2006 Technology Corner Programs

More recent programs are at the top and older programs are further down. That is to say that we use an inverse chronological ordering.

December 17, 2006 (Last program for 2006)

I keep forgetting about memory

When I bought my first IBM-compatible computer (a Zenith) it came with 256KB of RAM. Being the big spender that I am (yeah, right!) and wanting maximum performance from the 4.77MHz processor (Yeah! Right!), I spent $100 or more extra to upgrade the memory to an astonishing 320KB of RAM. Recently I bought a couple of 1GB Compact Flash cards for my digital camera. They cost less than $40. Last week, I bought a 2GB USB flash drive at Office Max. The list price was $70, but it was on sale for $38 and I had a coupon good for $10 off any purchase of $20 or more, so the 2GB drive cost $28 plus tax. The entire purchase was less than $30.

Easy on-line backup at an attractive price

Backup is essential. If you don't backup your files, you'll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life. (Apologies to Humphrey Bogart.) The trouble with backup is that you have to do it. You need to schedule the process. You need to provide the system with the proper media. You need to store the media safely far from the computer. So all too often backup doesn't get done. People mean to do it, but they don't. The ideal backup system would work invisibly and automatically. It would put your files in a safe place. And it wouldn't cost a lot.

When is enough enough?

I know that a lot of people who know Technology Corner from WTVN Radio are conservatives and that some of those folks look with suspicion on my liberal attitudes, but I encourage you to think back a decade or two. Remember when WTVN was The Friendly Giant? In those days, the station was part of the Taft Broadcasting System ("Public Trust and Service"). Nobody would ever accuse Taft or the Taft Broadcasting Company of being liberal.

Nerdly News

Hard disk pioneer Al Shugart has died: Honest. Profane. Those are 2 of the words used to describe Al Shugart, the father of the PC hard drive. Shugart died this week at 76. Shugart was a co-founder of Seagate and was a member of the board at SanDisk. It was Shugart who worked with IBM to put a 10MB hard drive in the IBM XT. That was a lot of disk space in those days.

The Microsoft Security deluge: As soon as Microsoft patches one problem, another pops up. If you use Word 2000, Word 2002, Word 2003, Word Viewer 2003, Word 2004 for Mac, Word 2004 v.X for Mac, or Microsoft Works (2004, 2005, and 2006), you're in trouble. This week's security update eliminated some threats, but not this one. There's a new one to concern you.

December 10, 2006

What's running and why

Recently, I received a question: "I have too many background programs running on Windows XP Dell Laptop and it is slowing down the performance on my computer for a music program called SmartMusic that I use in my music class. I noticed over 50 programs running in the background. I feel like I have a lasso around my neck and I am on a short plank. Please advise." That's a good question. Many of those programs may need to be there, but some probably do not. The problem is figuring out which is which. Fortunately, some utilities exist that provide some guidance. Let's take a look at 2 – the free Starter from CodeStuff and the not free Ultimate Troubleshooter from Answers that Work.

Building a better browser

Within the past few weeks, Mozilla, Netscape, and Microsoft have all released new versions of their browsers. Internet Explorer continues to lead in market share, but the others – as well as browsers such as Flock, Opera, Safari (Mac only), Camino (Mac only) – are worth looking at. My primary browser is Mozilla Firefox. This is the browser that I start every time I start using a computer, Windows or Mac, at home or at the office. Netscape is occasionally a better choice and some shortsighted website designers create sites that will work only with IE, so I keep those browsers handy and updated. All 3 of the new browsers have features I like. If you're still using any 1.x version of Firefox, any 7.x version of Netscape, or any 6.x version of Internet Explorer, now would be a good time to upgrade.

Nerdly News

Here's $14.5MM; now bug off: Hewlett-Packard says it will pay $14.5 million to settle a lawsuit by the California attorney general regarding "pretexting" (also known as "lying") to obtain private phone records of board members and journalists. A little more than half a million is a fine, but more than $13 million will be used to create a Privacy and Piracy Fund that will be administered by the State of California. It will finance investigations of consumer privacy violations and intellectual-property theft. A pittance (more than a quarter of a million dollars) will cover the state’s expenses in its investigation of the case.

