Hulu Desktop allows you to stream Hulu videos right to your desktop without visiting Hulu.com. It is compatible with Windows, Linux and Mac OS so everyone is able to use it. It allows three different quality settings to allow you to select the highest video quality while ensuring the video plays without interruption from buffering issues. The program itself allows you to search for content similar to using Hulu.com and works well on a Home Theater Personal Computer (HTPC) since the navigation text is large.

I recommend giving Hulu Desktop a look since it allows you to stream the video to your desktop which can help it to play better. It is less stressful on your computer which allows you to do more on your computer and get better image quality.

Hulu Desktop is one more step toward the PC and internet changing the way we view TV programs and movies. With programs like Hulu Desktop catching on and high speed internet in the majority of homes it makes sense to veer away from cable and satellite TV. Hulu and other streaming services allow you to search for content and watch video on demand easier than any cable or satellite service. Hulu is currently completely free however there is word that a paid service may start next year.

Get Hulu Desktop here.

Apparently being overweight can be a defense to murder. Read the article here.

“TRENTON, N.J. (AP) – A Florida man accused of killing his son-in-law in New Jersey is arguing that he was unable to commit the crime because he was too fat.”

If New York City is the best city in the world then why is everyone leaving? Read the article here.

“More than 1.5 million state residents left for other parts of the United States from 2000 to 2008, according to the report from the Empire Center for New York State Policy. It was the biggest out-of-state migration in the country.”

Tired of using the keyboard and mouse? Microsoft is trying to change that by using speech-recognition technology. The technology is planned to be in automobiles, smart phones and various software. They are also Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 will allow users to visually see their voice mail as an email instead of having to listen to it. This feature is called Voice Mail Preview.

Read the article here.

Today, Microsoft released Windows 7. Windows 7 will be released in three different versions for developed nations. The three versions will be Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate.

Microsoft Windows 7 pricing:

• Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Full – $320

• Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Full – $300

• Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Full – $200

Windows 7 could possibly be the best Windows ever.

Artist rendition of LCROSS. Courtesy of NASA.

NASA Rocket Attempts to find Evidence of Water on Moon

NASA crashed the LCROSS Moon rocket into the moon. The rocket crashed on the moon on October 9, 2009 in an attempt to find traces of water. The idea behind the rocket crashing into the moon is to create a plum of dust so it can be analyzed to determine if there is water vapor hidden among the debris. Evidence of water has been previously found on the Moon however there is no concrete evidence. Scientists are also curious to find out how much water may be on the Moon. The water could be used for future space missions including possible a Moon base.

“We have the data we need to actually address the questions we set out to address,” said Anthony Colaprete. Anthony Colaprete is the principal investigator for the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS for short, mission.

Dan Andrews, the LCROSS project manager, reported that it will take a while to analyze the data from the satellite to determine if there is water on the moon.

The LCROSS carried several instruments to analyze the dust. These instruments included a spectrometer, near-infrared cameras, visible camera, and a visible radiometer. The plum itself is estimated to be over 250 metric tons’ worth of debris.

Even though the crash was successful the results weren’t what was expected. The estimates for the plum were for it to rise over six kilometers from the surface. In the end the plum over rose about 1 kilometer from the surface. This prevented it from being viewed by Earth based observatories which required the plum to go to at least two kilometers above the surface to be seen.

First images of the crashed rocket appeared today, October 19, 2009. Courtesy of NASA.

Researched are trying to get the data analyzed from the LCROSS impact by the middle of November. It will then be determined if there truly is water on the Moon.

This is related to my previous article Evidence of Water on the Moon which you can read here.

Sources:

www.telegraph.co.uk

www.CNN.com

Google vs Bing vs Yahoo – The Test

I will be using BlindSearch to conduct a test to see which search engine I believe gives the best results for several search terms. You can  try out BlindSearch yourself be visiting http://blindsearch.fejus.com/.

BlindSearch allows you to search all three of the major search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo at the same time. The reason why it is called “BlindSearch” is because it doesn’t tell you which search engine the results are from. Instead you vote one which results you think are the most relevant. This way users won’t be bias on which search engine they use and may be surprised by the results.

In this example I search for my website “whatsupinyourlife”. Since my website is only a few weeks old there are very few search results for it.

