TVUPlayer is simply awesome. With TVU, you can watch live TV as it happens! This is especially convenient for those of you who do not have cable but also for people like me who want to turn their laptop into a portable cable television. It was especially cool the other day when I was on a road trip while a football game was on TV. Rather than miss the broadcast, I used my Blackberry as a portable modem and streamed the game with TVU! When it was over, I switched over to Comedy Central… again, while driving!

As far as channels go, TVU has plenty and has a nice guide-style layout so you can quickly find what you are looking for. Some of the major channels I have available to choose from as I write this include: CBS, Bloomberg, Fox News, SpikeTV, Comedy Central, SciFi, Nickelodeon, ABC News from New York City, Fox News from New Orleans, and plenty more. In addition to well-known stations, several users broadcast their own custom channels such as one totally dedicated to the show Dragonball Z and another than shows nothing but weird, old movies.

Note: You may find that the show you expect to be on whatever station is not on when it should be. If this happens, the reason is most likely that you are from a different time zone than the person broadcasting the station.

Get TVUPlayer from TVU

Miro is a truly awesome media player. It can be setup to act literally like a DVR / TiVo device. Unlike most media players that subscribe to podcasts which download files from servers, Miro employees torrent technology. This means that the more popular the show, the faster the download – and every show I’ve downloaded so far has been lightning fast. The coolest thing of all, though, is the ability to make your own channels out of RSS feeds of torrents. tvRSS.net is a good source for such feeds. I, for example, added TV shows South Park, Scrubs, and Curb Your Enthusiasm to my Miro and when new episodes of these shows come out they will automatically be downloaded via torrent to my computer.

Let’s cut the bullshit out, here is how to torrent; how to download music, shows, movies, games, whatever you want lightning fast and relatively safe (on Windows)

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This is just too damn cool. I’ve known for a while that you could boot Linux from a flash memory card / USB stick. But now I have a seriously comprehensive listing of possible ways to pull this off.

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People are always asking me to fix their slow-ass computers. First thing I tell them is to quit surfing the porn sites. Then, sometimes, I will help them out. Here is a quick how-to fix a computer running Windows that has become way too slow:

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Adobe Acrobat Reader has always seemed like a bloated, laggy piece of software that takes far too long to launch. I have found the perfect alternative.

Sumatra PDF is “a slim, free, open-source PDF viewer for Windows”. Sumatra PDF is just one file and has no external dependencies so it can even run off a USB drive. The best thing about it is how fast it loads – it’s like Notepad for .pdf files.

The web application revolution keeps growing stronger. Yesterday Mozilla posted about their attempt to shrink the gap between a traditional deskptop and new web applications. Their solution, called Prism, is a web application that allows users to run browser-based applications from their desktop. They already have a prototype available for those of you that are interested in giving it a spin.

Having an account with the Google-acquired GrandCentral and a free dial-in number from the kick-ass Skype alternative known as the Gizmo Project – you can combine the two to get unlimited, and more importantly free, incoming calls.

You will notice that in order to get a free number from the Gizmo Project you will have to settle on Nevada area code 747. This limitation is squashed by GrandCentral’s offering of a wide range of call-in area codes – also for free.

You will also notice that GrandCentral is in Beta and is only accepting a limited number of people. I would recommend you sign up as soon as possible if you want Google to send you the invite. Alternatively, I have some to give away if you contact me at ‘karmarogue {at} gmail {dot} com’.

Bottom line: no matter where you and your computer are, you will be able to receive incoming phone calls for free.

For the first time in a while there is an instant messaging service that could seriously threaten my usage of Pidgin. I’m talking about the Firefox plugin IM client Meebo. Meebo connects to every IM chat client and integrates with your Firefox sidebar via the new Firefox extension.

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Firefox users: It’s that time again; time to update! This update includes two critical updates so it’s best to take care of this as soon as you can.

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