Despite the fact that the only televisions sold now are high-definition (HDTV), none of the seven televisions in my home are high-def. Yet, because of the fact I make a living writing about entertainment and technology, I decided I needed to get with the program and update. I had to do a little research to find out what I was looking at as I compared all the options I was seeing at a store and decided to share my findings. Here are some things you’ll want to look for on a television if you’re planning on getting the most out of the technology available today.

Plasma, LCD, or LED

The first thing to consider is the type of HDTV you get, whether it be plasma, LCD, or LED-backlit. This refers to the type of screen. Plasma isn’t offered as much anymore, but they can still be found at the stores. LCD is the new standard, and LED-backlit is the newest option. If you’re concerned about viewing angle, you might want to consider a plasma screen. However, running a plasma screen HDTV can cost three times as much as running an LCD. One of the cons of an LCD can be how dark black colors can appear, but that’s where an LED-backlit display can come in. It fixes that issue, yet doesn’t cost as much to run as a plasma screen.

780p, 1080i, and 1080p and 60Hz, 120Hz, and 240Hz

This first set of numbers refers to the number of pixels in the display. Most likely you wouldn’t ever notice the difference in any of these except in larger screens. In that case, if the incoming source has more pixels than your display, you could lose some sharpness, although it wouldn’t be enough to be disappointed. If the incoming sources has fewer pixels, you won’t gain anything extra in the process. This last set of numbers refers to the refresh rate. For the most part, again, you won’t notice the difference. However, for a smoother motion, such as with action movies, sports, and 3D, you’ll want a higher number. Yet for most everything, 120Hz will suffice.

HDMI and RCA Connections

The next thing to consider is the type and amount of connections on the HDTV set. RCA connections are those old-style sets of three plugs that have a yellow, white, and red. HDMI are the newer type of plug with pin connections in it. You need to make sure your HDTV has the appropriate amount of outlets, whether HDMI or RCA, to connect to your devices, such as your Blu-Ray/DVD player, a set-top box for your cable or satellite, a computer, gaming system, or media-streaming device.

Ethernet or WiFi

The next consideration is whether you will carry the Internet to your HDTV through WiFi or Ethernet. Most likely you’ll be using whichever way you carry the Internet to your computer. If via WiFi, there should be instructions with the HDTV telling you how to get the set to accept your WiFi, just as you do with a computer. If via Ethernet, you will need to hard-wire your TV to your computer.

Flash Drives and SD Cards

Some high-def TVs have additional outlets to plug in flash drives and/or SD cards. This enables you to view other media such as videos or pictures directly on your television. You can cut out the middleman of having to view these through your computer and just get them straight from the sources. The flash drive would obviously plug into a USB, and an SD card would plug into an appropriate SD card slot.

Networking Included

Most people will want to use their Internet-enabled HDTV to view movies through their Netflix account, and may also want to view content from services such as YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter. Some sets come equipped with apps built in for this. After you’re connected to your Internet, there is no other networking necessary. However, those extra options can be costly. You can achieve the same thing through a media-streaming device that would connect through an RCA cable or HDMI, such as a Roku or Apple TV. Both of these devices are under a hundred dollars; however, it will be taking up another valuable connection port.

Image Credit:
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons

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If you are not trying to market something and using Twitter to be social, the 140 character limit can be a pain sometimes. Tweetdeck has added a feature called Deck.ly. The long and the sort of it (pun intended), is you can create longer tweets through Tweetdeck.

How Deck.ly works

Here is a rundown on how Deck.ly will work. The pictures were taken of the Tweetdeck desktop application. Below there are other options which work in a similar way.

As you are typing and using up your allotted 140 characters, you will see a notification like this.

You can continue to keep typing and post your update like normal.

When you send your update, you will see a tag at the end of your tweet saying Read More. If the people viewing your update are using Tweetdeck, they will see the same thing.

If they are viewing your update from a different application or a site like Twitter, there will be a Deck.ly link at the end.

When they click on that link, they will see a pop-up or a new page showing the longer message. In this page, there is an option to post a comment and see other people’s comments.

Where is Deck.ly?

There are several ways to use Deck.ly. Below are the 3 options you have to choose from. All of which will have the same end result:

Desktop Application

The first method, as you would expect, is within the Tweetdeck desktop application. As long as you have the most recent version, you do not need to do anything special to use Deck.ly.

All you will need to do to use Deck.ly is type more than 140 characters into the status bar. Once you reach 141 characters you will see an option box for Long Update.

When this box is selected, the tweet will not be cut off or split up into several tweets. As mentioned earlier, you will see a Read More tag or a Deck.ly link instead.

