Infrastructure Infrastructure Infrastructure

Robert Reich is a very smart man.  I have enjoyed and learned a lot from reading his blog. 

While this post is packed with insightful and interesting analysis, I think that his focus on the infrastructure aspect of Obama’s “Economic Recovery Plan” is especially pertinent. 

The American Society of Civil Engineers believes that $1.6 Trillion in infrastructure  investment is necessary to bring our infrastructure to a GOOD level.  The key implication there is that we currently have a BAD or at least non-good infrastructure.  This is very disturbing.  Especially since not $0.01 of the $700 billion TARP investment, or of the $25bn Auto bailout is going to investment, but just to maintain the status quo.  Now this is not necessarily an indictment of either of these programs, that can be done elsewhere.  But if it isn’t clear that we are faced with a fundamental structural crisis, then it should be. 

I think we would all prefer to see the private sector spearhead most of the necessary intervention.  Even liberals prefer private investment over public (if only to free gov’t up for other pursuits). But I think it is clear that the private sector is unwilling and, certainly in the short term, unable to make this investment.  This problem did not emerge overnight.  Eventually we will need to find a way to incentivize our private sector to tackling long term problems, but that time is not not, the need is too pressing to experiment. 

The question of whether the government needs to make this investment would seem to answer itself.  The key task for Obama will be how to spend this money.  Roads, Bridges, Mass Transit and clean water will be high on the list of course, but we need to do more than just patch up a 20th century system, we need to finally enter the 21st, and start preparing for the 22nd.  Universal Broadband, wireless networks, laptop initiatives, clean industry and sustainable models of living should all be on this list as well.  I think its critical that Obama view our current situation both as a challenge to overcome, but also an opportunity to grab. 

Pimp Out Your Gmail

Google continually pushes out new and useful features for Gmail. Some of these features are a little gimmicky, but some are very helpful.  I’m going to show you some of my favorite ones and also how to enable them.

To get started, you need to be using a recent internet browser.  The Student Nerds team recommends Firefox, but Internet Explorer 7 should be fine too.  If you are using Internet Explorer 6, you should upgrade, but if you can’t, make sure you have all the updates installed as some of these tips may not work.

First, log in to your Gmail account and look for a green flask in the upper right part of your screen.  If it isn’t there, click Settings and then Labs.  There are plenty of options to choose from, but here are the ones that I use:

Pictures in chat Custom keyboard shortcuts Mouse Gestures Signature Tweaks Muzzle Right-side chat Default ‘Reply to all’ Quote Selected text Navbar drag and drop Forgotten Attachment Detector Mark as Read button Go to label Google Calendar gadget Google Docs gadget

Google also just enabled 30 themes to choose from. You should see the themes option in the Settings page under the Themes tab. I’m currently using Shiny.  Google is constantly updating Gmail to make it better and better. Now they if they could only add HTML signatures.

E-mail Me or Twitter

Musical Capital

Music is very important to us at Student Nerds. Klear has started a new weekly column that gives you an idea of what’s spinning on our iPods.  But what if our eclectic picks aren’t enough to fill your week?

Music recommendations have always been notoriously low-fi.  Usually you’d turn to a particular buddy in your group, “the music guy.” The music guy was the one with a subscription to Rolling Stone, Blender, Spin, Chamber Music Weekly.  He’d be the one who every other night was going to some show in the far suburbs of a band that didn’t even have T-shirts yet.  But what if your tastes and Music Guys differ? Would you be forced to quit your job and listen incessantly to alternative FM radio?

Ever since music distribution has gone online, so have music recommendations. Sure most sites still have areas where you can leave you feedback on a song, but how do we know that Joe from Nevada is a good proxy for your tastes? Music sites have tried in a number of different ways to become your online “music guy”

Amazon has a classic “see what other have bought” feature, handy but very unscientific, and potentially confusing if enough fans of the Pouges also have 9 year old daughters who like the Jonas Brothers.  

Last.FM takes this idea slight further, trading purchase driven recommendations for “listen-to” suggestions and adding a social element by which a “neighborhood” of people with similar tastes are group together and allows you to explore their libraries and mixtapes.  One downside to the Last.FM model is that if you listen to a variety of genres or your tastes change, the effectiveness of your neighborhood is decreased.

iTunes has included in its newest release, a “Genius” feature which combines the ratings of its users, with purchase and listen patterns.  I’ve enjoyed using Genius, but am bother by how driven it is by selling new music versus the discovery aspect.  

