Going Boldly Into the Restricted Era: Streaming Video (Part 1)

Comcast just recently became the first major Internet Service Provider (ISP) to put a cap on bandwidth usage for Internet users. Bandwidth can be thought of like a data plan: you use kilobytes or megabytes to send data from your computer and to receive data on your computer. Whether you’re downloading music or just surfing the ‘Net, you’re using your bandwidth. The reason some websites take longer to load than others is often a result of the bandwidth required to load the page.

The cap that Comcast put on bandwidth is 250GB, which isn’t really going to affect the casual web-browser. The people it will hit, and the ones it intends to hit, are the Internet power-users who use the Web for everything from checking email to downloading movies.

Because of this, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time looking into ways to reduce my Web footprint, and use less data on the Internet. I’ve found some great stuff, and am constantly finding more- over the next few weeks, I’m going to share some of them with you.

Movie downloads, in particular, are going to have to take a hit as more and more ISP’s begin to limit the bandwidth we can use. This means that instead of downloading videos, streaming them is going to become the way to watch movies. As broadband speed has gotten faster, watching videos on sites like YouTube has gotten easier and easier, to the point where you don’t notice it’s streaming.

If YouTube’s not enough, though, there’s a plethora of sites out there for streaming TV shows and movies. Some are more, shall we say, legal, than others, but all are powerful. For a massive list of hundreds of sites streaming movies, check out Gax Online’s list here.

If you don’t have time to wade through that many, though, there are three great ones that have found permanent places in my bookmarks. I’ve written about another personal favorite here, but these are some great newcomers. These are all sites that simply direct you to watch the video on other sites, which has two consequences: they can host a ton more videos, and the videos can go away without anyone noticing. That said, here are my new favorites:

TV-Links (here): Offers download links, as well as places to watch the movie online. The site’s a bit slow, as are a lot of the ones it redirects to, but the database is huge. I also like that it links to IMDB, so you can learn about the movie or TV show.

Side Reel (here): If all you want is download links, this one’s going to seem crowded. It has, though, a lot of reviews and suggestions for good shows, as well as news and forums relating to shows and movies. A cross between TV.com and TV-Links, it’s a really useful site with a TON of alternative links to shows and movies.

SurfTheChannel (here): Much the same as the previous two, except for one nice feature- the videos have a sidebar showing download links, alternative links, and information about the show or movie. No back-and-forthing to get the right link, it’s all right there. I never thought about it, but it’s really useful.

These are just a few of the sites that have sprung up. There are the network-supported sites that are blossoming, but those are for another day. If you want your video fix without the RIAA after you, or without downloading huge files, these are great places to start.

Where do you watch videos online? Let me know in the comments.

Welcome!

To all those coming here from What We’re Into, thanks for sticking with us! This platform (we’re on WordPress now) seems to be working better, and can acommodate everything as we continue to grow. Make sure to bookmark the new link, and stick around! Content won’t change, we’ll keep doing what we’re doing.

What do you think of the new site? Let me know in the comments.

Need Some Wi-Fi?

Rainy Day

I live on my laptop. Whether I’m out trying to get some work done, or posting here, I rarely seem to be in the same place for very long.

All that means, though, I’m at the mercy of the Wi-Fi hotspots nearby. There’s the T-Mobile Hotspots, yeah, but I’m not one of those “pay for things” guys. So, I find myself always wandering around, laptop in my hand, hoping to pick up a Wi-Fi signal.

To help me look like less of a doofus, there’s OpenWifiSpots. OpenWifiSpots is a Google-Maps for free Wi-Fi. If you find it, tell the site, and it maps out places near you, organized by address as well as type of place. In New York, want a steak and some Wi-Fi? You’ve got 14 options. In St. Paul, in the mood for some mall people watching/Wi-Fi? Fifth Street Center.

You can enter your address, to find the places nearest you. Enter your desired kind of place, and you might have to go a little further, but you’ll get somewhere. If you use the site, make sure to go back and verify that Wi-Fi is still free. Takes but a mouse click, and helps some people out.

