Online storage, file sharing and data backup is all the rage these days. While perusing the latest tech news, you can’t go for long without reading all about the cloud, cloud, cloud! Cloud solutions! Cloud backup! Cloud storage! And while the term “cloud” might be the latest catch-phrase for storing data online, the concept has existed for quite a long time.

One of my first encounters with this type of service occurred back in the early 2000′s, when I signed up for a free Xdrive account. This now defunct service was one of the initial pioneers in online data storage, offering consumers free online storage space to house their data. Xdrive provided software that integrated with Windows Explorer, allowing for a seamless user experience. The online storage simply showed up on the PC as an additional drive letter, the X drive. It was easy to use and worked relatively well.

Interestingly enough, I didn’t use Xdrive for file sharing, data backup or any of the other most common modern day uses for online storage. Years ago, we didn’t have Terabyte hard drives available and purchasing additional storage was expensive. I used my Xdrive simply to add additional storage space to my PC.

Advances in online data storage and cloud services

These days there are a plethora of online storage, backup and cloud services that you can use to store your data. Many of these are cross-platform, providing access to your files across your entire range of computing gear; PCs, smartphones, tablets and other devices.

The most common use for online file storage is data backups. Personal computers utilize hard disk drives and flash storage disks for housing local data and these storage devices have limited lifespans. A hard drive will always fail, it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. And when your hard drive does fail, do you want to lose those priceless family photos or your other important documents stored on the local drive? Subscribing to an online backup service can ensure that your data is kept safe. Many of these services provide software that will automatically backup your data for you, making it dead simple to protect your files from local drive failure.

Additional advantages to using online storage services include the ability to collaborate with multiple users, document versioning, file sharing and access to your data from any Internet connected location.

Visit http://filestorageonline.net/ to learn more about online storage providers for you or your business.

It’s a disturbing new trend in the world of technology retailing — Rebates — but these aren’t the rebates from years ago… these rebates come in the form of prepaid credit/debit cards.

No longer will you receive that fancy paper check in the mail that can be deposited directly into a bank account.

The old paper rebate checks were a treat to discover in your mailbox, as if you were getting a paycheck back for making your tech purchase, albeit a small one. But alas, these days that doesn’t happen anymore, as most rebates now come in the form of a square piece of plastic that is “preloaded” with your rebate dollars. I’ve seen Visa, MasterCard and American Express prepaid cards.

What’s wrong with a debit/credit card pre-loaded with funds? You ask…

Well, you might think that a debit card loaded with funds would be more convenient to use compared to a paper check, but in most cases, I’ve found the opposite to be true. With a paper check, you deposit it and you’re done. Quick and easy. Refund received and added to your account balance.

With a prepaid card, you can run into all sorts of little snafus. I’ve found that many retailers and registers can have trouble processing these prepaid cards. Sometimes they can’t use them at all, other times they can only charge a certain amount to the card even though you might have more funds available on it. There are many hassles to be had.

If you don’t spend the entire amount of the card funds in one transaction, you’re then inconvenienced with trying to remember what the remaining balance is and to find a place to use that balance. It’s easy to forget what the remaining balance is and also easy to forget to even use the card again.

Why the switch to prepaid rebate cards?

So why have all these companies switched to using prepaid cards versus paper checks for rebates? It’s gotta be more expensive for the fulfillment of a prepaid card versus just mailing out a plain ole paper check, right? Initially, yes, but you’ve got to look at the entire picture of consumer behavior. I believe that many of these prepaid cards are getting lost, aren’t getting used or their entire balance is never fully spent. When you don’t spend the entire balance, the issuing company can recoup some costs, because it is as if they never paid you that amount. It’s a clever strategy by the rebate issuers to try and reduce their payout costs.

How do you get the most out of your prepaid rebate cards?

Spend them and spend them right away! Try not to leave a balance on the card. Use it at a gas station to fill up your vehicle in order to use up all the funds in one go. Keep track of your balances and be diligent about utilizing the entire amount.

I certainly wish that paper rebate checks were still the norm, but since they are not, I’ll be making the best of these pesky prepaid rebate cards.

Update: As @rax0r pointed out on Twitter, it might be worth it for you to get a free Square card reader and account to cash out your prepaid cards on your own. Square charges a fee of $0.15 + 2.75% per transaction.

Prepaid rebate card solution. Get a Square account and pay yourself the cash (less the transaction).

