How to Choose the Right HDTV

Ready to take the plunge this holiday season and buy a new HDTV, but overwhelmed with all of the options on the market? Don’t worry—you’re not alone. With the multitude of confusing choices on the shelves and new features showing up on a seemingly weekly basis, even the most tech savvy of us can get a little confused when it comes to TV shopping.

“What size screen do I need?” “Should I go with an LCD or a plasma?” “What in the heck are refresh rates and which one is right for me?” If these are the sort of questions that run through your head at in the TV aisle of your local big box store, HDGuru is here to help. They have published an in-depth guide to help you navigate through the HDTV maze and emerge with the perfect television for your needs.

Check out the guide here.

Fighting the Black Friday and Cyber Monday Monsters

As we all know, Thanksgiving is just around the corner, meaning that we get to eat absurd amounts of food while watching football or talking to relatives. Or at least, that's what it will be for me.

However, it's the weekend after Thanksgiving that many savings-savvy-shoppers look forward to. Black Friday is the day when all of the stores are dropping prices, and Cyber Monday is when the online retailers follow suit.

Both of these days are looming in the not-so-distant future, and they are ready for you to enter them with impulse and reckless abandon. To combat that, you could always eat an absurd amount of food, which apparently increases the production of an amino acid that makes you less impulsive. See? Eat more and save money. Science proves it, and you can't argue with science.

However, the best strategy for tackling the big shopping days is to go in prepared. If you're looking for the best deals for each one, there are some online resources that can help you out. For the shop-a-holics that prefer Black Friday, Black-Friday.net is an excellent catalog of all the deals you can find and where. And for those that wish to avoid the rabid swarming masses and do your shopping online, CyberMonday.net is a similar grouping of all the online deals and where you can save the most money.

So, which of these two days do you use to get most of your shopping done? Have you ever found any great deals? Tell us in the comments!

Recycle Your Old Cell Phone

This holiday season when you open your gift and find a brand new cell phone for you to tinker around with, don't forget to be green and recycle your old phone.

I found this awesome post that has all kinds of information about recycling your old cell. You can drop it off at certain retail locations such as a few select Target and Radio Shack stores. You can even mail it in. If the cell phone is in good condition you might want to donate to a charity like Call to Protect that refurbishes old cells and gives them to people who have suffered domestic abuse.

So if you need to recycle your old phone, read Bluetooth? iPhone? Don't just ditch the Old Phone.

How Fast is Your High Speed Internet?

If there's one thing that can be confusing when it comes to shopping for home services, it's high speed Internet. With the increasing packages that providers are offering via fiber optic, cable and DSL connections, it's getting harder and harder to figure out which speed is the right one for you. On top of that, there's no real standard across the industry for broadband speeds, so there are lots of options out there that can be difficult to sift through.

It really all boils down to what your needs are. If you are simply a fan of browsing the Web casually and checking e-mail, then you don't need anything more than the basic 768 kbps (kilobytes per second) package that most providers offer. However, if you are into downloading music and watching the occasional YouTube or other small streaming video, you might need to kick it up another notch.

For the more serious Web fiends, the options continue. If you are into higher quality video streaming, like the services found on Netflix, 6 Mbps (Megabits per second) is probably necessary to yield better results. In addition, online gamers will need a faster connection, but download speed isn't quite as important as upload speed there. Online gaming relies on how fast your connection is uploading your information back to the server you're playing on.  Many providers try to sell higher download speeds (like 12 Mbit/s) as the "gaming" package, but if it doesn't have a higher upload speed, you might not be getting what you need. 

Right now, I'm sporting a 6 Mbps connection at home, and so far it's proven great for video streaming and even online gaming. What about you guys? What do you have at home? Vote and tell us in the comments!

6 Reasons On-Demand Programming is Awesome

I recently ordered new digital television service that features on-demand programming, something I’ve been looking forward to trying for years. I have to say, it was definitely worth the wait. Here are the top six reasons you need to get TV service with on-demand.

• You never have to go to a movie rental store again, as all the latest hits are right there whenever you’re ready to order
• It’s easy to discover new series you may have missed, and catch up with old ones you’ve forgotten about
• You can watch TV and movies on your own schedule, without having to fill up your DVR
• If you subscribe to movie channels, they probably have a large library of movies you can access any time, for free!
• Typically, on-demand shows have limited commercials—and even then, you can skip right past them if you are as impatient as me
• If there’s a show from a premium channel you’ve been wanting to see, even if there is not a free sample episode, you can usually rent an episode to try it out

Why do you love on-demand programming? Let us know in the comments!

