Fiber in Vermont?

The idea of having rural Vermont be laid with fiber internet lines before large metropolises seems crazy, but not to Vermont Telephone Company. The company is currently offering fiber-to-the-home to only a few counties, but has aspirations to expand. VTel currently offers fiber connections for $35 per month, which slashes Google Fiber's cheapest plan in half. I wonder whether this pricing is sustainable, even though the general price of fiber is lowering. This exemplifies that fiber is starting to be rolled out all over the US, even in the most remote places.

Aereo is Launching in Boston

Boston is getting some good news this week: they are the next in line to receive Aereo. The service will be available starting on May 15 for pre-registered users. It will become available to the general public on May 30. The growing over the air TV company is looking to expand to 21 additional cities by the end of the year.

The following counties will receive Aereo:

• Massachusetts: Barnstable, Dukes, Essex, Middlesex, Nantucket, Norfolk, Plymouth, Suffolk, Worcester


• New Hampshire: Belknap, Cheshire, Hillsborough, Merrimack, Rockingham, Strafford


• Vermont: Windham

Space Monkey: Rethinking Data

Imagine the cloud, but with no datacenters. The cloud, would be your hard drive. Except, your hard drive would be on steroids. Meet Space Monkey, a futuristic new hard drive that has a new look on the way that data should be stored. The Space Monkey looks like a regular hard drive, but looks can be deceiving. You can upload as many files as you want, as large as you want, for as long as you want. Space Monkey charges $10 per month for 1 terabyte (1,000 gigabytes). Trust me, this cloud storage opportunity is one to grab for. $10 for a terabyte is something that is biblical in this day in age. On Dropbox, for $10, you would get only 100 gigabytes. With Space Monkey, you get 10 times as more storage space as Dropbox. Space Monkey also has native mobile and tablet apps, where you can download and upload files from your Space Monkey. And don't worry about losing data either. Once you upload a file onto Space Monkey, it is encrypted and then a backup of the file is sent onto the Space Monkey network. All of your files are copied and then stored elsewhere. So long to your nightmares about getting hard drives stolen and losing all your data. Space Monkey truly is the future for cloud data storage.

Facebook Home is Now International

Facebook Home is now available for download in Canada and the United Kingdom in Google Play. Facebook does however still keep the number of phones even eligible to use the Home service very limited. The HTC First is still an AT&T special, and  other carriers across the pond in the UK and in Canada carry the four other phones that Facebook Home can be installed on. The Home phones are: the HTC One X, HTC One X+, Samsung Galaxy S III and Samsung Galaxy Note II.

Time Warner: I built a mini Aereo all by myself!

Time Warner Cable announced today that they will be pushing an update to their TWC TV app tomorrow. This will allow subscribers to watch live TV from their iOS devices. TWC appears to be creating their own version of Aereo in house. However, this replica is very dummed down. If you aren't watching TV on your home wifi network, the number of channels you can watch takes a staggering drop. If you want to watch TV on the road, you will hit a red light. Only Verizon 3G/4G LTE customers will be able to stream live. But even that will have to wait until Quarter 4. The idea of watching live TV with real channels is coming closer; just at a snail's pace.

AT&T: I know, I'll copy Google Fiber!

As you may have heard, Google Fiber now has a competitor; AT&T. And not only does fiber now have competition; Google and AT&T are both going to be breaking ground in the same city, Austin Texas. This is sure to create company tension. Currently, Google offers a free plan, but I have no news as far as plan prices go from AT&T. But, I do know that AT&T is going to need to have attractive prices to try and break consumers away from a Google net of services. Google Fiber project manager, Kevin Lo, says that the prices in Austin may not be the same as the ones in Kansas City. However, I think that Google would not change the prices very much. Right now, I would love to be Austin's mayor, Lee Leffingwell. He is getting new fiber internet connections from two of the biggest tech companies in America. Austin is pretty lucky to be honest with you. I can't wait to see how the competition will affect pricing margins. But, Austin will definitely be in the fiber spotlight for at least a year or two.

