What is Streaming Radio?

Streaming Radio uses the internet to send live audio data to your PC or Mobile device to be played anywhere in the world.  On a daily basis, I am listening to a handful of streaming radio stations on my Motorola Droid.  I know I’ve written about Pandora in the past and that is considered streaming music as well.  However, I thought I’d share with everyone a couple of personal favorites that I listen to daily.  If you’re anything like me, a minimalist, you’ll appreciate the free digital selection of music so much that you wont ever listen to your MP3 collection!   Ok, I know I just lost some of you.  But that’s ok – because I know everyone appreciates free music.  Streaming Radio is free and legal!  So you get the latest songs without all the fees.  Good deal!

ElectricFM, the Best Dance Radio station on the entire web!

About 70% of the time I am listening to ElectricFM since I like trance, dance, remixes, and DJ music.  Plus it keeps me motivated while I do just about anything. ElectricFM is ran out of New York (my home state!) and is streamed live to the world with zero commercials!  More importantly, they are very in touch with their listening audience through Facebook, Twitter, and Email. Now there are several ways you can get ElectricFM and here they are:

• ElectricFM for PC/MAC Users

  • Surf to: http://www.electricfm.com/default.asp and then click on Listen Live!

• ElectricFM for Android Phone Users

  • You can find the APP in the Android Market on your phone.  A quick link: http://www.electricfm.com/e.asp?i=678

• ElectricFM for iPhone Users

  • You can find the APP in the Apple App Store.  A quick link: http://www.electricfm.com/e.asp?i=628

• ElectricFM for Blackberry Users

  • You can find the APP in the Blackberry App Market.  A quick link: http://www.electricfm.com/e.asp?i=708

iHeartRadio: Local Radio Stations streamed to the Internet

The other 30% of the time I have on a radio station with iHeartRadio.  What makes iHeartRadio so great?  They make available just about any local radio stations as well as the majority from other States!  That’s right – Physical Radio Stations available to you from ANYWHERE!  This is great, because if you moved you can still listen to your favorite radio station from your previous region.  Very nifty!

IHeartRadio has an application for just about every mobile device as well as streaming to your PC.  You should head on over to their site and check them out:  http://www.iheartradio.com

What streaming radio stations do you listen to?  Any other cool applications like iHeartRadio and ElectricFM?  Let us know!

Well readers, I found a nice and simple solution for you to fill out your PDF forms, save them to your PC, and print them out.  Ready? 

This is my first YouTube video article and walkthrough – so I hope everyone finds it useful.  I’ll try from now on to split written articles with YouTube articles (or a combination of the two). 

What do you all use as Adobe alternatives that are free or open-source?

So you’re on the road and you do not have Mobile WIFI for your laptop – or you just straight-up want to get Internet off a device bigger than 3 inches!  I understand.  You’re already paying  your cell provider for Internet access – wouldn’t it be nice to use that internet on your laptop, to surf the web in “real time”?  You betcha – and you can – by tethering your devices.  Get ready to go Macgyver.

Rumors have circulated that the iPhone/Android/Smartphone’s with Internet access do not offer “tethering” on your service plan.  This could not be more false and I will show you a simple and easy way to get internet access off your android Smartphone device.  For those of you unfamiliar with Tethering (according to Wikipedia):

Tethering is the use of a mobile device such as a mobile phone to supply Internet access for another device which is otherwise unconnected, using the mobile device as a modem.[1] This can be done through Bluetooth wireless technology or cables (such as USB).

Tethering has been used to gain access to the Internet since mobile devices started using their networks to give users Internet access, but has increased in prevalence due to Internet connectivity in modern cell phones and laptops.

Methods of Tethering:

There currently are two different ways you can tether a phone, via:

1. Bluetooth: Use of Bluetooth wireless technology to pair your phone and laptop together to share a internet connection.
2. USB Cord:  Use of a USB cord to connect between your phone and your laptop to share a connection.

Bluetooth in general is the most wire-free (cool) tech way to go about it.  But it will involve a couple extra steps such as pairing.  USB is pretty much a no-muss, no fuss easy solution if you’re in a rush.  (Did I really just rhyme?)

Simple and Safe Tethering Solution:

This solution works for the iPhone, Treo, Palm OS, Windows mobile, Blackberry, and Android operating systems on phones.  I personally have experience using it with the Android platform and feel it’s top notch.  This information I post is generally geared towards installing it on Android/Motorola Droid/etc.  For me personally, I chose it as opposed to “rooting” my phone.  For the those uninitiated in what this means – it generally means illegally gaining core level operating system access to your phone.  Can it ruin your phone make it stop working all together? You bet.  So take the safe path unless you’re real daring, have money to waste, or a hardcore technie. 

