Category Archives: Internet
I love my MiFi 3G hotspot! I use it all the time. The only thing that can be a bit of a drag is when it runs out of battery power. If I'm near an outlet I can just plug in the supplied USB adapter and run it all day. However, if I'm in a seminar or other setting where I don't have immediate access to an outlet the battery can only last about 4 hours tops. That all changed when I "super sized" my MiFi Battery.
A 3300 mAh Extended Battery Lasts me all Day!
As long as I have a good 3G signal, my MiFi will now last me all day with this battery. It's designed to replace the stock battery and battery cover. This way it charges internally and as far as your MiFi is concerned it doesn't see any difference. The good folks over at The 3G Store sell both Verizon MiFi 2200 and Novatel GSM MiFi 2352/2372 Extended Batteries for $90.
Yes it makes the MiFi about twice as thick, but it's worth it if you need to be mobile and connected for several hours throughout the day.
By the way, you can get an unlocked MiFi GSM 2372 Mobile Hotspot here On Sale for $226.
April 12th, 2011
10:42
Eye-Fi to Send Photos Direct to iOS and Android Devices without a WiFi Hotspot
In case you haven't been following me on this story you can start with my "Shoot Tethered (wirelessly) to an iPad" from a couple of weeks ago here. Back then I decided to try out the Eye-Fi Pro X2 Card in my D7000 shooting wirelessly to an iPad 2 via my MiFi mobile hotspot and I was pleased with the overall workflow. Today Eye-Fi just announced a new card (yeah that happens in technology, deal with it!), the Eye-Fi Mobile X2 which is a cheaper card that offers Direct to iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch) and Android mobile device shooting WITHOUT the need for a WiFi hotspot. Removing the WiFi hotspot requirement and going direct in an AdHoc fashion makes this solution even better. However, don't fret if you bought the Pro X2 card like I did. They are going to release a firmware update to the existing cards next week. Keep in mind that the Pro X2 card does handle RAW and Geotagging. The new card does not.
This should open up a whole new world for people that want to shoot with a decent camera and share those images even with some minor retouching/adjustments, from a tablet device directly. I'll be shooting RAW to my regular SD card in slot 1 and BASIC JPG to my Eye-Fi card in Slot 2 on my D7000. Life just got a little more fun.
If you don't have an Eye-Fi card yet, you can get the NEW Mobile X2 8GB card with the Direct Mode love built-in here.
Sorry, still not Compact Flash joy.
As soon as I have the yet to be released iOS App and an updated card you expect a review here.
Promo Video:
February 28th, 2011
12:30
5 Ways To Take Advantage of Dropbox
I started out using Dropbox.com because someone shared a file with me using that service. I really didn't think much about it at the time and treated it like all the rest of the File Sharing over the Internet services out ther. However, the more I used it the more I got hooked on it. I'll also state for the record that I have no affiliation with Dropbox.com, don't know them, never have met them and get nothing from them other than great service. Now that I have that out of the way let me explain briefly what sets Dropbox.com apart from the rest of the services I've tried.
How does Dropbox.com work?
First off you head over to Dropbox.com and setup your FREE account. You get 2GBs for free and while that doesn't sound like a lot (it's really not, but…), it's free and will cover most people's needs for sharing documents. You can also earn an additional 250MB's of space (up to 10GB total), per each friend you refer that signs up for a free account.
At this point you haven't done anything special that you couldn't have done on a dozen file sharing sites out there. However, what you also get is the ability to download the Dropbox.com application for your Mac or PC (as well as mobile devices such as iPad, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, etc.). With the Dropbox App installed it sets up a "Dropbox" folder wherever you want it be on your drive. You can treat this folder like any other folder. You can create subfolders in it as well. The difference is that anything you put in this folder will AUTOMATICALLY and securely sync up to the "Dropbox" cloud. The files will still be on your local drive, but they will also be available online via the Dropbox website as well as accessible from any of your mobile devices and sync'd to any other computers you have Dropbox installed on. This is what really sets it appart from most similar services out there. The latest version even offers the ability to keep this folder sync'd with your other computers on your LAN, which is a lot faster. Now that we know how it works (if not, watch the video at the end of this post), here are 5 ways to take advantage of it:
Have the same files on your Laptop and Desktop computer
Because Dropbox will sync the contents of your Dropbox folder across ALL of your computers (Mac, Windows, Linux), it makes it really easy to have the same files on a work/office/studio computer and a home computer or a Desktop Computer and a Laptop. Every operating system out there gives each user account a "Documents" folder. Instead of putting your documents in the default "Documents" folder, put them in a Documents folder located inside your Dropbox folder. Now you can work as you always do and when you get home those same documents will be there waiting for you on your home computer or on your laptop. This same concept would work for photos, music and movies as well. Syncing happens in the background once the document is saved and closed.
