home and office computer support for D.C., Virginia & Maryland
The Transparency Report from Google shows that queries from Libya have dropped enormously over the last couple of days. See the chart showing a drop off from the afternoon of February 18, 2011. This is what shutting off the Internet to a country looks like.
Most people who have websites are regularly emailed to join or place links on their site to be part of link farms. These are bogus links (links unrelated to the site’s content) that have the goal of tricking Google into improving the site’s search rank. Horrible SEO (Search Engine Optimization) companies sell this sleazy service. If you take part, you’re risking Google catching you and then demoting or banning your site.
See the NY Times article The Dirty Little Secrets of Search detailing how J.C. Penney rigged their results and then got demoted. It was a very successful strategy over Christmas, but Google just responded.
On Wednesday evening, Google began what it calls a “manual action” against Penney, essentially demotions specifically aimed at the company.
At 7 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, J. C. Penney was still the No. 1 result for “Samsonite carry on luggage.”
Two hours later, it was at No. 71.
At 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Penney was No. 1 in searches for “living room furniture.”
By 9 p.m., it had sunk to No. 68.
In other words, one moment Penney was the most visible online destination for living room furniture in the country.
The next it was essentially buried.
A colleague working abroad wanted to get streaming Internet content (videos from Netflix and Hulu, music from Pandora). But those services only have content distribution deals for US customers so they block non-US subscribers. How can those services be tricked? By connecting through a US server. Here’s how.
VPN
A Virtual Private Network or VPN is used by many companies to secure traffic and make your computer appear as if it is on the local corporate network. Internet traffic is typically tunneled through the corporate servers making it appear as if the web browsing is originating on those corporate servers.
Finding a VPN Provider
You can set up a VPN yourself with OpenVPN, but it’s fairly complicated.
I suggest using a paid VPN service. Because all your traffic goes through these servers and your bandwidth is limited by the speed of the VPN servers, you need to chose a VPN service that you can trust. Most VPN providers that I found look a little shady. There are lots of fake review sites as well that are clearly promoting particular sites.
StrongVPN
StrongVPN is a provider that describes their corporate history, locations, and services in detail. Their corporate headquarters is in California and by all appearances, they aren’t a shady company. As of this writing, they have 94 servers in the US in 8 locations.
They have setup instruction for Windows, Mac and Linux.
They have a page explaining how to make sure that Hulu, etc. will work for you:
Unblocking Geographically Blocked Sites
My colleague used StrongVPN without any problems. There is typically additional lag by going through the extra hop of a VPN, but the bandwidth from StrongVPN was good and it worked well enough to watch streaming shows while outside the US.
Slingbox
Unrelated to VPNs, another solution for video when traveling abroad (or anywhere) is Slingbox, which allows you to access your home cable box or DVR. See my old post: Watch Your Home Team with Slingbox.
I like Google and knew that they were attempting something new and audacious with their Google TV. I knew that it had been horribly reviewed and that all the major networks blocked their content from the device. But it wasn’t until I opened my review unit of the Google TV Revue by Logitech that I fully appreciated what a disaster this product was.
It’s “Open”
Yes, Google TV is open, which I now see means that there is no consistency in App design and interface. There are no standards for layouts or buttons. Do I use a mouse or click buttons? Use whatever you want.. it’s different in every app and very confusing.
It Feels Like A Computer
At a few points, I got the message that an application was not responsive and asking if I wanted to force-kill it. That’s not something most people want to deal with on a TV.
It’s Low Quality
The Logitech Revue takes in the video feed from your cable box or DVR and then overlays its content on top of it. This way you can put the live TV feed in a corner box while browsing the web. The downside? The video is re-encoded and therefore degraded in this process. I wasn’t even looking for it, but noticed that the colors and shadows were far more muddy than they should be. I then switched back and forth on the same content and could easily see the problems introduced to the video feed. Audio? Your 5.1 surround sound is converted to stereo.
DVR Integration Fails
The whole idea of Google TV sitting on top of my TiVo DVR doesn’t work for me. If I search for content and the Google TV thinks it’s on live, it will attempt to change the TiVo channel for me. But if my TiVo responds, “Currently recording something else. Do you want me to cancel that other recording?” the Google TV doesn’t know it. It’s clunky and confusing. Just keep my boxes separate or fully integrated (Google TV built into my DVR).
No Content
There is remarkably little content for the Google TV. Most of the content felt like shells for the web pages. I had to click on the option to expand the video to full screen.
