Play all your media from anywhere on the Internet for free with WebGuide for Windows Home Server!

Microsoft have recently released a free add-in for Microsoft’s popular Windows Home Server software which lets you access your home server remotely across the internet, and play movies, music or pictures from your media library.

Products to access media remotely through the Internet are not new, Winamp has their own branded version of the open-source Orb solution, and there are numerous other small shareware applications for distributing media. However, this is the first addon to explicitly support the new Windows Home Server and it supports one extra facility that existing products for Windows Home Server do not - scheduling of TV content.

Using this addon, you can browse the TV listings and remotely schedule TV listings to be automatically recorded. Something which you then can of course watch the recordings back again later. Slingbox does something similar, but it’s not free and doesn’t integrate with Windows Home Server and your existing Windows Home Server library. Although I don’t think it will be long before SlingMedia have this issue covered. I think many home prosumer users will be looking to consolidate all the content across their home systems under the Windows Home Server banner. GB-PVR, the open source solution also provides remote access and remote scheduling, but the configuration and setup interface is not as neat as WebGuide.

If you’ve been reading my post on building your own Windows Home Media Server, then this addon would sit very well alongside Windows Home Server

More information:
http://www.asciiexpress.com/webguide/homeserver.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/homeserver/archive/2008/01/10/updated-version-of-webguide.aspx http://wegotserved.co.uk/2008/01/10/add-in-webguide-for-windows-home-server/
http://winbeta.org/comments.php?id=13475&catid=1&highlight=webguide

Improve your internet speed with faster website loading times

A quick new-year’s tip for improving your web browsing experience and making your web pages load quicker:

Use OpenDNS (www.opendns.com).

It will take you a few seconds to do, and will save you a few hundred milliseconds on average each time you load a web page.

OpenDNS is a free replacement for your ISP’s own DNS servers. A DNS server is a machine which your internet connection uses to look up web addresses and to convert them to the unique IP address where the website files can be found. Whenever you type in a web address, for example www.google.com, before the page loads your connection first needs to find the numerical address (in this case: 208.69.34.230) in order to locate the phyiscal page on the internet. A DNS server is required to match the web name with the IP address number. Your ISP will already be providing this service, although it is likely to be running at near-maximum or over capacity and this results in a slow web browsing experience, especially at peak time.

OpenDNS has a distributed network of DNS servers around the world and will automatically choose the fastest one for your connection. As an added benefit, OpenDNS automatically filters out know phishing/scamming and illegal or dangerous websites for you. You can also register your IP address with OpenDNS and they can provide you with free statistics on your household’s or businesses surfing habits and from this you can block specific sites and content from ever being accessed. This service is definately one for the control freak or senior management

When my clients ask me if there is anything they can do to tweak the performance of their internet connections to speed up web browsing, this is the first trick of the trade that I show them. They’re always pleased with the results, especially for the price (it’s completely free!).

What do you think? Did you know that changing your DNS server could improve performance or give you immediate control over your network’s internet use? I’d love to hear your views; drop a comment below.