IT Legends - Tech in Connecticut

So, what I didn’t know about hulu.com earlier this month is that it’s a joint venture by News Corp (Fox) and NBC. Funny, the hulu.com mission is to deliver premium programming, and since I just love Battlestar Galactica (but wait, isn’t that SciFi? Yes… but NBC owns SciFi) I agree that the programming is indeed premium. What sucks is their delivery. Again, NetFlix takes the cake on viewing, but the selection is limited (even though its growing) and the networks probably won’t let them play current season stuff. Even NBC.com is better, and they own a portion of hulu.com - can’t they get some people together to make some upgrades to the service? Yes, you guessed it, I’m catching up on Battlestar Galactica today. We got rid of paid network programming, either cable or sattelite (tried both) because we’re just not home often and the costs are high for something you rarely watch. I used to watch BSG on iTunes, I even paid the $1.99 per show. But NBC didn’t resign with iTunes because Apple refused to increase costs to $4.99 per show. Go Apple! But now I have Seasons 1-3 in iTunes proprietary format and can’t purchase Season 4 the same way. I should have just bought the DVDs.

So, back on 4/10 when I talked about hulu.com some more, I also mentioned that I’d upgraded my wireless adapter. I’d purchased this ThinkPad T40 from Buy.com for $399. I upgraded it to 2GB RAM for $120, so total cost $519 plus some S&H. After awhile of using it, I realized the wireless b card (maxing out at 11mbps) wasn’t going to cut it for me in order to connect to my domain at the office. I needed wireless g (54 mbps). I’m a big fan of the Intel PRO/Wireless adapter series, so I started searching for the Intel PRO/Wireless 2200b/g MiniPCI adapter to replace my Cisco Aironet Wireless a/b MiniPCI adapter. I found one on ebay (from dragon_on_the_edge) with total cost about $24 (shipping and handling, card, etc). I was pretty ecstatic, as I was under the impression it would be more. There was one stipulation not to use this card with an IBM ThinkPad, and I thought … bollocks! I’ll use it. (more…)

I upgraded my laptop’s wireless adapter, thinking that perhaps this could have been part of the problem with hulu.com’s performance. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that way. I did notice that the imperfections are seen less when not in full screen - but they are the same imperfections. They are just more visible when in full screen mode. One thing I sincerely dislike about hulu.com is if you take focus away from the browser while in full screen mode and want to type something somewhere else, (more…)

A few weeks ago, one of my clients reported he had a bounced email to his client. It looked to me like it was a standard server-based spam misidentification; these things happen. So I followed the instructions I was led to in order to remove my clients’ email server from AT&T’s blacklist, which involved checking to make sure the server wasn’t on a few public DNSBL servers. His server was not, so I submitted it on an AT&T website and asked to remove it. I didn’t start to make a connection between AT&T and One Communications until a second and third client reported the same issue. Finally, my fourth and last One Communications customer client notified me of the same problem. So, since none of the servers were ever published on any of these well-known public DNSBL servers, I can only assume AT&T decided to blacklist all email (more…)

Travis told me about hulu - they had BSG Season 4 Episode 1, too! The video quality was indeed better, but the playback was still a little choppy. NetFlix still has the best online viewing I’ve tested out yet. iTunes has been good to me, too. But both of those are pay-to-view. Maybe the commercial-supported model just isn’t up to par yet - but it should be! I dunno what’s goin’ on with these people.