For right now, OpenWifiSpots has spots in about every major city you can think of, plus hundreds of towns and cities across the country. It’s growing and growing, and is a well-designed site. My only issue was that there wasn’t an obvious way to get directions to your location. The address was obvious, but it appeared you’d have to go to the real Google Maps site to get directions.

If you want to just wander, The Simple Dollar has a great list of 10 chains that offer free Wi-Fi. Chances are, there’s one of these around (McDonalds and Panera are pretty ubiquitous) and you can get some food and some Wi-Fi. The list of chains is here.

For a more robust search, though, OpenWifiSpot’s the place to go. Check it out here.

Online Tech Support That Actually Helps

Explore

When your tech gadgets go wrong on you- and I say when, not if- you’ll inevitably be looking for tech support from the manufacturer. When they fail you- again, when- you’ll turn to Google. This is a long, arduous process that is helpful for few and fun for none.

FixYa, a growing social tech support site, wants to help. FixYa’s goal is to be a one-stop support site for all manner of technological devices. They’ve compiled manuals, tips and tricks, and a forum for asking and solving questions. If you ask a question, it will be answered by one of FixYa’s “experts,” who are paid for their knowledge, and are usually right on. There’s a rating service in which you rate the helpfulness and accuracy of a particular solution, so you can figure out who really does know what they’re talking about.

There are a number of ways to navigate the site. You can ask a question from the front page, and FixYa tries to find people who’ve asked similar questions to yours. Poke through, and you can find a lot of solutions. Different experts will often answer the same question, and that’s when you want to pay particular attention to their ratings. If you don’t find anything there, you click “let one of your experts solve your problem!” As I write this, FixYa has 161 experts online, apparently just waiting to solve my problem. You ask your question, and FixYa lets you know when your answer is ready. Looking through, most answers are pretty good, save the few obnoxious people who call themselves experts.

If you don’t want to ask a question, you can just type in your product name. You’ll get common questions asked, questions needing to be answered, tips and tricks for your device, and then the necessary advertisements. The ads that are there, though, are unobtrusive and really didn’t bother me.

The neat thing about FixYa is that it’s the place to start, regardless of your problem. You can create an account and store all the products you own, and then go hunting when one breaks. As more people come on, more people ask and answer questions, it can be a really useful tool. It seems there’s no one on Earth satisfied with the existing tech support for the gadget world, and FixYa’s about the best option I’ve found out there.

Find FixYa here, and apply to be a paid expert here.

Two Ways to Fax Without a Fax Machine

Rainy Day

For most people, a fax machine remains the fastest way to send something. Faster than snail mail, yet more malleable than email, faxes are one of the most expedient technologies most people still use.

There are, however, a lot of ways to fax someone from a more high-tech alternative. Online fax services save you the need to have a fax machine, a fax line, and all the headaches that come with each one. Two of them have become favorites of mine, and I wanted to share them with you.

FaxZero (here) (Updated: The link’s correct now.)
FaxZero is a perfect way to send small, short .pdf and .doc documents to fax machines. All you have to do is supply an email address and have a document fewer than three pages long, and FaxZero will fax it for free. There’s an ad on the cover page of the fax, but that seems like a small price to pay. When you want to send a fax, you have to verify your email address each time, which is how FaxZero gets away with not making you register. It’s a bit of a pain, but really not so bad. There’s also a limit of two faxes per day. If you want to send more, or a longer fax, you can spend $1.99 and get unlimited ad-free faxes up to 15 pages long. Faxes can be sent to the US, Puerto Rico and Canada, which certainly covers my faxing needs. It’s a bare-bones service, but is perfect for faxing things like forms and applications. It works extremely well, too, from my own experience.

Drop.Io Fax (here)
Drop.io is an incredibly useful tool for more things than fax, but since we’re talking about faxing, I’ll keep it there. Drop.io’s beauty is its simplicity: you upload a file through any number of different tactics, and then enter the number to fax it to. Drop.io faxes it to any number you specify. Period. It’s that simple. I’ll talk later about all the other things Drop.io can do, but for fax it’s dead simple. It can also receive faxes, which means you can have more of a conversation instead of just a one-way transmission. Drop.io’s sophistication and popularity mean it has some staying power, and it’s still free to you. It does require an account and is US only at the moment, but if you are even a semi-frequent faxer, Drop.io’s a must-have tool.