— raxor (@rax0r) May 14, 2012

There are many reasons for converting old analog video to digital. Doing so allows you to retain video quality, as analog video tapes continually degrade when they are played. They even lose quality when they aren’t used, as aging & environmental factors can cause tape to deteriorate. Converting to digital allows you to preserve these videos without having to worry about the source tape media wilting away and becoming unplayable.

Converting video to a digital format also provides you with the flexibility to copy your video to a USB storage device, a DVD, a Blu-ray Disc or upload it to a website such as YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo or countless other streaming video websites. This allows for portability and playback on computers, smartphones, iPods and other modern devices.

Roxio Easy VHS to DVD 3 Plus review – features

Roxio advertises the following “Video and DVD” features for this product:

New Automatically split home movies too big to fit on a single disc and burn across multiple DVD discs
New Reduce video noise common to old VHS tapes
New Stabilize shaky home videos
New Improve color balance and lighting
New Add transitions between videos
New Add rolling credits to movies
Go from VCR to DVD in a few clicks – the fastest way to create a DVD from your VCR home video
Burn DVD discs from your VCR or camcorder videos
Produce Hollywood-style DVDs with navigation and professionally designed menus
Trim and cut video clips

In addition to these core Video and DVD features, Roxio Easy VHS to DVD 3 Plus also includes Music, Disc Label Creation and Sharing features, which are detailed here.

Roxio Easy VHS to DVD 3 Plus review – What’s inside the box?

The product ships in an attractive looking retail package, which includes the Roxio Video Capture USB device, a software CD and a “Getting Started Guide” instructional booklet. Kudos to Roxio for including a physical paper booklet. Many products that include software CDs are skimping on physical user manuals these days, instead opting for instructions stored alongside the software as a digital file on the CD. A paper booklet is much easier to reference and provides for a better end user experience.

Roxio Easy VHS to DVD 3 Plus review – Connecting the device

To test out the product, we dug out an old Emerson VCR and some old VHS tapes that we could convert to digital formats.

The Roxio Video Capture USB device is extremely easy to connect and use. On the source side, whether that be a VCR, a camcorder or another output device, you connect a set of RCA video cables to the device’s output ports. These cables then plug into the corresponding Red/Yellow/White RCA inputs on the Roxio Video Capture USB device. The Roxio Video Capture USB device then plugs into a PC via a standard USB plug. Easy peazy! Scroll down to our image gallery at the end of this article for more photos of the Roxio Video Capture USB device, the cables and the connectors.

Roxio Easy VHS to DVD 3 Plus review – Installing & using the software

We popped the Easy VHS to DVD 3 Plus software CD into our optical drive and easily installed the software on our PC running Windows 7. The software install did require a reboot to complete, which is a minor inconvenience. After rebooting, we launched the software and witnessed it performing some video tests, with windows resizing and flashing on screen. The software also prompted us to register for free technical support and communications from Roxio.

Above: The Roxio Easy VHS to DVD Plus 3 interface, showing a Record DVD session completing successfully. Click the image for the larger, full resolution version.

Roxio Easy VHS to DVD 3 Plus review – Record DVD mode

To start off my tests, I selected the Record DVD mode and went about the process of transferring some VHS footage to DVD-R.

My first attempt at doing a “Record DVD” resulted in the very first few seconds of my video being cut off on the resulting disc. I found that there is a freeze or delay in when the software starts the actual recording from when you first click the record button. This is reproducible. To account for this, I advise that you click the record button in the software 5 seconds early, at the least, to avoid having the very beginning of your video not getting recorded to the DVD.

Another option is to pause your VHS tape at the point at which you want to start recording, then click record in Easy VHS to DVD 3 Plus, wait for the software to provide confirmation on screen that it has started recording and then click play on your VCR. The downside to this method is that your recorded video file will show the paused screen to start with and it will also record the “PLAY” text that the VCR displays on screen after you press the play button. There is no reference to this recording delay in the Getting Started Guide, but I believe it should be added.

Roxio Easy VHS to DVD 3 Plus review – Record, Edit and Save

The “pause” method mentioned above works great when you are in the “Record, Edit and Save” mode, because this part of the program also allows you to trim your captured video clips as well as providing additional video editing capabilities.

I found the “Record, Edit and Save” mode to be the more useful area of the software, but if you’re in a rush to quickly transfer an entire VHS tape to DVD quickly, you might use the “Record DVD” mode instead.