QWERTY, Dvorak, or New Standard? The QWERTY keyboard has been standard for more than 100 years. Does it still make sense? A few people have converted to the Dvorak keyboard, but now John Parkinson has a better mousetrap. Or maybe a better keyboard.

December 3, 2006

Do you need a different DNS?

Several months ago, I tried to tell Wide Open West that they were having nameserver problems. The technician I spoke with told me that was impossible because WOW has no nameservers. That, of course, is nonsense. All ISPs run their own nameservers. When I reported the problem, I was having trouble connecting to websites. When I complained to WOW's corporate office, I was assured that the gentleman who claimed to be a "level 2 technician" was no such thing. In early November, I saw a similar problem. Websites just disappeared. Fortunately, I'd heard from Gary Freeland that week. Gary listened to Technology Corner when it was on WTVN and continues to listen now that we've expanded from local radio to worldwide coverage. He had written to ask about OpenDNS, so I thought I'd give the service a try. In a word, WOW! (And I don't mean Wide Open West.)

Truth in spamming

I rarely open spams, but when one comes from a self-professed "crook" I have to take a look. It was nothing more than a run-of-the-mill watch knock-off spam.

Deconstructing a Nigerian 419 scam

This time it was a BMW and £500,000 that I'd won. In less than a second I knew what the pitch would be, how the scam would work, and why I wouldn't be receiving either the money or the car. It's not that these things are so difficult to see through. The creatures who create them are crafty, but not very intelligent. It doesn't take more than casual observation to spot the tricks – and the mistakes.

Nerdly News

Electronic Frontier Foundation Can't Get No Satisfaction: The Copyright Office of the Library of Congress has reviewed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as they are required by Congress to do every 3 years. The stated goal of the review is to ensure that new technologies are recognized by the legislation. So far, the result seems to be to maintain the draconian aspects of the law while providing precious little relief for users. This year the Copyright Office granted 6 exemptions. "Unfortunately," says a news release from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, "all the proposed exemptions that would benefit consumers were denied."

More free stuff from Google: Now Google says your cell phone should be free, but we all know there's no such thing as a free cell phone just as there is no such thing as free radio and television. They are supported by advertising. Radio stations guarantee advertisers a certain number of ears. TV stations guarantee a certain number of eyes. That's Google's plan with the "free" cell phones.

November 26, 2006: No program this week because of the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States.

November 19, 2006

The Visible Employee

Employers don't have it easy these days. If they fail to keep a close watch on what employees are doing, they can get into trouble and if they watch too closely what employees are doing, they can get into trouble. Jeffrey M. Stanton, an associate professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, has written a book called The Visible Employee. We'll talk on this week's program.

Scary screen saver

The blue screen of death is almost always unwelcome. I added "almost" to the previous sentence because now there are times you'll look forward to seeing it. Perhaps wanting to show that as a corporation Microsoft has a sense of humor, the company posted Mark Russinovich's BSOD screen saver to TechNet after acquiring Russinovich's utilities company, Sysinternals.

Nerdly News

Have you noticed an increase in spam? If so, you're not alone and you're definitely not imagining things. The majority of the crap seems to involve pump-and-dump stock schemes, but there's also the usual mix of porn, penis enlargement, and stolen software. The messages are being spewed by tens of thousands of hijacked computers. Is yours one of them?

Wikipedia: Once again available in China: In the United States, the argument over Wikipedia is whether a user-written encyclopedia can be accurate. In China, the argument seems to be whether people should be allowed to read a user-written encyclopedia. This brings to mind the Great Soviet Encyclopedia that was the Soviet Union's national reference work until the fall of communism. Replacement pages were sent out to "correct" previously written articles. The earlier articles were cut out of the books and discarded.

Novermber 12, 2006

Hey, buddy! How about a free firewall.

