Justin Germino Ramblings

Streaming Internet movies and television shows are no doubt going to gain rapid popularity over the next few years as people no longer are bound to watching shows on the day’s/nights they want and can simply catch up on entire seasons in single weeks if they want.  Sure you can do this with a DVR, but who wants to keep previous seasons on DVR until the season is over just to watch them all close together?

Roku XDS is the device I chose to ask for this Christmas and I did this even though I knew Google TV devices like the Logitech Revue are getting more attention lately with their open web surfing capabilities.  The bottom line is that if you are looking for a device that can fully bring Internet web browsing which would include everything from using Facebook to browsing Craigslist on your home television, then Google TV is going to be the device for you.

Neither device at this time offers the Free Hulu web based service, and Roku is the only one of the two offering Hulu Plus subscription service at the moment but both are compatible with Netflix and only Google TV is compatible with YouTube (though there is a beta channel rumored to exist to bring YouTube to Roku).

Roku is the ideal platform for keeping your television grounded in Movies, Television and Music however and will prevent the potential of a family member hogging your big screen TV to chat on Facebook or read the New York Times preventing the rest of the family from watching TV.

Truth be told because Google TV is so much like bringing the entire web experience to your television why wouldn’t someone just plug their laptop into their television and get a wireless trackball or trackpad device with keyboard and use it the same way for 100% computer on big screen TV experience?  One might say the Google TV device saves the convenience of having to move a computer back and forth, but I think the Google TV device is a slimmer version of just having a Media Center PC in the first place.

Still at $300 for a Logitech Revue it is cheaper than most media center PC’s but far more expensive than even the most expensive $99 Roku XDS (Roku SD is only $69.99).

I presonally don’t want the distraction of the “entire” web on my big screen TV, so Roku XDS which ties into my Netflix is exactly what I need.  The fact is there are about 12+ free channels on Roku to get access to free movies as well like Coldcast, Crackle, AlloyTV and you also get MediaFly, Roku Newscaster and Blubrry and other channels for news and information.

I am still sticking with the Roku XDS and Netflix still has better options for streaming movies at a slightly lower price than Hulu Plus but Hulu Plus does have a better selection of Television shows and newer seasons.

-Justin Germino

Equality for all, land of the free right?  Despite America being one of the most democratic and equality based nations we are stuck with inequalities that infect our society in the form of ignorance and bigotry.  From homosexuals not allowed to be open and treated equally in the military to their restricted rights in various states for marriage and even to be listed as a partner for health benefits.

It isn’t a liberal or political wing that determines equality, it is a human factor and simply put if you can’t apply equality to all types and fairly then you are segregating sections of society based on beliefs.  Minorities as a term is even ignorant and framing, as it won’t be long before the “English background” America is the minority in a nation when non-English immigrants make up the majority of the population.

Political motives and plays only seek to keep and delay the inevitable directions of the world and the mighty nation that lead the world on so many issues is starting to fall behind other nations on moral issues and ethical issues.  Though the U.S. clearly still has some of the best laws and systems in place compared to many of the hundreds of nations on Earth, we are comparing to the top advancing nations and not what are considered 3rd World nations where that clearly suffer from political and ethical turmoil as a whole.

It is far too easy to breed hatred based on ignorance, it spreads like a wild contagion and a huge example of this is the aftermath of 2011 where attacks against Indians (seriously, Indian’s who have nothing to do with Middle East nations and such) were attacked because they wore a Turban and were associated with terrorist Muslims.

Tolerance for race, gender, religious preference, sexual orientation, beliefs needs to be equal so long as laws aren’t broken.  When laws are broken punishment is metered out with single handed equality for the crime committed.

More tolerance, love and respect in the world is greatly needed for one another and not just abroad, but here at home as well.

-Justin Germino

So my one of my wife’s favorite movies from the 80’s is License to Drive which starred Corey Feldman and Corey Haim.  As it turns out I was looking into getting this movie on DVD for her but realized that this is an out of print DVD that has become a collector’s item since Corey Haim’s death.

The movie which can sell between $70 and $100 on ebay and various merchants is so out of print that you can’t find a copy cheaper unless I get lucky and find one in Bookmans or on Craigslist. 

In doing more research there may be a new release coming out in Summer of 2011 which may be cheaper, but I wouldn’t have thought that DVD’s of 80’s movies could become such commodities.

This made me think of Laserdisc for some reason, and I had only actually seen 2 movies on Laserdisc.  One was the original Die Hard and the other was Japanese Anime "Akira" I had wondered what happened to the Laserdisc technology and read some information on Wikipedia that it fazed out and was pretty much dropped completely by 2001 though there were movies made for the format up until 2000.

