THIS GUY HAD A VERY SIMILAR ECHO TO WHAT I BLOGGED ABOUT THE OTHER WEEK-....FOLKS, WE'RE TALKING NOT HUNDREDS OF #DOLLARS PER YEAR- THOUSANDS! THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS PER YEAR AND A FEW THOUSAND DOLLARS PER CONTRACT TERM!  T E N S OF THOUSANDS OVER A DECADE!  THAT'S MORE THAN YOU WOULD GET AS A RETURN FROM #INVESTING $50,000 IN GENERAL ELECTRIC FOR THE SAME DECADE!!  SO UNLESS YOU HAVE A FEW 100K LYING AROUND- DO WHAT YOU CAN!  SAVE!  #SAVE WITHOUT SACRIFICE- JUST BILLS AND CONTRACTS...GONE! :

SAYS, BENJAMIN LEWTIN:  (ACTUALLY DOING THE MATH WHICH HURTS MY HEAD !)

If you’ve tuned into the latest mobile news, you’ll notice the “big guys” are throwing around “no-contract” as their hot new buzz word. Fact is, #PagePlus has been #“no-contract” since day one! That’s right – since 1998, we’ve been saving our customers money by providing no-contract prepaid cell phone service at affordable prices. Quite frankly, we believe in cell phone freedom without the red tape. Every day there are advertisements promoting brand new smartphones for less than $100 with a contract. In reality, you end up paying a whole lot more in the long run because these smartphones are heavily subsidized to make them “seem” like they don’t cost that much. In other words, if you’re paying $99.99 for a $600 phone, you end up paying the difference over the length of the two-year contract.  Let’s look at an example –
Say you purchase a Samsung Galaxy SIII for $99.99 (retail $599.99) with a two-year contract. Now, your new contract requires you to pay $100 per month to have unlimited talk, unlimited text and 2 GB of data usage. So, let’s do the math –

#Samsung Galaxy SIII	$99.99 one time purchase
#Two-year contract	$2,400.00 ($100 x 24 months)in a contract term!
Total cost	$2,499.99 (x 5= 10 yrs, or roughly $12,000!  (mv)

Okay, so the total cost after two years comes out to be $2,499.99 if you choose to take the contract route. And that’s not even including taxes, surcharges or overages, which can easily spike up your monthly bill. Now, let’s take a look at the cost of purchasing a brand new smartphone from Page Plus and activating it on The 55 plan over the course of two years without ever signing a contract –

Huawei Ascend Y	$149.95 one time purchase
No-contract prepaid $55 plan for two years	$1,320.00 ($55 x 24 months)
Total cost	$1,469.95

Wow – that’s a total savings of $1,030.04 over the course of two years (not including taxes and overages) compared to a contract plan! Not to mention, Page Plus eliminates “bill shock” altogether. That’s the beauty of prepaid – you pay for what you need ahead of time and when you run out, simply add more minutes, messages or data to your account.
The bottom line is that we’ve been in the no-contract business since 1998, and saving our customers money is what we’re all about. So, while you continue to hear more and more no-contract advertisements from the “big guys,” just remember, Page Plus has been saving cell phone users from contracts for the last 15 years!

___ Again, echoed by the gentleman listed above at the VERY informative blog on Page Plus and it's services./products at  http://blog.pagepluscellular.com/

Skype to acquire Qik

 
Qik is available on over 200 mobile phones running Android, iOS, Symbian, BlackBerry OS and Windows Mobile, and comes preloaded on a wide variety of mobile handsets through partnerships with handset manufacturers and mobile networks.
Skype and Qik share a common purpose of enriching communications with video, and the acquisition of Qik will help to accelerate our leadership in video by adding recording, sharing and storing capabilities to our product portfolio.
Through this acquisition, we’ll also be able to take advantage of the engineering expertise that is behind Qik’s Smart Streaming technology, which optimizes video transmission over wireless networks.
Together, we’ll focus on providing great products that will allow people around the world to share experiences in real-time video across different platforms, as well as storing those moments so they can be viewed later.

Microsoft gets Skype, Skype gets Qik- America finally starts talking on the phone with THREE of the five senses, well assuming you listening to whom you're talking.

