I have been getting quite a few queries lately from friends about virtualization. Virtualization means a few different things to a few different people, so I have been looking for a good and informative video that explains it. I think this guy does a pretty good job.

Let’s say that you live in the UK, or France, or Canada and you want to be able to access www.pandora.com (who wouldn’t–it serves up great music for free). Unfortunately, sites like Pandora or Hulu have very restrictive content policies. Essentially, unless you have an IP address that these systems recognize as belonging in the country that they are in, you will receive a page or message that says something like:  “Thanks for visiting, but this content is not available in your region”. There is not even a way to PAY for the info or data.

I recently discovered a great service from www.hidemynet.com. This service, which costs less than 20 cents a day, enables you to use a proxy server that the company provides in the US, the UK and Germany. Wishing that you could watch F1 racing from the US? Get a UK-based IP address.

The instructions are very straightforward. I was up and running in minutes and enjoying content from around the world–not just in my back yard.

These are smart times. Probably something to do with the economy…

Just in today: Texas company is going to build data centers powered by wind. The unfortunately named Baryonyx, is going to harness nature to power 100 turbines to give the center the juice it needs.

More info here:

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/07/20/wind-powered-data-center-planned

Watch Out WiFi, Here Comes MiFi

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I have been using yousendits.com service for awhile, but just tried this one–essentially, it allows you to send directly from one open browser session to another. This means that the send and receiver both have to be active, but the SPEED is amazing–just transferred a 77mb file in under 2 minutes.

Check it out at:

http://www.filesovermiles.com

Have you been following the hype around the Palm Pre? Me neither.

I think the Pre is yet another example pointing out that consumers are maxed out with technology choices and unless the new technology is easier and cheaper to use than the current item in their hands, they won’t budge.

The Pre looks good. And it has a cool charger (you don’t have to plug it in to a cord to charge it), but I think it comes down to this. The Pre is the Pontiac of the mofone world.  In these uncertain times, users want to know that the device they are using to communicate with will be supported by a company that will be around, AND look cool when they table drop it.  Table drop? This is the social behaviour where you bring your new device to lunch or dinner and then casually drop it on the table in full eye view of your dinner mate and wait for them to ooh and ahh over it. Sorry, Palm, but the iPhone has you there and Blackberry has a stranglehold in the “get business done now” world.

Prediction: some suffering computer maker will purchase Palm and try to generate some business from it. Hello Dell?

Ever get that sinking feeling that you just emptied your trash basket on your desktop and you made the awful mistake of killing a document or file that you really needed?

Or–maybe your computer got hit by a bad virus. It used to be that you would have to take your computer down to the local tech shop where in some darkly-lit back room, incantations were said and harmful screw drivers were used to try and save your bacon.

Lifehacker has a great article full of recommendations for products that can help you do the dirty work yourself for substantially less.

http://lifehacker.com/5237503/five-best-free-data-recovery-tool

I came across this video today–amazing stats about the pace of change with technology on this planet.

Have you felt left out because you hear your colleagues and peers talking about Twitter and you are not sure what it all means?
Basically it is a short form of keeping up to date (aka stalking) with someone or a company in less than 140 characters. If you take a blog and mash it with chat and a website, you have Twitter.

You can learn more @ www.twitter.com

You can also follow me and my tech thoughts @craigfaulkner.

Caught this on Techcrunch:

Dell’s Twitter experiment seems to be working. After making $1 million during the holidays by alerting Twitter followers to sale items, Dell is now offering discounts exclusively to the 11,844 people who follow @DellOutlet. For instance, here is a Tweet with a link to a 30-percent-off deal on an XPS laptop.

The new marketing program was, of course, announced on Twitter, as well as on this Direct2Dell blog post