We finally bought a nifty new iPad 2, just in time for the iPad 3 to come out. No worries, I don't use the camera for much that is going to matter between 720p and 1080p, although I do get a little bummed that my phone is faster than my iPad. While I'm really liking the iPad overall (when I thought I wouldn't), I must say that I'm also finding little annoyances along the way. One such annoyance is the inability to play flash video on the iPad. In this article I'm going to highlight two ways to reliably watch internet flash video on your iPad.

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It seems like I've spent a little more time lately than I would like recovering failed hard drives for people. How I do it is a topic for another complete article, but there's also a common thread and question involved with these recoveries. The common thread is no files are backed up, usually people had a USB drive, but never took it out or hadn't backed up to it for quite some time. Even worse was using the USB hard drive as their main datastore. The question I always hear after saving the irreplaceable pictures and data is, "How can I keep this from happening again?" In this article I want to explore a few options of building a solid home network on the cheap. The avenues to get it done can vary, but the solution to the data loss problem is common, back up to the network and have it be automatic, or it will never happen.

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UPDATE: After a few months in service, it was clear the AMD board and CPU were not cutting it. MicroCenter had a crazy sale on i7 2600K quad-core 3.4GHz processors, so I picked one of those up. I put it on an ASRock H67M-ITX board and added a 220W PSU, the latter requiring more fabrication on the TiVO case. This setup flew and was then used for the review of TVersity on SmallNetBuilder.

In Part 1 of the Repurposing a TiVo Series 2 set of articles I walked through my plan of repurposing our TiVO Series2 as a home theater PC (HTPC). For those of you coming here on this page and not seeing Part 1, you're probably thinking, "but I just want to install Linux on my TiVo and use it that way". Give up on that thought. The TiVo hardware is proprietary (ie limited or no drivers) and CPU power is very low. I explored this route for quite sometime and eventually gave up. I eventually settled on gutting the TiVo, doing some fabrication to make it in to an HTPC, and then placing it inconspicuously in to our cabinet under the TV. What I found was that was easier said than done. Granted, I did do some things along the way that took a lot of time, but overall this was what I could describe as a moderately difficult project. Let's press on!

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We used to love our TiVo, loved it so much that I thought we would never NOT have a TiVo. But then we got a nice Samsung HD TV with DLNA capabilities and we soon fell out of love with our faithful little TiVo. Although you can, you just don't want to watch a standard-def TiVo on a hi-def TV. I looked in to a new HD TiVo, but at $599 with lifetime service for even the cheapest box, I couldn't convince myself it was worth it. I found I could stream almost any network TV show from PlayOn to the TV via DLNA, although the rewind and fast forward capabilities are missing. The nail in the coffin was Comcast shutting off their analog channels, making the TiVo useless. This 2-part Repurposing a TiVo Series 2 will explore options and conclude with I ultimately did with our TiVo Series2.
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One of the perks of my day job is a nifty new Smart phone every year. This year I got to replace my "aging" HTC EVO 4G with the shiny new Samsung Galaxy S™ II, Epic™ 4G Touch SPH-D710 (now that is a mouthful!). Some people may call me crazy, but I chose that over the new iPhone 4S. I liked the new Personal Assistant on the iPhone, but I also like all of the Android apps I'd been using for my home network. Realistically I can't even say there was a thing wrong with my EVO, except that I got tired of constantly trying to clean up internal storage when apps would get me under the low limit. The new Galaxy S II afforded me 16GB of internal storage vs. the 1GB on my EVO. Added to that is a dual core 1.2GHz processor vs a single 1GHz processor, and wireless N, on top of a beautiful screen. In a phone I was really skeptical of the benefit of wireless N, but as I proved in the old laptop wireless upgrade shootout, it might be a benefit, even on the internet.

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