My 21st century existence crashed directly with a 20th century utility today, and it wasn’t pretty.

Every one in the immediate StarterTech family awoke this morning to no running water in our homes.  We had no clue what the cause was, but due to two of us having to run into town, we just opted for someone stopping by the water district office and seeing if our bills were up to date and so on.

What we learned was that the turn off was an area wide issue in our vicinity due to upgrades to the water system.  When we inquired as to why we knew nothing about this, the utility office workers informed us, “Well, we put a notice on channel 3″, our only local television station.

Therein resides the problem.  People with DirecTV or Dish Network do not receive our local channel.  They can barely transmit over the air, and won’t even be doing that as of February 19th, and our local cable provider leaves a lot to be desired.

So here we are left with the issue that our water utility, an essential aspect of human life, left the ability to warn people of a major service outage to just the local television channel in the hopes you would see it.  The outage was from 8:00 AM to 12:30 PM, and once it was back to working, we are under a boil order for 48 hours.  What happens if someone left for work at 7 AM and reutnrs sometime after 12:30?  This person didn’t see the notice, missed the outage, and now they are drinking water they have no idea that they are supposed to be boiling their water.

In this day and age, with dwindling television ratings, this was the best way the water company could find to communicate this important notice to us?  How about doing some other free things that could potentially reach even more people?

• Email burst list
• Social network profiles
• Twitter account

Those are just three ideas off the top of my head that would cost them no money, and reach potentially even more people.  In the realm of alternatives that cost, there are also an actual website with notifications on it and text message notifications.

In short, therewas no excuse for the lack of communication, and way too much reliance on us just happening to see a notice on the local television station.  How about getting a bit more proactive and actually going to where your customers are nowadays?  I know, what a concept.

Walmart has launched over a hundred items at bargain prices on their website today in the lead up to the final push for the holiday season.

The items are heavily discounted and feature a good mix of toys for young children… and toys for the older ones, too. (also known as “adults”)  The majority of the prices bring them into line with the everyday prices of online retailers like Amazon, but they are still good deals.  With their free Site To Store shipping on the majority of the items, you can have them shipped to your favorite Walmart location and pick them up the next time you are in the store.

Some of the better deals include

• Garmin nuvi 760 Portable GPS w/ 4.3″ Screen, Spoken Street Names, Bluetooth, MP3 Player & FM Transmitter – $246
• PlayStation 3 Holiday Value Bundle with a Blu-ray remote, game, Hancock Blu-ray and an additional Blu-ray movie – $459
• Toshiba Regza 46″ 1080p LCD TV, 46RV530U – $999
• Philips Progressive Scan DVD Player w/ 1080p Upconversion, DVP3982/37 – $49.00

There is a lot more items to be had, and many rumors are circulating that you can expect to see more sales like this from multiple retailers between now and Christmas.

Gmail has added the ability to read PDF files, and this may cause mass rejoicing amongst people who use the popular email service for business.

PDFs, short for Portable Document Format,are a popular way for people to send documents to one another, but they can be cumbersome to use due to the need to download them.  Google has removed this necessity by adding the ability to actually view the files inside of Gmail now.  This is a welcome addition to the service for anyone who uses it for business.

According to the Gmail Blog, you will now see a “View” control next to PDFs attached to your email, so all you need to do is click that and you’re done.  A welcome inclusion to the service, and yet another example of Google going hog wild with new features before the end of this yeat.

Novatel is looking to release a new gadget that maysolve one of the biggest headache for mobile computing fanatics: Where to find a WiFi hotspot.

Releasing sometime during the first half of 2009, the MiFi is essentially a 3G modem that will bring in the cellular network signal, convert it, and release it back in to the general vicinity as a WiFi signal.  Imagine being on a train, bus or other form of mass transit, and you will be able to get our your laptop or iPod Touch and get right to work.

While the device has no official price yet, they are saying “under $200″, you will of course need to pay some sort of monthly fee for a data plan.  While these vary wildly in price from carrier to carrier, this could easily become an essential piece of equipment for any one that works outside of their office more then they do in it.  No mare hunting for a coffee shop, now you can work on the go, where and when you want.

