Trendnet’s new 500Mbps powerline Ethernet product.

Ethernet over power lines has always been a part of our arsenal to connect PC’s when we don’t want to run wire. The draw has been that it is relatively slow when compared to the speed you are achieving over CAT5e and CAT6 cabling. It is nice to be running at a full gig between your workstations, servers and other networked devices. What we have seen in the past from powerline Ethernet was always in the 11-14mbps range but Trendnet’s new product promises to get that speed up where we need it to be to handle your Data, VOIP and Video traffic.

Things like Blu-ray players, game consoles, TVs and all sorts of other stuff need a web connection to work a lot of times. The catch for many of us is that not all of the gadgets have WiFi built-in and sometimes WiFi just doesn't cut it when it comes to getting a reliable connection.

Trendnet has unveiled a new powerline networking system that is aimed at folks streaming lots of HD models and other large files across a network. The networking kit promises powerline networking at up to 500Mbps. Each of the adapters has a Gigabit Ethernet port built-in and has 128-bit AES encryption. The system has one button set up and an LED indicator on each adapter for network status.

You are limited to a maximum of 16 adapters (nodes) if you are streaming video. Additional adapters can impact performance. Networked Powerline devices need to be plugged into power outlets that are on the same electrical system. The network signal transmits up to 300 meters.

You will be able to get two kits with the powerline gear. The TPL-401E is a single adapter and will ship on November 29 for $99.99. The TPL-401E2K kit is a pair of the adapters to get you started and will ship on the same day for $179.99. You can add more adapters to your powerline network as needed, but you need a pair to get started.

So what is Microsoft’s Office 365?

Microsoft's Office 365, the next piece of a broader play by Microsoft to bring its suite of Office server tools and collaboration work flows onto the cloud, is expected to launch sometime next year.

The company is already in the stages of testing it with small businesses and has a list of some 60,000 organizations, which are waiting to get access. In the meantime, Microsoft is continuing to fine-tune the product and expand its testing group--both in scale and the size of the companies that are being allowed in.

CNET reports: CNET was lucky enough to get early access to Office 365, which has been designed to work on a number of Web browsers, including Firefox and Safari--though not yet Chrome, which will work when the product is finalized. Office 365 is also cross-platform, so it works with both Macs and PCs. The good news is that in our brief testing, everything worked as advertised. The bad news is that you can't get it right now, and it's still a long ways off from something that lets you every feature out of the Office ecosystem without installing software.

So what is Office 365? This is a service that takes several server based applications and hosts them for you on the internet. These applications include hosted versions of Exchange (Outlook), SharePoint and Lync (replacement for Microsoft’s Communication Server) without having to host these services on your own network and never having to worry about maintenance updates. The service is going to run between $2 and $27 per user per month depending on your company size and which services your subscribe to.

Office 365 is available on a limited testing basis only and has a waiting list of over 40,000 but Microsoft is adding new subscribers daily as they test their server loads and functions. According to CNET they had absolutely no problem with their initial use of the product and they felt the system response was very good.

There is still a heavy reliance on local Office Applications and part of your subscription can include Microsoft Office for your local machine. Otherwise you have to rely on the consumer site for Office Web Apps for accessing Word, Excel and PowerPoint. If you are using Office on your local computer then one of your options with this subscription will be to save your documents to the Team Site (SharePoint) so you can share your files with others or with yourself from other locations.

You no longer need to have Outlook on your local machine in that the interface to the hosted Exchange Server is the new version of Outlook OWA that looks just like the packaged version. It has stronger links back to the Team Site (SharePoint) so that you can open documents into a pop-up browser window right from Outlook. This is quite useful in cases where your local computer doesn’t have Office installed on it. Outlook takes full advantage of keyboard shortcuts which helps you to quickly maneuver through your email.

Lync has some interesting connection to some of Windows Phone 7 and iPhone connections. This is something that I am going to look forward in testing myself to see if it is really useful or not. It provides other features like instant messaging, audio and video conferencing and voice call service. This version is based out of a web browser so it doesn’t have all of the capabilities of the full blown product but I can’t comment on that as of yet since I haven’t used it.

It is nice to have SharePoint on the system so that you can manage its capabilities on a team basis. Between simple list management, communication and file storage this is a great product to enhance how you do things and control workflow in your office.

All in all I would suggest keeping an eye on how this product progresses and when it becomes readily available might be a great addition to your company’s needs. It certainly will be something to look at to see if the pricing can fit within a budget that you can afford for the extra services that you can take advantage of.

