UPDATE!!!

I talked about how the Hulu private beta was very hard to get invited to... I was wrong. I added my email to their list about 2 days ago, and I just received an invitation to the service. Apparently its not as "private" as i thought. So if you want to sign up, go to :
www.Hulu.com
and enter your email in the box.

How to watch TV shows online for free, Legally!!!

As my first post on my new blog, I wanted to start of with something people are sure to like. A way to (legally) watch popular TV shows online. First things first.

www.hulu.com

The above link takes you to high quality, full screen, legal goodness. The catch here is that you are forced to watch small 15 second ads about once or twice per show. I consider this to be quite fair compared to the 8 minutes of advertisements seen on TV (per episode). When you click on the link, however you will not be able to view the content, instead you will have to sign up to receive an invitation, since Hulu is still an invite-only private beta. Most people report receiving invitations within several weeks of signing up, so you can always try that. However, if your like me, and you cant wait to get your hands on some full length TV shows, OpenHulu is for you. This is a free service that works the same way, in fact, its a workaround for the people who cant wait for their invitations! the site works by "embedding" the shows, thus taking out the restrictions. You still have to watch a few ads, but hey, at least its free!
If for some reason you want the videos in full screen, but don't want to wait for the invitation, you can use Tv Paradise, a service that works in the same way as OpenHulu, but allows you to watch the videos in full screen. The reason I would recommend OpenHulu, however, is that its much easier to navigate and find the shows you want.
Another catch is that none of these services work for people outside of the US, and the only way to geta round that is to use HotSpot Shield, a free service that hides your country of origin. This is where things get a little bit tricky, however, considering this goes against Hulu's term of service, It's not that you will get arrested, but its a "morals" thing.
Thats all for today folks!

A comprehensive guide to bits (and bytes)

Many people have asked what the difference is between a bit and a byte. So here is my attempt at creating a guide.
Firstly, we have to understand what a bit is. According to Wikipedia, a bit is a binary digit, taking a value of either 0 or 1. This means the number 111000 is 6 bits long.
When something is 8 bits long, it is called a "byte". for example, the number 11110000 is 1 byte, or 1B. The capital "B" is what tells us that we are dealing with a byte. A bit, on the other hand, is represented by a lower-case "b". This is a little known fact that can make quite a difference. Advertisers often use this to make their product seem faster, for example if you see an ad that says:

"Buy our internet service, it's 1mb per second!!!!!!!!!Super fast!!!!!"

You would really be buying a service that is 125,000 bytes per second, since 1mb=1000000 bits and 1000000 divided by 8 equals 125,000. If you are confused by all this talk of "mb", read on.
Since it would get annoying to say "Oh... my file is 2,000,000 bits", prefixes can be added before the word bit or byte that add certain amounts of zero's after the one. Here are the most common prefixes:

• Kilo - This prefix adds 3 zero's, so 1 kilobit is 1,000 bits. And 1 kilobyte is 8,000 bits (or 1,000 bytes)
  
• Mega - This is probably most common. "Mega" adds 6 zeros, so 1 megabit is equal to 1,000,000 bits, and 1 megabyte is equal to 8,000,000 bits (or 1,000,000bytes). Photos usually are a few megabytes, so are songs and most programs.
• Giga - This prefix adds 9 zeros. Hard drives are usually a certain amount of gigabytes. But very few other things are.
• Tera - One trillion bits, this is a bizarre amount of storage space some hard drives now have.
  
• Peta - Not even worth mentioning, 15 zeros...... maybe in the future.

Google

The next few posts will be all about google, and why you should have an account with them. Google is not just a search engine anymore, they have grown and added many more new features that can make life easier. Some of these features are:

• Gmail- The best free email client i have ever come across, all of the spam is caught by the filters, You get bizzare amounts of storage for free, and there are a few usefull mods I will talk about later.
• Google News- The most up to date news from hundreds of sources all over the world, all organized and searchable using Google's search.
• Google Calender- The easiest to use online calender I have come across, you can acces it from anywhere with internet, share it with others, and its well organized.
• Google Documents-My second favorite google service, you can make powerpoints, spreadsheets, and word documents, also, you can share with anyone.
• Google Photos-The simplicity of Google's photo serrvice is what makes it so great, you can view photos online and offline, and uploading has never been easier.
• Google Groups-Create a mailing list and private forum for your friends, office, club, family or whatever.

Now you may be wondering. How much does this cost? It costs nothing, and by nothing I mean nothing, no pop-ups, no virus's, free, free free free!!!!

I'll be adding to my descriptions later, hopefully once a day, possibly more. but for now, sign up for a google account here:

https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount

P.S. you only need one account to access all of these great services!

Craigslist

Today I want to tell you guys about Craigslist, the simplest, most effective way to save money. No coupons, no negotiations, just savings. Need a babysitter? Look on Craigslist. Need some household cleaning done? Look on Craigslist. Have some old junk you want to get rid of? Post it on Craigslist to trade or sell it. And its free to look and free for you to advertise. Why pay the newspaper hundreds of dollars to post Real Estate ads when you can get just as many views on Craigslist. Craigslist makes life easier!!

Here's the link:

www.Craigslist.org
Just dont forget to select the city you live nearest to for the most relevant info.

You may want to check out the "Barter" part of the site. Someone started out with a small red paperclip, and traded up to a house, a little bit at a time.

You can view his full story here.

one red paperclip story

well, that's all for today, more tommmorow.

Mozilla Firefox

Here is the single most important tool you could possibly have while surfing the web, the Firefox browser from Mozilla. This is a Secure (very virus resistant) browser that is customizable ( you can add tools to help you do the things you do most often ). The programm can be downloaded to your computer from this location:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/

you can also read more about it here:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

This browser has received numerous awards for it's speed, security, and overall user-friendliness.

Gmail

Today we get to talk about Gmail, my favorite Google service. Gmail has 10's of millions of users for some good reasons, the main three being simplicity, storage, and organization. The main selling point for me is the 5.5GB of storage that they offer for free, and here's why:
There is a fun little program out there called GmailDrive, and it works wonders. It allows you to use your unused Gmail space to store files. Basically, it's a free 5GB flash drive that can be accessed from any computer with internet.
Click here to download GmailDrive
Then simply follow the instructions and under "My computer" you will have a new "other drive" called Gmail, then simply drag and drop into it.

Gmail is also great because it lets you search you email using the same great search feature that Google is known for. Making organization very easy.
Also, Gmail has a very advanced Spam filter that catches almost all spam. I very rarely have a spam message sent to my inbox, and very rarely are "good" messages in my spam folder. This is because of the Google community. When people see spam in their inbox, they push a button that says "report as spam", and Google puts the email into a blacklist.
The integration of Google Chat is also part of what makes Gmail so great. You can easily have an Instant X=Chat with any of your friends who are currently online.
If all of this is interesting to you, head over to www.gmail.com and check it out for yourself. and remember, this google account can later be used for all of the other free services.

New blog, same idea.

Hey everyone! this is me (from computers-life.blogspot.com) my old account got hacked, and since Google wont respond to my emails to them, I decided to start a new blog. All of the old posts i will transfer to here, so you can still read the old information