Share a folder with your colleagues
The shared folder concept is how I got started with Dropbox in the first place. Someone shared a folder with me and the other people working on the project. When any of us would add things or make changes to the stuff in that folder, it would automatically sync those things to each of our computers. No more emailing files back and forth or using thumb drives. This is also useful for sharing photos with a group of if multiple people take photos at an event, they can all copy them to a shared Dropbox folder for everyone to have a set.
Create instant online, sharable photo galleries
I hadn't really discovered this feature until recently. If you stick a folder of JPGs in the default "Photos" folder, Drobbox will automatically turn it into a gallery and let you share a link to that specific folder for anyone to see even if they don't have a Dropbox account. Here's an example gallery that I created.
Continue reading “5 Ways To Take Advantage of Dropbox” »
February 1st, 2011
3:11
Ask Google
As you might imagine I get lots of questions every day. I get them via the comments section of my blogs, I get them via email, I get them on Twitter, I get them on Facebook and I get them on YouTube. As you might also imagine, while I don't mind answering people's questions, I simply don't have the bandwidth to get to them all.
How do I decide which questions to answer and which ones not to?
It's not really a conscious decision. Like anything in life the easier something is to do the more often we'll do it. To that point if I see a question that I can answer off the top of my head and it's a short answer, chances are I'll answer it right there on the spot. If I know the answer, but the answer is long and drawn out (more than 3 steps), chances are I won't have time to answer it (even though I may want to). Also I tend to answer questions based on how they are asked. If a person is asking a question of clarification on something I wrote or said, then I'm more apt to want to respond immediately. If the person is asking for a 1:1 class via email (show me how to do ______), then chances are I'm not going to respond. It's nothing personal, I just don't have the time. My job here is not tech support or to train you via Q&A. If the question is Adobe related I'm also more likely to respond since I do work for Adobe. However, if I feel that you're just being lazy (see Can you do it for me? below), then I'll probably be less inclined to respond.
What if I don't know the answer?
If I don't know the answer I'll probably just say "I don't know." However, if I don't know the answer and I want to know the answer then chances are I'll look it up because the question you've asked has me curious too. This is what brings me to today's topic! How do I find the answer?
I ask Google
Sometimes I feel like I'm on an episode of Star Trek. However, instead of saying "Computer" and asking my question verbally (wouldn't that be coo?), I pop up a browser window and key in my exact question. Long gone are the days of having to use specific keywords and operators between them to get the information you want from a search engine. Sure it still helps to do so today, but more often than not you can just pose your question in simple English. Just the other night I wanted to know if there was a way to convert the OLD Facebook Groups to the NEW Facebook Group format. While I could have searched through the Facebook Help Section, I always think Google first. I do this because 99.9% of the time someone else has already posed the same question online and someone has already answered it OR the very help system that I would have had to search has been indexed by Google and those tech documents show up in the Google results too. I fired up a browser window and keyed in "Can I convert an existing Facebook Group to the New Facebook Group format?" The answer was in the top 10 results that came back and sadly the answer was NO. However, that's just how easy it was to get the answer to my question. I do this multiple times a day and very rarely am I ever disappointed. Not only do I usually get the answer I was looking for IMMEDIATELY, but a lot of times even if the answer is NO, someone has developed some cool work around, setting, workflow or App to solve the issue.
Did you try it?
The other thing that kinda bugs me is when someone asks a simple question about something that would be easy enough for them to just try for themselves. This is what I meant above about being lazy. We're so used to relying on people to spoon feed us the answers that we would rather post a question, wait for a response (sometimes days) than just trying it ourselves. This is especially true when it comes to software. Much of the good software out there today is available in fully functional trial form. This means that you can download it, install it and bang on it all you want. Instead of asking is ________ feature better in the new version, why not see for yourself? That's what trials are for. For example, you can download a fully functional trial of Adobe Creative Suite 5. You can test each Application to see if it does what you need it to do and if it does it the way you want it done. If not, then you haven't lost anything other than the time to download and try it. However, at least you know with your own eyes whether or not it works. I love it when someone asks "how will that perform on my computer?" I have no idea. It depends on so many factors not to mention all the other stuff you're running on "your computer." The best way to be sure is to install it on YOUR computer and see for yourself.
