What is a “stumble”, and why should you care?

Just like when we explained What Is Digg and What Is Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon is one of those sites people talk about, but never really explain to anyone.  At the core of Stumble, as most fans call it, it is a social bookmarking site that allows you to save sites to your account with reviews and tags.

The social aspect kicks in as lets say you tagged something with “how-to”, and someone comes to Stumble and searches on that term.  Once they see the results, they will see your page marked with that tag, allowing people to discover new sites they’ve possibly never visited before.  The more a site gets stumbled, the better chance of it being discovered, so website owners love it when you Stumble something they’ve written.

If you choose to start using StumbleUpon, which I highly recommend, you download the StumbleUpon Toolbar so you have quick access to adding sites.  If the site is already in their database, all you will have to do is push the thumbs up to add it to your account, and if it isn’t already int here you will only need to fill out a bit of info to add it.

So give it a shot and start finding pages you never knew about!

All of us here at StarterTech our Sprint users, and say what you will about them, we are very happy with our service with them… except in the house.

There is nothing more frustrating than having to leave your cell phone laying in the window in the hopes of getting one bar of signal strength.  If you get a call, it doesn’t really matter because as soon as you pick it up, you lose your bar.  Same for text messages.  Essentially our cells were useless in our house.  Now Sprint has released a new device called the Airave, and we are now enjoying five bars of signal strength through most of the house, with some odd corners getting two to three.

The device works by plugging into your broadband Internet connection via your router or switch.  It then locks on to GPS satellites to make sure you are in the United States, and then your calls, while in range, are routed via the Airave over your broadband connection.

The unfortunate thing, and one that is a bit perplexing is you have to pay for the device and a monthly fee for the service.  Considering you are doing this to boost their signal, using your own Internet connection, and trying to make sure you can continue to use their service, but yet they charge you for all of it.  I would have preferred to have seen the device free with a subscription, but I am so happy to finally use my phone in my house, I think I’ll live.

We have talked about Open Source a few times, but we have never defined it.  What is it, and why should it matter to you?

The Open Source Initative defines it as:

Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.

Essentially it means that anyone can download the source code for a program, play with it as they like, and submit their changes for future inclusion in the program, or even start their own separate offshoot of the product.  As an example, Flock, a fairly new browser, is built on the original code of Firefox.

As the definition suggests, this is somewhat of a reaction to situations such as the perceived evil doings of Microsoft by forcing Windows, their world leading operating system on people.  Open source projects, as we said, can be played with by anyone, additions to a program are usually done by committee, and they tend to react quicker to security and stability issues because there are such large teams behind them with no corporate bureaucracy to fight their way through.

Are they inherently better?  Not always.  While they are free, and do tend to be more stable and so on, you have situations like Linux, an open source operating system to replace Windows, where there isn’t that much compatiable software for it.  Then you have situations such as WordPress and Firefox where everyone and their brother makes extensions and plugins for it.

We here at StarterTech use open source products whenever we can, but they aren’t for everyone, and you need to study to see if they fit with your needs.

What is WordPress, and why is it slowly coming to power the majority of websites out there?

In short, WordPress is an open source blogging platform that has taken on a life of its own.  Whether it be hosting your own blog, or using a free hosted blog, this piece of software has become so popular that it is literally everywhere you turn.  The reason this program has become so popular isn’t just that it’s free to use, but it is a solid program capable of doing more than blogging, and highly customizable via an enermously active development community.

As I write this, there are 2,700 plugins listed in the official WordPress plugin directory, and as for themes, the firles that determien the look o your blog, there are tens of thousands out there, which allow you to change your blog as often as you like.  This will also allow you to design your own plugins and themes if you are brave enough to give it a try.

The only thing we want to remind you if you are new to trying your own blog, don’t get sucked in by huge amounts of plugins.  The more of there you load onto WordPress, the slower it will go as it is constantly checking for updates to your plugins, seeing if each page needs what they run and so on.  Always ask youreself if the app will actually add to your reader’s experience, or is it something you just think is cool?  Always install with your readers in mind, nust what works for you or amuses you.

When most people hear “wiki”, they immeidately think of “Wikipedia“.  Well, there are many more out there than that, and we hope to let you know a bit more about what exactly they are.

Essentially a wiki is a website that is made up of a series of web pages that are editable by multiple people, and easy to roll back revisions in case something is overwritten or changed that is incorrect.  There are many, many uses outside of the idea of encyclopedias, such as:

- Teams can work on projects together from anywhere

- Families can set up pages about themselves, reunions, weddings and more

- Sports teams can use them to track practices, progress, schedules and so on.

- Build informational sites about a hobby you have, television shows you enjoy, comic books or anything you can imagine.

The nice thing is that the learning curve for a wiki is very low with no design knowledge needed, and usually a fairly intuitive language for linking to other pages.  There are numerous wiki solutions out there, but the most popular, by far, is MediaWiki which is the software that powers Wikipedia.  Even if you don’t want to run the software on your own, there are many hosted solutions out there that can take care of the technical side of things for you.