In the “Record, Edit and Save” mode of Easy VHS to DVD 3 Plus, I found it simple to capture multiple clips, import existing video files, trim clips and even merge multiple clips into one big output file at the end if desired.

This mode also provides some advanced features such as Denoise, Stabilize and Color Correction. The Denoise option says it will reduce grain and noise from the video, the Stabilize option offers up the ability to stabilize shaky video taken with a handheld camera and the Color Correction option purports to correct color balance, brightness, contrast and saturation automatically.

I used the Denoise option on all my video captures, but I couldn’t really detect any improvements in video quality for my particular videos. I didn’t test the Stabilize option as I didn’t have any shaky clips to import. I tested the Color Correction option on one video capture and it really distorted the colors on the recorded video clip, so I didn’t try it out again after that. These type of advanced video enhancements are always hit or miss depending on the source video feed, so even though they might not have provided significant quality improvements for my particular videos, I’m still glad to see that they are included in the software as I’m sure they will help improve the captured videos in some cases.

Roxio Easy VHS to DVD 3 Plus review – VHS tapes with recording breaks

I did encounter a snafu when attempting to record a VHS tape that contained breaks in between multiple video clips. In this case, the Easy VHS to DVD 3 Plus software will report “no signal” at the break points and it won’t allow you to record, greying out the button. It will also automatically end recording if there is a break in the video signal, which can derail your recording plan.

In order to record a VHS video clip that has a break inserted just before the clip starts, you have to pause the VCR at the exact second that the clip starts playing, then you have to hope that Easy VHS to DVD 3 Plus detects a video signal, and if it does, it will then make the record button available to click. This issue should be resolvable via a software update and I recommend that Roxio enables recording whether or not an input video signal is detected. I also advise against automatically ending the recording if it detects no video signal or at least making an option available in the settings to turn it off.

Roxio Easy VHS to DVD 3 Plus review – captured VHS video example

Embedded below you can find one of the VHS video clips that I captured with Easy VHS to DVD 3 Plus. The software captures VHS video at 640 x 480 resolution with 29 frames per second, saving it as a video file with the MPG file extension. The video file was then uploaded to YouTube and embedded below.

The resulting video captured by Roxio Easy VHS to DVD Plus looked just about identical to the video displayed by the VCR.

On one captured video clip, I did notice that the recorded video file did show a bit more distortion at the very top of the video compared to what I viewed on the source video feed, but the source video feed did have distortion at the very bottom and I think this transferred to the top of the recorded video clip.

Roxio Easy VHS to DVD 3 Plus review – more photos

Check out the gallery below for more images of the Roxio USB capture hardware, the connectors, the cables and the VCR used.

Roxio Easy VHS to DVD 3 Plus review – summary and conclusion

In this review, we pointed out a lot of little subtleties and nuances that you might encounter while using this product, but transferring video from analog to digital is always a tricky endeavor.

Overall, we feel that the Roxio Easy VHS to DVD 3 Plus package is a good product. It does what it advertises, it’s easy to use and it provides some advanced features for power users.

If you’re interested in purchasing this video capture solution, you can buy it on Amazon or directly from the manufacturer.

My experience this past weekend is a typical example of how Google TV just doesn’t have its act quite together.

While using my smartphone, I often see an interesting video posted on Facebook or Twitter. If the video sounds interesting enough for me to watch, I’ll typically send the video link to my Google TV using the “Share with Google TV Remote” option on my Android device. This works great for “beaming” video content to the big screen in our living room.

I tried this twice this weekend, and both times, I got a big fail from Google TV.

You can’t load QuickTime on Google TV

The first occurrence happened when I saw a tweet stating that the full trailer for the new Total Recall movie (remake) had been exclusively posted to Apple.com. I’m a big fan of SciFi flicks, so I wanted to check out the trailer from my Google TV. Unfortunately, loading the URL on my Google TV resulted in an ugly error message that I need to install Quicktime for Chrome in order to view the video. The problem is, it’s not possible to install QuickTime for Chrome on Google TV. Usability fail #1 of the weekend for Google TV.

Flash video incompatibilities surface often on Google TV

The second occurrence happened when I attempted to watch a live stream of the Phx AM skateboarding contest. The stream was available at PHXAM.com and was embedded in a Flash video player. I thought, great, Google TV should be able to play the video fine since it’s Flash. Wrong. It showed up as a black box on my Google TV and would never load. I’ve seen this happen with other Flash videos in the past as well. I don’t know what the specific incompatibility is or what is tripping up Google TV, but yet again, the end result is another video that you can’t watch on your Google TV.

