I received an invitation to join Hulu the other day. Hulu is the new service by NBC which provides premium programming including TV shows, movies and clips. There is content from NBC, E! Entertainment, FUEL TV, SciFi Network and USA Networks. Also, there are some shows from other networks. For instance, House is on FOX, but is produced in association with NBC Universal.

I will post some screenshots below. The interface is very intuitive and there are some neat features, such as the ability to share videos and vote. However, I expected to be able to watch the most recent episodes. I clicked on House to watch the episode I missed on Tuesday, but it was not there. Consequently, CBS had last night’s CSI:NY episode on Innertube this morning.

One feature I find enjoyable is being able to view shows that are no longer on the air. I have saved some shows, such as Hill Street Blues, WKRP in Cincinnati, Adam-12, Miami Vice and The A-Team to my playlist for future viewing. If you are flipping through the channels on TV and can’t find anything you want to watch, this would be a good alternative. If you don’t like watching video on a computer screen, see if your computer has the capability to connect to your TV. The video card in my computer has a video out and S-Video connectors. I bought a cable that connects to the S-Video connector and audio out from the sound card to my TV. The video is not broadcast quality, but it is a good alternative if you forget to set your DVR or do not have one.

   

I was perusing my RSS feeds the other day and read a Lifehacker blog post about shortening your voicemail message. It does make sense that we all know what voicemail is and how it works. You don’t listen to the greeting and can’t wait until you hear the beep. There are some people I call that have very long greetings. By the time they state their name, title and company, 20 seconds has elapsed. Fortunately, most voicemail systems have a “bypass” that brings “the beep” immediately. For our phone system, it is the asterisk key. Another Lifehacker blog post lists the methods of bypassing voicemail greetings.

This week, my boss asked me to fix his voicemail. When I completed the task, he needed to record a new greeting. I mentioned the blog I read and he decided to follow the advice. So, his voicemail greeting simply states his name, title and “please leave a message”. His greeting is about 10 seconds. I have not changed my greeting yet, but plan on doing so. I bet I can make my greeting shorter. My name has less syllables than his and I talk fast! My title is longer though, so it may be close!

After reading my feeds in Google Reader, I learned that Fedora 8 was released on Thursday. So, I fired up Firefox and clicked on the torrent link. I checked back in a couple hours (3.1GB download) and the ISO was finished downloading. I opened up Parallels and began the installation. It took about 30 minutes to install. Above is a screenshot of the desktop.

My first reaction is that I like the new desktop theme. There are a lot of programs already installed, including OpenOffice 2.3 and The GIMP.  I would like to compare it side-by-side with Ubuntu 7.10. I may have our Tech Team load up a couple of computers we purchased on Thursday. They are Pentium IV 2.6 Ghz with 512MB RAM that were purchased from State Surplus.