Another day, another dozen new releases from Google.

As we mentioned yesterday, Google seems to be on a tear with new releases. Since we published the news of upgrades to Google Street View, there have been two major new releases from the Big G. First up, Google Chrome, Google’s upstart new web browser they introduced back in September, has been taken out of beta status and received an upgrade to version 1.

According to the Google blog, the new version has improved bookmark controls, better speed, improved stability and more.  If you have yet to try out this new browser, it is a decent experience, though no one here at StarterTech has switched to it completely, we do use it every day for various tasks.  If you have not yet downloaded it, you can download it here, and if you are currently using it, click on the wrench in the top right corner, click on “About Google Chrome” and then click “Upgrade” and it will handle the rest for you.

Second up is a new feature for Gmail that made a brief appearance in October, but it was pulled almost as soon as it appeared.  The release is stable now and working with all of the major United States phone carriers.  As Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins noted on Mashable last night, it is not working with regional carriers, though.

The Gmail blog notes that the new features is part of the “Labs” system which means you need to go in and activate it by hand.  As we noted in the post about Gmail adding Tasks, you need to do the following:

• Go to Settings
• click the Labs tab.
• Select “Enable” next to “SMS”
• Then click “Save Changes” at the bottom.
• After Gmail refreshes, you will see the options in your contact information.

As we said yesterday, we don’t know what has happened with Google this month, but they are on a tear for new releases!

Google seems to be on a roll lately with new features, and they certainly didn’t forget Google Maps.

Street View, the Google tool that allows you to view street level photography on some maps, got a major boost in coverage this week.  According to The Official Google Blog, Street View had coverage of 23 major U.S. cities at the beginning of 2008, but now they boast international cities such as Paris and Tokyo, and the United States saw their coverage double.  You know Street View is everywhere when even my town of Kirksville, MO gets coverage, albeit only our main road, Baltimore.

Google seems to be on an end-of-the-year rampage what with adding to-do lists in Gmail, Friend Connect for web sites, Gmail support in Google Desktop and more.  Usually technicians don’t like to launch new features in December due to support issues going in to the holidays, but it does seem to be deterring Google at all, if any thing, they seem to have accelerated their releases.  It may only seem this way because they have so many items to add more support for now, but it does seem like an awful lot of new releases for the last month of the year.

With three weeks left to go in 2008, you have to wonder what else Google might be holding up their collective sleeves.

Google just can’t seem to stop themselves from adding more and more features to Gmail as of late.

The newest feature this time is a to-do list called “Tasks”.  While it certainly won’t change the world, it does bring Gmail one step closer to being a personal digital assistant (PDA) on the Web.  If they add syncing to mobile devices for the tasks, as they have with their other features.

The official Gmail Blog does a good job of describing what exactly this new feature can do for you.

1. Manage your email workflow better by converting emails into tasks: “More Actions > Add to Tasks”
2. ENTER creates a new task, TAB and SHIFT-TAB indent and un-indent, CTRL-UP and CTRL-DOWN let you reorder from the keyboard, and SHIFT-ENTER toggles back and forth between the detailed view for a task and the main view
3. After turning Tasks on, turn on Keyboard shortcuts in “Settings > General” and then use “SHIFT-T” to create tasks from your emails – even faster than using the More Actions menu

While there have been several to-do list applications out there in the marketplace, most notably Remember The Milk, the continuing expansion of Gmail as a catch-all for all of your daily needs is amazing.  To-Do lists, contacts, calender, who knows what’s next for the popular mail application.  Tasks does have a ways to go to catch up with the stand-alone applications, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see it happen.

For now the Tasks are only available as part of the Labs portion of Gmail.  To access this new feature you just need to follow

To enable Tasks, go to Settings, click the Labs tab. Select “Enable” next to “Tasks” and then click “Save Changes” at the bottom. Then, after Gmail refreshes, on the left under the “Contacts” link, you’ll see a “Tasks” link. Just click it to get started.