A Company called JuneFabrics makes the experience pretty easy and tidy to use. Therefore…

1. Surf to: www.junefabrics.com
2. Choose your Operating System: Android, iPhone, Treo, Windows Mobile, Blackberry
3. Download and Install the PDAnet software on the laptop/pc you want to tether to your phone
4. Go to Android Market or the iPhone Apps market, etc and Download/Install PDAnet to your phone.
5. Note for Android Owners: You will need to enable USB debugging. Go to > Settings > Applications > Development > ENABLE USB Debugging
6. Reboot your PC and your Phone
7. Connect the Phone either via Bluetooth OR USB to the PC.  Try USB first – its often easiest.
8. Your devices will recognize each other.  If at this point it asks for drivers, approvals, firewall changes – Approve them and move on.
9. On the PDA/Smartphone/iPhone/Android device: Right Click on pdaNet Application on taskbar > Connect
10.  
11. Click ENABLE USB TETHER or ENABLE Bluetooth DUN
12. The devices should sync up and you should now have Internet Access off your laptop. CONGRATS!

This process took me approximately 5-10 minutes to complete.  Really great, fast, and reliable.  All in all, great product.  By the way, if you find this product useful then I suggest buying/donating to the software designer – they deserve it.  Depending on your plan and 3G status signal strength, you’ll get decent speed internet.  When you’re ready to stop surfing off the phone – go back to pdaNet application and turn off/disable the connection.

Some Warnings:

Bandwidth: One word – Bandwidth usage!  Sure, you can tether your phone. Does your carrier probably want you to?  Most likely not.  Do not give them a reason to cut your service.  If you’re surfing the web, checking email, stocks, etc well then I am sure the bandwidth usage will be pretty low and they will not care.  Thinking about downloading full movies off iTunes or using torrents?  Think again.  Just a word of advice that I’ve read amongst the many forums. 

Battery: You are using your phones internet, therefore you will drain the battery faster then usual.  Keep this in mind when using this method.

Maximum Battery Usage TIP! (Post Update)

A.J, a TftM reader, brought up a good point in the comments below and it relates to battery optimization.  If you want THE MOST BATTERY LIFE out of your MOBILE DEVICE then you should use USB TETHERING. 

The thought process?  USB tethering will keep your mobile device charged while it’s being the source of your internet. The Bluetooth method lacks a continual charge, plus, using Bluetooth itself will put some drain on the battery as well.

   USB = Fuel Efficient / Bluetooth = Super Nifty Gas Guzzler.

Conclusion:

For my part, I’ve only used tethering a couple of times and one of those times was during a road-trip.  In this case, it was a life-saver.  Sure, my Motorola Droid can do most everything for me – but I work quicker on full-screen/full keyboard laptop.  Plus, it brings up the maps and directions a lot larger! 

Was this tip helpful?  What other solutions do you all use?  Has anyone had any positive or negative experiences with PDAnet?  Any good alternatives?  Love to hear from you!

The Hotshot competition basically consisted robots designed to release balls, harvest them, then “shoot” them through a netted goal.  

Teams:

The teams were (from the Pace site):

Hotshot Challenge Video

Tech for the Masses Videos

Photos of the Robotic Challenge

Furthermore, I took a few photos if anyone would like to check them out:

Final Results:

The results are posted on Pace’s official site and should be up within a couple days.  Click on photo below for results.

Results of Competition

Get Involved: More Information

Head on over to these sites for more information and resources about FIRT, Robotics, and Pace University.

• FIRST Hotshot Challenge @ Pace
• FIRST Robotics Program
• Pace University

There always comes a time when you’re ready to switch to “new digs” in a new area, neighborhood, or city.  Personally, I find it as quite a task to go through a sea of rental websites then, another sea of neighborhood statistics sites as well.  Recently, I’ve been recommended to check out Rent Jungle online and take it for a test-drive to search for apartments.  Being that I may be in the market soon for an apartment of my own – it registered on my Tech Radar.

Rent Jungle is a pretty straight forward and well organized apartment search site that aggregates data from several popular apartment sites.  Searching is broken into straight forward city, state search box or by US State > City > Neighborhood (the neighborhood feature is very cool).  It has some distinct plusses that many other sites do not have such as price comparison, Facebook integration, and Neighborhood reports. 