Chrome

The Google Chrome extension is a great option for those of you who don’t want to want to install anything on their computer. The Chrome extension works in the same way as the desktop application. Type everything you’d like to say, then the Long update option will automatically appear.

Android

The Tweetdeck for Android application works like the Google Chrome web application does. There is nothing you need to do to activate Deck.ly. You will be able to type and type and type then post your update.

Conclusion

Using Tweetdeck by way of the desktop application or the Google Chrome web application is very user friendly. Adding in a longer tweeting option is great for those posts that I want to RT but there isn’t enough room with hashtags, giving credit and adding in a comment.

As for Tweetdeck for Android, I do not use it regularly. The reason I prefer other applications is Tweetdeck for Android does not allow scheduled tweets. If it offered that feature I would use all three versions religiously.

What are your reasons for needing more than 140 characters?

image credit: jm3

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Let’s turn the situation around. What if you can find out which social networks your friends are involved in when you received emails from him/her? Rapportive does just that. Rapportive is a browser extension (available for Firefox, Chrome, Safari and MailPlane) and it works with your Gmail or Google Apps account. When you are reading your email, Rapportive will scan the sender’s address for the social networks he/she is in and present all the info on the side pane, right where the Google ads are.

Using Rapportive

Install the browser extension from here.

Once installed, login to your Gmail. The Rapportive link should be visible at the top of the page.

Overall, the application is pretty hands-off. When you are reading your email, Rapportive will grab the sender’s address and scan the various social networks for detail.

You are not asked to do anything except read the information displayed. If you choose to interact, you only have a couple actions you can take. You can:

• Click on the links in their displayed information
• Create a private note
• Add information

Why use Rapportive?

The biggest reason I can think of is the building your day to day business connections. People like to buy things from people they are comfortable with. This means friends are high up on the list. If you court potential clients within their comfort zone and do not push your product or service on them, they won’t feel like you are stalking them on their social networks. You will however, get to know them.

Info you see in Rapportive

As mentioned, you see information about your Gmail pen-pal in the sidebar of your message window. This information is pulled from social sites all over the web. Information from Linkedin will show your job history, recent tweets will show up along with links to all of your known social accounts.

Your Rapportive profile

You may be wondering what YOUR profile will show. Well, you’re in luck. You can click on the link at the bottom of the Rapport window. You can see what others will see.

When I clicked on the link to see my profile, I had a good laugh. It displayed a profile picture I uploaded to Myspace quite a while ago to be funny. If this happens to you, fret not. You can change your profile pic at Gravatar.com

Rapportive notes

With all of the information flooding our head on a daily basis, it would be a miracle to remember small details about your Gmail contacts. Rapportive puts a notes option in the window. Using the private notes allows you to jot down a quick thought or tid bit to help you late connect you with your contact. The note can be anything from a mention of their birthday to an interesting tweet.

Conclusion

I have been testing out Rapportive for a couple weeks now. While you could use Rapportive to track down what social applications friends and family are on, It has a greater value for a small business owner or someone in sales.

My take on the overall goal of the add-on is to find out information to help you make conversation with people you might not know too well. Having a list of sites they might frequent will give you some insight into how they interact socially with people online.

Do you know of other applications like Rapportive? Leave a link in the comments.

Image credit: Rapportive

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Installation and setup

Before you begin you need to make sure that SSH client and server are installed on the correct computers. The host computer that will have the actual running applications needs to have SSH server running. On Ubuntu, it is not installed by default. Look for the packaged called “openssh-server” and install it. On the client computer, you will need “openssh-client“.

The other important preliminary step is to make sure both computers are connected to a network and that you can reach them via SSH. If the computers are in the same building, it will be easy. If not, you might have to configure the host computer to receive SSH connections through the firewall. See your router’s documentation for the correct method of port forwarding.

Connecting

1. Open a terminal emulator: Gnome terminal, Konsole or something similar.

2. Now connect to the host computer. As an example, if the host IP address is 192.168.254.76 and the host username is “bobolina”, you would type the following:

ssh -X -lbobolina 192.168.254.76

This tells SSH to forward the X server calls to the client computer.

3. At the password prompt, enter the password.

4. Run the application. For example, if you want to run Kwrite, just type the command:

dbus-launch kwrite &

(Note: you will need to have “dbus-launch” before KDE 4 applications. Other applications that do not require D-Bus should work without it).

Other Considerations

That is all it takes.  You should now be able to run remote X applications at will. This can be very helpful if, for example, you are running a computer with a very small hard drive, no hard drive at all or even one without a CD-ROM drive, all of which are common with many netbooks and low-cost mini desktops.

