Personal Technology Tips in Plain English
Entertainment
Comparing Apples to Apples in High Definition
Feb 6th
This is the big weekend. . . for Flat screen TV sales across the country. With the SuperBowl being held this Sunday, all the consumer electronics stores are pulling out all the stops in order to get a shiny new plasma or LCD (or even LED!) television in your living room in time for the big game.
If you are making the switch from an older 4:3 analog tv screen to the 16:9 format flatscreen TV, you may or may not know that you can’t just get the same “size” TV. Since TV screen sizes are measured diagonally, and the ratio of height and width are different on a 4:3 screen vs. 16:9 screen, you have to do some math if you want the same size tv image to look at (or larger).
So if you have a 32″ tv in your living room, you can’t just go out an buy a 32″ LCD HDTV. If you do, you’ll basically end up with a smaller tv, since your tv image will be shorter on the new 16:9 screen than it was on your current 32″ analog 4:3 ratio screen. You’re not comparing apples to apples if you’re comparing two different format screens.
Of course TV manufacturers and the guy at your local Best Buy don’t really help you out in this area and instead will probably just shrug their shoulders and try to upsell you on a tv that’s larger than you need.Â
So what do you do?
The internet to the rescue! www.ScreenMath.com has a handy dandy conversion table which lets you look up your analog tv screen size and it will tell you the dimensions you’ll need to get in a 16:9 format in order to match your current tv screen size.
Just as a FYI, the popular 42″ HDTV size that has largely become the “base model” for LCD, plasma and LED tv’s in the store today is equivalent to a 34″ analog 4:3 ratio television set.
So technically, the 32″ tv we have in one of the bedrooms only needs a 40″ HDTV to replace it at the current screen size. If we got a 42″ HDTV, it would actually be an upgrade in screen size for that room. That’s nice to know!
Once you know the facts, you’ll probably feel a little easier walking into the store to pick-up a new HDTV. It’s just one less factor to worry about as you’ll have to sort out all the other alphabet soup jargon as you compare all the different options on the table these days for TV’s.
How to Load mp3 Music Onto Your Apple iPod Touch or iPod Nano
Jul 22nd
It’s easy as pie to go to the iTunes store on your iPod Nano or iPod Touch and download music directly onto your device.
But a lot of your music might be on your computer, and you want to load your iPod with the mp3 music you already have.
One you learn how to do this, you’ll have the freedom to take any music you have in the house or on your computer with you on the go on your iPod Touch or any other iPod device.
The Apple iPhone has a very similar process to load mp3 music onto the mp3 player device part of the phone.
Downloading music onto your iPod is a simple process if you’ve seen it before. Here’s a video that walks you through the whole process:
52 Free DVD Video Rentals Of Your Choice in 2009
Dec 24th
You have already seen them — since there are about 12,000 of them out there.
If not, once you start to look for them you’ll spot them all over the place. And every one of them is waiting to hand out a DVD movie of your choice to you for a free night’s rental.
You can go back over and over again for another free DVD movie week after week, all year long.
It’s the latest way that I get movies every week — in fact, there aren’t that many good movies worth watching, so this tip will get you more than enough video content than you would ever really watch in a given year.
What on earth am I talking about? Read the rest of this entry »
Design Your Own Emergency Party Button
May 29th
Are you just going through your days each and every day over and over and over and over and over and over and over again?
Do you feel the pressure of the daily grind sometimes to the point where you feel like your head may just explode?
In times like this, you really need one of those big fat red “use only in case of emergency” buttons. . .Something that sets off an exceptional break in your routine and lets you release all that pent up negative energy.
Without one, you are just living life dangerously (to yourself including others around you)!
If you could design your own “EMERGENCY PARTY BUTTON” what would it trigger? I think this is one of the most important parts about proactively managing your own life to ensure you stay creative, productive, and sane.
While it’s important to stay focused and keep moving forward with your life goals, there clearly is a need for you to be ready to make a rest stop here and there.
To help inspire you, here’s one amazing example of a RED EMERGENCY BUTTON that one guy created literally. . . Read the rest of this entry »
Use Your Verizon Wireless Cell Phone To Talk To Your Tivo
Jan 15th
Yes, you read that right. You can now communicate with your Tivo when you’re stuck in line at the grocery store or elsewhere.
You bought your Tivo to save time and make your TV viewing time more productive. Now you can use your downtime when you’re out to find and schedule new TV shows from your Verizon Wireless cell phone.
It’s a great way to set your Tivo to record new programs while you’re out and about. Here’s details of how to set it up. . . Read the rest of this entry »
Tracking Santa NORAD style
Dec 25th
My daughter was curious about how Santa actually flies from the North Pole to over the whole world in order to deliver presents to all the children.
She asked me if he sleeps on Christmas Eve and if reindeer actually fly. How does he go to all the places?
So I simply showed her Santa’s tracks, thanks to satellite technology, Google and NORAD (yes, NORAD – as in North American Aerospace Defense Command). NORAD has set-up tracking systems to pinpoint exactly where Santa is at any given moment and through Google Earth, you can now see his flight path as he hops from city to city across the globe – no joke:
You can watch the details on Google Earth or watch Santa caught of video as he rides his sleigh through various parts of the world: www.noradsanta.org
Merry Christmas!
It’s all about YOU: How To Download YOUtube Videos
Dec 15th
In our culture today, It’s all about YOU. . .
YOUtube that is.
2007 was the year of online video and YouTube was at the forefront of it all. Google made a smart move to gobble up YouTube when it could.
Now there’s so much video content being produced and uploaded and the masses are taking to having their own YouTube procrastination breaks all throughout the day.
As if it’s so critical to have access to YouTube, even iPhone launch marketing collateral made a point of the fact that you can access YouTube videos on the iPhone. Yahee or Yahoo! J
Anyway, when you find that gem on YouTube, sometimes you wish you could just *keep it* or rather download it to save, forward or just watch over and over again offline to waste even more of your life. How do you do that?
Well, there’s a great site called KissYouTube that lets you do this. You simply visit www.kissyoutube.com and enter the URL of the YouTube video clip you’d like to save, and it will automatically allow you to download the video clip in a format that you can save and watch on your own computer without a flash-based browser.
OPTION #2: The Internet never offers just one choice. Here’s another option to download online videos into various formats for your PC, iPod, mobile phone, DivX, etc. www.vixy.net offers you several options with a drop down menu to select which format you’d like when you grab that video.
Or if you find that hilarious or inspiring music video, but want to download the audio track for your listening enjoyment in the car or on your mp3 player, there’s an option to download the audio into mp3 format only as well.
I love tech, gadgets and the web. Hope you pick-up a useful tip or two here today that helps you use technology to your advantage! Better yet, why not share your own expertise in a comment on a post today to help the other readers that land here for answers!