Placeshifting is a term you don’t hear all that often as it is a technology that still hasn’t hit mass-market penetration.  With a recent announcement that Dish Network will be integrating it into their new HD DVRs, it should be something you hear a lot more about in the months to come.

In short, placeshifting is the act of literally shifting the location of where you watch your media from one place to another.  This is most commonly used with television broadcasts, but you can do it with a number of different devices such as DVRs, VCRa, CDs and more.

The most common name in the placeshifting marketplace is Sling Media which makes a line of products called “Slingbox“.  By plugging your satellite or cable receiver into their piece of hardware, connecting your box via Ethernet cable to your router, and then finally a piece of software on your laptop or selected mobile devices, you are able to watch the TV in your home anywhere you have an Internet connection.  Whatever appears on your TV at home will appear on your mobile device/laptop, and will also have full control over the television to change channels, and even control the DVR if that is connected.

While there has been some question as to if this is legal, thus far it has been found to be okay so long as you only use it for your personal use, and it is your own TV programming you’re watching.

The device really couldn’t be simpler to set up, and if you are someone who travels extensively for business, you couldn’t find an easier way to keep up with your favorite shows while away from home.

Though we have discussed what social networking is, what exactly is the networking portion, and what purpose does it serve?

The picture to the right is an image I took using a Facebook application called Nexus.  Each dot in the picture represents one of my “friends” on the popular social networking site, and each line represents one person being friended to another besides myself.  As you can see, some people are connected to many others, while some have no other connections.  This doesn’t necessarily mean they have no other friends, we just don’t have any others in common with one another.

While all of this is great, the question becomes what you do with your “network”?  While some social sites such as LinkedIn promote the professional aspect of networking, most of them are merely about connecting with old friends, or people you currently work with.   It can be useful for self-promotion, such as with your own blog, or other personal type project, but for work advancement, it is not perfected yet.

How to expand this into something meaningful, or new leads for work or advancement… well, that’s still trying to be worked out.  Until then, enjoy catching up with your friends and family… and charts with dots and lines!

Mashup is one of those terms you hear and see around the web quite often, but again it is hardly ever explained.  Like so many other terms, people just assume you know what it means.  So, as always, StarterTech is here to help you learn what these things mean.

As the name would imply, a mashup involves taking a minimum of two web services and making them work together to create a third service.  The one we’ve pictured to the right is called Twittervision and combines Google Maps with Twitter to give you a graphic representation of where each twitter is coming from around the world.

All of this is accomplished via the use of application programming interfaces (API) which allow programmers to access the raw data of a service and manipulate it in different ways to create other tools.  While we have shown you a fairly frivolous example here, there are thousands upon thousands of such tools out there on the web now, with all sorts of varying degrees of usefulness.

So, next time you see the word, at least you’ll have some idea of what is being discussed.

While there is more than one way to connect a computer to a TV, we’re going to cover one of the easiest ways to do it with a laptop.

The first question most people would ask why you want to display your screen on a TV, and there are numerous reasons for this. Quite often I do this to show my family a movie trailer from a web site, or a video on YouTube, or if we have a business matter to go over, it is a quick way for everyone to be able to see the same materials without crowding around a small screen.

The simplest way to accomplish this is most laptops feature a SVHS (short for Super VHS) output like the one pictured here to the left. You will just need an SVHS cable for the picture, and most TVs today have one, if not multiple of these inputs.

As each computer and television are different, you’ll need to consult your owner’s manuals on how to change the input on your television, but most laptops will have some sort of sub key on your “F” keys (the function keys across the top of the keyboard) with a symbol for a television, or something that says something to the effect of “CRT/LCD”. Once you have located this selector, it will give you the option of changing your screen to the TV only, to the TV and laptop screen or back to the laptop only.

One caveat, as you can see from the picture at the top, the display is rarely perfect when it moves to the TV. While this isn’t a problem in general use, just don’t expect it to be perfect.