Well, gotta go- just found a nice new one to get onto- Google, siblings (especially older, male ones), the 1st Amm. to the Constitution, money, privacy, and jobs- all in one very long piece.  In the mean time I meant to give you a tip here.  

People love to hate VoIP phone systems- I almost don't want to say the word.  I mean does EVERYTHING have to be digital?  No, your PBX lines aren't- that's why you could very well have someone listening to your phone calls right now.  The phone system going down?  When's the last time your DSL went out?  Not that a computer wouldn't get online- but you had to have Century Link come out and put in a new modem or something, because the whole Internet was out??  Anyone- I heard that smartass- yours' went out last month........ Well guess what?  I said DSL, which 90% of businesses have, so if your DSL was out, so was your PBX or whatever phone you use- because they use the same line- the phone lines....

So what's the difference between, say Skype, Google Voice, the service I have with Charter or Century Link (or whatever they have here now).

First, let me say this- I have 6 phone lines and pay $60 a month.  If you can beat that, I'll pay your bill for a year.  Add the Direct TV and other partner lines (800 numbers, and I've got about 12- $60/ mo.)  $55 of that is my cell phone, by the way where I get Verizon with 2GB of data and unlimited talking and texting without a contract.  I'm with the ONLY nationwide carrier of Verizon's complete network- want to know who that is?  Call me- 828-MIX-PLUS or 828-919-TECH....  

Quickly here's the difference... Skype is great for home and your cellular.  But it takes very low bandwidth to use per call.  The business version is stepped up a bit, but not much.  If you used a SIP converter to a PBX system and had Skype for your service, yes- you'd throw your phone at the wall.  

Businesses- in this case...not all- need a business class service.  My favorite (and I've tried them ALL- believe me) is Ring Central, BY FAR.  Where a 1 minute call using Skype might take 20 kilobytes of bandwidth, that same call using Ring Central would take about 85 kb.  This ensures a solid connection with no fading or waning, and thus begins the platform for a virtual PBX, answering attendant and all sorts of stuff- the best part is... .It's really not Virtual at all anymore- it's here, and here to take over the market, once CFO's find that they can save a company with 25 employees thousands of dollars per month by using such a service.  How?  First, there's no monopoly with VoIP as the phone company has.  Most importantly though- the Internet and transmissions over it are free.. You're not using AT&T's creation which meshed with MCI's tangle of wires............ You're at the top- in the clouds... And it's getting less and less lonely up there, lemme tell ya... These are what is going to bring our nation out of the economic slump that we've begun to crawl away from already.   The extra funds executives will have using systems that not only save thousands per month, but offer dozens of extra services at no charge- these things will bring us back.... Out of the 90's, and into the great One- Century 21.

Free Trial of RingCentral Fax Call: 

877-929-6750

Mark Vanderbloemen

http://homePCmedia.com

Free Trial of RingCentral Fax

---

Look Closely- Is this REALly an Insect?

No. It's an insect spy drone for urban areas, already in production, funded by the US Government. It can be remotely controlled and is equipped with a camera and a microphone.

It can land on you, and it may have the potential to take a DNA sample or leave RFID tracking nanotechnology on your skin. It can fly through an open window, or it can attach to your clothing until you take it in your home.

Livestreaming Google+ Hangouts (Ustream to make a Google+ Hangout)

One of my responsibilities at Google Ventures is to plan the growing number of workshops that we offer to our portfolio companies. In the last several months, we’ve offered workshops on a variety of topics, including SEO, AdWords, latency, technical recruiting and candidate sourcing, A/B testing, and business development. With each new workshop announcement earlier this year, I received several replies from portfolio company employees outside the Bay Area: “What about us?!” It was a fair complaint: as we ramped up the pace of Startup Lab workshops in Mountain View, the unfortunate reality was that they required you to physically be in the Startup Lab to participate.

Starting in March, we began using Google+ Hangouts to extend the audience beyond the Startup Lab, but quickly ran into our next hurdle: Hangouts support a maximum of 10 participants, and demand for our broadcasts almost immediately exceeded that number.

