Again with the Hulu, I know. But it looks like they’re up to something . . . something very cool. They’ve introduced Hulu desktop. I am a huge Netflix streaming fan via Roku, of course, but this is pretty slick. You download a desktop application that opens Hulu and allows you to use a Windows Media Center remote or Apple remote to navigate the content.

So, goodbye mouse and keyboard (though you can use a keyboard quite easily). I tried it out today and it works quite well, allowing you to drill down through content with pretty good logic.

The one thing I find with Hulu vs. Roku (Netflix) streaming is that Netflix has virtually no hiccups with pulling in the content (pauses, glitches). Hulu almost always gives me a staggered look at some point (I’m on a 10 MBit connection). My Roku box is stellar in pulling in content (I know, it’s dedicated to JUST streaming, so that’s optimal), but I get great streaming through Netflix’s web browser setup as well.

Anyway, this can only be a good thing – then there’s that dream of Hulu added to the Roku channels . . . sweet bliss.

Just a community reminder that Google Chrome 2.0 is out (web browser). Do yourself a favor and head to www.google.com/chrome to download it. I can’t explain how fast it loads web pages – just trust me on this one.

OK, before this year, let’s just say my book keeping was less than stellar. I knew just enought about Excel to put clients into a spreadsheet and dole out billing on my own each month or quarter. Yeah, that was lowsy. I had tried Quickbooks way back when, but just didn’t “get” it . . . then, I ran into Freshbooks. I truly haven’t run into a piece of software (let alone an online provider) that was this intuitive and useful to the average self-employed person.

Setup is a breeze . . . fees are very reasonable . . . and best of all, I don’t lift a finger once I set up my clients. For instance, if I have a yearly client (hosting fee), I simply enter a recurring fee for a date and forget it. Freshbooks handles the late fee notifications and such and I can see when people log in to view their invoices. I can give credits when needed and create custom invoices and estimates. Bottom line, it’s increased my productivity drastically. I can even have Freshbooks mail actual paper billing without thinking about printing and folding – they take care of it all.

So, there ya go. If you’re looking for some good book keeping software or, like me, can’t keep it all together manually, you should check this out. They have a free trial if you’d like. Just click here to get going. I think you’ll really like it.

Here’s a quick post about a pretty slick website. Do you have Netflix for renting movies? If so, head on over to www.feedflix.com . . . they’ll tell you how much you’re spending per movie. I’m ahead of the game at 18 cents per video – only because my kids watch alot of the Disney streaming stuff on the Roku box via Netflix streaming. Pretty cool just to see what it’s worth to you!

OK, I tried, I really did. I’m in the market for a new hard drive for my laptop. I did my research and came upon the Seagate Momentus Drive. It has stellar reviews, so I skipped on over to Buy.com and grabbed one for $85 . . . not bad at all (320 GB, 7200 RPM with 16 MB buffer for you gear heads). Well, I’m on a trip with my wife and have some time to kill (time to kill by myself in different city = Best Buy). While in Best Buy, I thought I’d check the prices on the hard drive I just ordered. I spent an extra $5 to have 2nd day shipping online, so I thought if they can even get close to that, I’ll purchase in store and cancel online.

Forty Bucks . . . they had it on sale for $40 more than the online purchase. I was ready to shell out even $10 more, but this was rediculous.

So, that begs the question – how will brick and mortar stores make it? With the recent closing of Circuit City, it looks bleak. Now, alot of folks say to ask the store to match the price or get close to the price with shipping and I’m all for that – something tells me they won’t come more than $30 off though. It’ll be interesting to see how the competition pans out over the next few years . . .

So, I’m getting a bit of disk space filled up by now, much of witch is client data and template files for the web. I have an external hard drive and another drive on my desktop for double backup, but that just leaves me protected locally if one drive fails. I have nightmares of the day with my laptop bites the dust and for some reason my desktop gets zapped . . . worst case scenario (or, Lord forbid, my house burns). Online storage keeps everything “safe” at a distance.

I wanted a low cost (ok, cheap) solution for backing up online. I have heard of Carbonite and Box.net, but I need LOTS of space (over 20 GB) and those guys start to add up as yearly rates roll along.

Enter Amazon Storage (www.amazon.com/s3) – they charge 15 cents per gigabyte for storage and 10 cents per GB of transfer. I use that service in conjunction with Jungle Disk (www.jungledisk.com, $20) and my files are automatically backed up every evening. Without going through the math with you, 10 GBytes or so of client data was backed up and stored last month for less than 2 dollars. Yeah, that’s cheap. You can also encrypt data for security and access the backed up data as a networked drive – that way you can just drag and drop back to your computer if needed.

