Richard Farrar's Blog

New  internet technologies and social media websites seem to be springing up at an almost exponential rate. With these ever expanding ways to communicate and stay in touch, how do you decide which to adopt and which to ignore? Which will stand the test of time and which will be destined to obscurity by the time your morning coffee’s gone cold?

Social media, new media, web 2.0; whatever you choose to call it, there are now so many ways of keeping in contact with friends and family and keeping up to date with the latest news and events, that you could spend all day doing just this and not achieving anything productive.

So how do you choose which of the latest new media offerings to adopt, and which are the ones that are likely to stand the test of time and become mainstream?

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Photo by jessicafm

I never planned to have a home network, it just kind of evolved out of necessity. After a while  though,  I decided that leaving things to evolve naturally may not be the best strategy and decided to apply a bit of intelligent design to the process instead, since which things seem to have grown exponentially.

Only a few years ago, networks were the preserve of large or medium sized business and definitely not something that you would find in the average home.

So, why did I decide to setup a home network in the first place, what benefits do I get from it and how and why has it grown so much? Read on and hopefully all these questions will be answered. Not only that, but you’ll see that a home network doesn’t have to cost the earth either.

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Photo by kaibara

Nowadays, every piece of consumer audio-visual equipment seems to come with a bewildering array of video connectors on its rear. How can you possibly know which is the best one to use and why?

Things are supposed to be getting easier, not harder. Yet trying to link your latest bit of electro-trickery into your existing audio-visual (AV) system is a bit like a camel attempting to do the tango; an exercise in futility.

How do you choose from the plethora of video connectors available to you on your latest Carlos-Fandago Super Ninja Turbo DVD player/toaster? Well, thankfully things can be broken down into some sort of order. There is a technical hierarchy amongst these video connectors that can be exploited, giving you a series of preferred choices, depending on the options available.

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