Take your Kindle on the road with you with a Mobile Wifi HotSpot

Last month, a group of bloggers got together at the Techlicious & TravelingMom Holiday Roadshow to share some technology and traveling tips.  We had a wonderful lunch and I walked away with a Kindle Fire HD and an AT&T Unite for GoPhone  by NetGear Wi-Fi mobile hotspot. While each of them is pretty cool in their own, they're like the Wonder Twins - combined they're pretty powerful.

The Kindle Fire HD 7" is a pretty nice starter tablet. It's got a beautiful screen and a fast responsive processor. Battery life is pretty nice, lasting a day off use, making it great for trips. Mashable rates the Kindle Fire (albeit a larger size) a good one to get this holiday season.  This is my first table and I'm excited to leverage the larger than a phone form factor.

I'm truly interested in using it like a tablet, leveraging the larger screen for taking notes, looking at pictures in beautiful HD, and reading recipes while cooking. It's great for those things that work on your phone, but work better on a larger screen. This post was even drafted on my Kindle.

There are plenty of apps available through Amazon's App Store. Many software makers even keep the Kindle version up to date with their Android versions!  Skype works nicely with the front facing camera to keep me connected, though I don't travel as much as I used to.  I miss Instagram and the Google apps, though older versions can be sideloaded.

But what the Kindle excels at is connecting you to Amazon library of movies, books, music and their store. With a Amazon Prime Account it's so easy to quickly find and start watching a movie. And they can even be downloaded to watch when you don't have Wi-Fi, like on an airplane (don't be that guy with the $1,171 Wi-Fi bill).

Coupled with a AT&T Unite for GoPhone  by NetGear Wi-Fi mobile hotspot, using AT&T's fast 4G LTE (where available) network, you can connect your Wi-Gi only Kindle (or up to 10 other devices) to the internet.

This is great when traveling on a road-trip or, in my case, when the public Wi-Fi at the pool
just doesn't cut it.  You can have your own trusted network anywhere you are and not have to worry about anybody snooping your connection or if there will be Wi-Fi where you're going.  You don't have to type long emails on your little phone keyboard, you can fire up your laptop and use the full size keyboard from anywhere!

And because its through GoPhone, you don't have to sign up for a new subscription. You buy the device from AT&T or other retailers and then add a pre-paid plan. I've been using the $25 for 1.5GB of data in a month and that's been getting me through the multi-day swim meets that end the short course swimming season.

The new Kindle also comes with a 2 year anything goes warranty, when coupled with a Nerf-like case make this the kind of device you can share with your kids. It's got multiple user accounts so you can share it with your family and everybody keeps their own place in their books. With the Free Time Unlimited, kids are provided kid appropriate books, games and videos and the parent has control of how long they can play games and how much reading must they do before hand.

Note: I was not compensated for this post, but I did receive some cool swag, including the Kindle and the Mobile Hotspot and a really awesome lunch. All the content is my own honest opinion.

Ubuntu is easy or Computer recover with Linux

It seems to be the time for hard drive failure in our house. Heather has had two hard drive failures in the last two years and I have finally had my first disk failure.

On Christmas Eve, my windows PC gave me a blue screen of doom error. I decided that it was a good time to turn it off. When I turned it on Christmas afternoon, my disk was clicking and clacking and the BIOS found no bootable disk. Not a good thing to happen.

I wasn't concerned because all my data was backed up with Carbonite. A good backup strategy is a great idea, no matter how you do it. Comcast provides some backup software with the free with subscription McAfee Security Center and there are scads of online backup services. But I really like Carbonite because it runs in the background and backs up to a remote site. I can selectively restore files or even to a new computer!

But, I needed a computer. Okay, I really wanted a computer - I store recipes online, I keep my tasks with Remember the Milk, and I was sure to get one or two Christmas greeting emails (I use Gmail). Just about everything I do an use is web based, so as long as I could get online, I was good to go.

I had also been wanting to play with some distro of Linux. This was my excuse to do it. I downloaded the latest Ubuntu Live CD, burned it to a CD (on my wife's computer) and just like that, I was able to boot my PC.

It was super easy! Unfortunately, it did confirm for me that my hard drive was entirely fried. But it wasn't a big deal, I had a working computer until my company was able to send me a new hard disk (well, a new laptop, too because it was time for a new computer anyway).

So, I've been running Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn for a short while (and know that I will continue to do so in the future) and here are my thoughts:

1. Incredibly simple install. You answer a few questions and then it does its thing. You don't have to sit and supervise it.
2. Package managers (either with the command line or a graphical one) make installing software so easy. I was very quickly able to get the software I wanted up and running (and it automatically installed all the required other libraries as well). For those still running Windows, check out Appupdater for that same type of functionality.
3. Almost all of the software is free! Free! Ubuntu is free!
   