The Aereo Battle Intensifies

News Corporation is getting serious in its struggle to get Aereo offline; it's considering taking the signal from Fox off the air. All of the major broadcasters are peeved at Aereo. The small startup has found a small legal way to broadcast television live from over-the-air signals. This loophole in the copyright law permits Aereo to stream. However, the TV conglomerates are annoyed that Aereo, and anyone really could have, actually noticed this loophole, and took advantage of it. Fox is threatening to cut its over the air signal if Aereo doesn't shut down. And trust me, Aereo is not shutting down because big News Corp. is scared of a little startup. It's quite surprising that News Corp. is actually even putting that possibility on the table. You would think that News Corporation, one of the biggest media giants in the US, would not be threatening to shut down one of its services. Many people take advantage of over-the-air signals. Aereo just got lucky and found a good business model. News Corp. should really only be mad at itself, not at Aereo. I'm going to keep following the story, as I'm interested to see how it plays out.

Is Google Fiber Going to Austin?

There has been an explosion of rumors that Google Fiber is going to expand to Austin soon. And for the most part, those rumors are correct. Yesterday on the Google Fiber News section, a peculiar banner showed up: Google Fiber is Expanding to Austin, Texas. That pretty much sums up that Google Fiber will in fact be expanding to Austin Texas. Unfortunately, we do not have a timeline on rollout; so you Austinites probably have a year to get the celebration ready. Despite Google promoting that Fiber is what every American needs, do we actually need it? Google Fiber gives a speed of around 1 Gigabit per second. That is way faster than the average Joe Schmoe will need. And there is nothing we really need that speed for; besides for streaming movies on Netflix faster. Hopefully, Google or a third-party will come out with an application or product that will make you really want that 1 GB/s. Until then, I'm fine with my Comcast 100 MB/s. 

Snooze: The iPhone turned Alarm Clock

Snooze: The iPhone turned alarm clock. Literally. Snooze, an iPhone alarm clock dock is an alarm clock for your iPhone. It comes with a charging cable, so your phone won't die over night. The accessory also has a large snooze button on top, that you can just slap if you feel like going back to sleep. The alarm clock uses a free app by Snooze as the alarm clock. It's Snooze on the app store. So, if you hate your old 1990s alarm clock, this may sound like something for you. See you tomorrow!

Web page

Vdio and Rdio: The iTunes of the Internet?

Everyone knows and loves iTunes. But, there is one company that is aiming to change that. Titled Rdio, an alternate spelling of radio; the company now has an online music and video service. The music service, Rdio, is an unlimited music plan and charges by what devices you use. This price model has definitely earned its share of media attention. The new video service, just launched today, Vdio, is definitely now a competitor to iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, and similar services. Vdio has the same price model as all other services: charge users by per episode. But what Vdio different, is the fact that it is web and mobile based. Consumers can watch their TV episodes and movies via their web browsers, not just using an app (i.e. iTunes) on their computers. Also, Vdio has launched an app for iPad, but I think I can make a safe assumption that they are doing quickly to get apps rolled out for iPhone, Android, and maybe even Blackberry and Windows Phone. An additional feature is that you can use your Rdio login for Vdio too. No more managing different media passwords. I think that Vdio was a wise decision. The idea of a closed system for both your music and TV episodes/movies seems intriguing. I do think that Vdio will eat up some market share, but it will be real adjustment for customers. If you are a Rdio unlimited subscriber, you can get a $25 credit. Just check your email, and you should have gotten an invitation from Rdio. All the rest of you will have to wait before you can get a peek at Vdio. They are signing people up for the public release, just take a visit over to their website, Vdio.com and click on "Get Notified". As Vdio says, "Enjoy the show!"

The Mini Printer

Happy Wednesday!! As the first campaign, I have chosen the mPrinter. The mPrinter, is basically just a mini printer. It prints on restaurant-receipt like paper, but can really print anything. From suduku to shopping lists, anything can be coded to be printed on the mPrinter. It connects over wifi, and can printed upon by just about any device. The mPrinter has succesfully reached and passed its Kickstarter goal, and you can preorder it on the mPrinter website.

Get Ready: Blast to the Past Kickstarter Week

Hey Interweb!

Get ready for the first Good Night Nerd Series, a collection of posts all revolving around a certain topic for a week. This week's series is all about awesome Kickstarter campaigns. Get excited, because the series starts tomorrow! :)

Happy World Backup Day!

It may sound ridiculous, but it's true; March 31 is World Backup Day. Techies all around the world must reaffirm their geekiness by convincing all of their friends to backup their data. As everyone knows, there are two types of people who backup their data. One is the person who backups up his data once per day. The second is who backups after they lose all their data. It is up to us to spread the world about backing up our valuable data. There are many simple and cheap ways to backup:

1. Time Machine via External Hard Drive


2. Mozy


3. BackBlaze


4. Carbonite

Happy backing up! :)