There is one more thing you’re going to need if you want to play audio along with the video, and that’s some sort of audio-to-RCA cable, such as the Belkin produced cable we have pictured to the left.  While this cable is actually meant for devices like an iPod, hence it also having an output for video, it works perfectly for connecting your laptop to your TV via your headphone output.  Once you plug this into the computer, you then plug the red and white cable to the corresponding inputs nearest the SVHS input, and you will have audio as well as video playing from your computer to your TV.

As I said, every model of computer and TV varies in all the finer details, but at least you now have a basic knowledge of what to look for, and how to get from one to the other.

We’ve discussed Wi-Fi before, and we’ve discussed routers, and though we told you to lock down your router so people couldn’t use your connection, there are times when sharing your connection can be a good thing.

A company named Fon has come up with a system where you purchase a router from them for $53, a reasonable price for a Wi-Fi router, the encourages you to let others share in your connection.  While this may seem like a scary concept security wise, the device is built to handle this by offering two channels of connectivity.

The private channel, the one you will use, is secured by you entering the router’s serial number as the password, so it is fairly unlikely that anyone will hack it.  The second channel is a public one that is unable to access any traffic on the private channel.

The public channel can be used in two different ways, either from people willing to pay to use your connection, if you so choose to do that, or by other people who own a Fon router.  That’s one of the side benefits of owning one of these is that it gives you the right to use other Fon routers anywhere in the world, which can be located by using this handy Google Maps mashup.  So if you’re traveling any where in the world, you can have free access to the Internet.

It is certainly not a perfect system, but if you are in the market to add Wi-Fi to your home or office, this is a handy way to do it with a lot of potential side benefits.

Wi-Fi is another one of those terms that people toss around without much thought to if people know what it is, or what it does.  Essentially it is just the common name for the way computers and other devices converse with one another in a wireless manner, or connect with the Internet.

While Wi-Fi is the common term, what you are actually using is variations of the modulation for wireless communications using the 802.11 standard.  This technology has now been included in items such as computers, handheld video games, game consoles, PDAs, phones, media players and more, all of them with the intention of letting you get on to the Internet from more convenient locations, and without the restriction of wires.

Thus far the technology has had three official iterations released to the public:

802.11a – Released in 1999, running in the 5 GHz range, this standard didn’t run long due to the lousy ranges the devices got.

802.11b – Also released in 1999, this version ran in the 2.4 GHz range, and traded speed for distance.  Due to the range, this was the first standard to catch on with the public.

802.11g – Still in the 2.4 GHz range, this version came out in 2003 and really helped the concept take off with the public.

802.11n – While 802.11n devices have been released, these are not yet a finalized standard.  Once done, this will be the fastest yet, with the same approximate range as b and g.

The problem with 2.4 GHz is that this is the same bandwidth that most cordless phones, microwaves and Bluetooth operate on, so you can see signal problems with conflicting signals.  This is why you have seen a lot of cordless phones advertising they now operate in the 5.8 GHz range as it reduces the interference with your wireless Internet connections.

Amongst the biggest benefits of the technology is the number of restaurants, coffee shops, hotels and more that are offering free Wi-Fi to their customers.  While cities have attempted to offer free Wi-Fi across their entire population, unfortunately most of these initiatives end in failure, so that is why it is always handy to look for businesses offering free Wi-Fi, or some other systems we will discuss in the future.

Quite often if you have to call in for tech support on your broadband Internet connection, they will ask you if you have a router connected to your modem, but what is a router?

Typically called “routers”, the actual name for the pieces of equipment you put in your home to assist in running multiple computers is “residential gateway”. While you certainly can run your computers without a gateway, this device will allow your computers to not only talk to each other and share files, it will also allow your system to share the same Internet connection. So instead of plugging your modem directly into your computer, you would instead plug it into the gateway, and then your computers into the gateway also. Most of these devices today are Wi-Fi, so quite often you won’t even need to plug in your computers directly, but I personally always find it more reliable.

Besides allowing all of your computers to talk to each other, they can be a useful device to have around just for the convenience they give people who may visit you, and also as an added layer of security for your computer. Most gateways today come with a built-in firewall, making it that much more difficult for hackers to get into your system, causing potential damage. As for being useful to anyone who may visit your home, Wi-Fi is appearing in more and more devices from the iPod Touch to cell phones, so allowing someone to hop on to your connection to check their email is always nice, just make sure to secure the gateway from random users as should be listed in your instruction book that came with your gateway.