This week the Google+ team announced that Hangouts on Air allow for unlimited viewers, and are now available to everyone. However, Hangouts on Air require the broadcasts to be public, which ends up not supporting our use case at Google Ventures: our broadcasts are available to anyone at our portfolio companies, but generally not to the public. As a result, we had to look at a way to leverage the early success of using Hangouts to enable interaction between remote attendees and presenters, while also retaining control over who could see the live broadcast.

When I started digging in on the best way to extend live broadcasts of our Hangouts, I was surprised to find few sites documenting the best ways to accomplish what we wanted. Since many people expressed interest in what I ended up doing (not to mention the many Startup Lab occupants who put up with me testing things out at the Startup Lab in the last few weeks!), I figured it was worth a summary of what we’re now using in the current Startup Lab.

Hangouts remain our platform for presenters to speak to the remote attendees, present slides, and screenshare their browser when showing specific sites, tools, etc. Remote attendees are invited into the private Hangout a few minutes ahead of the workshop, and can ask questions at any point throughout. In the Startup Lab, we run the Hangout from a Mac Mini, which has a Logitech C910 HD webcam pointed at the presenter. We use a Blue Snowball USB mic to capture audio in the room, and have a set of powered speakers plugged into the Mac Mini’s headphone jack.

For the livestream, we’re using Ustream. I liked Ustream’s featureset – we have the ability to embed the stream on our site, remove our channel from Ustream’s site altogether, brand the video stream with our logo, password protect the stream so only authorized viewers can watch, and remove ads (we pay for some of these features). Running the Ustream production is a dedicated iMac – I went with a 27” 3.4 GHz quad core iMac so that I’d have the fastest machine possible handling the CPU load associated with live streaming.

Remote attendees had pointed out that they had trouble following along with workshops when questions were asked in person in the Startup Lab – so we added a second camera (the upgraded Logitech C920 HD webcam) mounted on a tripod that’s pointed at the audience. When someone in the audience starts talking, we can switch to that camera so remote viewers can see the person who’s speaking and hear their question (which also avoids us having to have the presenter repeat the question).

Controlling the livestream is Ustream Producer Pro, an app that lets you manage multiple “shots” in a livestream and select which is the active shot seen by the livestream viewers. (Note: Producer is a free app, but I paid for the ‘Pro’ version to get the ability to stream in HD.) In addition to the audience webcam, we need the Hangout to be one of our shots; to get that, I’m routing the Mac Mini’s audio and video out via the Mac Mini’s HDMI port into a Blackmagic Intensity Extreme Thunderbolt video capture box. That plugs into the iMac via Thunderbolt, where Producer Pro sees it as one of its video signals.

Running the actual livestream is pretty straightforward: log into Ustream via Producer Pro on the iMac, select the active shot (the Mac Mini) and sit back. When questions are asked in the audience, switch to the audience camera in Producer Pro so livestream viewers can see/hear them, then switch back to the presenter shot when the question’s done.


In the planning stages, I drew out a diagram that actually comes close to representing the final setup:

Couple final notes on the setup:

• In the Startup Lab I wanted to hear audio from the Hangout directly from the Mac Mini instead of through the livestream. There’s a couple second delay from live to the livestream, and the interaction on the Hangout would start to feel very awkward if the presenter took several seconds of waiting before they heard the question asked in the Hangout. When I plugged the speakers into the Mac Mini, the Mac routed audio to the speakers (and not the HDMI signal). To get audio to both the speakers and the HDMI signal (so that the Hangout audio would be included in the livestream), I created an “aggregate device” in the Mac Mini’s Audio Devices (Utilities | Audio MIDI Setup | + | Create Aggregate Device), and in the Hangout set the audio output to the aggregate device.
• It’s much simpler if presenters use the Mac Mini for the Hangout, but there are times when what they’re presenting is only available on their laptop. For those cases, I got an HDMI switcher and a display port to HDMI cable. When needed, I can plug them into the HDMI switcher, and the signal on the iMac via the Blackmagic Intensity capture device will be their laptop instead of the Mac Mini.
• Facilitating questions from the livestream remains a work in progress. We’ll be incorporating Google Moderator to collect questions and let the audience vote on which questions they’re most interested in. We will likely be embedding the Moderator questions directly on the livestream page on our site, but are still evaluating the easiest way to do this that’s also visible to folks in the Hangout so we avoid forking conversations.
• This setup does result in two video feeds: the Hangout and the Ustream broadcast of the Hangout. I’m going to keep an eye on things to figure out whether this becomes too confusing; if so, we may shift to having all attendees watch the livestream, and have presenters in the Hangout.

