Sell your house through a blog --- thanks David!

David Hobby lends his blogging and photography expertise to the Real Estate world. See this blog site he created to help sell his house.

The pictures are beautiful as expected from David's expertise in lighting. Be sure to read more about how he created this site and the prep-work involved.

And if you live in Howard County, Maryland, be sure to check out our growing and active community of bloggers at hocoblogs. We now have close to 150 bloggers from all over Howard County blogging about various topics including community, politics, faith, tech, food, arts, and lots of various special topics and personal stories.

Congratulations Bev Speed - Bronze Medal for Underwater Photography

Congratulations to Bev Speed for winning another award for her beautiful underwater photography. There were 12,591 entries from 134 countries this year and Bev won the bronze medal for the super macro category for Underwater Photography Magazine.

The UnderwaterPhotography.com photo contest is the longest running and most prestigious contest online, or off. If you want to make a name for yourself it is THE place to do it.

One of the medals awarded is the reward for all the hard work underwater photographers put in chasing those great shots in far-flung destinations. It's the industry's most coveted prize because it says the winner succeeded in the most competitive environment there is, against the top talent of the moment.

Bev Speed - Super Macro - Bronze Medal

You can check out Bev's gallery over at SmugMug where she has underwater pictures from all over the world.

Lenovo Netbook first impression

If you're in the market for a small and ultra-portable laptop, consider a netbook. These laptops are small, typically having a 9 or 10 inch screen, light (less than 3 lbs) and very affordable, starting at less than $300.

At that price I decided to get one to take with me on the road. It was a choice between a Dell Inspiron Mini or the Lenovo Ideapad S10. The Dell Inspiron Mini was my initial choice because they're very light (2.28 lbs.) and they were recently on sale at the Dell Outlet for $279. This would come with Windows XP, 8 GB solid state hard drive and 512 MB RAM. I almost hit the buy button when I decided to continue shopping around and went to the Lenovo site where I saw the Ideapad S10 which comes with a regular 80 GB hard drive, 10 inch screen and on sale at $349. After reading some reviews about both netbooks I decided to get the Lenovo (the reviews mentioned the Lenovo build felt more solid & durable and the larger hard drive was going to be worth it).

It arrived in 2 days and if I didn't see the shipping label from Lenovo, the size and weight of the box fooled me to think this was another book order from Amazon. After opening the box and attaching the battery I was up and running in minutes. Since this runs regular Windows XP, no surprises here. It recognized my wifi network immediately and I started browsing on Internet Explorer. I wanted to test out how slow (or fast) this computer really is with its Intel Atom processor. So I went to YouTube, Vimeo, Akubo, Picasa and it was fast. No problems at all. I also installed Skype (it has a built-in webcam), uninstalled Norton (replaced it with AVG) and installed MS Office (this I had to do through a flash drive because it doesn't have a CD/DVD drive).

At this point I was pretty impressed. The build feels solid and the fast performance doesn't feel compromising in any way. Of course I haven't tried loading up photoshop and I'm not sure I will, but looking at the task manager, the Intel Atom is a hyper-threading processor so you get some of the benefits of a dual-processor.

I also loaded up Rhapsody and Verizon VZAccess Manager. So last Saturday on the way up to PA, I plugged in my blackberry to the netbook via USB, fired up Verizon VZAccess Manager, connected to the internet, started Rhapsody, chose an album to play and connected an audio cord from the netbook to my car's Aux input and for the next hour and half driving up I-83 we were listening to music from my Rhapsody account, online, on the road. Pretty cool!

I will be taking this netbook on the road with me and my guess is when my clients see it, they will want one for themselves.

2009 Wish List

My wish list for 2009.

- $500 Mac laptop
- Windows 7 is released on time (late 2009)
- Quad-core laptops from Dell
- Nikon releases an SLR to improve upon the D90 that allows zooming and focusing while taking videos
- Rhapsody on my Blackberry
- Touchscreen iMac/Macbook
- Carbonite releases feature to back up external drives
- Facebook merges with Linked-In so we only have to maintain 1 social network account
- Blackberry/iPhone synch for Akubo
- Wii 2
- VZAccess Manager official release for Linux with support for using my Blackberry as a modem

Last chance for Wii Raffle by Maryland AT Coop

The Maryland AT (Assistive Technology) Coop is having a Wii raffle to be drawn on December 4 at 2pm. Tickets are $10/ticket; 3 for $25, 7 for $50. Click here to purchase tickets through the Maryland AT Coop website (pay by paypal or credit card).

The Maryland A.T. Co-op is a great resource for Howard County families and organizations that need or are exploring the use of assistive technology products. The Co-op provides discounted purchasing and training opportunities to schools, agencies, organizations, and families.

AVG Online Backup powered by Carbonite

AVG, the popular free antivirus product is now offering online backups. AVG's backup system is powered by Carbonite. I've been seeing Carbonite in various installations and my overall impression of it is good. Online backups are worry-free and very easy to use. They're not the fastest in terms of data recovery, but at $50/year it's cheap and worth it. I still recommend an external backup drive for quick recovery, but if you want something completely automatic and never want to worry about filling up your external drive, sign-up for online backup.

AVG's online backup is free for the first 2 Gigs, after that it's $50/year for unlimited space.

http://www.carbonite.com/avg/signup.aspx

Update on my 2008 wish list

We're 10 months into 2008 and so far 4 out of 5 of my wish list items (from January 1st) have come true:
- $100 blackberry
- Facebook has grown up (sort of) ... they no longer assume they'll be the next advertising king.
- Norton Antivirus 2008 is a lot better ... it seems to not slow down your computer anymore.
- We're beyond 100 local Howard County bloggers on HocoBlogs (blogs are no longer on ezColumbia but on our partner site HocoBlogs).

What's close is internet TV as more and more episodes are starting to be shown online. The iPhone is down to $199. Emu did release non-beta Vista drivers but not for all their products. There are streaming radio apps for the iPhone now but not yet Rhapsody. No similar store to CompUSA yet in Columbia. We'll have to wait and see how much of a memory hog Windows 7 will be when it comes out next year. Probably no near-term chance of iPhone working on Verizon's network.

Here's a recap of my 2008 wish list.
- Apple's iPhone will work on Verizon's network
- a $100 iPhone
- a $100 Blackberry
- Internet TV
- 50 Meg download speeds at home
- Emu releases non-beta drivers for Vista
- Facebook grows up
- A more open and less cluttered system challenges Facebook
- Norton, McAfee, Trendmicro (and all the other bloated PC security software) release a security software that doesn't slow down your computer otherwise we'll continue using AVG.
- Microsoft announces that their next version of Windows will be Unix-based and doesn't need 2 Gigs of RAM to work well.
- Apple announces that they're developing the iRadio for cars (and I can use my Rhapsody subscription on the road).
- a store similar to CompUSA opens in Columbia
- 100 Howard County bloggers on ezColumbia (we're almost 50 bloggers today)