I find myself frequently needing to send faxes, but almost never within reach of a fax machine. Having a way to fax someone online makes my life easier, saves some trees, and saves me quite a bit of money as well. These options can truly replace your fax machine, and you’ll be glad for it- at least I was!

The Music of the Web

Listen

I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog discussing music. I’m a big music junkie, but it doesn’t really seem like the direction we’re going to go here, as we continue to be more Web-focused. I know, there have been a number of changes here in our infancy, but we really seem to have found a niche, and I think we’re sticking with it. Thus, there won’t be as much music on the site anymore.

Not wanting to leave you high and dry, I’m going to show you into my world of music. These are the blogs, websites and ways I get the music and the recommendations that I share with you guys, and I want you all to see them too. There are a lot, but I’ve narrowed them down to the best sources I’ve come across of great music on the Internet.

Music Is the Heart of Our Soul (here)
Easily the most prolific of the blogs I read, Vicki and co. post tons of videos, song downloads, new albums before they come out, and all kinds of music from every genre. You may not like some of the music, but it’s diverse enough that you’ll find some good stuff.

StereoGum (here)
Stereogum hits a lot of underground music, covers, and concerts. News, downloads and live cuts all fill the blog, and it’s a cool look into the world of music you may not know about.

Jon-Wire (here)
Jon-Wire and Music is the Heart of Our Soul draw a lot from each other, and both are great places to go for popular music. Jon has a knack for finding music before it comes out, and posts albums he’s taken a liking to. He just leaked the New Kids on the Block album, and has a lot of good popular stuff.

I am Fuel, You are Friends (here)
Big concert junkies, I am Fuel is a great places to go to find pictures of your favorite band in concert, as well as some awesome recordings of their live stuff. Tour info, deep live cuts, all things concerts- Fuel Friends has you covered.

Rolling Stone: Breaking (here)
Though I hate their website for reasons I can’t figure out, the Rolling Stone breaking blog has some fantastic artists you’ve never heard of. They’re a great place to start if you want to be ahead of the popular music curve, especially given the sway RS has with who’s popular.

The Music Slut (here)
Harmless, despite the name, the Music Slut, like Stereogum, has a finger on the underground music world. Some popular stuff, some news, some interviews, some downloads, some videos- the world of music is inside the Music Slut, as long as you’re not a Jonas Brothers fan.

Between those blogs, Torrenting (I use BitLord, here, to download, and LookTorrent, here, to find. More torrent info is here) and CDs, that’s where my music comes from. Amazon has a great recommendations engine on their site which helps me find some new stuff, and the iTunes recommendations have gotten better.

If those don’t give you your fill, look in the “Affiliates” section of any of the sites above for a huge list of other music blogs.

Listen away!

Journal Writing 2.0

Use

Over the last few years, pen and paper is beginning to become a less-used commodity. Though no one is truly paperless, more and more things are making the switch “into the cloud,” as part of the online community.

For me, at least, journal writing is something I used to do with pen and paper (and a Care Bears diary with a lock. I mean…) but has somewhat fallen by the wayside since I’ve made the switch to primarily using a computer. I spend too much time in front of the computer, and not enough writing in a real diary.

That got me wondering: is there a place where you can keep a diary online? A journal, either in a traditional form or a more Web-friendly version. In my searching, I found a huge number of options. After weeding through them, here are some of the best I’ve found.

A disclaimer: I didn’t include blogs, or services like Twitter, or even note-taking applications. Those can all be used as journals, but I wanted to primarily focus on those applications that are meant to be used exclusively as journals, diaries or scrapbooks.