Can you do it for me?
My favorite (the ones that make me laugh) questions come from YouTube and I swear sometimes that YouTube needs to implement an IQ test before allowing people to post comments or send questions. Granted I know that YouTube is full of kids and you have no way of really knowing if you're dealing with an adult or an 8 year old. However, on more than one occasion I've had someone ask me "I'm having a problem doing ___________ to this photo. Can I send it to you and have you do it?" I literally laugh out loud when I get one of those. I guess it would be pretty sweet if we could all just send our work to someone else and have them do it for us 
I would have had slightly more respect if the person would have said "Hey, I'm having a problem with this photo can I send it to you and perhaps you could use it as an example in one of your upcoming tutorials?" At least then the person would be showing that they want help and to LEARN how to do it themselves and with such a file It could be used to help others. There's no guarantee that I would take anyone up on that kind of offer, but at least I would respect it more. Another favorite is "How much does _____ cost?" In the same amount of energy that it took you to type that in an email you could have typed it in Google and gotten your answer!
Someone has probably recorded a video
In this day and age if there is something that you want to learn how to do, chances are there is a YouTube video on the subject. For example, one of the most common questions that I get from new Photoshop users is "how do I remove a background in Photoshop?" When I searched YouTube for this topic 922 videos showed up. I could be wrong, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you'll probably find some good techniques in at least one or two of those videos and if nothing else you'll see lots of different ways to do it. Also you'll notice the titles of the videos are in plain English ie: "How to remove a background in Photoshop".
Speaking of YouTube, check out my YouTube Channel Here. With close to 3 Million Views I'm blown away with the response!
Oh yeah and YouTubers please stop sending me this one: "Where can I get a free download of CS5?" Really?
The Bottom Line
Google is AMAZING and a resource that I would not want to be without. I get so much more done each day because I can easily look stuff up without having to rely on my friends and wait for responses. Give it a shot the next time you're thinking about posting a question somewhere else. You may be surprised at just how much easier it is.
October 27th, 2010
3:52
My New Google TV: A Work In Progress
A little bit about my habit
I admit it. I'm a TV junkie. Yes, I'm one of those guys that actually enjoys TV. Now while you may be picturing this guy laying on a couch with empty potato chip bags all around, I'm not quite that bad. I use TV as a form of turning my brain off. I work long hours every day. I travel for a living and that in and of itself adds layers of stress on my life. I'm constantly on my computer working or reading up on the latest things in tech. When I've had enough! It's time to veg in front of the TV. This means that I'm not looking for inspiration. I'm not looking for a message on life. I'm not looking for controversial issues. I'm looking for simple entertainment. That's it.
With that said, I've got all the latest TV gear in my home. HDTVs, a theater room, TiVo HD, Apple TV, Comcast HD Cable Service, Slingbox, Playstation 3, Nintindo Wii, Xbox 360 and a Netflix account. At one point I even had both DirecTV AND Comcast until DirecTV all but accused me of lying about a pay per view that I didn't order (as a result I'm no longer a DirecTV customer, their loss!). There is no shortage in ways to watch TV in my life.
When do I find the time to watch?
I almost NEVER watch a live broadcast. I just don't have the time to sit in front of a TV on someone else's schedule. That's why TiVo HD is my favorite piece of gear out of all of the above boxes. I set up the Season Passes and one time recordings for the shows I want to watch and when I'm home and done with work for the day, I can usually get 3-4 shows in (fast forwarding through commercials) in one sitting. My second favorite box is my Slingbox. This allows me to stream my own TiVo recordings anywhere I happen to be traveling on my computer or my iOS devices. Lastly I also like to watch on those long flights. Therefore I either bring Netflix DVDs or rip the TiVo'd shows to my laptop or my iPad. That pretty much covers that ways that I watch content. I'm not a regular Hulu user and I rarely if ever watch shows on the network websites. The biggest reason for this is that I'm either watching at home and using TiVo or I'm in the air and don't have an internet connection to stream content. So streaming shows to my computer is the least interesting option for me.
The road to Google TV
I was intrigued by Google's initial teaser video on the upcoming Google TV and put it on my list of gadgets to check out. At the same time I was looking to replace the HDTV in my bedroom. The one I had was a Sony 32" 720p lower end Bravia. While this TV worked fine, I wanted a few more HDMI ports, Full 1080p resolution and the power saving aspects and clarity of the new LED sets. I was in no hurry and was just waiting for the right deal to come along. Also I had no particular brand in mind. I have no love or hate for Sony. I have several Sony products, but if a better set came along by another manufacturer I'd consider it.