I’ve been with the service for a month, so I’ll let you know if I change my mind about it. Oh, and the system doesn’t upload files every night that haven’t changed – just the files that have been created or revised since the day before. Good stuff.

My plan after upgrading my laptop was to let Alison use my old faithful gateway. Well, after minutes (looong minutes) of boot up time, that option fell by the way. I had heard about “Netbooks” becoming really popular for secondary systems and thought she might like one. I searched far and wide and did my research and came up with a great little gem.

The HP Mini 1000 is really a very well built, well thought out little machine. I’m actually typing on it right now. It has a 92% keyboard, so it’s actually not that bad to type on (it’s no Thinkpad, but for the size, it’s nice).  I’ll give my pros and cons below.

Pros

• Size – the main reason for a Netbook is portability. In fact, that was one of my main reason for buying this. I figured my wife could simply put the computer in her purse and take it with her to school, dinner, trips . . . wherever. After 2 months with it, she’s doing just that. She loves it! She brought in her purse (a small one at that) and showed me how it just slips right in. And at 2 pounds, it’s really a lightweight.
• Speed – the operating system is Windows XP, so it runs just as fast as any machine I’ve had. It has the new Intel Atom processor, so it chugs along nicely.
• Solid State Drive (pro and con) – The model I bought has the 8 Gbyte solid state drive (think of it like a big digital camera card). Since she uses it for email and web most of the time, it doesn’t get near the space limit. There’s an SD card slot that will hold up to 30 GB if needed, so we’re good there. Also, it’s super quiet. You have to really get close to even barely hear a fan.
• Nice screen – the resolution is 1250×600. When I bought it, I thought that might be a little low, but it’s just right for the size. This is the 9 inch screen. There’s a 10 incher as well, but this does just fine. The screen is good and bright . . . almost too bright when plugged in!

Cons

• Solid state drive size – there’s a 16 GB, but these days, many people want lots of space. You can upgrade to at 160 GB drive if needed – adds weight and hurts battery a bit, but it’s there.
• Battery life? – Not so much a con for me. We get 3 hours or so from the battery. Alison took it on a trip for 3 days and didn’t charge it once (casual use in the hotel). So, it’s a matter of preference. New netbooks are bragging about 10 hours, so we’ll see.

There’s also a built in webcam for easy Skyping which we like as well. One thing I think we might run into is installations for software. If it’s not downloadable over the web (i.e. on a CD), we’ll have to improvise with a USB CDROM (which we don’t have!).

Overall, I would recommend this for anyone doing lite duty computing such as web, email or word processing. It runs great, has the best keyboard of any netbook (size wise) and looks good to. The build quality is as good as I’ve found.

Price: $350 (most likely cheaper by now)

So, I’m a cheapskate (alot of the time anyway!). I do, however, have the $8.95 subscription to Netflix for the occasional episode of Prison Break (thanks to my uncle for tipping me off to yet another addictive show!). So, here I am, getting my 1 DVD at a time and totally fine with it. Well, Netflix has kicked it up a notch by offering streaming to your computer. Now, you don’t get the major blockbusters, but that will come. And, there are lots of great shows and movies for children (a big demographic in this household). So, I just hook up my laptop and let the kids watch some old Inspector Gadget (that takes me back) and life is good.

Like my TiVo, there’s a policing effect to choosing what your children watch. My kids don’t know what’s out there, because they pretty much watch what I provide them. I’m sure I’ll have to deal with some adjustments once they figure out there’s live TV though!

But, back to Netflix. Now there’s the Roku Netflix Player (see here). You can now buy a $100 box to interface with the streaming content from Netflix. No computer – totally simple. And, with the $8.95 plan I’m paying now (or higher), you get unlimited streaming. We could watch whatever we want from the Netflix streaming library . . . whenever we want.

Needless to say, any Christmas cash this year could very well be redirected to a special fund for that puppy.

So, there’s another web browser on the market . . . great. I’ve had enough fun trying to design for two major browsers (Internet Explorer and Firefox) and now Google throws another into the mix. I said I wasn’t going to bother . . . but there’s something worth looking at here.

The one thing that made me change the new Google Chrome Browser to my default is speed. It loads fast (every time so far) and the page loads are borderline ridiculous. It’s a night and day sort of thing.

So, now I use Chrome for general browsing. I’d say 99% of the time it’s dead on for loading stuff. If there’s a page that gets janky, I just open IE and let it roll. Small price to pay for speed.

http://www.google.com/chrome

Well, I bit the bullet this week and grabbed an iPhone. Aaaaaand . . . . it’s so worth it. Say what you want about Apple or hype or whatever. This sucker’s amazing. Batter aside, it’s all I wanted it to be. I’m sure I’ll ramble about stuff from time to time, so I won’t bother you with specifics now. Just wanted to voice my opinion. This is a major step in phone innovation.