The Best One’s I’ve Found

Diary.com (here)
This is sort of a micro-diary site. Entries can be up to 1,000 characters long- this is a deal-breaker for those looking to write long journal entries, but fine for those wanting to keep a record of things. You can enter a URL of a video, or an image, and Diary.com pulls it into your diary. Diaries can be private or public, and you can have as many diaries as you want. For someone wanting to hold on to links, pictures, etc. Diary.com’s a great choice. More of a scrapbook than a diary, Diary.com is a solid way to keep little online mementos.

Tumblr (here)
Tumblr is something of a blog/journal/scrapbook hybrid. With Tumblr, you can add a huge number of different things- chats, quotes, photos, text, videos, etc. Your information is public, more like a blog, but posts are much shorter- a thought, a picture, a video. You can post through an email, or on your phone, from your IM, basically any place you can think of. For me, the most natural way to use this as a diary is as an idea-journal. If something hits you, inspires you, or comes to your head, send it to Tumblr as a post. It’s a nicely put together, free site that will store all the short, spurted musings of your head

LiveJournal (here)
Also in the hybrid vein, LiveJournal is probably the most popular of the ones I’m including here. LiveJournal can be totally private, or shared with your friends, or totally public- this allows you to choose the way it looks. You can design it in a huge number of ways (Care Bears, anyone?), and support exists for mobile posting through voice, email and text. You can have friends that you get updates about, forming a mini-RSS feed.

Penzu (here)
More of a traditional journal, the thing I love about Penzu is how hard it tries to look like a pen-and-paper journal. You log in, and your journal is presented to you, complete with lined paper. You can search through your journal (a really useful feature), add images, and even write an entry without signing in. You’ll have to sign in to save it, but if you have a sudden urge to write, go for it! Entries are saved as you write, so you’ll never lose anything. Print entries, share single entries or entire journals, or just keep your journal in the cloud. Penzu is the one of these that has really stuck with me, and it’s become my daily journal. My only worry is not being able to save entries locally- what happens if Penzu goes away?

There are many more options out there- Diaryland, Xanga, OpenDiary, to name a few. I’ve tried a bunch of them, a few more than others, and the ones above were the ones I saw the most potential in. I loved keeping a journal, and online journals make doing it a lot easier for me.

Do you journal? Do you use pen and paper, or online? Why?

Got Questions? Get ChaCha

Use

I’ve talked briefly about ChaCha before (here), but it’s a service that’s definitely worth a real mention, given all the help it’s been to me.

ChaCha is a service that lets you call, text, or Twit a question to them, and then real-live people answer you. Guides are paid by the answer, and for the most part are very good.

When you’re at your computer, Wikipedia is a great tool for answering any questions and doing research, but what about when you’re out? ChaCha wants to help.

Their most basic service is simple question answering. You can text your question to 242242 (ChaCha), call 1 (800) 224-2242 (2ChaCha), or send them a Twitter message. You’ll receive an answer, by text message, within just a few minutes. For your first question, you’ll get a confirmation text message, but afterwards the only thing you’ll receive is the answer and a link to your conversation (I guess in case you forgot your question…)

For example: I called the number, listened to the nice computer lady, and asked “How long has Coke been around?” before hanging up the phone. I got a text message welcoming me to ChaCha, and then, about two minutes later, my answer: “Coca-Cola has been around for 122 years! Coke was invented by Doctor John Pemberton, a pharmacist from Atlanta, Georgia in 1886.”

I texted the exact same question to ChaCha, and got my response in a couple of minutes: “In May of 1886 Coca-Cola was invented.” I tried it through Twitter, waited 15 minutes, and then gave up. I guess Twitter at your own risk.

The human aspect of ChaCha makes it a little bit iffy to use, as the quality of the service is dependent on the people working there. I’ve generally found answers to be extremely helpful, though, and have loved using the service.

If you ask questions about your specific place, ChaCha wants to help you out. Send a text with “set loc whereeveryouare” to ChaCha, and they can answer questions specific to where you are.

If you don’t have any questions, ChaCha’s still got some love for you. “Send me a joke” gets a funny joke from ChaCha. My knee-slapper? “There was this Eskimo girl who spent the night with her boyfriend. Next morning she found out she was 6 months pregnant.” You decide.

Weather can be found easily with a text saying “w yourlocation”. You can check stocks too, but I don’t really see the draw there.