Then I got an email from Sony announcing "the world's first HDTV powered by Google TV". I thought "perfect timing"! I was in the market for a TV and I wanted to tryout Google TV and this would kill two birds with one stone.
July 8th, 2010
3:13
Do you use in flight WiFi?
Back in April I finally made it on to a plane that had Gogo In-flight WiFi internet (reviewed it here). I loved it! It was fast and convenient. Although I certainly wouldn't call it cheap, I wouldn't say that it was way over priced either. However, the other day I saw this article on how people weren't using it (less than 10%) and more importantly the reasons why. From the comments I saw, the main 3 reasons were cost, "coach seats are just too small to work" and lastly "flight time is my time and I want to be disconnected." Some are even predicting that if the price doesn't go down or become FREE that in-flight WiFi will go the way of in-flight telephones (most have been removed due to lack of use). While I can see the point, I don't think that it's as bad as the in-flight phones were. They were outrageously expensive and really the only reason you would use one would be in an emergency. However, for me inflight WiFi is one of the few perks left of flying. I don't look at it as I want to be disconnected as much as I see it as the internet IS MY IN-FLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT. My price test is, would I pay for this out of my own pocket? While I do get reimbursed for my internet expenses, I would probably still pay for this out of my own pocket if the flight were long enough. So I guess I feel the price isn't as much of an issue as some do. So what your take on it? Do you use it? If so why or if not why not?
June 15th, 2010
3:58
What Do We Want From TV?
Google made a lot of noise recently with their announcement about Google TV. See their short concept video here:
This got me thinking about how I watch TV now and how much of it is on the computer vs. on my HDTVs. I probably have more vested in TV than the average person. I have multiple HDTVs, multiple TiVo HDs, multiple Apple TVs and a couple of Slingboxes. Yep, I like to get my TV on! The conclusion that I came to after watching Google's video is that while I definitely watch my share of "internet" videos, I don't think that my viewing habits will change all that much with Google TV. Here's my reasoning: when I watch a clip on YouTube, it's primarily because I'm already on my computer and it's an in the moment kind of thing. Someone sent me a link or it was embedded in a website that I was already headed towards. It's also like to be a SHORT clip (YouTube limits the clips to 10 minutes max). Each of my TVs already has either an Apple TV or TiVo HD connected to them (if not both) and both of those devices can view YouTube clips. However, I almost NEVER watch YouTube via those devices. I don't sit down to look for stuff to watch on YouTube or the internet. This might also be due to the fact that unless I specifically hook up a keyboard or run some type of App on my iPhone/iPad that searching with these devices via the onscreen keyboard is a royal pain. So If I sit in front of a HDTV it's usually to watch a longer show and probably one that I've already TiVo'd ahead of time.
May 4th, 2010
3:49
Time for a new Cable Modem?
If you're a cable modem user chances are your cable modem is on 24/7 doing its job and you don't give it a second thought. Most people go for years without upgrading their equipment because as long as it's working the cable company has no reason to upgrade you and as long as it's working you have no reason to think about upgrading right? Think again! Like any other technology out there, cable modem manufacturers add new features too. So while your old cable modem is functioning, you may not be getting all of the speed out of your connection that you could be getting. Here in Michigan my cable provider is Comcast and while I've had my issues with them for Cable Television off and on, my Cable Modem service has worked very well for over 10 years. As a matter of fact my internet speeds have steadily increased over the years. So I've been a happy customer.
And then something went wrong…
Very rarely does my IP address change and usually when it does it means that Comcast has changed something on their end. Normally their changes have meant good things for me. Not this time! I was out of town and wanted to connect to my home network and I couldn't (at least with the IP address that I knew) because my IP address had changed. It wasn't a big deal and I moved on. However, once I got home I immediately noticed that my upload speeds were in the toilet. Here's a speed test I performed back on July 7, 2008 (yes almost 2 years ago) when I noticed and blogged about how much faster my service had gotten:
Great download and upload speeds back then.
Here's the speed I was getting when I got home from my trip:
While my download speed was still rocking as fast as ever, my upload speed was way way down. Below 1Mbps. This all happened around the time when I was needing to upload lots of video content via FTP for the CS5 launch and therefore a slow upload speed was very painful.