Google claims that Google TV has the web as it was intended to be

If we take a look at the features page on the official Google TV website, the very top listed feature is:

“Google Chrome browser
The web as it was intended to be. Watch online video, update your status, watch what’s viral in real-time, and even check your fantasy scores.”

Really Google? The web as it was intended to be? I’d say web video was intended to be viewed and since I can’t do that often using my Google TV, it’s not as it was intended to be.

And don’t forget, many TV networks block Google TV from accessing their online video content, as well as Hulu.

All of this leads to a very poor user experience for the Google TV user. You’ve got this supposed fully featured browser on your HDTV, yet you still can’t access the video content that you want to.

Google should install the QuickTime plugin for Chrome on Google TVs

Google really should preload the Chrome Quicktime plugin on all Google TV’s to resolve the first issue I brought up above. There are many videos around the web that use QuickTime and Apple.com routinely hosts exclusive movie trailers that aren’t found anywhere else. I’ve got to wonder if the exclusion of the QuickTime Chrome plugin on Google TV is a conscious decision by Google due to a pissing match between the 2 companies. After all, they are now fierce competitors in the mobile phone arena and on the home theater front, Apple has their rival Apple TV platform. There’s also no way that Apple is ever going to release a Quicktime app for Android.

I’m hoping that Google TV can improve further to provide a better end user experience, but I’m not sure if it will ever get to where it should really be. I’ll be anxiously awaiting the next major Google TV update. Until then, I’ll continue to get frustrated when videos won’t play on my Internet TV.

I use my personal mobile phone for receiving pages text messages from work, as I’m required to be available 24 x 7 in case of issues and I also work a rotational on-call schedule with the rest of my team.

When you really need a text message to get your attention, the stock “bling”, “beep” or “boop” sound bytes used by most mobile phones to alert you of a new text message just won’t cut it. Due to this, back in my Windows Mobile phone days, I would set the WakeupAlarm.WMA file as my text message audio notification when I was on-call. This is a really obnoxious and loud alarm clock sound byte, and that gets your attention when a new text message arrives.

When I moved over to Android, first with the T-mobile G1 and then with the Motorola Droid, I kept using this sound clip by copying the WakeupAlarm.WMA file over to my phone. And why not? It was a proven, effective, paging alert sound.

Unfortunately, my Stand Operating Procedures (SOP) were thwarted once I upgraded to my Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Apparently Android 4.0 does not support WMA files, unlike previous versions of Android, which did so with no problems whatsoever. To continue using this sound file with Android 4.0, I had to convert it to a new format. Enter: Media.io

Media.io is an online audio file conversion service that allows anyone to convert virtually any audio file to an MP3, WAV, OGG or WMA audio file, all for free. As of this posting, the site also has zero advertisements and a very clean interface (see above for a partial image of the webpage).

I was able to quickly and easily convert my WMA file to MP3 format thanks to Media.io. There were no artifacts, distortions or any other problems found in the resulting MP3 file and I am now once again happily using the WakeupAlarm sound byte on my Android 4.0 smartphone.

I have tried using many other audio file conversion apps in the past, including some freeware found on CNet. None of the other apps that I tested were able to successfully convert a WMA file to MP3 with good quality. Many of the apps would do the conversion, but the resulting MP3 file would be static laden or contain other audio artifacts.

Huge thanks and many kudos to Media.io creator Johann Burkard for creating such a useful, effective and totally free audio file conversion service.

After my trusty ol’ Motorola Droid bit the dust, I selected Google’s flagship Android smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, as my new mobile computing device. This phone comes loaded with the very latest Android OS version 4.0, also known by its code name “Ice Cream Sandwich” (ICS).

In this post, I’ll explore some of the issues that I have encountered during my month and a half relationship with Android 4.0. But before I get into that, I’d like to preface the following segments by stating that I am very VERY pleased with the Galaxy Nexus and it is undoubtedly one of the best smartphones available on the market today. In that vein, I plan on featuring some of the more interesting (and positive) ICS features in future posts coming soon. In this post, however, I’ll be getting down to the nitty-gritty: problems & issues encountered in Android 4.0.