Usability

While I was using it, I found the site to be well programmed and it ran very fast (I hope it stays that way as it gains in popularity).  For the average Tech for the Masses reader, I think its very user friendly and has a system that isn’t too confusing. If you want more then apartment search, they also offer an online community message board to share experiences or ask renting questions – very nice for first timers.

Tech Factor: Neighborhood & Rent Comparison

Once you get into the city/state of where you are searching a nifty little sidebar appears.  It offers information such as Neighborhood browsing, average rent in this area, Rent vs Own stats, median age, population, families with kids, and average commute times for that area.  The geek in me screams “very cool” on this information being so readily available.  So far, I’ve not seen this on other sites (at least not right in my face and easily viewable).

Another very tech smart tool is the Rent Price Comparison. They offer a nifty price comparison that aggregates data with other renters in your area or particular neighborhoods to see what everyone else is paying. For me being interested in finance as well as tech, this may give a few of us the upper hand in negotiating lower monthly rent.  Nice job RentJungle, Nice job.

Networking

This site relies heavily on networking and using many other established sites.  Now that isn’t entirely a bad thing because you can think of it as they’ve done all the web-surfing for you.  But you need to realize that they are providing a clean front-end that redirects to other websites for detailed property information.

RentJungle also has integrated Facebook/Twitter into their website which I think is a huge boon. Anyone creating sites now should give people the opportunity to share their findings and views with the Facebook or Twitter world.

Overview

RentJungle’s interface is clean and the experience is fast.  However it is not without the standard foray of ads like those of similiar sites.  In general, RentJungle puts a up a nice interface (or front-end) and pulls its data from several other well known sources – such as Aparments.com and Google (for mapping).  It’s apartment search and neighborhood research done easy with minimal invasion by ads.

The bottom line is the fact that it lets you compare rent, gives you neighborhood information/statistics, and displays apartment data from several sources in a well organized interface.  Because of this I will keep this functional website in my Favorites for apartment searches for quite awhile.

What their next step should be?  “HouseJungle.com” – and use the same interface (similiar to Zillow.com) to find available houses in the your desired area.  Did I just hear cha-ching?  Great, because it’s something to consider.

Check out Rent Jungle right here @ Rent Jungle Apartment Search

If anyone else has a review or would like to share their experience, please post your thoughts!

Say what? Pandoras Box?  That’s right.  While in Puerto Rico a friend of mine turned me onto this free Internet radio service called Pandora.  Pandora Internet Radio isn’t like most online radio stations.  It’s different in that you can customize the radio stations to your preference.  Lets just call it Smart Radio – it knows what you like, what you don’t like, and will play according to your tastes.  How does it does this?  Well, a little training of course. By the way, did I mention this service is FREE?

Free Premium Service for Audiophiles

Pandora is easy to use and right off the bat will introduce you to a customized music station based on your favorite genres, artists, or albums. The entire system is free and will work with an account (free) or without one.  I’d just sign-up for an account anyway considering it will save all your settings and preferences for your return visit.  You may ask why this kind of premium service is free and I wondered that myself.  I believe Pandora makes it money off advertising whatever song you’re listening too. 

Smart Internet Radio: Artificial Intelligence for your Music

What makes Pandora so smart?  If you tell Pandora you like 2 genres of music or 2 different artists – then it runs some statistics on its end.  It will basically find similarities in the music that you like and automatically deliver you a custom radio station with your artists plus others that you’ll “statistically” like.  Sound awesome?  It is.  So you better go check it out.  It’s definitely fun, free, and a good time.

Smart Marketing

If you are listening to your radio station, Pandora will show you the Album cover, song title, artist, and album name of the song playing.  Furthermore, you can click a small BUY button if you want to buy the entire album.  For me, even if I do not buy anything, I like the idea of knowing what I am listening too.  It also don’t hurt to be offered a quick-way to buy the entire album via the Internet.  Entirely integrated and Entirely user-friendly – I like it.  Its soon to be a Tech for the Masses favorite!

Check out Pandora here @ www.pandora.com

Readers, how do you access your favorite radio stations and music online?  Any suggestions?

In comes Google Chrome – this is the lightweight, secure, and “feng-shui” interface we’ve all been waiting for.  Let’s break it down in layman’s terms.