You can see how one of the search engines does not show my website (whatsupinyourlife.com) as the top site. You can also that all three search engines show my articles on digg. I then voted for which search engine I thought was the best based on the results. Look below to see which search engine I voted for with no bias thanks to BlindSearch.

Google won this round. With both the first and second result being pages from my actual site I thought it was the best.

For test two I will be searching for my shorter address which is wuiyl.com with out the .com. See the search results below.

You can see how the search engine on the right is the only one that displays a website that links directly to one of my articles for the first result. You can’t tell from the picture but one of the search engines only displays a few entries and has very poor results. I voted for the search engine that displayed the digg link to my article. See results below.

As you can see Google was once again the best search engine in my opinion. After many generic searches I concluded that all three search engines are very similar in their results. They all seem to list the same top 10 results but in different order. I will try to find search terms that help to determine which search engine is better in a future post.

This article is related to my previous article on Google vs Bing. Check it out here.

Google vs Bing

May29, 2009 Bing.com went live. Bing.com is Microsoft’s latest attempt to overthrow Google as the search giant. Google has seen its usage go up as the years go by while Microsoft’s MSN search has been steadily losing market share. Yahoo, the second most popular search engine, also continues to lose market share to the search giant Google.

Before Bing.com came along Microsoft tried to purchase Yahoo. Not once, but twice Microsoft failed in its attempt to conquer Yahoo. Microsoft even tried to turn Yahoo’s investors against them in an attempt to over throw the leadership and take control.

It is speculated that since Yahoo has approximately 17 percent of the search engine market and is the second most popular search provider that Microsoft would not be able to compete with Google in the future if they did not acquire Yahoo. Even if Microsoft did acquire Yahoo the company would only have approximately 22 percent of the market. This figure still pails in comparison to Google’s 70 percent of the market share which is still growing. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Google’s market share is growing by taking away searches from Yahoo and Microsoft alike.

* The chart shows the enormous lead that Google has over its competitors and demonstrates Google’s growth spurt over the year while both Yahoo and Microsoft (MSN) both lost users. *

Will Microsoft’s search engine Bing be successful? Only time will tell.

Overclockers.com has a list of freeware programs that are useful. These applications add functionality and features that don’t come with a standard Windows install. Also, many include features, functionality, and usability that you would normally have to pay for. All of these programs have the best price… free. Check out the article here.

I highly agree with these programs:

Videolan VLC – It helps prevent you from looking for codecs to play movies and sound files. I can play many different codes and formats.

Notepad++ – This program is excellent for viewing any kind of text document. Very good for HTML and PHP files. The tabbing feature saves you time.

Putty - Putty is handy for connecting to servers of various types. It is a very simple yet effective program.

Firefox – The ability to use it on basically any operating system and use the same plugins is very useful. It allows you to get the same features no matter what platform you are currently using.

Chrome – Google has done a good job so far with this browser. It is fast and effective. I have very few issues with it. It seems to be more stability, faster and less of a resource hog than Firefox.

Opera – This browser has some draw backs when compared to the others but it is still a nice browser. Give it a try.

7-zip – Extract all the major formats, plus no need to buy the program or get nag screens from the shareware alternatives.

OpenOffice.org – A wonderful open source office suite that has the features of 95 percent of MS Office users need. It’s not perfect but good enough for nearly everyone.

Abiword – A nice small and feature rich word processor. There are plugins that make it even more useful.

Programs that I disagree with:

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition – AVG is an alright anti-virus. However, I believe that an anti-virus is very important and you should purchase a better program. Even better purchase one with a firewall built in.

Go here for an independent test that pits all of the major anti-virus programs against each other.

Edmund’s did a follow up of “Confessions of a Car Salesman” for 2009

The original author has a friend who recently ended his tour at a used car lot. The author asked him questions and you can read the questions and answers for the follow up here.

Read the original “Confessions of a Car Salesman” here.

Saturday night I was driving to a grocery store just a few blocks from the apartment I was visiting. While slowing down for the turn I revved my engine so my friend that was riding with me could hear the exhaust. While pulling into the grocery store looking for a parking spot I noticed the classic red and blue rotating lights behind me. I had been pulled over again!