4. Linux does a better job of memory management than Windows. I can run the same several memory intensive applications (Open Office with giant spreadsheets, Google Earth, GIMP and then several Citrix based java apps) simultaneously with better performance under Ubuntu. Linux will keep an older computer running longer than under Windows!
5. There is so much information available online to support Linux. Sure it helps to have a smart friend (I've got a few of them) for computer support, but there are all kinds of forums and blog postings out there. Okay, at the same time this can be problematic - some of it wasn't up to date, but there is lots of information available.
6. Ubuntu has a great UI. Most people think of 'nix and the command line, but you don't have to use the command line (editor's note: the command line is such a faster and easier way to do stuff, so check it out). The learning curve was almost flat from a user standpoint. If you are a just turn on the computer and use it person, you can do that with Ubuntu. If you want to get into the backend of the system, you can do that with Ubuntu.
7. I'd like to give serious props to the Wireless Network Manager in Ubuntu. Under Windows you always have to enter your wireless access point's WEP key in hex (numbers 0 - 9 and A - F). With the Gnome network manager, you can actually enter the plain text phrase - real words that are easy to remember and know that you typed correctly. Oh yeah, and you only have to enter it once as opposed to twice (or more if you type it wrong) under Windows.
   

So far the only thing I still have to figure out (and it is from a lack of looking, not that Ubuntu can't) is to manage my music and iPod. For the time being, it isn't a problem, because I manage my iPod on my daughter's PC, but I'd really like to be able to do that at some point.

Ubuntu is definitely as good an operating system as Windows, if not better, both technically and cost wise. The applications are out there and they too are as good as or better than the commercial alternatives. I'd recommend checking it out and thinking about it for your next OS.

When can we get rid of those wires or Wi-Fi to supersede wired Ethernet

The Wired and Wireless blog on ZDNet has an article entitled, Wi-Fi to supersede wired Ethernet. The article focuses on how some people feel that 802.11n is going to replace wired ethernet.

It's doubly ironic for two reasons (and that is redundant - both fun words to say). Firstly, I am in the process of upgrading my home wi-fi network to 802.11g. Sorry to dash your visions of me, I'm a gadget lover, but not always an early adapter. Secondly, I spent hours yesterday rewiring our home AV equipment for our new HDTV (notice how I slipped that one in there). With a Tivo, a DVD and now a cable box, there are so many cables to connect everything. While I was doing that, Heather asked me when it was all going to be wireless?

That day might be coming. Right now, you can't get a clean enough, fast enough wireless connection to move the amount and quality of data for a good audio-video experience. When it comes to speakers, we can't move enough power over the air to drive the speaker.

The article mentions "pervasive mobility" and that is a significant benefit to faster wireless technologies. Right now, we have that mobility with voice communications, because we accept lower quality audio for voice communications. However, a home theater setup isn't mobile, so until the costs come down significantly and the quality goes up, those wires are here to stay.

Plus setting up those wires is your Red Badge of Home Electronics.

My first Craigslist listing

I just made my first Craigslist listing. Nope, I'm not posting to missed connections or looking for more women, I'm selling my old router/wireless access point and wireless cards. I'm upgrading to the faster, but not latest in technology, 802.11g.

For the week that Seattle Craigslist keeps ads up, you can see my ad here.

I used a disposable phone numbr, which seems pretty cool but Heather suggested that I don't use PayPal for the financial transaction.

So, we'll see how it goes and if I can make 50 bucks and turn it into one 802.11g wireless adapter. I've got to get our Wii or Tivos online faster too!

New wifi access point, new KMFDM album

I didn't think I'd be writing a post like this tonight, but it fits.

I was out picking up pizza and I heard that KMFDM would be on the C89.5 Worldwide and so I called up Heather to see if they were having a show tonight in Seattle. No dice, just a radio thing. So when I got home, I kept the radio in my MINI on and ran to the entertainment center.

Heather asked me why the music was on in the car and I responded, "so I can have a seamless audio experience."

She didn't want to listen to the radio show, because she "doesn't like my music." So Parker and I sat in the garage in the car listening, while the pizza cooked.

Once the pizza was ready, I decided I would sit in my home office and stream the music. And that is were I am right now. Eating pizza, listening to KMFDM streaming online, downloading some very large work files and using my new wifi access point.

I finally upgraded to 802.11g and I am doing all this via wifi, without any latency! It is incredible. Just like the new KMFDM. The album is really good, lots of self-sampling (a KMFDM trademark), but the radio show is hilarious. They are having all kinds of technological issues with the phones (dropping callers) and quite funny conversations with the callers.