With any luck I can find a cheaper copy of License to Drive on DVD, but I am not betting on it this year.  I just can’t justify spending $70+ dollars for a single DVD movie that isn’t a full season or collection of some sorts.

-Justin Germino

I have been a big fan of Junk salads for a long time, ever since I lived in a room mate situation and was a teenager. A junk salad is basically a salad you put together from any leftover vegetables, fruits and meats you have in your refrigerator. You can dice it up like a cobb, or leave larger chunks and leafy lettuce like a traditional salad.

My wife even posted about the famous Junk Salad on her food blog with pictures she took of her making one.

Well, one think I had never thought to do was make a Junk salad with leftover Thanksgiving turkey, my wife thought of this herself and created one of the best junk salads I had ever tasted. It had dried cranberries in it, leftover turkey chunks, blue cheese crumbles, seared walnuts, lettuce, hard boiled egg and was just fantastic.

This was an excellent way to leverage leftover Turkey and though it isn’t the healthiest salad when you add blue cheese crumbles, it does pack a ton of protein and nutrients. (Omit the cheese if you want it leaner with less fat).

-Justin Germino

Like many bloggers in the make money online arena, I am always trying to find ways to monetize my WordPress blog sites or social media networks and one of the most profitable ways to monetize is to sell affiliate products.  I see it clearly in some bloggers in my circle, the problem is that most of the products being peddled are such poor quality hack jobs with the same scam and pitchy sales pages that I wonder if integrity and credibility are cared about anymore at all.

Seriously, I have been tempted to potentially sell a product with $50 commission per sale for something like a WordPress plugin that barely can do what you can’t do for free from somewhere else.  I too have been considering selling many of the same “make money online” schemes, or guides to better blogging…etc as I have seen countless others produce.  I don’t because it isn’t that I don’t care about the potential to earn money, it’s just that I don’t want to sell a product I think is crap.

This is why I MUST test every affiliate product I try to sell, if the advertiser won’t let me try the product (don’t have to give me a free copy, but I must be able to test it and review for myself) I won’t sell it.  If I don’t like the product or think it is worth spending your hard earned money on, then I won’t sell it.  There are only a handful of affiliate products I have promoted on my blog with honest reviews and though I do accept banner ad sales from various affiliate programs I won’t directly promote or write a review promoting a product I don’t believe in.

Recently, I have seen a glutton of products that prey on the desperate bloggers who are trying to make their websites more popular, rank better in SERP or just claim to “get you to the top”.  I have tested some of these products and wouldn’t shell out $20 for some of them, the $70+ price being asked is insane and whats worse is many bloggers I followed promoted these products blindly.  After testing a handful of these products I can’t see how these bloggers could actively endorse them like they do and am especially positive that this game of nickel and dime approaching to pitch something is really the least fun aspect of blogging for me.

I actually enjoy writing sponsored reviews for companies and products where I can test, review and just collect a fee for my services which include time spent learning more and in some cases testing the product.  In cases where I try to affiliate sell something I would rather it be a product that I have used, enjoyed and can highly recommend and would much rather sell you on a great game that I played or Windows software that I use rather than some “make money” system which I can’t possibly know if it works because I don’t use it myself and neither do any of the other bloggers who endorse it.

Sorry, but on my Make Money Online page on DragonBlogger.com you won’t find any “affiliate sales” programs, just reviews on programs that pay you to blog, promote on social media or freelance writing sites online.  I do include some “referral” links to some of the programs if you sign up like BlogsVertise or SponsoredTweets, but there is no sale here and all programs cost you absolutely nothing to join at all.  They are simply methods to try and monetize your blog or social media accounts and there is nothing to purchase.

There have been a few WordPress plugins that I have paid for and endorse, but these are very few and far between.  I will say though that one key to making money online that I have learned is that affiliate sales are key to big earnings and unfortunately this is the thing I have the most problem with and am the least comfortable with.

I refuse to lose credibility and integrity just to make a few extra hundred bucks peddling a product I can’t truly endorse, and most of the programs that offer you high commission rates offer high commission rates for a reason.  To entice you to affiliate sell them!

-Justin Germino

I recently wrote a guest article for Search Engine People after being requested to provide input and share some tips that I have gathered over the past two years.  The article I wrote was How to Leverage Targeted Keywords Properly and talks about SEO and SERP and how optimize and invest time and energy into building your SERP rankings.

I can tell my readers honestly that I honestly have ranked two sites so far at the top of the Google Search results for keywords I was targeting, and ranked pretty high for secondary keywords on one of my sites as well.  I continue to spend time learning and figuring out the best way to leverage keywords but my methods and recommendations are spelled out in my detailed article on Search Engine People.