Are Solar Panels for the Birds? New Solar Powered Birdhouse Debuts

Oooms, a Dutch design firm, recently introduced a birdhouse outfitted with a solar panel on the roof. Okay, I can already hear you all asking, “Why would a bird ever need electricity?” As silly as it sounds at first, there’s actually a pretty neat explanation for the solar panel. 

During the day, the birdhouse gathers solar energy via the panel and charges a small battery. Once the sun goes down, a small light attached to the birdhouse’s perch is illuminated. No, it isn’t so the bird can read in bed, it’s actually designed to lure nocturnal bugs right to the opening of the birdhouse—essentially the bird version of late-night pizza delivery.

This seems like a neat way to enjoy having a birdhouse and feeder, without having to ever actually put out any birdseed. That said, I might be a little worried that I was messing with the birds’—and the bugs’—natural behavior just a little too much. What do you think?

If you’re interested, you can purchase your own solar birdhouse from the Oooms store, for the bargain price of 70 Euros.

Image via Oooms

The Green Wireless Charger

In this day and age, everything is going wireless. I remember the first time I used wireless Internet, and how I felt like I was in some kind of bizarre future world. The idea that data transmitted through the air baffled and fascinated me. But then again, I'm a nerd. Most people probably don't think about these things.

However, I'm sure this one will get the brain going. Two companies, WiPower and Green Plug, are partnering together to work on a green wireless charger. Yes, wireless power. How's that for the future? The technology they're working on would allow for a universal wireless charger, instead of all the proprietary ones that different manufacturers provide with their products. This is going to take some working together with manufacturers, but on top of the coolness of charging things without wires, it would also be very green.

How is it green? Every year, "millions of chargers are thrown away each year when people buy new devices and discard the old chargers".It could save millions in costs for those manufacturers, and also saves on the waste created by all the unused chargers. Hopefully this doesn't get too much push back. I'd love to see this technology in my home.

To read more, visit CNET. What do you guys think about a universal wireless charger?

WhiteFence makes Moving Easier for Military Families

As you can see from Eddy's post yesterday, moving is easier when you visit the WhiteFence move center, but seeing how today is Veteran's Day, I wanted to point out how it can also help military families.

When you have to move as often as some people in the military, it is good to know that there is a site that can make it a smooth transition. The move center can help you get mover quotes, auto shipping quotes, change your address, packing supplies and more.

You can also use WhiteFence to shop and compare plans and services to easily set up your electricity, home phone, Internet, natural gas and TV service in minutes. You can even set up other essential home services like maid service, lawncare, newspaper deliver and more.

Making the Move Easier

Moving locations is rough. We all know it. While I'm not often prone to exaggerated complaining, I personally find moving to be completely and thoroughly soul-crushing. OK, so maybe that's just a little over the top.

Part of my disdain for the moving process comes from college, where I moved apartments every single summer. My wife and I also moved twice in our first few years of marriage, bringing the grand total to 6 moves in 6 years. We had sworn off moving for quite awhile until just last month, when we bought our first home. Early in the process, we decided that we were going to try hiring movers instead of doing everything on our own or with the help of friends that would forever scorn us for making them lift boxes full of my video games.

This was my first time to experience the help of a moving company, and I don't think I can ever go back. While moving will never be easy, hiring some professionals to carry my junk around really made a huge difference. It made me wonder why people ever try to move on their own, so I thought I'd make a little poll and find out how many readers out there have used movers.

Got any moving horror/triumph stories? Feel free to share. For moving help, be sure to check out the WhiteFence move center.

Save Money and Go Green by Upgrading Your Home’s Insulation

Yahoo! Green has posted an in-depth guide on how to lower your bills and reduce your carbon footprint by upgrading your home’s insulation. On average, heating costs make up about one third of a home’s energy budget, making insulation upgrades one of the quickest ways to make your home more energy efficient.

The article walks you through how you can identify trouble areas in your home and how to choose your new insulation. Included is an in-depth breakdown of every style of insulation on the market, featuring innovative new green choices like bio-based fibers, radiant barriers and blown-in insulation. To help you determine which type of insulation is best for your situation, the guide even provides a link to a handy cost-to-savings calculator.

With winter just around the corner, there’s not much time left to protect your home from the cold before temperatures drop and energy rates soar, so consider upgrading your home’s insulation today.