What are you waiting for?  Set up a wiki and start sharing your information with the world or just your family!

They have many names such as thumb drives, jump drives, memory stick, USB drives and more, but they all serve the same puprose, and that is being very useful.

These drives have been around for quite awhile, and while they started off as a niche item, they have  grown more and more into the mainstream for their extreme usefulness.  The concept is simple in that you are carrying aroud a large amount of computer memory in the palm of your hand, and due to it being USB, it means you can stick it in any computer and have instant access to what ever information you have stored on there.

When they first came out a few years ago, their cost was prohibitive, but now you can pick up an 8 GB one like the one pictured here for $29.99 on Amazon. Considering the handiness of this, the ability to take it anywhere, and the hassle it can save you in emailing yourself files, it’s a great price for such a handy device.  I own several in the 1 GB and 2 GB range, and I couldn’t live without them any more.

Every so often someone comes up with a way for you to make money on the Internet for jsut doing your every day activities, and sometimes they even seem like they may work.

Scour is a new search engine that will let you search Google, Yahoo and MSN all at once from one interface.  Once the results come up, you can vote thumbs up or down on them to help with future rankings and leave comments on them to help other people with their searches.

Where it gets interesting is when you  start doing all of these activities, you earn points for your actions.  Earn enough points and you earn gift cards of cash.  It will take quite a few points to earn money, but it is better than getting nothing at all.    As you tell other friends about it, and they sign up, you earn points for their searches also, so you can climb even faster towards your goal.

From everything we can tell, it is legit, and it is not the first time something like this has come along, but these types of projects have a checkered past of not lasting for very long.  For now, it’s worth a definite try for how little effort you have to put in.

Now that you have either upgraded your iPhone or iPod Touch to firmware 2.0, or bought a device with it pre-installed, what the heck are all these “apps” and what is the “Application Store”?

As the name implies, these new apps are applications that you can add to your iPhone or iPod Touch that will give you new functionality from the devices.  This can be anything from new games, to ways to access your Twitter account, making payments with Pay Pal or any other number of things.  At the time the Application Store launched there were already 500 apps available, so there is sure to be something for just about every one out there.

The apps range in price from free to $29.95, so be careful to check the prices before you go too crazy with your downloading.  As we get to play with them more here at StarterTech, we will be sure to let you know which ones we’re really liking, and which ones we think are duds.

Our one big caveat at this time is that each app adds another icon to your home screen on your device, so it could get a bit overwhelming with all these new things to click on.  Our suggestion is that since you can make new pages, why not make pages for the different types of apps?  Say, a page for games, a page for social networking, etc.  This may help you keep your sanity a bit more as you flip through, looking for that one app you want to be using.

What is Mozilla Weave, and why is it something you need to ponder?

Weave is going to be a new addition to Firefox that allows you to synchronize your setting, bookmarks and passwords across multiple computers.  This will even allow you to someday log in from an unknown computer and access all of your information, deleting all traces of your activity as soon as you log out.  One other exciting feature is that it will let you end a session on one computer, and resume it on another with all of the tabs you had opened on the other.

This tool is in very early testing, and may not be suited to everyone at this point, but it is certainly something to keep your eye on it. This image below will give you some idea of what the service will do when it is completed.

As we said, this is very early in its development cycle, and if you do choose to give it a try, make sure to backup your Firefox before you install it!  Until it is completed, if you still need to bckup just your bookmarks, don’t forget to check out Foxmarks.

USB, short for Universal Serial Bus, is an easy, and universal way of plugging devices into your computer.  However, if you’re like me, you never have enough ports on your computer, so what do you do?

USB 1.0 was introduced in 1995, but was badly flawed, never quite being as “plug and play” as they claimed it would be.  In 1998, version 1.1 came out, correcting some of the problems, and then in 2000, version 2.0 came out, fixing all of the problems, and skyrocketing USB to the forefront of connectivity.

Once USB finally worked as promised, just about everything started connecting to your computer through those little slots, quickly filling up what space you has.  Luckily, every USB controller can handle up to 127 items plugged into it, so even if your computer has 4 to 8 ports, that is not the extent of what it can handle.  By plugging a hub into one port, you can turn that one slot into 7 or 8 more slots (the most I have ever seen is 8), greatly extending how many devices you can have plugged into your computer.

As the technology has become more and more common place, everything from thumd drives, to printers and even external hard drives, are using the USB interface.  On my main computer, I have 8 ports, but even that isn’t enough for someone like me, and I have two 4-port hubs plugged into the system.  I even travel with a mini-hub when I am out of town on businss.  You van never have enough USB ports.  Instaliation couldn’t be easier, either.  Plug it in to a 2.0 slot and… it works.

So what are you waiting for?  Get yourself some more USB gadgets, you have the space to use them now!