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I am a big movie buff. I have a film degree and hundreds of DVDs cluttering up my house to prove it. My memories are more like scenes ripped from the big screen, full of intense action, gritty suspense, and random symbolism. They even have their own soundtrack. I am constantly using movies to describe what’s going on in my life, even using them as analogies in speeches and writing to better address a point. When I meet up with friends, it’s never long before someone is quoting lines from some movie we saw together. Needless to say, movies are an integral part of my life and if you’re anything like me, you’re going to love the new website, MovieClips.com.

The site is pretty much self-explanatory, it’s a site full of movie clips, old and new. If you’ve ever scoured YouTube looking for that one clip from that one movie to share with your friend in an email, on Facebook, or on Twitter, then this site’s for you. The beauty of this site is that its creators, Rich Raddon and Zach James, have spent countless hours negotiating with all the major studios for the right to display their content legally online. In other words, unlike YouTube, who is being sued by studios like Universal for allowing clips from their movies to be shown, clips on MovieClips.com will never be taken down for copyright infringement. You are free to share them as often as you want wherever you like.

The site is simple and highly searchable. They have armies of film buffs scouring movies daily looking for keywords to tag each clip with. They mark everything from mood, to actors, to product placement, and more. They even have a feature called “we [heart]” that contains categories such as “Awesome FX,” “Alien Attacks,” “Die Already!,” and even “”Projectile Vomiting” to aid you in your browsing.

Sharing on MovieClips is easy. They have links to Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks to make sharing even easier (I should note that Facebook embedding is not available yet, but is coming soon. For now it’s just link sharing). You can also use the provided “embed” code to embed the clip right on your blog or website. This is where I think the real value will come. I could probably find an applicable clip to any post I write (so be warned), and what better way to spice up a boring post than with a movie clip, not to mention the obvious application for movie critics.

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MovieClips.com is still in beta, which means they are constantly adding new features to the site. They have most of the major studios on board, but are still working on more, so if you can’t find a movie now, chances are it’ll be there soon. They even have clips from movies still in theaters, like Avatar. If you encounter any errors with the site, be sure to report them, their customer support is great. I heard back about my issue within the same day. So check them out and share some clips with your friends, I could easily spend all day reliving my favorite movies. Below is an interview my brother, Jesse Stay (@Jesse on Twitter) did with MovieClips’ founders talking about the site.

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You can also find MovieClips on their Facebook page or on Twitter.

Disclaimer: I was in no way compensated by MovieClips.com for this post. This is simply a site I love and think should be more widely used.

Since moving into a new house, I have been in a constant battle with weak digital signals. I placed our over-the-air antenna in a room with a south-facing window, thinking all our local repeaters were to the south of us (a fact that was even incorrectly confirmed by my local NBC station through one of their engineers). Yet every time we wanted to watch a show on a different network than we were on, I had to trudge up to the second floor and move the old bunny ears around while my wife shouted confirmations from below. Something had to be done.

As a quick aside, it wasn’t all bad. In an email exchange with the local NBC station attempting to get them to boost their signal since theirs is the only channel we can never get, the engineer let me know that an antenna with bunny ears is the best at getting VHF signals, which are the lower channels on your TV and the stations with the lowest frequency. In my case, NBC is channel 3 and the lowest frequency in the area. Keep that in mind when choosing your antenna, bunny ears are not obsolete after all.

After countless vain attempts to get the elusive NBC on our TV so my wife could watch Biggest Loser without waiting the week that Hulu requires, I started looking at outdoor antennas, figuring all the wireless signals in our house and the thermal barriers we put around it were causing too much interference. In my searches (I’m leaning towards this one), I came across a website that has changed our TV watching forever for the good: AntennaWeb.

AntennaWeb proclaims itself as a way to “Maximize your television reception,” and maximize it does. You simply choose your antenna (or the closest match), enter your address, adjust your location for better accuracy, and it tells you what direction each local station’s signal is coming from (in degrees). I simply busted out my trusty Boy Scout compass, pointed the antenna in the exact direction stated on the website for optimum signal reception, and we now get just about every channel in the area without having to move any bunny ears.

Now, there are still many factors that go into the quality of your signal reception. The slightest change in weather can affect things as can microwaves, wireless internet, cell phones, and other similar devices, so keep that in mind when choosing the best room for your antenna. If indoors, it’s best to put it near a window as the signal passes better through windows than walls, and you’ll want it to be as high as you can get it, above any possible interferers. We sometimes even get NBC when everything feels like cooperating.

I’m still going to get the outdoor antenna, but with AntennaWeb, I can be sure where to place it and that it’s going to work. If we get most channels with an indoor antenna, we should definitely have better luck with a stronger outdoor antenna. Go ahead, try out AntennaWeb and let me know how it works in your area.

Disclaimer: This post is for informative purposes only. I am in no way involved with or a part of AntennaWeb or any possible affiliates. I have received no compensation from AntennaWeb for this post.

