you have a direct line with fiber you have no bottle necks and no speed problems

Cable is the "thats what I have" for most area's. Cable is most of the time "reliable". You can get some okay deals for decent speeds with cable, high end cable is around 60 to 80 bucks for 25 Mbps. You will almost never get that while actually using your connection. But average home user will most often go with 10 Mbps to 15 Mbps speeds for 30 to 50 bucks. As I said above you will bottle neck with this due to a whole neighborhood using the pipe line and its basically like rush hour traffic, you can move a little at a time, but it takes for ever!

The bottom three are the low end, and not worth it in my opinion. DSL is a service provided by the phone company and they run your internet connection through the phone lines. You will see a max speed of around 2 Mbps. Yeah you read that correctly.

3G/4G hotspot setups are a newer trend that can get better with time. Basically what you do is pay a cell phone provider a monthly data fee for accessing their cell network for surfing the web. You put the device in a place that receives the best cell signal, and it then gives WiFi to up to 5 devices. I have not been able to test this or use a mobile hotspot device so I can not verify the speeds or reliability of its use.

Dial-up is dead. Well unless you want to give your money away. In today's standards of web content you can not access anything with dial-up due to waiting hours upon hours to even see a small result of your waiting.

Okay links to the info, the FCC will hopefully be doing some good things and helping to improve the overall use and pricing and access to the internet and paying for assess from your ISP. FCC Speedtest info Speedtest.net

Cell Phone OS's and what will take the market

Remember the days's when every cell phone was bulky and had a screen that you could almost make out the number you were trying to dial. Well we are way past those days and now can do everything on a cell phone that you can on a actual computer. Most cell phone manufacturers are now using CPU's that are running at 600 Mhz and are hitting 1Ghz and will soon be even faster.

In this corner building a app market at a rapid rate and is creating a smooth and easy to use UI for the phones, Android. And in this corner we have Mac Mobil OS. Which has a app market with millions of songs, and thousands of apps that are both growing as well.

So as a iPhone user for a few years now, I have a small favor to the iPhone and its OS and app store. But now seeing some new emerging tech from places like HTC with the EVO and HERO (Evo will be out summer 2010) and other companies starting to follow by building phones with faster components and the ANDROID phone OS I'm starting to wonder what direction the big players will do to sway the buyer.

At&t has had the market for the iphone, but I feel a change coming, At&t will loose a lot of customers if they can't provide the best services for the all the iPhone can do. Yeah it works now, but there is so much more it could do, and can do better. Some of the other carriers have seen this and are giving more options and better features for the user.

Apple needs to kick it up several notches if (when) they get the new phone out sometime this summer. If they don't pull a trick out of their magic apple hat I think that they will suffer in every market.

I think that summer 2010 will be a time to watch and see what happens to the cell phone market.

T3KG33K is Nerd wrapped in Geek with a side of tech

Welcome!

So first thing first! I am a fan of geek / nerd/ tech/ gadgets / anything that innovates the way we live our lives with technology.

Second, I love it, and can't get enough of it. I will be using this blog for updates in any and every area of tech and news. I also want this to be a two way street, I look forward to great discussions about tech questions and related info. I will get links and e-mail up and going for this as soon as I get accounts linked up.

I will also be using video demo's, I will use most of my own stuff for this, but will be also sharing other tech reviews for the stuff I can't get my hands on.

So I guess I'll end this intro and open the gates of geek!

~T3KG33K