Google TV does have Netflix (what box doesn’t today?), Amazon, and Pandora, but many of the other applications either didn’t work or worked sporadically. This is on the latest firmware as of Christmas 2010.
Conclusion
Google TV might be an upgrade if you’re running a Web TV 2.0 box from 2004. But with Apple TV, Roku, Windows Media Center, and a host of “hacker” systems from Boxee, XBMC, and Plex, there are many alternatives now that do far more for less money.
I applaud Google for trying to move into the living room, but this box needs to be redesigned to be user friendly for non-engineers. It needs a consistent user interface and more content.
Google says that they’re continuing to develop Google TV, but Logitech has stopped making this Revue unit and the products planned for CES have been cancelled. Lets hope that Google takes this break in product development as an opportunity to rethink their approach to entering the living room.
There are several MiFi devices out there these days but none as cheap as the one by Virgin Mobile. A MiFi allows you to get on a cellular network via your devices WiFi. Your laptop or iPad has WiFi but probably not built-in cellular network support. This bridges that gap. You can also use up to 5 devices thru the MiFi at one time so its more useful than a built-in connection like the high-end iPad. This MiFi 2200 can be had from walmart.com for just $139.99 with no contract. In comparison, the Verizon MiFi is $269.99. The Verizon data plan is $60/month with a 5GB data cap while Virgin Mobile offers unlimited data for just $40/month.
Activation
The first thing you have to do is activate the MiFi. This is actually different from paying for service. Activation involves creating an account, getting some special IDs from Virgin Mobile, and entering them into the MiFi. This is a simple guided process that you do by connecting to the MiFi via wireless and going to virginmobile.mifi in any browser. One odd thing is that the MiFi will not connect to 3G (EVDO) until it is activated. This means you have to go through the activation website via the older 1xRTT Sprint network which is only slightly faster than dial-up. While annoying, you should only have to activate your MiFi once. Once activated, you will then see it connect to 3G.
You can provide your billing info without actually starting your data plan. You’ve got an option to have your plan auto-renew which is nice if you plan to use it always. If you plan to use it only on occasional trips, there is also the option to only pay manually so when you sign up for a month of service, it will simply end at the end of the month.
Data Plans
In addition to the $40/month plan that most will probably get, there is also a $10/month plan with 100MB cap. That’s a great cheaper option if you just need to use the MiFi for a short period. There’s one other secret extra special plan only available to people who buy their MiFi from walmart. For $20/month, you get a 1GB cap. That’s a nice additional plan option since that would likely cover most people for a week long trip. This is plenty reason enough to purchase your Virgin Mobile MiFi from walmart.
Performance
Virgin Mobile is owned by Sprint so it uses Sprint’s cellular network. When you are connected to Sprint 3G, you can expect typical downloads speeds of 300Kbps to 1000Kbps. While testing, I typically had 2-4 bars of 3G and averaged about 450Kbps. This is no where near as fast as most DSL or cable speeds but for the price and mobility, I think its terrific performance. If you are not in a 3G area, the MiFi will fall back to the older 1xRTT network where the best speed you’ll likely see is 100Kbps and more typical is probably half that. I recommend you check out sprint’s 3G coverage map before purchasing to be sure 3G is available in the areas you plan to use it. The 1x speeds are fine if you’re desperate for any connection but it will be painful to use. As long as you’ve got 3G, you’ll be happy with the performance, especially at just $40/month. If my home internet ever went out, I’d be happy to use this as an alternate internet connection. And since you can start your data plan through the device, you can do just that whenever you have to.
Battery Life
You can expect to get about 4 hours of continuous use from the MiFi. It can be setup to automatically power down after X minutes of no usage. This can be handy to save battery life but it is also easy to simply press the power button until the light goes out to save battery.
If you are looking for a little more battery life like me, I recommend an external usb battery like the Satechi Battery Extender Pack
Admin Options
This MiFi offers terrific admin controls. You can change the wireless SSID, the wireless password or admin password. You can even setup port filtering, port forwarding, and mac filters. Once you’ve setup your config, you can even back it up to a computer in case you ever have to reset your MiFi and restore your setup.
Conclusion
The Virgin Mobile MiFi doesn’t offer the fastest speeds. It doesn’t offer terrific battery life. But it is an amazing price with terrific data plan options. If you’re a price conscious shopper that wants connectivity for any of their many WiFi gadgets, this is the device for you. I think road warriors or occasional travelers would be happy with this device.