While all of these recommendation services have their place, when I’m looking to broaden my musical horizons, or just when my playlists are getting a bit stale, I turn to Amie Street

Amie Street has a unique distribution and recommendation model that provides direct financial incentive to both music creators and distributors, but also to consumers.  Here’s how it works:

An artist or label uploads a song or album to Amie street, that track is assigned a value from $0.00 to $0.99, depending on that artists history and reputation.  As consumers buy that song, the price of the song increases, (though no one song ever exceeds $0.99).  Artists and labels get a cut of their sales, so they are incentivized to upload good music.  Further, this pricing tool acts as a signaling device, if a song has been available for 6 months and is priced at $0.05, then it’s probably a dog, if it’s a new release and already at $0.98 like this of Montreal track, then at least you know it’s not nails on a chalkboard. 

This pricing scheme is valuable in itself, but Amie Street takes it a bit further, by paying people to become your music guy.  They have created a unique recommendation systems where you use a limited number of “REC”  flags to recommend individual tracks and comment on them.  As these tracks are downloaded (or not), their prices goes up, as does a metric that is used to measure your value as a recommender, you “street cred.” More importantly, as money is made off these tracks, a percentage of it is credited to your account.   As your RECs become more and more influential, you can actually buy and REC more music.  If you’re good, you can actually start a cottage industry as a music critic. 

Amie Street does have a few draw backs however.  They lack the breadth of mainstream content that the other services have, and there’s an inherent feedback risk in the REC system where the site can become increasing focused on one genre or sub-genre and limit it’s value.  But as a way of discovering  and purchasing new music, as well as a unique and social business model, I think Amie Street is way ahead of then curve, and a great way to go online to get and become a “Music Guy”

Friday Leftovers

Every Friday the Student Nerds team will share some random links that we have found throughout the week. The links will be related to anything and everything.

On a side note, it’s pretty ironic that I wrote this backup article this past week.  Just last night, my external hard drive that has my 80gb music collection crashed.  I tried performing some recovery operations, but alas, it was dead.  I am now in the process of restoring all of my music from Mozy (which could take around a week or two).  Regardless, It is well worth the $54.95 I’m paying a year for unlimited backup.

Here are the links of the week:

• Share all your media with your phone, tv etc wherever you go, always have
  access to your pictures, movies, tv shows, documents.
• New Gmail Themes
• Relax @ Work
• Free 3D Modeling Program from Google
• Picasa - Great Photo Album Software from Google
• Discover new music
• Why the universe may be teeming with aliens
• iPhone 2.2 Update Available Now
• Microwave an Instant Chocolate Cake in a Coffee Mug

 

Guide to Free Downloads

I have a confession to make: I love downloading stuff.  Wait, let me rephrase that.  I love downloading FREE stuff.  Today, I’m going to show you how to use uTorrent to download almost any type of file.

Please note that I do not condone any type of illegal downloading.  Use this guide at your own risk.

What You Need:

1. uTorrent
2. A RSS feed for TV shows
3. A torrent search engine

First you will need to install uTorrent. This part is very simple and straight-forward.  If you have any problems, here is a good guide to get started.  Once you have that installed, copy the address of the RSS feed to this section of uTorrent:

 

You will now see the feed show up on the left side of your screen.  This feed will update at a set interval (default is 15 minutes).  Whenever you see a show that you want to get, double click it and it will start downloading.  You can also right click on a show and Add it to your favorites which will download the show automatically for you.  In a future post, I’ll show you how to schedule your downloads to work while you sleep.

I hope this helps you get started with uTorrent and downloading. E-mail or Twitter me if you have any questions.

Hulu v. YouTube: Which Content is King?

Prassel has already posted a guide on how to get streaming content, like that provided by Hulu and CBS, up on to the big screen. Streaming content is the future, and just as CDs gave way to digital means of distribution, so will DRM-laden download based files soon give way to freely streaming content.

There is little doubt that the media landscape will move toward more and more streaming media, but what will the landscape look like?

Roughly two years ago, with Google’s purchase of YouTube for nearly $2bn, many observers predicted the downfall of major media providers and a move to user generated content. Soon we would all be actors, producers, DJs, VJs and so on.

Along with YouTube, sites like Vimeo for video and Last.Fm and Pandora for music, user generated, streaming content seemed on the rise. Maybe people predicted the death of the movie studio, or record label. Not surprising, rumors of the death of corporate media has been greatly exaggerated.

But by late 2007 Last.Fm has signed a deal with all the major content distributors, Pandora may potentially be sued out of existence over copyright infringement, and Analyst from Screen Digest predict that Hulu’s revenue will surpass YouTube’s as soon as next year.