You need a firewall. You'll notice that I didn't preface or follow that statement with "if you have a high-speed Internet connection." Just to be certain that I'm clear, I'll type it again: You need a firewall. Firewalls are the new antivirus application. Time was, you needed an antivirus program only if you had a modem. Today everybody has an Internet connection and everybody has (should have) an antivirus program. And today everybody should also have a firewall. Ignore this advice at your peril.

Damn spammers

Spam is now about 90% of the messages I receive every day. Fortunately, I have procedures in place that identify most of the dreck and discard it without any intervention on my part. Most of those messages are the standard fake drug or porn spams. The pump-and-dump stock scheme operators are smart enough to get their crud past SpamAssassin. I don't understand why the FBI can't identify these creeps and shut them down, but that's another story for another time. I've been looking at SpamArrest, a challenge/response system. Messages that slide past SpamAssassin are caught by SpamArrest if they come from any address not on my list of approved senders.

The hostess with the mostest

Sometimes I complain about poor service or incompetent service. Remember "highly trained dogs"? But not all service is poor and some companies have real people on staff who answer questions accurately the first time. When e-mail for my domains (blinn.com, techbyter.com, technology-corner.com, and such) suddenly became unavailable, I called the hosting company, BlueHost in Orem, Utah, to let them know there was a problem. Although I suspected they already knew, I never make that assumption. The automated phone system told me there were 5 people ahead of me. In less than 5 minutes, I was speaking to a support person. The answer I got was complete, accurate, and apologetic. As far as I'm concerned, this makes BlueHost the new Dinah Shore.

Nerdly News

Windows Vista RTM: It's now Vista and the name "Longhorn" is being retired. In the time it took Microsoft to develop Vista, Apple upgraded OS X from 10.0 to 10.1 and then to 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4. Of course, Apple was able to start with a solid BSD Unix base and build on an Apple-like user interface while Microsoft essentially went back to the drawing board and reinvented everything.

Wide Open West's nameserver fails (again): You may recall my account of an hour on the phone with a guy who claimed to be a "level 2" technician a few weeks ago at Wide Open West. This was a level 2 technician who had no idea what a nameserver is. This week I encountered additional problems that were clearly nameserver related. Did I call Wide Open West to report the problem this time? In a word, no.

November 5, 2006

Nothing's better than a free find

I changed the Technology Corner search function to FreeFind.com earlier this year. Because I'm using the free version, users of the search function will see advertisements that relate to their search. But they'll also see more accurate search results on the Technology Corner site. Most of the pages on the site are "shtml" instead of "html" and that's something that some other search engines don't handle very well. FreeFind gobbles up shtml pages easily.

Hey, buddy! Back it up.

The marketing folks at Maxell came up with an idea to sell more media: Promoting fall back(up) around the return to standard time from daylight saving. It's a self-serving promotion, but it's also a good reminder that backing up the data on your computer is more than just a good idea. Backup needs to be done on a regular basis. Even home users should back up their critical files at least once per week. If you computer died and you lost every photograph, letter, spreadsheet, video, and audio file since your last backup, would you be inconvenienced?

This is the week Hell froze over

And not Hell, Michigan. Microsoft says it will allow Linux to work more seamlessly with Windows. It wasn't something that Microsoft just decided to do because it was a good idea, though. Steve Ballmer admitted that Microsoft's customers have been beating up the company and demanding interoperability. And that's not all.

Nerdly News

E-mail: IM for old people: Just about the time you think you're surfing along with the rest of humanity and that you're somewhere near the front of the pack, you learn that the technology you rely on the most is for old folks. A poll by Parks Associates says teens think e-mail is old-fashioned.

The FCC gives Continental Airlines the OK for WiFi at Logan: Logan International Airport in Boston has been trying to shut down Continental's WiFi service for the past couple of years. Why? Might it be because the airport authority has its own $8-per-day service? (This compares somewhat unfavorably with the free service offered at Port Columbus.) Logan said it was a "safety issue" but the Federal Communications Commission says that Continental has every right to operate its own WiFe service in its own lounge and that Massport has no authority to order Continental to shut it off.