Chrome being a Lightweight Browser:

You’ve opened up Internet Explorer and felt how slow it is, how laggy, and how long it takes to load things like add-ons before actually bringing up your Homepage.  That is because IE has so much “bloat ware” associated with it (heck, it is bloat ware itself) that it takes longer to start up and just get to a webpage.  Sure, its the most popular browser but that is only because Microsoft has the Operating System market share and they build Internet Explorer into Windows.

When I say Chrome is lightweight, I mean, it isn’t loaded with bloat and it starts up VERY fast.  Furthermore, when you surf to a webpage, it comes up even quicker and loads videos/photos readily.  If it needs an add-on like Java or Flash, you can download – and it don’t bog down the browser.  So far, every site that I want has loaded fast and properly – meaning not too many loading errors.  It also plays nice with Facebook and modern Web 2.0 websites.

Bottom Line: Want speed in your internet surfing and decreased load times?  Chrome has it.

Chrome being a Secure Browser

I wont make any blanket statement saying that Chrome is invulnerable to virus, adware, and spyware.  But I will tell you some simple basics.  Internet Explorer has the most market-share, followed probably by Firefox, and now there is Google Chrome.  Realistically, which browser do you think software vendors, hackers, and virus/spyware programmers are going to target?  The ones with the largest market share.  This is apparent in Internet Explorer, as it is patched on a regular basis because of new vulnerabilities.  It’s well known for it actually.

Chrome being completely new and having no relation to Internet Explorer, makes it a secure browser in its own by completely eliminating 90% of vulnerabilities found in other browsers, such as Internet Explorer.  That is good news for those of you worried about spyware, identity theft, and malicious scripts being run from your browser.

Chrome being a Feng-shui Browser

Maybe I should of just say, simple interface but Feng Shui sounds better.  Basically, everything you need is right where it needs to be. More important, right where it feels it should be.  You have your tabs, address bar, favorites, and scroll bars.  Anything you may need, will become available such as site suggestions or pop-ups to install add-ons.

Give Google Chrome a Try: http://www.google.com/chrome

~ James

However, this can be used easily by just about anyone to connect to their home pc (or work PC) from anywhere in the world.  Please note, your systems administrator may not allow you to install this on your work PC though for security reasons.  But for your home PC, its invaluable.  Heck, nowadays you can pretty much get to your home PC from your iPhone or Blackberry!

Interested in Remote Access? Well…

Who should use this

Business: As an IT Professional, I use this profusely to monitor several servers in different places.  I also use it to access my own home computer.  If you do not want to use clunky VPN setups and configurations in business, just to get access to a server – then use LogMeIn.  Besides, it’s free anyways even if you use it for business.  Although the business packages aren’t expensive and have some nice features.

Personal: For you addicted at-homers, you too can use LogMeIn.  If you’re away and want to check your computer, you can do so with LogMeIn pretty easily.  It’s pretty painless even for newbie’s.

Tech Support:  I’ve seen several people add quite a few pcs to their account in an attempt to provide dirt-cheap remote desktop support.  This does work.  Personally. I have my friends and parents computers on my account, so I can fix any annoying problems from time to time.  Being in the Caribbean makes it difficult to fix family and friends computers back in the US!

Why it’s so great!

Hands down – Number 1: It’s easy to use!

The 2nd reason:  Easy Setup – It blasts through all firewalls and network configurations by using LogMeIn servers as an intermediary.  No more port-forwarding or making special rules in your router to accommodate for this software.  Most remote access software is a pain because of intricate network configurations – LogMeIn solves that by using their secure servers as a middle-man and both the client and host computers meet right in the middle.  Pretty awesome huh?

Number 3:  Yes it is secure.  They use 256bit encryption when sending any data back and forth not to mention SSL.  For those of you that don’t know what that means – it mean’s its a good thing! Entirely unlikely any hacker could be snooping your business.

Like it?  Go Sign-Up

Again, it’s free. What can it hurt? And you can access your servers or PC’s from anywhere with a laptop and an internet connection.  Check out their site.

http://www.logmein.com

Tutorial of LogMeIn

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea5snGizfCs

Tech Blog PCMech posted a nice YouTube video on the basics of LogMeIn.  You should definitely check it out.

Have you used LogMeIn? Have an alternative or easier solution? Let us know

Related Blog’s on the Topic: GoToMyPc vs LogMeIn – LogMeIn coming to Blackberry Storm – AskTheAdmin – Review on LogMeIn

Big Love to Microsoft for this hidden yet interactive feature they built-in into Windows Live Messenger.  Basically, by changing your display name in MSN you can donate to a charity of your choice for each message you send.  Sounds great doesn’t it?  And it doesn’t cost you a penny but you can still feel less guilty about spending hours chatting with your friends.

