YouTube Creator Studio

If you're uploading videos to YouTube and have a low or no budget to edit videos no worries.  Use the YouTube Creator Studio (beta) to edit you videos after you upload them.  There is also a Creator Insider Channel here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGg-UqjRgzhYDPJMr-9HXCg.   There is also a Creators Blog here  https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/

In the Perl world there is a saying; "There's more than one way to do it."  Well, I find it interesting that there are developers out there that are stick paying massive amounts of money for tools when it no necessary.  Instead of maying an annual software maintenance fee for Adobe products to edit videos you can edit them in YouTube Creator Studio.

CleanTalk AntiSpam

I maintain a website for our church https://cbcwoodbridge.org.  We migrating from a html template to using Drupal CMS.  We were getting a lot of spam email from out contact form.  I have the Honeypot (free) module installed but it just wasn't enough.  Then I found the Cleantalk in the modules section of drupal.org.  I installed it and was instantly surprised that within 3 days it was stopping bots from using our contact form from sending spam.  It's definitely worth the annual fee for this module.  I highly recommend it.  Here's the link to module on the drupal site.  https://www.drupal.org/project/cleantalk

Android Privacy

The Privacy Enthusiast's Guide to Using Android https://news.google.com/news/amp?caurl=http%3A%2F%2Flifehacker.com%2Fthe-privacy-enthusiasts-guide-to-using-android-1792432725%2Famp#a-0b0fdf41-0926-449c-ada2-baae42b47cd8

Chromecast device review update

Seasons Greetings!

Merry Christmas, even though it is the day after. Having spent time in Upstate NY as a kid I enjoyed celebrating Christmas with snow on the ground. Sadly living in N. VA we don't usually get much if any snow at this time of year.  I miss snow and when we do get it I usually will go out and spend 4 - 5 hrs snow-blowing the sidewalks in our townhouse community.

Now to the point of this update.  I bought a Google ChromeCast device quite a while back.  I posted a review about it shortly after testing it out and I was sadly disappointed that there weren't that many apps available for it yet.  I was also disappointed that you could only display a few apps to the screen from whatever phone or tablet you were using.  At the time I had my Wife's Samsung Tab 2 10.1" tablet and my Motorola Droid X2 (mobile computing device that thinks it's a phone).

Anyway, I had to replace my 4.5 yr old X2 with a new Samsung Galaxy S5.  The phone dialer was taking 3 minutes to dial someone. The review for my new phone will be the subject for a separated blog post.

So I started tinkering the new S5 and some of it's more advanced features.  I decided to see what it could do with my ChromeCast device.   There is a Samsung patch for the ChromeCast app so I installed it on my S5.  Google updated ChromeCast to now allow full device mirroring to the ChromeCast device.  Awesome, FINALLY!

This works great from my S5.  My Wife's family recently purchased 3 Galaxy S5 mobile computing devices.  With the ChromeCast device I can now go over and demonstrate to them the different features available on the S5 while my screen is mirrored on the TV screen.   WooHoo!  Gotta love technology sometimes.

You can get all the latest news and updates related to ChromeCast at this URL http://googlechromecast.com/

Happy New Year!  Stay safe in the cyber world too!

Internet of Farming: Arduino-based, backyard aquaponics

Google Chromecast device

It's been quite some time since I last posted anything here.  I need to start writing more but there never seems to be enough time for the fun stuff including getting in a nap.  There are way too many distractions it seems like.

By trade I've a hardware person, well, for the last 34 yrs..  I must admit however that electronics or  computer hardware has become hard to follow in the last 10 to 15 years.  The reason is because hardware it changing so rapidly anymore and I believe we can throw out Moore's Law.  I don't usually look at hardware that closely anymore unless I need to replace a computer at work or home.  At work servers are being virtualized so there's really no need for me to keep up with that much lately.  I'm not going to go into how computer virtualization works here though for those that aren't familiar with technology.

Anyway, this is going to be a review about the Chromecast device I received as a Christmas gift.  Yes, I'm a gadget person however not as bad as some people.  I don't run out buy a gadget immediately after it hits the "shelf".   I prefer to wait until a product has matured a little, say when it's reach the 3rd or 4th generation.  I also try to determine whether a product is going to be worth the investment of my time as well as my money.  Is it going to be useful too or is it going to "collect dust" after I'm finished tinkering with it and I move to something else or get so distracted that I don't tinker with it for a year.

You can buy the device from Google directly or a 3rd pary such as Radio Shack, Best Buy or MicroCenter now, for $35.  It's slightly bigger than a thumbdrive, comes with a power adaptor, USB Cable used to power the device.

At the time that I recieved it there was limited app support. What was more curious Chromecast app wasn't support on my Wife's Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1.  And yet it was on my Droid X2, yes I still have my X2.  Yeah, I've had it a while now.  Not sure what I want for an upgrade though.

Anyway, if you're thinking about getting one of these devices be forewarned not that many apps support it.  Not only that most of the newer TV's have all the app support they need.  There are other devices that would fit the bill better than Chromecast.   Like maybe the Apple TV device, Roku or Slingbox, etc....... I'm sure I could spend all night point out other devices with similar capability.

Ciao!
B

Long over due

It would appear that I'm long overdue to post something here. I'll have figure out what topic to pick first.