October 29, 2006

SpamCop: A cure that's worse than the disease

SpamCop and I go back a long way. I subscribed to the service many years ago and still have a few dollars worth of credits with the organization. Recently the vigilante aspect of SpamCop has gotten entirely out of hand. Today (October 14, 2006), for example, SpamCop has listed both Wide Open West (my Internet service provider) and Indiana University (where I'm the co-owner of a discussion list for editors) as a source of spam. Their real-time blacklist, which is used by many ISPs, is causing mail from Copyediting-L and mail I send through smtp.mail.wowway.com to be bounced. Grrrr!

What will it take to wrest the office away from Microsoft Office?

Microsoft has a virtual monopoly on standard office applications -- Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, and Access. Neither Open Office nor Corel Wordperfect offers the full line-up. Within the next several months, Microsoft will release Office 2007, the new version of the suite that's been in development since 2003. The user interface will change dramatically and that will perplex some users. There's also the cost of upgrading. Upgrading one or two copies in a small office might not be a big deal, but upgrading tens of thousands of copies in a large corporation will be expensive. Managers may look more closely at Wordperfect's office suite, which is less expensive, or at Open Office, which is free.

Nerdly News

Who will download which browser? IT Vibe, a British tech news service conducted a survey of its readers. Which browser will you download: Internet Explorer 7, FireFox 2, both, or neither. It's important to note that surveys such as this one and those operated by radio and television stations that allow those who take the survey to select themselves as survey participants are worse than useless. They're misleading. So take the results with the appropriate warnings.

"Battery" and "recall" didn't always occur in the same sentence. Sony's earnings dropped 94% in the quarter that ended in November and things don't look much better for this quarter. Last year, Sony earner $240 million in its 2nd quarter. That dropped to $14 million this year. Sony has already taken a $430 million charge for the quarter and most of that is attributed to battery recall issues.

Does your car have a 10-year warranty? Technology Corner doesn't usually talk about cars, but this is worth noting. Hyundai Motor America says it is extending its 10-year, 100,000-mile powertrain warranty through 2010. Remember when Korean cars were given little chance of success in the U.S. market?

October 22, 2006

Firefox 2 approaches

The Mozilla folks are casting out the final few bugs that will be addressed in the initial release of Firefox version 2. The beta version has been available for a long time, but I've become increasingly reluctant to try early beta versions of applications. I thought about installing beta 1 and quickly rejected the idea. It took a little longer to decide not to install beta 2. When release candidate 1 came along, I decided to give it a try. By the time organizations get to "release candidates", an application is usually more or less stable and you can be certain that there won't be any big changes before the final version. What I've seen so far suggests that Firefox users will be happy with this version and that Internet Explorer users should give it a try. Before I finished writing this section, Mozilla posted RC2 and then RC3.

The Google in your mirror is not as smart as it appears

There's no question that Google is run by smart people who hire other smart people, but even smart people sometimes do incredibly dumb things. One aspect of Google Mail clearly illustrates this point. Although Google Mail is unquestionably the best Web mail application available, the programmers made one colossal blunder -- and it appears that it was an intentional choice.

Nerdly News

Blasted Spammers: Friday morning, I was just minding my own business when -- in the space of less than 30 minutes -- I received more than 200 bounce messages. One of my addresses was being used by a spammer. Fortunately, the spammer had picked an address that I used rarely in the past and use not at all today. It wasn't a "real" address (one with a POP3 mailbox) but just a forwarding account. I killed the account and the bounce messages stopped immediately. Everything should be this easy.

Internet Explorer 7 is out: If you have Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, Windows Update will eventually install the latest browser version on your computer. If you're still running Windows 2000 or something earlier, Microsoft wants you to know that you are now officially orphaned. IE7 is certified only for Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1. There will be no Mac version because IE development for the Mac ended with version 5.2.

October 15, 2006

Phishing worsens, but defenses exist

Visit a rogue website and lots of nasty things can happen to your computer. You won't even see it happen because you'll be looking at free porn or you'll be gambling with the "free money" the website "gave" you. While you're otherwise occupied, the website will run through a series of tests to see what vulnerabilities your computer has. When it finds one, it will install something you don't want. This is how the bad guys are able to take control of millions of computers worldwide.

