Ryan & Amanda Keefer's Personal Site: Cycling, Family, Tech, Music, Software & Game Reviews, etc.
// February 3rd, 2011 // No Comments » // Internet / Web
Two little HTML5/JavaScript auditory experiments showed up this week — at least in front of my eyes. Thought I’d share them with you all who hadn’t come across them yet either. While HTML5 and JavaScript are typically more of subject matters these days addressed over at my other blog, Keefr.com, I thought the little quirky interactive audio demos felt better at home here on Keefer Madness.
// February 2nd, 2011 // 5 Comments » // Computers, Internet / Web, Software
Mozy’s been our offsite backup of choice — cheap at $5 a month. But this is just lame. I read about this on Lifehacker. It was nice of them to email customers for a heads up.
Plans are as follows:
$5.99/mo – 50 GB (1 computer)
$9.99/mo – 125GB (up to 3 computers)
An additional 20GB of storage is $2.00/mo.
We’ve currently got about 140GB backed up on there, meaning we’re looking at going from $5 a month, to about $12 a month.
Might be a good catalyst to go through iPhoto and get rid of a lot of unneeded/crappy photos. It might also be time to be more selective about what we’re actually backing up offsite. We’ll see how much we can cull. If that doesn’t get us enough, might be time to look for a new offsite backup solution. Thoughts?
// January 29th, 2011 // No Comments » // Internet / Web, Video
I’ve seem this rumor floating around a couple places today on the Web. Though it’s very possible this holds as much validity as the [sadly] wrong rumor that Amazon was going to give Kindles to its Amazon Prime members, I hope both eventually come true!.
Video streaming from Amazon would be fine, but I still think we’d hold onto our Netflix account, as Netflix streams 720p to both our Apple TV and TiVo HD, and the interface on both those devices is top-notch. But hopefully Amazon’s selection would include some stuff Netflix didn’t have, and vice-versa. The other question is what devices would Amazon stream to? I’m guessing since all the Series 2+ TiVo boxes can already stream Amazon content, they’d be on board. AppleTV and Xbox 360 support would be great as well.
As an aside, we’ve had an Amazon Prime membership going on over two years, and have thoroughly gotten our money worth out of it just getting diapers, other baby supplies and the occasional random electronic products and movies.
Amazon Rolling Out Netflix-Like Unlimited Video Streaming for Prime Subscribers?
// January 26th, 2011 // No Comments » // Internet / Web, Local (Raleigh Durham)
Looking forward to this, but not looking forward to being an early adopter to anything Time Warner Cable related. 50 Mbps downstream and 5 Mbps upstream is impressive though and would sure make uploading the daily off-site backups speedy. We already go with TWC’s upsell RoadRunner Turbo, but could probably be enticed to go up to Wideband, especially if we were allowed a trial period to test actual speeds.
// September 28th, 2010 // No Comments » // Internet / Web
Oh man, this one saddens me. By far, this is the most useful and most used of all my Firefox plugins. I’m really sorry to see them go, as they’ve been reliable and easy to use. They started out as FoxMarks, but later rebranded as they moved to syncing cover other browsers, including Apple’s Safari.
Luckily, us Firefox users aren’t totally out in the cold, as Mozilla has their own syncing service add-on now — Firefox Sync that will sync passwords, along with history, tabs, etc. It obviously doesn’t work with other additional browsers (and doesn’t seem to be compatible with the Mozilla-based Flock (though they’re moving towards WebKit anyway).
A list of syncing alternatives to utilize after Xmarks goes away is listed here.
The full story on the history and the sad demise of the service can be found on the Xmarks blog.
// September 27th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Internet / Web
I absolutely love this list. Seeing as I’m a near-daily blogger here at Keefer Madness and over at Keefr.com (and the only author at both), plus an occasional contributor for the iContact blog (My entries here). Coming up with constant content for any or all three of those sources can be daunting, especially when there’s a lull in experiences in daily life to talk about. My number one source for finding topics to comment on and write about isn’t on the list, though a commenter on the article mentions it — RSS feeds. If you haven’t used RSS feeds, I highly recommend it as a way to skim through a lot of articles and web sites in a very quick and efficient way. I use Google Reader and organize my RSS feeds there into categories such as Apple, deals, green, music, sports and tech.
Their ideas on using Google Alerts is great — especially if you have a blog with a very focused topic. Being a huge TiVo fanboy, I’ve had Google news alerts for years on the keyword TiVo. While, you’ll end up getting duplicate articles/subjects, if you setup your alerts for realtime, you’ll often get them in your inbox before you stumble on them on the web, or even your RSS feeds.
Another suggestion I have for topics are reviews. That’s a place I’m striving to expand on Keefer Madness. As a cyclist, I’m looking to review bicycling products to compliment the other categories of reviews I already have: video games, movies, etc., which is one of the first areas my web site was built upon.
// September 15th, 2010 // No Comments » // Internet / Web, Local (Raleigh Durham), Tech
Like many suburban areas of the United State, Durham, North Carolina has limited options when it comes to Internet options. It’s basically DSL from Verizon or cable Internet from Time Warner Cable (RoadRunner). It’s not really an option. Time Warner sucks as a company, but the speed is much better than DSL. Sadly, in this day and age of larger and larger files and more reliance on the Internet, the speed just isn’t enough.
// September 14th, 2010 // No Comments » // Film, Internet / Web
Man, this list couldn’t have come at a better time. Our household recently re-upped our subscription to Netflix as our TiVos have become slim pickin’s these days. The streaming of movies and shows via Netflix is great — if you can find something you actually want to watch. There’s a ton of crap on there, and seemingly no rhyme or reason as to why some older films and shows are available, while others are only available as traditional disc rentals.
Gizmodo created a nice list of 55 comedies available to watch Instantly on your Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii, iPad, iPhone, TiVo HD, supported blu-ray player, etc. etc. Whew! Isn’t it cool how many devices now can hook up to Netflix’s streaming library? I welcome the day when Netflix is in fact NET flix — where they can stream everything and mail nothing.
// August 30th, 2010 // No Comments » // Internet / Web, Tech
While I don’t utilize it to its full potential, nor often enough, Google Voice is great. Now with it in Gmail, it becomes even more valuable in my book. I’m in Gmail a ton, so having the phone call option there is pretty handy. Below is a compilation of tips to take full advantage of this new feature.
My two favorites of Google Voice by the way are the fact that I can have multiple phones ring depending on the time of day and/or who is calling. I also like the automatic voicemail transcriptions, though they’re still working on the accuracy of those.
Eight Clever Ways to Take Advantage of Free Calling in Gmail
// August 18th, 2010 // No Comments » // Computers, Internet / Web
Now that I’ve got a new machine at home, I’ve got iMovie on my computer and iPhone, and we’ve got a couple sources for recording high res video, I see myself recording more video — mainly of our little 11 month old who’s now mobile and getting into everything. To supplement the video, and add a little ambiance, background sound effects can really help polish your video projects. Thanks to Lifehacker, I stubbled onto the Freesound Project, which has a bunch of creative commons-licensed sounds for you to use on a whim.
Find Creative Commons Licensed Sound Effects at The Freesound Project
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