ChaCha’s out to replace the Google SMS feature, and is doing a pretty good job. The service is free, only applicable to your regular cell carrier’s charges. As TechCrunch has pointed out before (here), ChaCha’s money-making potential may not be high, but while they’re around, ChaCha is a great way to win bets, stay entertained, and answer all of your questions. There are those who’ve had bad experiences, but for a free service, ChaCha has served me pretty well.

CNBC and the Wall Street Journal gave ChaCha some love, if you want to check it out. The video is here.

Also- it’s a fun way to make a little bit of money, if you want to be a guide. Apply here.

Video-ify Yourself Better

Watch

When I first decided to write this post, I did a bit of searching: how many videos are there on the Internet? That’s a number I couldn’t find, but I did come across some pretty staggering data:

• In March 2008, 11.5 BILLION videos were watched by U.S. Internet users alone. 1 month, 1 nation, 11.5 billion views.
• Those numbers broke down as such- 139 million viewers watching 83 videos apiece.
• The average online video viewer watches 235 minutes of video per month

(Source: Comscore, here)

Long story short, online video accounts for a huge portion of time spent by Internet users, both in the United States and abroad. There are, however, things about online video I truly hate, and I’m going to help you avoid them.

The thing I dislike the most about online video is that it is the only thing I can do. Sites like YouTube, Google Video and the like force you to single-task. I can’t start a video and then go somewhere else, or multi-task with another site while I’m watching the video. Doing so would require a new window, resizing, etc.- just a pain. To solve this, I’ve found a great Firefox extension called YouPlayer. Essentially what YouPlayer does is play your videos in the sidebar. MakeUseOf, one of my favorite blogs, did a great piece about YouPlayer that you can read here.

I love YouPlayer for two reasons: One, the fact that videos play in the sidebar. That allows you to do other things while your videos play, and it reserves a set portion of the screen for the video while allowing you to use the rest of the screen for other things. The second thing that sold me on YouPlayer was the ability to create playlists from around the web. I’m often watching one video, and find another that looks cool. With YouPlayer, you can drag links to the sidebar and watch the videos in order without having to open and close browser tabs, navigate websites, and generally engage in tom-foolery.

To install the YouPlayer extension, go here.

My other beef with online video is that there’s just too darn many video sites out there. YouTube, Google, Vimeo, FunnyorDie, Blip, HolyLemon, Revver… the list just goes on and on. Though most of them are located on a few sites, there are different videos all over the Web. There just isn’t time to search all the different sites for the videos you’re looking for. Luckily, MetaTube has created a great search engine for video sites.

It claims to search over 100 sites, and works just like any other search engine you can think of. You can search across all 100 sites, or narrow it down to one particular site. Just select the ones you want to index, and let MetaTube go to town. Its search is fast and easy, and actually removes the need to go to the sites in question. The searches bring up results in the page, so you don’t need to go to the site at all. It saves a ton of time, and allows you to search the sites you’ve heard of, and all the ridiculous numbers of those you haven’t. Search MetaTube here.

Online video is a phenomenon that is really here to stay, and one that will continue to improve. With MetaTube and YouPlayer, you can make finding and watching the infinite number of videos easy, fun, and actually worth your while.

Happy Fall!

As we head back to the fall, and people start to get busier and schedules return to normal, we here at What We’re Into are changing too!

You’ll be hearing from us about once a day now- sometimes more, never less. It’ll be typically seven days a week, as people seem to want more weekend-love from WWi. Once a day lets us create better, longer, deeper posts that will serve everyone better.

As always, your input is hugely appreciated. What do you want to hear more about? What are we doing well? Poorly? Do you just generally hate us? Let us know in the comments, or send me an email at david (at) whatwereinto (dot) com.

Of course, this is the second post of the day, so I’m lying already. Starting tomorrow, we’ll set into a more normal schedule of some of the best stuff from around the Web, so that everyone can understand and get into it. Whether you’re nine or 90, we want you to be into the Web as much as we are. Well, almost as much as we are- it’s healthier that way.