Sometimes protective software gets in the way

When I tried to download and install the ZillaBar, I had trouble. It wasn't the fault of IS3, but a firewall can silently block access to a site that you really do want to visit. It took a few minutes for me to figure out what the problem was. Because I was grabbing screen shots along the way, it took a little longer than it might have otherwise.

Anti-spam measures can also protect against phishing

The company that provides website hosting for Technology Corner includes SpamAssassin. I have to admit that I've not always been a fan of SpamAssassin, but my opposition was based on seeing a system that hadn't been set up properly. SpamAssassin examines every piece of mail that arrives and rates in on a large number of criteria. The application can then tag messages it considers spam by coding the subject line or by adding an X-header. I have it code suspected spam with *S* at the beginning of the subject line and, because I set the trigger point liberally, I can be virtually certain that anything marked spam is spam. This procedure catches more than 98% of the spams I receive and misidentifies real messages as spam so infrequently that I can disregard that concern.

Nerdly News

Notice anything strange about last Friday? Oh, sure, it was Friday the 13th. You probably noticed that. So did I. But I missed -- and unless your someone who intensely observes every date looking for a pattern, so probably did you -- that the digits that make up the date did something that hasn't happened since January 13, 1520.

Bugety, bugety, bug: This month's Microsoft patch day offered a record number of patches that covered both the operating systems and Office products. Users who run Windows, use the Office suite, and also have .Net framework products saw a total of 26 individual patches. And almost immediately another problem surfaced.

October 8, 2006

If you lie about who you are, is it fraud?

This isn't, strictly speaking, a technology report, but people who use some applications have been receiving letters that look a lot like invoices from the new publisher of a series of overpriced newsletters that deliver only scant content to subscribers. I haven't subscribed to any of the newsletters since 1999 or earlier. Yet I received several "invoices" from the company with offers to "extend" my trial subscription or "renew" an existing subscription.

Wide Open West fails another tech support test

Monday evening (25 Sep 2006) between 8 and 8:30 Internet access became slow. Websites started timing out with a "site cannot be found" message. Ping using IP addresses was instantaneous. Ping using named domains took 15 to 20 seconds to start. To me, this appeared clearly to be a nameserver problem. I called Wide Open West's technical support for what I expected to be a brief call reporting a problem. Wrong.

No highly trained dogs here!

On September 24, I mentioned highly trained dogs, these are typically customer service folks at large companies. They may be underpaid. They may be overworked. They may be lazy. They may be not particularly bright. They might be all of those and more. When customers deal with these highly trained dogs, the dogs respond, but usually get it all wrong. I've described some places where trained dogs are employed. A local company that builds computers and provides strong support definitely does NOT employ highly trained dogs and I can prove it.

Nerdly News

Does "recall" occur naturally in sentences that begin with "battery"? Fujitsu has announced a battery recall. Fujitsu makes notebook computers that are powered by Sony batteries and the company is recalling 287,000 of them because of a potential fire risk. That brings to <strong>7 million</strong> batteries recalled by Toshiba, Lenovo, Dell, Sony, and Apple.

Criminal charges filed in HP case: Former Hewlett-Packard head Patricia Dunn appeared in court this week after California's attorney general charged here in connection with a spying operation at the company. Charges have been filed (or are expected to be) against others, including the company's former legal counsel.

October 1, 2006

Another zero-day exploit hits Microsoft Internet Explorer

After an uncomfortably long delay, Microsoft released an out-of-cycle patch to address a flaw that exposed Internet Explorer users to having their computers taken over silently by Internet creeps. The flaw is the kind of thing that is used by those who run "free" porn sites. While you're looking at the pictures, the website is busy downloading bad applications to your computer. You don't visit porn sites? OK, but if you ever type a URL incorrectly, you might also be exposed to the danger. Shady dealers buy domain names such as "micorsoft.com" and some of those "typo sites" are loaded with exploits. It's nasty stuff.