In the course of building this setup, I reached out to a number of folks for guidance. Big thanks to the TWiT crew (Leo Laporte, Denise Howell, Alex Lindsay) and the Ustream guys (Brad Hunstable, Alden Fertig, Andy Francis) for answering every question I threw at them, and of course the Hangouts team for building such a great product.

Livestreaming Google+ Hangouts

One of my responsibilities at Google Ventures is to plan the growing number of workshops that we offer to our portfolio companies. In the last several months, we’ve offered workshops on a variety of topics, including SEO, AdWords, latency, technical recruiting and candidate sourcing, A/B testing, and business development. With each new workshop announcement earlier this year, I received several replies from portfolio company employees outside the Bay Area: “What about us?!” It was a fair complaint: as we ramped up the pace of Startup Lab workshops in Mountain View, the unfortunate reality was that they required you to physically be in the Startup Lab to participate.

Starting in March, we began using Google+ Hangouts to extend the audience beyond the Startup Lab, but quickly ran into our next hurdle: Hangouts support a maximum of 10 participants, and demand for our broadcasts almost immediately exceeded that number.

This week the Google+ team announced that Hangouts on Air allow for unlimited viewers, and are now available to everyone. However, Hangouts on Air require the broadcasts to be public, which ends up not supporting our use case at Google Ventures: our broadcasts are available to anyone at our portfolio companies, but generally not to the public. As a result, we had to look at a way to leverage the early success of using Hangouts to enable interaction between remote attendees and presenters, while also retaining control over who could see the live broadcast.

When I started digging in on the best way to extend live broadcasts of our Hangouts, I was surprised to find few sites documenting the best ways to accomplish what we wanted. Since many people expressed interest in what I ended up doing (not to mention the many Startup Lab occupants who put up with me testing things out at the Startup Lab in the last few weeks!), I figured it was worth a summary of what we’re now using in the current Startup Lab.

Hangouts remain our platform for presenters to speak to the remote attendees, present slides, and screenshare their browser when showing specific sites, tools, etc. Remote attendees are invited into the private Hangout a few minutes ahead of the workshop, and can ask questions at any point throughout. In the Startup Lab, we run the Hangout from a Mac Mini, which has a Logitech C910 HD webcam pointed at the presenter. We use a Blue Snowball USB mic to capture audio in the room, and have a set of powered speakers plugged into the Mac Mini’s headphone jack.

For the livestream, we’re using Ustream. I liked Ustream’s featureset – we have the ability to embed the stream on our site, remove our channel from Ustream’s site altogether, brand the video stream with our logo, password protect the stream so only authorized viewers can watch, and remove ads (we pay for some of these features). Running the Ustream production is a dedicated iMac – I went with a 27” 3.4 GHz quad core iMac so that I’d have the fastest machine possible handling the CPU load associated with live streaming.

Remote attendees had pointed out that they had trouble following along with workshops when questions were asked in person in the Startup Lab – so we added a second camera (the upgraded Logitech C920 HD webcam) mounted on a tripod that’s pointed at the audience. When someone in the audience starts talking, we can switch to that camera so remote viewers can see the person who’s speaking and hear their question (which also avoids us having to have the presenter repeat the question).

Controlling the livestream is Ustream Producer Pro, an app that lets you manage multiple “shots” in a livestream and select which is the active shot seen by the livestream viewers. (Note: Producer is a free app, but I paid for the ‘Pro’ version to get the ability to stream in HD.) In addition to the audience webcam, we need the Hangout to be one of our shots; to get that, I’m routing the Mac Mini’s audio and video out via the Mac Mini’s HDMI port into a Blackmagic Intensity Extreme Thunderbolt video capture box. That plugs into the iMac via Thunderbolt, where Producer Pro sees it as one of its video signals.