Drop by and let me know what you think,

-Justin Germino

This year there is one gift that I have on my list that stands about above all the rest and this is the Roku XDS Streaming Player. The main reason why I chose the Roku XDS for my Christmas list is because I have an older TV currently and it doesn’t have HDMI ports, I do however support component, composite and optical audio which the Roku XDS has that the less expensive versions of the Roku player do not have.

I have a Netflix account and love that it streams through the Wii for my kids, but in my master living room I don’t have access to Netflix and instant movies streaming, the Roku XDS solves this problem for me plus ties in to Hulu so I can catch up on TV Shows that I miss and/or forgot to DVR.

For $99 if you have a wired or wireless connection in your house the Roku XDS brings streaming movies and television shows to any television system in your house and is really worth the price if you have a Netflix subscription. Even more so is that the Roku Netflix interface is among the best and has features and ability to search and find instant movies that are lacking in the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360 versions of the Netflix interface.

So for me, my Christmas gift that is above all else this year is the Roku XDS which I will use quite often instead of having to wait for DVD’s to arrive by mail.  The only thing is I think I got rid of my optical audio cable that I used to have with my Playstation 2 some years back and I will probably have to buy a new one.  These aren’t much though and Amazon.com sells one for like $4.

The Roku XDS system also supports playing video and music files from a plugged in USB device, it supports mp4, mp3, wma and wmv video formats.  So literally you can just drag and drop movies and video to your USB device and plug it into the Roku and watch it on the big TV or listen to your music from your TV.

I am curious if anyone has used the Roku Internet TV system yet and how do you like it?

-Justin Germino

I don’t really do the whole wait in line at the store thing, I do most of my Christmas shopping online and leverage free shipping and no tax deals in most cases.  Amazon.com probably is where I buy most of my purchases from over the past several years for a reason.  I do however spend the day after Thanksgiving unboxing and putting up my several thousand Christmas lights around the house and there is nothing like my wife’s turkey noodle soup that she makes with some of the left over turkey meat.

I will likely be spending a lot of time playing with my kids over this four day weekend and this will involve Nintendo Wii time and some PC gaming with my son’s latest favorite game which is The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2 a real time strategy game set in the Lord of the Rings universe that is actually really fun to play.

-Justin Germino

Every year I make a point of paying attention and cataloguing the things that I am thankful for so that I can pay my respects and or truly appreciate and not take things for granted. 

This year thankfully was not as difficult as the previous two years and I am quite thankful for that.  Though life continues to throw curve balls both financially and emotionally at times I am thankful that I have a healthy and close family to ride through the storms together.

I am thankful for my wife who is my best friend, colleague and has literally shaped who I am today.  I was merely a kid when I met her and 18 years old, my career decisions, life choices and everything have been affected by her being by my side.  I could never express my appreciation enough for someone who has been at my side for the better part of 14 years and has given us two beautiful boys.

My children are my second greatest thing to be thankful for, both healthy and wonderful.  Being a father is more rewarding than I ever could have imagined and though kids are the ultimate test in patience, compassion and forgiveness I couldn’t imagine my life without them.

I am thankful for my in-laws as well, they are closer in-laws to my family than any in the history of in-laws and my sons consider their Grandma to be so close as to being almost like a 2nd mother to them.

I never forget for one day how many people out there in this country and the world have tougher and harder lives, and though we complain about our own most of us really have no business complaining when we truly see what some people have to endure and live with.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone and make sure you tell all the people you care about how thankful you are that they are a part of your lives.

-Justin Germino

I am a huge fan of any console game that can entertain myself and my four year old at the same time and Rabbids Go Home is a fantastic and fun filled game that is nothing like the mini-game Rayman series before it.  This is a good thing because my four year old actually doesn’t like the mini-games at all, but likes games like Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Bros Wii or other games that are exploring, collecting and have missions and objectives.

In other words linear games with adventure, some humor and multiplayer is key.  Rabbids Go Home has a similar “helper hand” system to Super Mario Galaxy in that player 2 is a helper dot that can grab items and shoot Rabbids at enemies to assist the first player.  In Rabbids Go Home you play the cute and whacky Rabbids who are trying to get to the Moon and hatch a plan to build a heap pile of assorted junk that is tall enough to reach the moon.

Each episode has you control two Rabbids who steer a shopping cart loading it with junk to help build the pile back at the junkyard.  The fun comes in the types of objects you collect, the interaction with the Rabbids and the objects they encounter as well as being able to customize your Rabbid with the goodies you collect by completing missions successfully.  My four year old and I spent at least an hour a day all week playing the Rabbids Go Home game for the Nintendo Wii and I have just as much fun.

Rabbids Go Home is highly recommended if you have kids between 3 and 10 years old as they will get a kick of out the Rabbids whacking, hitting, screaming, and interacting with everything from dogs, robot toys and other stuff.

-Justin Germino