Go and activate it, and give it a try.

Gadget lovers can be some of the hardest people to buy for on any person’s holiday gift giving list.  However, never fear, there is some help out there to aid you in figuring out what to buy them!

It isn’t just people hunting for allusive toys each holiday shopping season that get stumped, but it also adults who can’t find that just so right gift.  Online auction seller eBay has been releasing lists of how various sectors performed for them this year, and the gadgets area is very telling of what people are looking for this year.

1. Nintendo Wii: 2,056,866 related items sold
2. Microsoft Xbox360: 1,297,903 related items sold
3. Sony PSP: 350,591 related items sold
4. iPod Touch: 281,361 related items sold
5. Nintendo Wii Fit: 266,584 related items sold
6. Apple iPhone 3G: 212,837 related items sold
7. BlackBerry Pearl: 207,688 related items sold
8. BlackBerry Curve: 193,788 related items sold
9. Sony Playstation 3: 103,333 related items sold
10. Guitar Hero III: 98,159 related items sold
11. Halo 3: 91,067 related items sold
12. Grand Theft Auto IV: 43,005 related items sold
13. MacBook Air: 12,423 related items sold
14. Guitar Hero Aerosmith: 3,749 related items sold
15. Rock Band 2’s: 1,650 related items sold

The Nintendo Wii topping the list isn’t that surprising seeing as after two full years of release, you still can’t just walk into a store and buy one.  The rest of the list is a bit of a hodge podge, but it gives you a good idea of what people are looking for if you are just stumped for what to find someone this year.

The clock is ticking down rapidly, and parts of the country are bitterly cold, so how do you wrap up all of your holiday shopping in time?

Each year online shopping seems to catch on more, but it still amazes me how many people don’t think to go online for their shopping.  Why fight the crowds?  Why go out in the cold?  Why pay full list prices for items?

This was one of the most amazing things to me when I had to go to our local Hastings yesterday to sell some old games I wanted to get rid of.  As I wandered the store I saw a copy of the newest version of The Nightmare Before Christmas marked at $29.99. If you go over to Amazon, it is $20.99.  If you belong to their Amazon Prime shipping where you get unlimited 2nd Day Air shipping for $79 a year, and you add in the fact you don’t pay tax with most online stores, you see how far ahead you come out.

It’s not just DVD type media that you can find these sort of better deals on.  Hasbro released an AT-TE Tank toy that is huge, and at Wal-Mart in my town it is $99.96 plus tax.  Amazon has it for $90.51 with free shipping, Big Bad Toy Store has it for $70.00 plus $19.09 shipping for a total of $89.09.  Sure you’re talking savings of $9 – $10, but you are also talking about saving time, gas and frustration.  Travelling somewhere for the holidays?  Have the gifts shipped directly to your destination so you don’t have to contend with them in the car, on the plane or on the train.

In short, online shopping solves a lot of issues for you, one of the biggest being time.  All of us here at StarterTech do almst 100% holiday shopping online, and have for years.  We couldn’t be happier, and we certainly don’t miss fighting the crowds out in the stores.

With the latest update of the XBox 360, Microsoft enabled the ability to stream movies from Netflix to your gaming console, but is it worth it?

While people have been able to streammovies from the popular video rental service Netflix to their computers, they are trying hard now to get those streamed videos to yur TV.  When Microsoft updated their XBox 360 dashboard in November, they made it possible to stream the videos to your console, and then use that to show the videos on your full-sized TV.  Unable to resist such a convenient way to watch movies, and with a family member about to undergo surgery which will have him on the couch recovering for weeks, we signed up with Netflix to give it a try.

So, how is it?  Let’s break it down:

Pros

• Easy to set up.
• Videos look amazingly clear considering their source.

Cons

• Have to use a computer to add things to your ue before trying to stream them.
• Selection is mostly old or odd ball movies, but with over 12,000 titles there is sure to be something for every one.

We do recommend the service, and considering you can get unlimited streaming for as low as $8.99 a month, and the old television shows selection alone is worth it, we suggest you treat yourself if you don’t already belong!