Running the actual livestream is pretty straightforward: log into Ustream via Producer Pro on the iMac, select the active shot (the Mac Mini) and sit back. When questions are asked in the audience, switch to the audience camera in Producer Pro so livestream viewers can see/hear them, then switch back to the presenter shot when the question’s done.


In the planning stages, I drew out a diagram that actually comes close to representing the final setup:

Couple final notes on the setup:

• In the Startup Lab I wanted to hear audio from the Hangout directly from the Mac Mini instead of through the livestream. There’s a couple second delay from live to the livestream, and the interaction on the Hangout would start to feel very awkward if the presenter took several seconds of waiting before they heard the question asked in the Hangout. When I plugged the speakers into the Mac Mini, the Mac routed audio to the speakers (and not the HDMI signal). To get audio to both the speakers and the HDMI signal (so that the Hangout audio would be included in the livestream), I created an “aggregate device” in the Mac Mini’s Audio Devices (Utilities | Audio MIDI Setup | + | Create Aggregate Device), and in the Hangout set the audio output to the aggregate device.
• It’s much simpler if presenters use the Mac Mini for the Hangout, but there are times when what they’re presenting is only available on their laptop. For those cases, I got an HDMI switcher and a display port to HDMI cable. When needed, I can plug them into the HDMI switcher, and the signal on the iMac via the Blackmagic Intensity capture device will be their laptop instead of the Mac Mini.
• Facilitating questions from the livestream remains a work in progress. We’ll be incorporating Google Moderator to collect questions and let the audience vote on which questions they’re most interested in. We will likely be embedding the Moderator questions directly on the livestream page on our site, but are still evaluating the easiest way to do this that’s also visible to folks in the Hangout so we avoid forking conversations.
• This setup does result in two video feeds: the Hangout and the Ustream broadcast of the Hangout. I’m going to keep an eye on things to figure out whether this becomes too confusing; if so, we may shift to having all attendees watch the livestream, and have presenters in the Hangout.

In the course of building this setup, I reached out to a number of folks for guidance. Big thanks to the TWiT crew (Leo Laporte, Denise Howell, Alex Lindsay) and the Ustream guys (Brad Hunstable, Alden Fertig, Andy Francis) for answering every question I threw at them, and of course the Hangouts team for building such a great product.

LTE- The Forever Network


Top secret Verizon Training Material included at bottom of page..

Markus V- to lead must follow, to know must listen, to rule must obey- if you get confused, listen to the music play... (jerry garcia)
In response to someone's comments about the at&t "lte" network??


Yea, LTE stands for Long Term Evolution- "the forever network." Verizon coined that- they own it. GSM carriers - which is the type of network the world besides the US and a few of its protecto rats, assyslum nations and annexed political zones uses seeks Tmobile's HSPA++ 4G network. High Speed Packet Access allows everynoe to grab what they're wanting quickly and get off.. CDMA- Code division multiple access networks like those making up the Forever network rely on many, many towers, repeaters, servers, relays, switches, and stations, not to mention bandwidth, to support. What happened to the ability to stick a coat hanger with tin foil into the back of your TV and watch Green Acres? The Federal Communications Commission sold that spectrum of bandwidth (UFH) to Verizon for billions of dollars. Seen as risky a decade ago, any cell company- any investor who could- would buy that spectrum today, as the 21st Century finally has delivered its promise of connection among all, all the time. The ability to compress and virtualize servers and their contents has made possible the ability to save more information than humans have thus far created or discovered. The available storage to need ratio is summarized as flipping a coin into the Grand Canyon.. That's all we have to offer right now- maybe in 20 years, when Verizon's more like 60% completed, we'll know something new, large and challenging to current banks of data server storage capacicty. Anyway, AT&T and LTE are like orange juice and toothpaste.
Damn I just lost a bunch with this timing out- but Tmobile is the smartest company off all... They pay AT&T to use their network each month, but AT&T doesn't pay Tmobile for the same (around here.. ) They made their 4G network where the most people could benefit from it, realizing their a small company, and those who don't live close into town still get crystal clear, unlimited calling via Wifi Calling, which is a standard, free feature by Tmobile alone. It's a VoIP setup, but you wouldn't know it- It's seemless. mark my words, and that's my name, 10 years- Tmo and LTE will be the top dogs, with the Forever Network fraying at the seems all over the country, as they've only focused on pushing their new, LTE 4G super network along. The dilapidation of some rural, Verizon towers and equipment is appalling- and expensive. Tmobile is competing carrying 1/10th of the load at and equal 4G speed, which is typically 3x the speed of cable Internet....

