How to Stream online videos and music to your TV using your smartphone, tablet, or laptop

Finally, a way to get rid of my HDMI chord!

I often stream videos from my laptop then connect it to a TV via an HDMI chord. There are several "inconveniences" that I go through as I go about this process.

1. I have to get the chord and attach it to both my laptop and the TV.
2. When I want to switch to another movie or video, I have to stand up... go to the laptop then change the movie|video.
3. I cannot multitask well.  Whenever I have to use my laptop to do something, I have to... (you guessed it!). I have to stand up and go to the laptop.

But with Google Chromecast HDMI Streaming Media Player... Everything is just more convenient. I an even stream a movie in one tab while wet urging on something in another tab. This way my wife can watch while I do some work. If this was an HDMI chord, my wife will see whatever am looking at my screen. 

The one big disadvantage see with the Google Chromecast, is you can't use it with other applications other than the Chrome browser or any of its Chromium-type derivatives (like Dragon by Comodo). So this means you can't use it with Windows Media Player or VLC. Well, might have to look into this... But haven't found a way yet.

You can find this amazing device in Amazon for a very reasonable price.

Review on SkyDrive, Google Drive, SugarSync, Box.net, and DropBox

Task

This post is a review on 4 of the biggest online storage and collaborations services in the cloud today. 

Of course, one can argue that it would be difficult to compare these as they each have their own strengths and apparent weaknesses.

I will be basing my comparison under the context that these will be used for a small non-profit organization trying to minimize its costs, and works in a manner where the management of its activities depend on the energy and dedication of a handful of its volunteers. Activities are managed by some project leaders which are normally tasked by its founders. One can imagine, that work is mostly decentralized and projects are divided into different clusters. A further complication is that volunteers come and go. A team working on a project will have new volunteers coming in, and will also have volunteers going out. There is a lot of reshuffling on the workload, depending on the need of the organization and the availability of the volunteers.

Scenario

First of all given that the organization is working for charity, the price should be affordable. The memory space should be sufficient. It doesn't need to be very big, but it has to be enough for a growing organization. Each department in the organization will have a folder. I will assume that the founding members will have access to all the folders and will have the authority to share these to any team. Once a team leader is chosen, the respective founding member should be able to manage the users and can allow users to gain edit/read only capabilities for all the files in the folder. Furthermore, the founders should be able to make a user, particularly the elected project leader to manage the project team members. This means, the project leader could also add/remove users on a per need basis.

As mentioned, I will focus on the following services out there in the web - SkyDrive, Google Drive, Sugarsync, Box, and DropBox. I know, it would be difficult to only compare personal versions while aiming to recommend a commercial service but I will do my best.

Below is a chart which is still a work in process. I will update this post as I get new information.

How to use the System File Checker in Windows 7 and Windows Vista

About System File Checker

Sometimes, you wonder why your Windows computer doesn't cooperate and loads in a way that scares you. You might also get a message saying "Error loading XXXXX.DLL," or an icon becomes so arrogant it won't do a single thing even if you click it a million times. Can you related to this? Frustrating indeed.

Well, there is something you can try. You might have to run a nifty little command built into Windows 7 or Vista. It's run on the command prompt and goes by the name System File Checker. It's file name is SFC.EXE. You can run this on the windows command prompt using the  sfc /scannow command.

To run a command prompt as administrator, simply right click on the command prompt then choose Run as administrator. If you don't open the prompt as administrator, it will say "You must be an administrator running a console session in order to use the sfc utility." BTW, console session is another name for the command prompt.

Then type sfc /scannow on the prompt and hit enter.

SFC automatically scan and check all critical files and replaces any that it sees as corrupted. During this process, it may ask for the Windows installation CD-ROM. Keep it beside you, just in case.

It will initially say how much is already scanned in percentage figures, and will keep going till it hits 100%.

The results are also shown above.