Android 4.0 issue: Voice Search doesn’t provide location based results for the call command

You know what’s awesome? Google Voice Actions and Google Voice Search. Before Siri captivated iPhone 4 users, Google’s Voice Search & Voice Actions were available on the Android platform, allowing users to search, text, send emails, call phones and complete many other tasks using voice commands.

Unfortunately, when I migrated from my Motorola Droid running Android 2.2 to my Samsung Galaxy Nexus running Android 4.0.2, I was sorely disappointed to find that the Google Voice Actions “Call business-name” feature no longer provides location-specific/GPS tailored results.

Previously, if I spoke the voice command “Call Taco Bell”, Google Voice Search would give me a listing of the Taco Bell locations closest in proximity to me, relative to my current GPS location. This is no longer the case in Android 4.0, and this is a HUGE problem for me as I previously used this feature on a frequent basis. With Android 4.0, when I speak the command “Call Taco Bell” to Google Voice Search, it gives me options for a Taco Bell in Chicago and New York City, as shown above. Quite disappointing, since I live in Phoenix, AZ. Workaround: none that I could find. You’ll have to find those local phone numbers in the browser now, lame.

Android 4.0 issue: Sharing within the Camera app doesn’t allow portrait orientation

When sharing an image in the camera app, it forces you to use landscape mode to type your image caption and share your photo. If you rotate your phone to the portrait position, it doesn’t rotate the screen to the correct orientation. This does not occur if you share a photo from within the Gallery app. Workaround: click through to the gallery app before sharing photos.

Android 4.0 issue: Movie Studio crashes when a title is used

The Movie Studio app crashes when attempting to export (build) a video that has a title overlay. I had to remove my Samsung Galaxy Nexus battery in order to get the phone back online, holding down the power button wouldn’t help. Once I removed the title overlay from the video editing project, it built the video file just fine. Workaround: none found, don’t use titles in your projects.

Android 4.0 issue: Questionable battery drainage

One of the reasons I hesitated on buying the Galaxy Nexus was questionable battery life. There are many user reports around the web of dismal power longevity for this device and/or Android 4.0. For the first month or so, I didn’t really run into many issues, but I do use the extended battery from Samsung.

There are definitely some battery life issues going on here. I have gone 3 days with very light usage before my battery dies and I have also had the battery deplete in a matter of hours, and that was with very light usage and WiFi turned on. In the screenshot below, you can see one such case where my Galaxy Nexus only lasted for just under 7 hours, this was with almost zero use.

You can see the battery life performing decently at first and then it just drops off a cliff. “Mobile network signal” appears to be the culprit here, but I never had this issue with my Motorola Droid phone. To be fair, I cannot affirmatively blame this issue on Android 4.0, as it could very well be a hardware issue (such as an inadequate antenna), but I’m guessing that it’s a mix of both. I’m hoping the next update will improve these types of battery issues. Workaround: get the extended battery and/or charge your phone more.

Android 4.0 issue: Contacts no longer sync with Facebook photos

Now THIS really pissed me off at first. In Android 4.0, you no longer have the ability to sync your contacts photos with their Facebook photos. Supposedly there was a recent update to allow applications to interface/sync better with contacts in the future, but straight out of the box, it wasn’t possible to have Android contacts automatically sync their photos with their Facebook images. I chalked it up to Google’s lust for social network relevance, hoping they would get more users on Google Plus. Workaround: Use Google Contact Sync, a third party tool to update your Gmail contacts photos with their Facebook photos. It worked for me.

These are the biggest issues I’ve experienced with Android 4.0 and my Galaxy Nexus thus far. I’m hoping that these can be fixed in future ICS updates.

What are the biggest issues that you’ve encountered with Android 4.0 and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus?

Notebook computers are ubiquitous these days. It’s not uncommon to see someone typing away & navigating the web on a laptop in their living room, while comfortably lounging on the couch. Many of my friends do this on a daily basis, making their living room their personal base of operations.

If you’re a Google TV owner, you have probably wondered if it is possible to easily share & send links, websites & web pages to your Google TV from your Windows laptop. After all, if you’ve got a huge HDTV staring back at you from a living room wall, why watch that new YouTube video on the small screen? Well now you don’t have to!

Google TV has a very under-publicized feature aptly dubbed Chrome to TV, which allows you to send website URL’s to your Google TV from the Chrome browser, with just one click. If you’re familiar with the Chrome to Phone browser extension, then you’re halfway there, as Chrome to TV uses that same mechanism.