Google Reader announced some new features yesterday, so I thought I’d continue the Google theme of my blog lately by breaking it down for the uninitiated. The idea of an RSS subscription manager, or reader is foreign to most internet users, but it can be very helpful, especially for mothers and estranged friends and family trying to keep up with the blogs of loved ones. What follows is my attempt to de-mystify Google Reader, using more familiar language. Feel free, as always, to leave questions in the comments below, or on Twitter or Facebook.

What is Google Reader?

Google Reader is an RSS-based subscription service and manager. I know, I’ve lost you already. Put more simply, Google Reader is a tool used to put all the blogs you check regularly in one central location. From Wikipedia:

RSS (most commonly translated as “Really Simple Syndication” but sometimes “Rich Site Summary”) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.

Google Reader takes the “RSS feeds” (or more simply, the constantly updated content) from your favorite blogs or news sites and constantly checks them for updates, so you don’t have to go to little Billy’s model rocket page 5 times a day just to see his latest launch. You just go to your Google Reader and wait for the post to show up.

It’s a lot like having an email account for your blogs. You don’t go to a hundred different sites to get messages from your hundreds of accounts, you go to one email account and let the messages come to you. Why should it be any different with the websites you frequent? Google Reader makes that happen. You go to one place and your websites come to you.

How do I get started?

Getting started is as simple as logging in. Go to the Google Reader homepage here, and either use your existing Google Account to log in, or register for a new one. If you use GMail or any other Google service, you already have an account and you should use that one, for reasons I’ll explain later. After logging in, you’ll be brought to this screen:

Google put some helpful tips in your feed to get you started. Go ahead and read them for a quick overview of what I’m about to talk about. There’s even a video to walk you through some of it. The first thing you’ll want to do is add your favorite websites. Click “Add a Subscription,” then enter in the address of any website. I’ll use this site just as an example. Enter http://www.afrowhitey.com and click “Add.”

You’ll notice “The Mighty AfroWhitey” shows up under the “Subscriptions” tab. Click on it.

Congratulations, you are now reading The Mighty AfroWhitey from your very own Google Reader. You can customize the way you see each feed by clicking on the “Settings” link. I prefer seeing my sites as a list, and using the “Previous Item” and “Next Item” buttons to scroll through them. To do this, click on “List” in the upper-right corner of the blue box. To go back to the old view, click “Expanded.”

As you add more subscriptions, you may prefer to read through all your websites in the order they posted. To do this, click on “All Items” and you’ll see all the posts from all your websites. You can then sort them by oldest or newest by clicking on “View Settings” (“Feed Settings” when in a specific subscription). “Oldest” puts the oldest posts at the top, “Newest” starts with the newest. I prefer to sort by oldest and cycle through the posts using the “Next Item” button.

Now what?

Now you’re pretty much on your own. Add whatever site you want to your reader using the “Add Subscription” button, or you can create a bookmark to add any site you’re viewing that will go in your toolbar. This can be found in the “Goodies” tab of your settings. To find out if a site is subscribable or not, check the address bar. If you see an icon next to the address that looks like a soundwave, you can subscribe and all updates will come to your reader (it’s the icon next to the star in the screenshot below).

I suggest starting with any family or friends’ blogs and moving on to news sites or even, like the New York Times or CNN or BBC, or even ESPN. You can also subscribe to specific columns, like sports or fashion, or specific contributors a lot of the time. I keep track of my movie reviews this way. You can subscribe to Roger Ebert or my personal favorite, Peter Travers. Just look for the icon on any page you’re reading and you’ll know if it’s an option.

Bonus features (A little on the advanced side):

One of the coolest features of Google Reader is the ability to share a post with any of your Google Contacts. This means that if you think your mom will like a post, you can email it to her without even leaving Google Reader. If you look at the bottom of any post in reader, you’ll see a bunch of links: “Add Star,” “Like,” “Share,” “Share with note,” “Email,” “Keep Unread,” and “Add Tags.” “Preview” is only there because I use a program called Better GReader for some added functionality.

“Add Star” is a way of organizing your favorite posts so you can come back to them later. You’ll notice a “Starred Items” link on the left below “All Items.” Clicking this will show you all the posts you’ve starred. You can also search all starred items by using the drop-down menu next to the search button.

“Like” is a new feature. Clicking like in Google Reader works just like it does in Facebook. Anyone who reads that post will see how many people have liked it. You can also see the individual people that liked the post. This is useful when looking for more people that share similar interests to discover more interesting blogs. Just click on the link below the title to see the individuals, then click on a name to see their shares.

“Share” will share the post with any of your Google Reader followers. Your followers are any of your Google Contacts you’ve allowed to see your shares. To choose who sees these, click on “Sharing Settings” under the “People You Follow” tab. You can also “Share with Note” to personalize any of your shares with a little message. My shares can be found here. Go ahead and follow me if you like. I share anything from cool technology, to movie news, to funny videos.

The rest of them are pretty self-explanatory. The most useful of which being “Email.” Click on this and you can email a post to anyone in the world. It will even auto-fill for you if you used your GMail account to login. It’s vey handy for sharing with those who haven’t yet taken the Google Reader plunge.

So there you have it. I hope I’ve de-mystified Google Reader for those who may be weary of joining. As always, leave any questions in the comments, or Twitter, or Facebook. And don’t forget to become a fan on Facebook!