The other issue that is coming up more and more in technology is not just computers needing to connect to the Internet, but also video game systems, DVD players, VoIP phones and more are all using ethernet cables now to hook up to the gateways, as well as Wi-Fi. The ability for devices to talk to the Internet and download new software updates is becoming essential to any gadget’s operation. Eventually you will need to be connecting multiple devices to the Internet, so you may as well get to work on it now.

I can not stress this enough, though, if you purchase a Wi-Fi enabled gateway (router), make sure to follow the manufacturers instructions on securing your wireless signal so that no neighbors, are curious wander-bys can get on your network, or use your Internet connection for nefarious doings.

It’s another one of those sites you see all over the web, and you hear about it constantly, but what exactly is Digg?

Launched in December 2004, Digg was one of the first social bookmarking sites that encouraged people to get involved with helping to let other people know when you thought a site or article is important. A user first submits a blog article to the site by providing a link to the story, followed by a picture to symbolize the story (usually an image from what you are submitting), a description and a category.

Once it has been submitted, other people who like the story can “Digg” the story by clicking on a simple button on the actual Digg site, or by clicking on a button the blog owner has embedded in their actual site. If a story gets “dugg” enough times, it can make it to the front page of the Digg site which can mean a tremendous amount of traffic for the site that published the story.

The site has gone through many trials and tribulations with their original core users getting upset by the fact that technology related stories aren’t featured as prominently as they used to be, but with the popularity of the site growing into the mainstream, its CEO was named 1 of the Time 100 of 2008, it has begin to reflect society as a whole, and not just the early adopters.

So, next time you see that little badge, and you like the story, why not give it a click and do the suthor a favor of helping them get more readers?

It’s happened to all of us. Your Windows XP slows down, and for the life of you, you can’t figure out what is causing it. There is a way you can figure it out, but you need to be careful playing around in this area of your computer, so please follow along carefully.

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While there are many social bookmarking options out there, (del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, amongst many more) most people still like to have their bookmarks saved on their physical computer, myself included. The largest hassle with this is if you have multiple computers, say at home and at work, it can be a nightmare remembering which computer has which bookmarks, and always making sure that that you have your latest favorites on each.

This is where bookmark synchronizers can come in extremely handy. While there are many of them out on the market, my hands-down favorite has to be Foxmarks.  As the name would imply, this is a tool built only for the Firefox web browser, but as we have said before, it is the one we highly recommend everyone use.

The system is fairly simple in that you download a small additional piece of software for your browser, known as an “extension”.  This, like any other extension, is just a small item that will help your Firefox do more tricks and helpful tasks, thus extending its functionality.  To download the extension visit their page on Firefox’s site here.

What happens is once you’ve installed it, you will be asked to set up an account, just like you would any other service.  Once done, it will make a copy of your bookmarks and upload them to a central computer, a server, in their system.  You then will go to the second computer and download the extension again.  The difference here is that instead of creating an account, you will sign in to the one you created on the previous computer.  Once you have signed in, you will be asked if you want to upload what is on this computer and replace what is on the server, or if you want to start merging them what is on the server instead.  You want to start with what is on the server as this will simply merge your two sets of bookmarks, the other way will overwrite what you already saved.

Once you have gone through this process once, you will never have to do anything again except occasionally wait for them to finish syncing before you shut down Firefox, but it will warn you whenever this happens.  From here on out, the extension will automatically detect when you have made changes to your bookmarks, upload them again to the server, and when you go to the other computer, it will automatically download the changes.  Your bookmarks will now be constantly merged so they will look exactly the same on every computer you add this to.  You can do it for home, work, your laptop, any computer that you own.  I do, however, recommend you never do this on a computer that is accessible by users other than yourself as it would give them access to all of your bookmarks as well.

It’s a brilliant little system, and something all of us here at StarterTech use all of the time to sync across all of our systems.