Enable Chrome to TV on your Google TV

From your Google TV device, press the home button, click All Apps, navigate down to the “Settings” app & click it, navigate down to “Input device” and click it. Navigate down to the “Chrome to TV” as shown below and click it.

Chrome to TV welcome screen

After clicking the Chrome to TV input device, you’ll be greeted with the Chrome to TV welcome screen, which describes the feature as shown below. Click Next to continue.

Select a Google account for use with Chrome to TV

This next screen asks you to confirm or select the Google account that you’d like to use with Chrome to TV. I’ve blotted out my account name in the image below for privacy/security.

Chrome to TV link action preference selection

The next Chrome to TV setup screen asks you if you’d like to have links launch automatically after they’re sent to your Google TV or if you’d prefer to manually launch them. I prefer to auto-launch the links, but you can experiment with both options to see what you like best.

Complete your setup of Chrome to TV

That’s it, click the Finish button as shown below to complete your Chrome to TV setup!

Install the Chrome to Phone extension on your Windows PC

As the completion screen is so kind to inform you, you must now install the Chrome to Phone extension on your Windows laptop. If the link in the previous sentence doesn’t work, just go to the Chrome Web Store and search for “Chrome to Phone” to find the extension.

Start sharing & sending web pages from your Windows PC to Google TV with Chrome to TV

After you install the Chrome to Phone browser extension, you’ll see a small icon in the top right corner of the Chrome browser that consists of a yellow arrow pointing to the right along with a little phone. Click that icon and it will prompt you to login with a Google account. Make sure to login with the same Google account that you used in the Chrome to TV setup. Once logged in, you can now begin sending web pages, links and URL’s to your Google TV from your Windows PC! Any time that you want to send a link to your Google TV, simply click the Chrome to Phone icon, as shown in the screenshot below.

Web page links will automatically launch on your Google TV

If you’ve configured Chrome to TV to automatically launch links, the web page will automatically show up on your Google TV with no further action required, as shown below.

Enjoy using Chrome to TV!

Share & send web pages from an Apple MacBook or ChromeBook to Google TV with Chrome to TV

An astute reader would probably notice that the above instructions don’t require the Windows Operating System whatsoever. As long as you have the Chrome browser, you can easily send links to your Google TV, whether you’re using an Apple MacBook, a ChromeBook or any other OS that the Chrome browser is available on!

The instructions listed in this article were created utilizing a Sony NSX46GT1 46″ HDTV Google TV device with firmware (Android) version 3.1 and build number 2011111402_AAV_ORSC.2011111411323.

The following is a guest post written by Bre Carter.

If you are anything like me, you probably talk less on your smartphone than any other activity. Texting, searching Google, playing games, and posting to Facebook all consume much more time than actually using the device for its main purpose. Communicating with each other has kind of devolved into a text based system that places a steep value on literacy. Fortunately for those who do not want to read, you can also turn your smartphone into a cool remote control for your home theater.

Most home theater systems require you to own several different remotes in order to control what you see and hear. This practice of remote control overload gets confusing really fast and keeps people from watching DVD’s or operating other cool features on their systems. By converting your smartphone into a remote control, you can do away with your useless remotes and enjoy the media that you want to.

Google TV Remote app

Instead of going out and purchasing a brand new remote with a specialized interface, most people are deciding to download free apps and products that convert their smartphones into remotes. While still costing up to $100, using a smartphone is a much cheaper option than the existing smart products on the market.

In order to use an app installed on an iPhone, you must purchase additional equipment from a retailer. Most televisions rely on an infrared system to communicate information with remote controls. According to PC World, you need to use products like NewKinetix for iPhone, or AV/Shadow for Android and Blackberry devices.

One of the most useful ways to control your television through your smartphone is the DVR. Companies like Direct TV, DISH, and AT&T U-Verse all have mobile websites that allow you to program your television. If you want to watch Jerry Springer, but have to work during the day, you can program the show from your office and have it waiting for you when you get back.

While the market for smartphone remote apps may be weak right now, once people start purchasing more smart televisions the need will start to increase. In order to get more brand recognition with consumers, brands like Samsung and Google will want to immerse their image in the minds of all of those watching with free apps.

If you are still only using your smartphone to make calls, or look up unknown numbers through Anywho.com, you are missing out on a wide world of diverse entertainment. Try exploring the App Store or the Android Market in order to find remote control options that fit your needs.