Everything should work this well

Remember the Mars Rovers? "Opportunity", a robot about the size of a golf cart, has been wandering around Mars for 1000 days. Scientists would have been happy with 9 months of service and that's what Opportunity was designed to provide. It's been running for 10 times that period and is now stanging at Victoria Crater, the Martian equivalent of the Grand Canyon.

Remember when applications used to be small and simple?

ThumbsPlus used to be a utility application designed to help users organize and view their digital images, but the growth of digital camera usage and new features extends the application beyond what I would call a "utility". The program is large, complex, and often patched. Version 7 was released not many months ago and already there have been three patches.

Nerdly News

Microsoft will lose money on Zune: Would an Ipod by any other name smell as sweet? Do Ipods have any odor at all? Will Microsoft be able to put a dent in Apple's market share for portable music players. Nobody else has been able to do it even though some of the devices sold by other companies have more features at a lower price. But now the 300-pound canary is about to take flight. Is the cat worried? Am I asking too many rhetorical questions?

“I do not accept personal responsibility for what happened.” Those are the words of Patricia Dunn, the now former chair of Hewlett Packard. Dunn was fired/resigned for her part in unethical (at best) or (possibly) illegal actions in attempting to find the source of information leaks. On the other hand, Mark Hurd, who replaced Dunn, says “There is no excuse for this aberration. It happened, and it will never happen again.”

September 24, 2006

Itunes 7: More features; some frustrations

The first thing I have to say about Itunes 7 is that the interface is gorgeous. Just simply beautiful. There are new features, but the application's already good interface is better. There are still some typical dumb Apple moves, but you can work around them.

IE7 (Slowly, I turned ...)

Assuming you have Microsoft's automatic updates turned on, one day in the not too distant future you'll find that Internet Explorer 6 has been replaced on your computer with Internet Explorer 7. Microsoft has been beta testing this new version since sometime in 2005. My preferred browser is Firefox (soon to be available in version 2), but I've been looking at IE's new interface. The coming Vista operating system, Office 2007, and IE 7 will represent sea changes for users, so now would be a good time to lay in some life preservers.

Highly trained dogs sighted

Not long ago, I read an article about the use of highly trained dogs in business. The writer used this as an explanation for why stupid things happen. She had sent her Internet service provider a change of address notice. She had a dial-up account that wasn't associated with a particular address as high-speed services are. The ISP closed her account. When she called to complain, she was told that she'd asked them to close the account. The explanation: Highly trained dogs. The dogs can't read, of course, so they have to work by sense of smell and apparently a "change of address" letter smells a lot like a "cancel this account" letter. Since then, I've noticed several organizations that employ highly trained dogs.

Nerdly News

Are the Feds really losers? Earlier, I reported statistics on computers that the federal government (including agencies such as the FBI) have lost. The Commerce Department may be the winner in this category, having lose 1137 notebook computers since 2001. Most, according to the Associated Press, were assigned to the Census Bureau.

HP continues in damage-control mode: Patricia Dunn, who announced earlier that she would resign at the end of the year is out. Mark Hurd, who replaces Dunn, made the announcement and admitted that he had not read a report on the spying campaign -- a report that had been prepared for him while the program was still in operation. Two other executives -- those who supervised the investigation -- are also reported to be leaving.

September 17, 2006

Internet-based television has TV execs shaking

Well over 50% of homes with Internet access have high-speed Internet access. You can "get" TV on your computer -- sort of. So far, it's been slow and jerky. There hasn't been much content. A lot (maybe most) users don't have a clue about how to get to the content that is there or how to watch it. But advertisers and network execs are nervous. The future isn't here yet, but it's approaching. And it's probably closer than it looks in the mirror.

OPINION: "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

Spanish philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist George Santayana (1863 to 1952) wrote those words, which are the most quoted words from "The Life of Reason" in his book, Common Sense. That seems to be missing these days at HP -- both reason and common sense. Oh -- and a knowledge of history.