It's not our fault
I immediately got on the phone with Comcast support (after doing the standard unplugs and resets). They claimed that nothing had changed on their end. Of course! We tried a bunch of things and best I could get was about 1.75Mbps when connecting my computer directly to the modem and a little less than than on the router. I know that routers add some latency, but this was more than just a latency problem and again it wasn't all that much faster connected directly to the cable modem. Comcast told me that they only promise 2Mbps UP on my plan and since I was getting very close to that, there wasn't much they could do.
It's my own modem
I own my own cable modem because it seems that since they don't change very often the math works out in my favor to own rather than rent. Since I own my own equipment that means that I can upgrade to the latest standards whenever I want. If I ask Comcast to bring me out a new cable modem, they will but I'll have no control over what they bring. I know that Comcast is going to be upgrading to faster speeds and you'll need a cable modem capable of handling DOCIS 3 to get those faster speeds. I also know that this kind of upgrading of their systems doesn't happen over night and I figured that they had already started putting some of this new gear in place. So why not take advantage of it?
April 13th, 2010
3:18
Officially Launching My YouTube Channel
I've been using YouTube for a long time now as a way to provide video content on this blog. I remember the early days of YouTube being primarily for teenagers and vehicle for people to show off their babies and pets. The quality, well, um, kinda sucked! I just didn't really find it remotely good enough to host the kind of content I wanted to share. Well all that has changed now. YouTube is GREAT for sharing videos in 720p HD quality, up to 10 minutes in length. It's easy to use and to embed the clips right on my site. Now don't get me wrong, I know that there are other GREAT video sharing sites out there too like Smugmug (which does all the way up to 1080p with a paid account), Vimeo, BlipTV, etc. However, I find that YouTube seems to be the most universal and has the largest audience. After all, if I go through the trouble to produce a video and make it available for free I wan to have the largest possible viewing audience I can get. Also since YouTube is BUILT-IN to the iPhone and now the iPad, I can reach millions more people with this one service than I can with any of the others. Another nice surprise was that Apple gave the iPad's Safari the ability to view embedded YouTube clips right in the page without having to launch the App or go to another browser window. Sold!
A funny thing happened on the way to this post
Continue reading “Officially Launching My YouTube Channel” »
April 8th, 2010
12:05
What’s Going On With My Sites?
In case you haven't noticed, I've been having issues with my site lately. I've been getting hacked lately AND my hosting provider Network Solutions has been having Server issues at least two weekends in a row. Let's just say there have been a lot of sleepless nights in the past couple of weeks.
The Hacks
The hacks have been coming in two flavors. The first is some how they've hacked the titles of my post that get indexed by Google. So if you were to Google "terry white tech blog" you'd get some interesting titles to my site. The links sill work, so I'm not sure I see the purpose behind that particular attack. The other more recent attack has been far more troublesome. It's an injection of code throughout my site files that point to a different server know to serve up malware to unsuspecting visitors. That's the one that is yielding the warnings above in both Safari and Chrome browsers and that's the one that's been the biggest pain to deal with.
Chrome users – To make matters worse Google has now flagged my main domain terrywhite.com as a "suspicious" site. Therefore until that times out or until they rescan my site from my request you'll be "warned" about visiting ANY of my sites at the moment. Even if the infections are completely cleared out there's nothing I can do to get rid of this warning until Google rescans it and clears. I have to wait it out.
Moving Forward
While I think I'm on the other side of all these problems now and I'm starting to see my way clear of these issues, I was once again reminded of one of he principles I try to live by and that is "always have a backup and a plan B!" I don't expect technology to always work or to be perfect. Nothing is. This is why we have backups and contingency plans. So I started thinking about that a lot lately when it comes to my websites. I also haven't been extremely satisfied lately with my hosting provider as I don't feel like they've had my back during these issues as much as they could have. So it made me start to shop around for other hosting companies. While I'm certainly not settled in on another company just yet, I do now have a backup to this blog!
Plan B
For the time being while I sort this all out I will be posting my content in two places. Here on the existing tech blog AND on my new (backup) tech blog:
The NEW (backup) blog is hosted by GoDaddy.com. While I'm not 100% sold on them yet, they do come highly recommended by my buddy RC over at Layers Magazine. I know that no hosting provider has 100% up time. However, I do expect issues to be resolved as quickly as possible when sh*t happens! So for now while I continue to weigh my options, you have another place to see my posts in case this server goes down again and until I ultimately decide what to do. Files have been cleaned and ALL passwords have been changed. Fingers crossed!
Thanks for your patience and continued support!
I will cover the technology, gadgets, events and cool toys that have affected me in some way. I will also give recommendations on the products that I have actually used.
April 20th, 2011
12:25