What I think we are experiencing is the classic model of creative destruction. A creative and entrepreneurial people in the edge economies constantly innovate and push technology and media further ahead. While slow moving, but highly capitalized corporate media companies have no choice but to adapt.

Certainly there has been a great deal of rent-seeking the behalf of media companies, with DRM files and restrictive deals with various providers, but it seems like every day more and more professional created content is appearing (legally) on the web for streaming access. Companies like Universal, Sony, CBS, Fox, NBC are slowly realizing that their interests are best served by becoming an indispensable part of the conversation, as opposed to a miserly guardian of their content.

While new Last.Fms and YouTubes will continue to emerge and push limits, I think that the popular content landscape will continue to be increasingly dominated by corporate content providers such as Hulu. And as long as the forces of creative destruction are continued to be supported and served, the evolution of this landscape will continue to be remarkably exciting to watch, enjoy and participate in. 

We’re Bringing Syncing Back

I got really serious about backups back in January after I lost some crucial data. It was a devastating experience that I did not want to have happen again.

I started writing my own scripts to copy my documents, pictures and other files to my server. This worked, but then I found SyncBack. SyncBack takes all the hassle out of backing up all of my important files. You can use it to copy files to another computer or an external hard drive. After syncing the files to my other computer, I use Mozy to upload my important files to an online server for safe keeping.

Obviously, if you do not have another computer to back up to (or even an external hard drive), Mozy is a great program to use to backup your files. You can use Mozy for free and get 2gb of storage which would be good starting point. I pay about $50 a year for unlimited storage on Mozy, but it is completely worth it. Along with my important files (including about 10gb of pictures), I have backed up my entire 80gb music collection. Better to be safe than sorry. Twitter me or E-mail me with any comments or questions.

Music Monday!

Every Monday at Student Nerds, we are going to going to recap the best music from the previous week.  We might also share some music that we have been listening to ourselves.  You will have a guide for where to find the best new music.  We know everyone has different music taste so we will try to pick music from different genres.  Here are my picks for the week:

 

	Snow Patrol A Hundred Million Suns	iTunes Amazon
	Jason Mraz We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things	iTunes Amazon
	Metallica Death Magnetic	iTunes Amazon
	T-Pain Thr33 Ringz	iTunes Amazon

E-Mail or Twitter me your comments.

How to Build a Home Theater PC

People always ask me about my Media Center when they come over to my place. They love how it has all my movies, music and pictures in one place. I can also view online content (Apple Movie Trailers, YouTube, etc.) from the same place. Well, today I’m going to tell you how I would put together a new Home Theater PC today if I was going to start from scratch.

I’ll include the parts list assuming you know how to build a computer. (If you don’t, here is a great guide on how to do so)

First, here is a list of the parts that I would choose to use to build this machine:

Case

Motherboard

Processor

Memory

Hard Drive

Blu-ray Drive

Card Reader

Infrared Remote Control with Receiver

At the time of this writing, the total cost (with shipping) comes to $480.17. This is without buying Windows XP or Vista. You could also install Linux for free. You may notice that I don’t have a TV Tuner card as I plan to still rely on my cable provider’s DVR box.

Second, the software. The software that I use and love is called XBMC. It is a free program that runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and even the Apple TV. Eventually I’ll probably start using Boxee when that gets released for Windows. Feel free to ask me any questions via e-mail or Twitter.

Watch Hulu on your TV

If anybody has ever used Hulu to watch a television show or movie, you know how great of a website it is.  The only problem is, nobody wants to watch this stuff on a laptop screen. We all want to watch it on a Television from the comfort of a couch.  Well, there is a great program called Boxee that you can install on an AppleTV (or any other Mac. Windows & Linux coming soon).  It's a very simple process and once you're done, you can enjoy Hulu on the big screen (Along with Comedy Central and CBS).  Here is the guide. [Via Gizmodo]

Sharing Files between PC & Mac

As Apple's market share continues to grow, it will become much more common to share files between a Mac and PC computers. I know I would eventually like to start messing around with the OS X operating system but I still need to use Windows for some daily tasks (and share files between both systems. Here is a guide on how to do that and it's good to know that I can eventually setup a good network with both types of operating systems. [Via MakeUseOf]

Congratulations to President-Elect Obama

I have a lot of feelings towards this election, but I'll let you read what Mark Cuban wrote. I feel exactly the same way.

How to live with a Mac and a PC

Good morning fellow nerds! Hope everyone is having a lovely Monday.

Found this great article on how to have a setup with a Mac laptop and a PC desktop. [Via Lifehacker]