Mark Vanderbloemen, CEO
Vanderbloemen Communications, Inc
828-212-4817

In Viewmont
1245 2nd St NE
Hickory, NC  28601

The "M Disk" - Permanent Backup Storage by any DVD Burner?

This was cut from  Millenniata.com's blog about the "M- Disk" - a solution to the decades old quest for backup storage that 1. holds a lot of stuff, 2. Is durable enough to toss around and be okay, not damaged, and 3. Inexpensive.  Here's what THEY have one of THEIR clients' saying about their product.  I find it quite interesting.  I'm currently trying to contact them for more information regarding storage capacity, formats, required software, etc.  As the 2014 deadline approaches for doctors to have an efile of all of their paper files, one question keeps rearing its head- so do we also want to go ahead and make a backup of our own stuff, while we're scanning all of this media to be available online?

What will doctors put patient records on / in?  The 'cloud'?  I doubt a lot of doctors are going to let patient data float around with everyone else's in the 'cloud.'  In my experience, doctors, lawyers and CPA's trust ONE place for keeping backups- within an arm's reach.

Servers are great, ephemeral- especially the drives, and especially at this time in history as I'm seeing the crappiest hard drives coming out of Taiwan and China that I've ever seen...And no, I'm not surprised- just wishing they would start making drives in the Motor City of Detroit, or something- somewhere they can be built Ford Tough or Heavy Chevy.  I personally won't use hard drives solely for backing up important files, such as videos of my daughter's birth and birthdays.  I use the arm's reach, a couple of clouds, a locked FTP directory and also, a PAIR of duplicated (RAID) hard drives (Good old, and slower, IDE 40 Pin Barracuda drives 180GB at 7200RPM's -Well Western Digital is all I could find there with IDE interface- $80 for 160GB and $80 for 260GB, Which do you buy?  The smaller one if it's going to be your operating system disk, and the larger for storage only. Those two should ALWAYS be separate... Heavy as a brick, each one- and will click for a year before going out finally, so you know when it's time to change them.  Sata drives- don't get me started- technology- just bring on the Solid State, made in the United States preferably. )

So the "M- Disk"  See we all loved the 100 megabyte zip disk for its rigid strength 15 years ago- and then 250 megs!  Whew!   It would only take, aahuuummm about 7 zeros (2,500,000,000) / 250= 1 hundred thousand of those things to back up most good libraries and data servers today...  And 3 or 4 boxes of Sharpies to make sure they stay in order......And yes, 3 or 4 months to do the process.

Ultimatum- This "M Disk" needs to hold around 20GB at least to be as awesome as it's touted, because putting DVD after DVD into a drive as you back up a computer gets rather annoying.  Considering the typical 320GB - 2 TB we're doing these days, that's 16- about 16x6 (a hundred?? Not a math person) disks... Hopefully, on second thought their compression ratio and design has them holding 100GB per disk- that's only 10 per Terabyte... I can go with that for arm's reach sake.....  (Keep in mind a fire proof safe is not only crucial, but will only hold so many disks.....)

Millenniata:

We recently received an email from a small business owner who wanted to share his review and recount the story that lead him to using the M-DISC as his method for backup. With his permission we’ve posted his review below. If you’ve also started using the M-DISC and would like to share your review, please email us at contact@homePCmedia.com . We value the comments and feedback of our customers and community members.