Editor’s Note: In our household, we use many Android remote control apps to manipulate our WiFi connected devices, including Google TV remote, Roku Wi-Fi Remote and GMote (used to control a laptop connected to a TV via HDMI). All of these apps connect to the device you’re controlling via Wi-Fi, so no additional equipment is necessary.

About this Guest Author: Bre Carter is a journalism student at Saint Louis University. Upon graduation, she hopes to travel the world while producing compelling content for the masses. When she isn’t writing, you can find Bre with her nose in a book, or her headphones in to block out the rest of the world.

Almost all modern day computer users have run into the pesky problem of filling up a hard disk drive (HDD) to near capacity. But once you’ve filled up all of your disk space with large files, or just a boatload of smaller files, how do you find what files are eating up all of that space? There’s no easy way to do it natively in the Windows OS, but thankfully there are many 3rd party tools to help you on your quest to find and clean files from your HDD.

My favorite at the moment is a completely free utility named WinDirStat. It’s simple, easy to use and has a very helpful graphical interface (screenshot below) that shows directory trees and file types in colorful blocks. As the program’s Help section explains, it ”Shows where all your disk space has gone and helps you clean it up.”

The image above (click for higher res) shows a completed WinDirStat scan on my Acer notebook’s HDD. I am just about at capacity and I needed to find out what was eating up all of my disk space so that I could delete some files.

I love how it color codes file types to give you a quick graphical view of how much the various file types are eating up your HDD. Notice all the blue? All of the blue blocks correspond to .MOV (quicktime video format) files that are taking up space on my hard drive. Quick time video files are by far the biggest hard disk space hogs on my system, eating up 61.6GB of disk space and 49.5% of my total HDD capacity.

With the disk space utilization information provided by WinDirStat, I will now be able to easily go in and copy off or delete the offending .MOV files, freeing up disk space and expanding the available free storage on my drive.

On other Windows systems, WinDirStat has helped me to find and eliminate temporary video editing program files and temporary ASP.NET files. Both of these file groups were eating up huge amounts of disk space and they weren’t needed on the systems at all.

What is your favorite Windows tool for analyzing disk space usage and identifying large files on your hard drive?

From the dark days of WinMo, I transitioned over to Android, first with the T-Mobile (HTC) G1 and then over to the original Motorola Droid. One of the reasons I went with the Droid was due to the inclusion of the slide out, full QWERTY keyboard. Many other Android phones at the time (and to this day) opt to skip a physical keyboard altogether and for good reason. Physical keyboards add thickness, weight and cost to a device.

Suffice it to say, the default Android virtual keyboard leaves something to be desired, although it has improved some with newer Android updates. Even so, I still find the Android virtual keyboard lacking and unacceptable for use as a primary input method.

Enter Swype.

Getting in on the Swype for Android beta

When I first learned about a new virtual keyboard that allows you to “type” words by connecting all of the containing letters in one fluid motion (think connect the dots with letters), I immediately wanted to try it. Fortunately for me, at the time they were getting ready to launch their Android application and were accepting beta testers. I was accepted into the beta program and I’ve been happily using Swype ever since. Nowadays, I rarely use a physical keyboard on a smartphone.

Swype is available to OEM manufacturers (eg HTC, Samsung) and now comes pre-loaded on many Android phones. The app makes for a fantastic primary input method, no physical keyboard required.

Unfortunately, if you have an Android phone that did not come pre-loaded with Swype, you are probably out of luck. The app is noticeably missing from the Android Market, as the company does not make it available for consumer purchase. Bummer.

If you’re in the market to purchase a new Android phone, with the great credit card deal you found, I highly recommend that you get one that includes Swype pre-loaded. I’ve tried an imitator (another slide-typing keyboard app) on Android and it was vastly inferior. Swype does it right.

If and when I need to transition to another keyboard, it’ll be a difficult adjustment for me after using and enjoying Swype for so long.

Swype virtual keyboard Pros

Easier to use than the standard Android virtual keyboard
Word suggest
Quick
Customizable
Google Voice input key

Swype virtual keyboard Cons

Not available in standalone form to consumers (not on Android Market)
Beta Updater buggy, often requiring uninstallation & then a fresh install
No install to SD card option

Update: The newest version of Swype (3.26) now provides automatic app updating. Finally!! No more hokey installer app to mess with.