Day: November 23, 2010

Geek Software of the Week: ActiveSMART!

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This is a really neat utility to keep your hard drive healthy! And, if you are like me, and have a ton of valuable data on your system, you NEED to be sure that your drive is in good shape! Check this out! Highly recommended!

From their site:
“Protect your hard drive from a sudden failure. Use ActiveSMART! Install ActiveSMART® to protect your PC from a possible data loss in case of an unexpected hard drive failure. Normally, the hard disk errors happen unexpectedly. How much would the hard disk information loss cost you? Does your hard drive – the heart of your PC, and storage of all your data – feel healthy? Save your system from a hard drive failure with ActiveSMART.”

ActiveSMART Hard Drive Utility

– “Feel safe with ActiveSMART protecting your hard drive
– Notebook power saving mode support. Use the same version of ActiveSMART on desktop PC and laptops!
– Detailed hard drive status reports
– Health, Performance, Free Space information for all your drives
– Hard drive Temperature monitor
– Scan for bad and unstable sectors on our hard drive
– Alerts if something wrong is about to happen with your hard drive!
– User friendly interface”

Netflix Agrees With The Doctor!

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OK, not quite what the headline says… it is just that in a recent post I said that we were heading toward ubiquitous Wi-Fi and that would lead to handheld devices that we would get streamed video on. And Netflix is coming out with streamed only account content.

Netflix foretells the future of content distribution with new streaming-only plan

“Netflix today announced a revision to its subscription tiers that simultaneously increased the price of its DVD-by-mail plans, and introduced a new bottom-tier plan solely for streaming TV and movies.

Similar to the streaming-only plan Netflix launched in Canada in September, Netflix subscribers will pay $7.99 a month for unlimited access to the Netflix Instant Streaming library. Previously, the cheapest plan cost $8.99 per month and included one-at-a-time DVD rentals as well.

That plan has now been bumped up to $9.99, and the two-DVDs-at a time plan has gone from $13.99 to $14.99. As the number of DVDs included in the plan rises, so too does the price increase. Netflix has tiers going all the way up to eight DVDs at a time, and that has risen from $47.99 to $55.99.

The introduction of the new streaming-only plan highlights a major shift in user behavior. In short, there are no DVD-only plans, but there is now a plan that involves no DVDs at all. Streaming has graduated from a companion service to one that can stand on its own.

‘The fact is that Netflix members are already watching more TV episodes and movies streamed instantly over the Internet than on DVDs, and we expect that trend to continue,’ Jessie Becker, Vice President of Marketing at Netflix said today.

The next big question is whether Netflix will graduate from being a complement to pay TV subscriptions to a real ‘cable cutting’ solution.”