Category: Internet

Revision3’s Release Results In Roku Rumors

Internet, Netflix, Roku, Television

Yesterday, Revision3 announced that they will have a "channel" on Roku boxes. If you don’t already know, Roku is a small, $99 set top box that can play Netflix Instant Queue movies, Amazon VOD movies and even Major League Baseball games. Roku had promised 10 new channels announced by the end of the year. MLB was one of them. Blip.TV was a second. Revision3 becomes the third. However, during the video demonstration of Revision3 on Roku, I noticed something odd. Here’s a screen capture, tell me if you notice it too.  (Click the image to enlarge it.)

Did you notice the Pandora and Flickr channels?  If these are released, then you might soon be able to listen to your Pandora music and browse photos by family and friends via the Roku.  These would be channels four and five.  Add in a rumored YouTube channel and we might have six.  It remains to be seen what other channels will come up, but I for one am excited at the future prospects of Roku!

Aloha Friday: Ten Years With My Angel

Aloha Friday, B, Internet, Life

Ten years ago tomorrow, I was just getting back from Rosh Hashana services. I wasn’t tired enough to go to sleep, so I decided to log onto Yahoo Chat and talk with a few people. Little did I know that B was in the same chat room. Actually, B didn’t even know she was in the same chat room. She thought that the window was closed. When she saw it was open, and that I was signed in, she checked my profile. A change I made a few weeks back – adding the text “Nice Jewish Boy looking for Nice Jewish Girl” – led B to contact me. Right from our initial chatting, we clicked. I didn’t know at the time that I would fall in love and marry her, but I definitely knew that there was something special about this “Angel Forever.”

My Aloha Friday question is: Have you ever met anyone in person that you had first met online? Do you feel that meeting people online lets you get to know them better than meeting them in person?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha Friday by Kailani at An Island Life

Aloha #4

Beware the Twitter Follower Scam

Internet, Twitter

While browsing through various tweets, I saw this one. Intrigued, I clicked through. There, I was presented with a video explaining how, if I joined this website, I would get thousands of followers *AND* get paid. Of course, my “scam alert” sirens went off immediately. Here’s the basic run down. First, I would give them my Twitter username and password. (*siren blares*) After that, everyone who had previously joined the system would be automatically set to follow me and I would be set to follow all of them. Next, for each person that I convinced to join, I would be paid $10 per month per user you convince to join. (*siren blares*) And how much for this “wonderful opportunity”? Only $1. (*siren stops blaring but only because it has overloaded and exploded in a humongous fireball*)

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Cutting The Cable Cord

Internet, Money, Netflix, Roku, Technology, Television

With the economy the way it is, everyone is looking for ways to save money. For awhile now, I’ve thought about how much our cable TV costs us per month and whether/how we would do without it. We currently have Time Warner Cable’s All-In-One package (Internet, Phone and Cable) with two boxes. One is a DVR and one is a plain cable box. The phone line and Internet we would need to keep. (Ok, technically we could cut our land line and go cell phone only, but that’s a thought experiment for another day.) Switching to Time Warner’s “Surf & Talk” plan would save us about $65 per month.

Of course, our cable TV doesn’t go unwatched every day. NHL and JSL watch it. B watches it. I watch it. So we can’t just rip out the cable line and pocket the monthly savings. Some kind of entertainment is going to need to replace the cable TV loss at or below the cost of cable TV. In doing research on this, here are some of the options I’ve come up with:

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Spotlight on PR

Blogging, Internet

When I started blogging, I looked at other blogs to see what other Daddy (and Mommy) bloggers were doing. One thing that interested me was product reviews. When I worked for a computer magazine, I had the chance to do a few hardware and software reviews and I loved it. The chance to try a new product out, see how good it was and write a balanced article detailing the product’s strengths and weaknesses just appealed to me. Unfortunately, I had no clue how to connect with anyone to start reviewing products.

Enter Tara from Feels Like Home and Adreinne from Adrienne’s House. They have started “Spotlight on PR” to help bloggers connect with PR professionals. I would like to thank both of them for their efforts (as well as my wife for alerting me to this.)

Spotlight on PR

A big welcome to everyone just stopping by from Spotlight on PR. My name is TechyDad. Ok, it’s not really TechyDad, but I prefer to keep a measure of anonymity online. Back in the young and innocent days of the web, I used my real name when posting online. After being married and having two wonderful children, however, I began to question the wisdom of posting my full name and real city of residence all over the place. My wife, TheAngelForever, had started a blog a few years back and kept herself anonymous so I decided to follow suit. Thus, TechyDad was born.

Despite my short time blogging under the TechyDad name, I’m an old-school ‘Net user from way back. I remember using Gopher back in college on my college’s VAX computers. (To those who don’t know what I just said, Gopher was a pre-web information network and VAX were old text-only terminal computers.) I’m a web developer by trade, but also enjoy cooking, photography, gardening, reading, writing and a lot of other eclectic hobbies. As I said before, I’m married to TheAngelForever and we have two wonderful sons. NHL is almost 6 (just 10 days to go as I write this) and JSL is 2.

My blog, like myself, is an eclectic mix. One post may be about a programming project I’m working on. The next might be about a minigolfing trip with NHL. The one after that might be about copyright law and the one following that might be about a new gadget I’m drooling over. To paraphrase Forrest Gump: My blog is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.

I’m always interested in new projects and would love to hear from people with ideas for product reviews, interviews or pretty much anything else. You can contact me via e-mail at TechyDad at TechyDad dot com or by using the “Contact Me” link at the top of this page. In addition, you can check out the “About” link for more information about me. (Though, to be honest, I copied a lot of that information into this blog post.) I look forward to starting some interesting conversations.

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