I wanted to take a moment and give you guys some feedback on your m-discs and the BP40NS20 LG drive I bought for my small business. First, I decided to give your discs a try because at the end of last year the unthinkable happened and my external hard drive quit working. I was worried about this same scenario happening because the drive was getting a bit old (if you can call 3 years old!!) and so I had backed up the most important files on a jump drive. I still lost some photos and files that I really wanted to save, but as sad as it is to say I’m glad I didn’t lose everything on that drive.
Needless to say, I was feeling a bit vulnerable after this because I have documents and files for my business that I absolutely cannot lose. So, I did extensive research on the subject of backing up data and eventually made the decision to use m-discs. To be honest I was a bit skeptical when I first read your site, but after watching the video where you guys dip a disc into liquid nitrogen I was sold. I emailed your customer support with a few questions about which drive I could use on my mac and they did a great job helping me pick out the right one—kudos to them!
I’ll admit, I couldn’t help but do some of my own stress tests after watching your videos when my drive and discs arrived. It’s really quite amazing how much abuse the disc can take and still be readable. Anyways, I had thoroughly convinced myself that the m-disc would suit my needs and so I started backing up all my business files and docs. 37 discs later, I’m incredibly happy with my decision. I’ve saved absolutely everything I want to keep to my discs and continue to burn them as I inevitably acquire more files. I store the discs in a good location in my office and I feel confident that I will always have them when I need them. So thank you for the peace of mind!
Brig T.

 http://millenniata.com/2012/04/13/an--disc-review-from-a-small-business-owner/
 

                                                                               

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Opinions and suggestions added by Mark Vanderbloemen- CEO Vanderbloemen Communications, Inc. (dba locally in Hickory, NC as Home PC Media or visit our recycling initiative on Facebook- Hickory Computer Recycling



Some HD Cable or Satellite opperates at higher frequency signal.
Cable Boxes like the SA HDTV DVR's and DirectTV H21.
Simply replace original receiver which cames with the IR system to the Dual Frequency IR Receiver.
The standard cable from the IR eye to the repeater box is 10' long; If you need more cable length, please add our Extension Cables

 CMPLE 1178-N Dual Frequency IR Receiver SA HDTV DVR and DirectTV H21

Get this or any device cheap through that link at the Techno Outlet

VLC Media Player - Apple and Microsoft meet halfway.

(In response to a question- a guy hooking up a new media server, looking for Microsoft to play an ALAC file (Apple Lossless).... That was a loosing quest, until VLC- the FREE, open source bridge...)


