Hulu Review
Hulu, just like YouTube, is a site that streams videos. It has one major difference though, and that is the fact that it hosts premium content, and is 100% legal. What I mean by premium content, is real full length episodes of TV shows. No joke folks, this is for real!
How do they do it?
It’s common sense that a service can’t just get out there, and legally offer free content, especially television shows. What they do is put a 10 second ad at the beginning and then about every 8 minutes (approximate, but it is actually dependent on the video length) they play a new ad. These ads are all videos, and are in the flash player itself. As for the layout, it is ad free apart from a little ad in the top right corner that shows the last sponsor that the player showed.
Make Money for Free?
This post is for the stay at home moms, teenagers, and college students trying to pay of their debt. I’m only kidding, it’s actually for anyone out there trying to make money online. I’m not talking about millions, but an extra little bit of income on the side to help you pay off those bills.
Running A Blog
Plain and simple, this costs money… What you ask? Hosting can cost up ten dollars a month while a domain will run you an about extra eight each year.
I spend a lot of time surfing the web and I have realized that many people use free services such as blogger.com and wordpress.com to share their thoughts on certain aspects of life.
The Scoop on Poker
Recently, I’ve gotten into online poker (with play money, of course).
What’s so appealing about Poker?
Ahh…Poker…where should I start? The popularity of Texas Hold’em to most is baffling. Why Hold’em? I have no idea - maybe it’s the room you get for stringing people along, maybe it’s the element of suspense, I’m not sure. Most people consider poker to be a complete waste of time, sort of like Solitaire, yet they wonder why people play them nonetheless. I’m willing to say that in a few years, Poker will have more popularity than NASCAR, golf, soccer, hockey, curling, basketball, and baseball. Wait, what?! Baseball?!? That’s ridiculous. Well, strangely enough, it’s not. In 2000, the prize money for the champion of the “World Series of Poker” Main Event was $1,500,000. The total prize money in the Main Event was 5.12M. Two years ago, the WSOP reached an all-time high, and online gambling went through the roof. There was a slight reduction in 2007, due to a legal document passed making online betting in the US much more difficult. However, that being said, the prize money to the champ in 2007 was 8.25M,
and the total prize money was nearly 60M for the main event. This year, it’s set to be even higher due to the large revival of online poker services.
Time To Buy HD DVD!
Right now is the best time to be looking at HD DVD players and discs. Since the announcement from Toshiba to cancel allfuture plans for HD DVD, prices of players have just been just skyrocketing down.
Why buy a player that supports a dead format?
It’s simple, the players do a great job of converting your regular DVDs and can also play over 350 HD DVDs which you can buy very cheaply, due to the numerous discounts sprouting up. Warner Bros has also stated they will still be releasing HD DVDs till May of 2008. Amazon has one model going for $82 with two free HD DVDs in the box. If that is still more then you are willing to spend keep looking, prices will just keep going down.
What are a few benefits of HD DVD over online video?
There are a lot of internet movie services that have been showing up in the last two years. While some of those are in pretty decent quality, HD DVD is just a whole lot better. There is currently a pretty large selection of Hi-Res videos that you can buy for a family night, or your daily television routine (I wouldn’t want to watch a legendary movie such as Pulp Fiction on my small, distorted computer screen, but that’s just me).
If it’s still to expensive for you, you just wait it out a month or two. You’ll find some more incredible offers for HD DVD players on Amazon, eBay, and other peer-to-peer selling sites presenting themselves real soon.
Last.fm Review
Last.fm, an online music network owned by CBS, has launched a new on demand service that allows its users to listen to the tunes that they want, when the want. It is a music community, in the sense that it allows you to find people who have the same taste in music as yourself. The most interesting feature in the service, is that it learns what you like and not only suggest other artists, but creates charts along with a load of other personalized features.
The fastest way get started is to create a account, and then to download and install the plug-in for your proffered music player (if it is supported). The software currently works with the most popular OS’s; PC, Mac, and Linux.
Sadly this won’t replace your radio anytime soon, since an internet connection is required.
As I earlier stated, the software learns as you listen. Within a couple of days when you have listened to enough songs, the service will start putting other listeners into your neighborhood, who have smiler interests as you. In addition, you will be able to snoop around and see what your friends have been listening to.
My experience with this service thus far has been very good, I have found myself being opened up to a whole new world of music, and a whole new way of finding it. I would most definitely suggest checking it out, that is if you have the time.