Laptop Thoughts: News & Reviews on Laptops, Netbooks, Slates, and More.

"Looking for a drop-dead simple solution for streaming media (photos, music, video) and accessing files from home on your smartphone or tablet? Or how about backing up your smartphone's recently taken photos and video? Well, Pogoplug's new $79 Pogoplug Mobile product offers to do just that."

There's definitely something very appealing about having access to all of your music, videos, and photos anywhere you go. I've solve this by by uploading every photo I've ever taken to Smugmug, every song I have to Amazon's Cloud Drive, and videos...well, I don't have a good solution for that yet. I can access them remotely via my Windows Home Server, but only when that works (the last time it didn't). This is rather appealing, especially given the $79 price point. What solution do you use for everywhere-you-go media access?

For those of us living in the US today is Independence Day, the official birth of our country. We celebrate by lighting fires and burning stuff all day long. It begins at the grill where hot dogs, hamburgers and whatever else you want are thrown onto an open flame and end at night where we light enough gunpowder to wake the dead.

I figured anyone in the US reading this site also has a camera and more than a few of us could use a few pointers to make sure that when we take pictures we get more than just some hazy smoke or a blur of flashing streaks across the image. Lifehacker has a few tips in the link below that will make your picture taking result in a better photo gallery. Once done, post links to your favorite shots from your Flickr, Smugmug or whatever online gallery you use for your images.

And Happy 4th of July!