The officer walked up to my window and informed me that what I had done is considered “reckless driving”. I asked her if what she was referring was me revving my engine. She replied that indeed that was the crime I apparently committed. I asked her since I revved in neutral if this was still “wrong”. Her facial expression showed she was extremely surprised. She then informed me that driving in neutral is illegal. Sorry if I don’t feel like heel-and-toe down shift every time I slow down to turn. My car has 6 gears. I was traveling at 35 MPH so I was in 5^th gear. Going from 5^th to 2^nd gear is a lot of gears to go through to do it properly. I would really like to see this policewoman downshift this car properly.

The Policewoman informed me that she could smelled alcohol. She asked me if I had been drinking. I replied no because I forgot I had a drink about an hour earlier. I then informed her that I did have a shot about an hour before. I informed her that I was well under the legal limit. She said “Have you been drinking?” I replied yes. She then said “Well then you are drinking and driving then aren’t you?”. I was then tested with the breathalyzer. After I was tested she looked disappointed and went on and on about how my friend should be driving my very nice car since I had been drinking. How I looked like “a smart kid” and should know better. I asked twice what the results of the test were and eventually she reluctantly answered “triple zeros”. I was so sorry to disappoint her. Darn…

She informed me that even one drink was enough to effect my driving ability. She talked about how the police did an experiment about drinking and driving. I read about this in the local news so I knew what she was talking about. She told me that she hit a building during the experiment and how she was “not a bad driver” because she drives everyday for her job. What really bothers me is how uninformed police officers seem to be about the amount of alcohol that can be legally consumed by an individual and the effects that certain alcohol levels will have. I will follow this article up later on with an article about how alcohol effects people differently and how the effects change by alcohol blood level. For now I will just state that the the legal limit is 0.08 blood alcohol level for a reason.

I have not driven this car since Sunday. Saturday night of last week was the last time I got pulled over. I got pulled over this time a week later at nearly the same time Saturday night. That makes four times I have been pulled over this year. In the end, I received no written warning or tickets this time around. No tickets at all this year with 3 written warnings.

Some points I believe are important in this article.

• There is no way one drink will effect an adult male’s ability to drive.

• Police should learn more about how alcohol affects different people and at what alcohol blood levels. Both times I have been breathalyzed I was very surprised by how uninformed the police officers were.

• Technically, it is illegal to have your car in neutral while driving. The laws seem to change state to state but there seems to be a limit for how many feet you can leave the car in neutral. The reasoning is because if you car is not in gear you can not accelerate to avoid obstacles if needed and being in gear allows your engine to act as a brake.

• The proper way to downshift a manual transmission is the heal-and-toe downshift. It is an advanced technique but the only proper way. Learn how to do it here. Your car will be in neutral for a short time while you do this. I wonder if this is technically illegal then?
  

• Apparently, police officers will smell alcohol on your breath even when no one else can and test you for it. They also can apparently smell this even when your results show you have no alcohol in your system.

• Revving your engine is considered “reckless driving”. I can not find a reason why it is illegal.

• Apparently, if you drink a beer during dinner you have to call a cab. If you don’t you will be drinking and driving. Remember that one drink will apparently effect your driving ability… after all she did hit a building.

A quick note about downshifting a manual transmission.

When you downshift a car with a manual transmission you have to put the car in neutral. Then match the rpm of the engine that the new gear will be at by revving the engine. When the transmission is placed in the lower gear the gear will force the engine to mechanically rev higher. The idea is that you match this rpm so that it is smooth for your drivetrain, transmission, tires and clutch. You are basically rev matching the gear. So… that would be revving the engine in neutral and breaking the law supposedly. These laws leave way to much room for interpretation by police officers. This is compounded further if they don’t understand why you were revving your engine because they don’t know how to drive a manual transmission properly.

Sometimes my foot slips and I give the car to much throttle which revs the engine to high. This did not happen when I got pulled over however I can see this being a problem. It is possible to get pulled over and receive a reckless driving ticket for just a missed shift. Again, the law allows the police officer to interpret the situation.

Links to start the weekend off right.

This map really shows you can’t escape McDonalds.

McDonalds really is everywhere.

The first fully implantable artificial heart that has been approved by the FDA.

It doesn’t even have a “heart” beat!

A man who threaten to shoot his iPhone was arrested.

I guess we now have “iPhone Rage”.

Verizon CTO, Dick Lynch, believes the future is to pay by the amount of data we consume while using the internet.

Let’s all hope he is very wrong.

Lobster seeks revenge!

Yeah, being boiled sucks.

Watching a woman destroy her Mercedes and private property is always fun.

Driving and common sense must be hard for some people.