Sound cool and want to sign up?  Read On…

How it works – from the Microsoft Site:

The i’m Initiative from Microsoft® makes helping social causes easy. Every time you use Windows Live™ Messenger or Windows Live Hotmail®, our free webmail service, we’ll share a portion of our advertising revenue with the cause you choose from among our partner social cause organizations. Exactly how much will we share with our partner causes? Well, that’s up to you and the growing masses of i’m Initiative users. The more messages you send, the more we give.

The charities currently offered are:

• The American Red Cross
• National AIDS Fund
• NineMillion – UN Refugee Agency
• Sierra Club
• StopGlobalWarming.org
• Boys & Girls Clubs of America
• The Humane Society
• National Multiple Sclerosis Society
• UNICEF
• Susan G Komen for the Breast Cancer Cure

How to Sign-Up:

Get started by checking out: http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/Home/ then go to their “How to Join” section and follow the instructions.

It’s really really easy, trust me!

How I cheated but who cares – It’s good anyway right?

Anyone that has me on Messenger sees my name like this:

Most people set it up to only show one IM in their name.  Guess what?  Microsoft doesn’t apparently limit the amount of organizations you want to donate to!  So go ahead and add more!  Add them all if you want to.

My settings look like this under display name:

*sierra James *komen

Doing so enables me to have two activated. Great stuff!  Anyway, now that you all know about it – go ahead and change your display name.

Start giving something back other than giving yourself carpal tunnel from all that IMing you have been doing!

- James

Related Blog’s on the Topic:  A – B – C

That’s right, I said it.  After many hours of teaching myself Vista in personal and business environments I’ve almost given up.  I really wanted to like Vista.  It had a clean looking interface and looked modern.  However, this obviously is at the expense of real processing power.

Over time, the more you use a computer you’ll probably notice that you care a lot less about the graphics in your Operating System then about Performance.  For me, in the past couple years Vista has failed miserably in the performance arena.

As a IT Professional, there were some things I did like about Vista and these are it:

• Clean Interface
• After a Windows update is handed down from the server – it would install, log-off, reboot, then log back in with all your old Windows open.  This was pretty nifty and end-users rarely noticed the update.
• Gadget Sidebar – There were some nifty little tools you can use in there.

BLOG UPDATE – July 1st 2009! Guess what? Windows 7 is now available for Pre-Order!  Check out the link below

What I hate about Vista as an IT Professional:

• Upon booting in Safe mode you aren’t given a choice of the default Administrator account. If someone forgets their password, you need to get a boot-disk utility to unlock the administrator password!  XP made this so much easier.
• Constant crashing of Apps.  Sure it’s great that they only crash inside the app, and not the entire OS.  But this isn’t good enough.
• Will they ever fix the Printing Preferences crash bug?  I administrate about 75 computers and every single one of them does it, including anyone’s laptops they give me.
• Resource Hog:  Vista uses up so much ram and resources it’s ridiculous.  This severely slows down the computer.

Stay with XP

Thank you Microsoft for making it impossible for average users to get PCs with Windows XP on it.  We’re all stuck with buying Vista on our PCs for the most part.  If you have a choice or can get the “downgrade license”, please do so.  Then DOWNGRADE to Windows XP.

Windows XP at this point in time is probably the most stable Operating System Microsoft ever had.  It interacts well with servers as well as makes efficient use of resources.  If you take a laptop that had Vista installed on it then install XP – you’ll immediately see the speed difference.

Sorry Microsoft, but you did drop the ball with Windows Vista.  Server 2008 is another story – so far I’ve had good experiences with it.

Please Note:  Windows XP will have a direct upgrade path to Windows 7!  It was cited here: Microsoft: Windows XP to Windows 7 Upgrade and PC World: Upgrade Path for XP to Windows 7

Windows 7 So far

Personally, I haven’t had a chance to try it out.  However, what I’ve heard from my colleagues in the field is that it’s everything they wanted Vista to be, with the performance of Windows XP.  I hear it even has some touch-screen capabilities, that’s pretty neat.  Here’s a list of new features also: Windows 7 Features

That it’ for my gripe session.  Love to hear yours! Anyone else out there had their hands on Windows 7?  What do you think?

Related Blog’s on the Topic: Computer Pros say wait for Windows 7 – Avoid Vista – Should you wait for Windows 7