We live in this Microsoft Universe, where if we have something we want to do and Microsoft's products and solutions aren't doing it- we're basically screwed, right?  No, I'm finding out - there is a very bright light at the end of this very long tunnel, a buena Vista after all.  It's all about open source.  I don't care how smart the guys are at Microsoft, or Apple for that matter (a company which gives annually what percentage of their income to charity, by the way...??    any guesses???   Apple... under Jobs........0% .. That's right...zilch.
If I've heard one product in the last 6 months more than any other- no wait, lemme say this correctly.  I hear VLC everywhere I go... Oh just get VLC, VLC'll do it....
You know what, all of these codecs the other guy was good at explaining  (the recieving end neeeds as a translator of whatever language was spoken by the speaker (the player, the camera, the tape, .) however the media was modulated to the stream (as was the case with radio communication and still is..AM- Amplitude Modulation , FM frequency modulation....  You need an AM radio to listen to AM what____________? Radio stations / waves / transmissions, etc.....                         An "AM" codec for your radio......
But the difference with OPEN SOURCE stuff- I'll leave this readable- is the WHOLE THINKING... the WHOLE MINDSET that we're going to make things WORK for people, where they haven't , and we're going to build bridges where corporations have built motes (moats?)
Itunes doesn't WANT to play your WAV media files.  But they will work a deal with you- you can download their iTunes program and convert......the word "convert" just doesn't sit well with me....... But they want you to basically convert to applism.  iAM .  iLove you... iHonor Thou.   Oh great i, iArt the one and only...
Okay, but Mark my words, not only because that's my name, but because I've been playing with this stuff since 1983 when I was 5 years old.    My uncle was a salesperson for IBM and that PCjr he gave us shaped my life.  Believe me, it's taken all but a 12 step program to convert from Billism to Unaffiliated or Agnostic.  I think even Socrates said that the more he learned, the more he realized how much he didn't know- that's why he was the "Wisest man in the world."
Companies like Mozilla, Google (as it pertains to their organic search engines, and increasingly not much else..)  and ones making VLC type stuff.  Hey, In my store I have two identical computers setup.  One runs 7 Ultimate and one runs Ubuntu x64 12.4  (the latest and it's free, of course).  When older folks or people who don't know anything about computers come in, I'll ask them to try each and tell me which one they like more?  Which one do you think is a Microsoft based computer, and which is a Linux based OS?   (The winner gets a free copy of the latest Ubuntu by the way.... :-)
The #1 answer, of course, is I have no idea.  Which one do they prefer?  Neither- they do the same thing.  They're both beautiful, seem fast, do 2,000 times more than they expected a computer would EVER do... So what's the difference?  , well, about $350.    
My daughter is 2.5 and has an iPad.. I can't even use it and refuse to try.  Why can she use it- she had no preconcieved notions or biases which prohibit her from learning how to get her games to pull up.  (I do have it set up where she has to do a math problem or it won't unlock..)
My answer to you is that I am quite sure VLC plays ALAC files, because I used to tape phish shows and I know that format well.  I think I remember seeing it on the list..
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 Ok brother:
Audio formats
MPEG, MP3, AAC, Vorbis, AC3 - A/52 (Dolby Digital), E-AC-3 (Dolby Digital Plus) 3, MLP / TrueHD, DTS, WMA, FLAC, ALAC, Speex, Musepack / MPC, ATRAC 3, Wavpack, Mod (.s3m, .it, .mod), TrueAudio (TTA), APE (Monkey Audio), Real Audio, Alaw/µlaw, AMR (3GPP), LPCM, ADPCM, QCELP, DV Audio, QDM2/QDMC (QuickTime), MACE
How's that for playing some dang music!?  And Video?

Video formats:
FLV (Flash), MPEG 1/2/4, DivX 1/2/3/4/5/6, AVI, XviD, WMV (Windows Media Video), Sorenson 1/3 (Quicktime), Real Video 1/2/3/4, 3ivX D4, H.261/.263/.263i/.264, Cinepak, Theora, Dirac / VC-2, MJPEG (A/B), VC-1, DV (Digital Video), On2 VP3/VP5/VP6, Indeo Video v3/4/5
(The biggest thing you'll notice here is the Apple / MS bridge- it plays WMV, Quicktime AND Real Video Files....)
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Hardware Compatability List for VLC's Media Player:
(check it out- way too many to list here)

Now here's what really gets me.. Everyone has an old tuner card- the change to all digital signals was a pain for everyone, including software companies, but name another media player supporting this list:  VLC's HCL
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Anyways, good luck with your attempt to do what Century 21 will quickly allow- for software to replace hardware, for simplicity to replace cabling.  And for free, open creative advancement to carry our nation and this world together into the next century facing god only knows what challenges....
All I can say is that we're now headed for the clouds, where 40 gig hard drives will be large and unnecessry - where access to your media will be like finding the box of Cheerios in the morning, as opposed to something like what you pose as a ligitimate and challenging question due to a complete breakdown and lack of corporations to work together.... How long did every phone have a different charger before they all went to USB?
By that time I think every computer I sell will come with a version of Linux or other open sourced OS on it.   I just had a client walk int 20 minutes ago asking if I could come over and install XP back on his system... "I just don't like this 7 stuff, he said..."  And if 8's great I'll dance naked in Times Square.....
Please show your support for Recycling and responsible waste management for the sake of children in Bangladesh and countries like it.....


If you are going to get Microsoft for your PC, as 95% of computers do, get a version with Media Center embedded or Home Server 2011 for under $60 at the Techno Outlet:
        


Cheers,

Mark Vanderbloemen, ceo
Vanderbloemen Communications, Inc  (which finds itself sitting on a free Microsoft trial for the 365...360, whatever it is- a Sharepoint site....)
Home PC Media of Hickory
1245 2nd St NE,Ste. B
Hickory, NC  28601

828-MIX-PLUS