To automate this process, you could setup SSH public keys to connect without passwords and write an executable script. Also, if you need a full X session forwarded, you can use NX technology, available with the commercial NoMachine NX or with FreeNX (a free and open source alternative).

As with any network solution, security is always a concern. Using SSH provides a secure connection, but it does little good if your password is easy to guess and your firewall allows anyone to gain access to it. Once you have a secure plan in place, remote X forwarding is an excellent way load remote applications on demand and manage remote machines. The possibilities are only as limited to your imagination and the speed of your network connection. Experiment with different techniques, and let us know what you discover.

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Often, just the words “computer network” are enough to draw up images of some complicated mess of cables and boxes with blinking lights. People see acronyms like LAN, WAN, TCP/IP and a host of others, and think this whole network thing must be the domain of pocket-protector wielding geeks. The truth is, once you get the basic idea of how it all fits together, you’ll find that it’s really not that complicated, and home networking can be done by just about anyone.

IP Addressing

Way back in the day, when I first switched from dialup to broadband, I was thrilled. Not only did everything go so much faster, but I had heard that my computer and my family’s computer could be online at the same time! Gasp! So naturally, on the day it was hooked up, I tried to get both computers online. To my surprise, it didn’t work. Each one could get online when they were the only computer connected, but as soon as I tried connecting both through a hub, it failed.

It was then that I began learning the world of IP addresses. Every device on the internet, from desktop computers to cell phones to smart toasters, has an IP address. Typically, this is a unique number assigned to each of those devices. IP addresses come in the form of “x.x.x.x”, each x being a number from 0 to 254. For example, the server that’s hosting Google.com has an IP address of 74.125.45.100. If you were to type that number into your web browser’s address bar, you’d get the Google homepage.

Places like Google, Yahoo, and of course MakeTechEasier.com keep the same IP address all the time. This is because they’re providing content to the world, and we want to make it as easy as possible for people and devices to find us.

Your home computer, on the other hand, is probably not serving web pages or providing some kind of content to the outside world. This means that your internet provider does not have to worry about giving you the same address every time you connect. Each time you connect to the internet, your computer asks your ISP for an address to use. Most of the time, it’s not the same one you had a few days, weeks, or months earlier. They see your computer’s request for an address, search in their system for an available one, and assign you the first unused address they have. For the sake of simplicity in this article, I’m going to use “9.9.9.1″ to represent the IP address given to you by your ISP.

Back to my old internet sharing problem: what was going on was that my internet provider was only giving me ONE address. I could hook up 2, 10, or 700 computers but my ISP was still only giving me ONE address. Well how in the world was I to hook up all my computers when I only have 1 address to use? Network Address Translation.

Network Address Translation

It’s a fancy name for a pretty simple concept. NAT basically means converting that one, single, internet address (9.9.9.1 in our example) into seperate addresses for your home network. To make this easier to understand, I’m going to compare internet routing to the existing postal system here in the US.

In the preceding example picture, we have College University as the destination for our letter. Even though the college is split into multiple buildings, it has a single street address. When the mail room gets a letter, it checks the letter to see which building it should go to, and which department in that building. Compare that to a similar example of an incoming internet data packet:

As you can see, it follows a very similar method to the postal example. The outside world sees every computer in your home only under your “main” IP address, in this case “9.9.9.1″. The router, which equates to the Mail Room in our example, checks all the incoming data to figure out which computer it should go to.

Note: I won’t be covering exactly how it figures that out, as that’s a bit beyond the scope of what I’m covering here, and the postal-to-internet analogy isn’t a perfect 1:1 comparison

You may be wondering about the IP addresses shown in the example. As I said earlier, every device on the internet has an IP address, but your ISP usually only gives you one at a time. Where did these other ones come from?

In short, IP addresses starting with “192.168.x.x” are private addresses. They only exist inside your home network. This is the key part of NAT. Even though you only have one “real” IP address of 9.9.9.1, your router basically “makes up” new ones for all your computers.

I know, I know, we’re getting into the complicated stuff and I said it wouldn’t be complicated. Essentially, what happens is that all the websites you visit or people you chat with on AIM/Yahoo/Skype/etc only see that your “street address”, your real IP of 9.9.9.1. When they send you a message, they send it to 9.9.9.1. It’s your router that knows, when it gets that message, which computer to send it to. The rest of the world doesn’t need to know anything but your main outside IP address. All the 192.168.x.x addresses are completely private and nothing but your router knows, or cares, that they exist.

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