Netflix adds unlimited streaming plan; raises prices for DVD plans

Some good news and some bad! Netflix is now offering an unlimited streaming-only subscription plan for those of you who don’t want to deal with DVD’s and the United Postal Service. The bad news is that Netflix is raising its prices on several other plans that are based around DVDs.

The unlimited streaming plan will run $7.99 a month, which puts it right in line with Hulu Plus’ offering. This plan is available right now. As for the price hikes, the 1-DVD and 2-DVDs out at a time plans will rise by $1 while the 3 DVDs-plan will jump $3 to $19.99. This will definitely make the streaming option a lot more attractive to those who have an internet connection that can handle it.

I know that I for one would probably be better suited with the streaming only plan because I don’t turn around the DVDs very often. I have one that I am currently sitting on for over a month and during that time the streaming version  has become available.

EOS Rebel T2i / 550D Firmware Update Version 1.0.9

So we got a Thanksgiving present of a new update for our T2i cameras. This update fixes a phenomenon in which tone jumps become noticeable in some images, depending on the shooting scene, when shooting with the Auto Lighting Optimizer settings (Low / Standard / Strong).

Be sure to follow the directions on determining if you need to install the update and the proper method of doing so on Canon’s site. It is simple and only takes a few minutes to perform the update. You will need to go to the bottom of the page to agree to Canon’s terms before you can do the download. There are separate downloads for Mac and Windows and the link that I provided above is for the Windows version. To select another operating system version of the firmware go to this link and click on the Choose Operating System in the center of the screen. You will then be taken to the proper screen for your download.

I find that in most cases that you will want these updates when they come out. If you don’t feel adventurous then you may want to wait a couple weeks to see if anyone is having any problems with it before doing the installation on your equipment. But typically these updates from Manufacturers are usually a good thing to install.

iPad's big upgrade: The top 10 iOS 4.2 features for business | ZDNet

TechRepublic has published their choices of the top 10 iOS 4.2 Features for iPads used in business.  I have found some of these features as very valuable but I haven’t been able to take advantage of several of them as of yet.

Multitasking: I played with the multitasking some and so far I have found it to be a great boon to my productivity but I sure would have liked two more things added to this function:

1. An easy way to close an application when you are through with it and
2. I would like to have the application continue to run in the background when I jump to another application.

I find it really annoying that I can’t listen to a video without it running in the forefront. Sometimes it is nice to continue listening while you jump to some research or to make notes about what you are listening to.

AirPlay: This could really be a neat app in as TR discusses for presentations. It works with the new Apple TV $99 product and you could hook this up to a projector or large screen TV to give presentations, training or any other kinds of video in your conference room.

AirPrint: The list of printers that are capable of taking advantage of this feature are very few at the moment. There are several HP’s working right now but there are several manufacturer’s that seem to be working on this but for now I have to rely on my little Lexmark App to allow me to print at home. It works pretty well out of the utility but it is limited to printing pictures and websites that are brought up within the application. It doesn’t take advantage of the built in functions with iOS 4.2.

Find My iPad is now free. Whoopee!

Folders: I have hated having so may screens just as I did on my iPhone but you have to be careful how you group applications because I have found that even though my initial consolidation seemed to make sense at the time, as time goes by you forget sometimes where you put apps that you don’t use very often.

Unified Inbox: This feature makes it easy to quickly look at multiple email account inboxes at one time. This is a real time saver if you have many different mail accounts for different things.

Web Browser Search: This is a nice addition that allows you to find key words on a webpage and is especially useful big full pages.

Quick Controls: By double tapping the Home Button (takes you to the multitasking screen) and swiping left to right on the panel that appears you will get to the the quick controls panel that lets you work with the following functions: play/pause button and forward/back buttons for the iPod app, a volume control slider, a brightness slider, and a new virtual orientation lock setting. The old lock above the volume buttons is now a mute button, which I think is stupid but you go with what Apple gives you and you like it!

The Wireless app distribution and Remote device management functions sound great on paper for Enterprise support of large numbers of iPad Corporate supported units and I will have to see this in use before I can comment further on it. Anyway, take a look at the link listed below to see what TechRepublic has to say about these new features.

TechRepublic Top 10 New iOS 4.2 features:

Multitasking

AirPlay

Wireless app distribution

AirPrint

Find My iPad

Folders

Unified inbox

Remote device management

Web browser search on page

New quick controls console

iPad's big upgrade: The top 10 iOS 4.2 features for business | ZDNet