Odds and ends

I encounter no small number of oddities and anomalies in dealing with computers. Individually, none of these would be worth mentioning. Collectively, though, they're worth a couple of minutes. So I offer for your inspection an update that claims to have been installed before personal computers even existed and an example of what some people will consider Microsoftian pettiness.

Nerdly News

Firefox is "more secure"? Don't bet on it! Mozilla has released an update to Firefox that addresses 7 security flaws, some of which are serious. If you're a Firefox user and you haven't installed the new version, now would be a good time to do so.

It's the 50th birthday of the hard drive: How many hard drives are in your house? Kaydee's Mac has 2 internal drives. My desktop system has 2 internal drives, 2 external drives, and a network attached storage drive. I also have a notebook computer with a single hard drive.So that's 9 hard drives in the house with a capacity of more than 1 terabyte. Every one of those drives is thousands of times larger than the first hard drive introduced in September of 1956.

September 10, 2006

TypeIt4Me types it for me

Although most of my work is done on a Windows machine, I tested TypeIt4Me a couple of years ago on my Mac. I liked the program at the time. Since then, programmer Riccardo Ettore has added some new features. If you liked the previous version, you'll like what's new. This is one of those programs that makes me wish that the Mac was my primary work machine.

Wireless networking

It's been a while since I set up a wireless network. The last time I tried it, the network was slow and had a limited range (20 feet with a tailwind). On Labor Day weekend, I bought a Netgear wireless router. Things have changed.

Nerdly News

Now you can pay to watch mindless "comedy" on your computer: A friend of mine once said that there is some confusion in people's minds about the true meaning of "sitcom". Many believe that it conflates abbreviations for "situation" and "comedy", but this isn't the case. "Sitcom", he says, is actually the shortened description of "sit comatose". This might be one of the reasons that I watch, on average, about an hour's worth of television per week. Whatever the meaning, sitcoms are coming to your computer screen.

Another way to battle spam: Magic Mail Monitor: An application developed by a former Soviet block programmer is now available without charge as an open source application from SourceForge.net. This looks like a winner in the battle against spam.

September 3, 2006

The Long and Winding Podcast

Apologies to The Beatles. I've been asked by several people why Technology Corner is now a podcast instead of a broadcast. Some want to know whether this is good or bad – a step up, a step down, or a shuffle sideways. Many have been critical of Clear Channel. But it's not that simple.

How to make a podcast

To create a podcast, you need just three things: A good microphone, a sound editing program that can create an MP3 file, and a quiet environment. A few other niceties are helpful, such as a stand and a pop-filter for the microphone. I'll run through the list of tools you can use.

Secure that computer!

Now's the time for students to head for college. Most will be taking computers with them and most of those computers will be small, portable machines that can easily be stolen. But that's not all that can happen. Viruses and worms can wipe out assignments. And it doesn't really matter whether the computer is a Windows machine, a Mac, or a Linux system. The cautions that apply to students also apply to home users.

Nerdly News

The Great Battery Recall: Last week, I grumbled about Apple's lack of notification regarding its recall of 1.1 million Sony batteries from various notebook computers. This week, the notice is finally on the main page of Apple's website.

Dueling Operating Systems: This could get interesting. In the time it's taken Microsoft to move its next-generation operating system to RC1 status (release candidate version 1), Apple has upgraded OS X (the cat series) 3 or 4 times. The next version is in the wings. And so is Vista.

August 27, 2006

Apple thinks different about battery recalls

Last week, I described Dell's battery recall for more than 4 million Sony-made batteries that have a disturbing propensity to overheat and sometimes catch fire. Dell has documented cases of laptop computers bursting into flame. At the time, I mentioned that other manufacturers, including Apple, use the same batteries. Apple has now issued its own recall for 1.1 million units, but says there is no danger from continuing to use the batteries. Apple also didn't exactly go out of its way to make the information available.

Update atop update (Windows version)

This would be a good time to visit http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com to ensure that you have the latest system patches. Even if automatic updates have been enabled on your computer, the automatic update procedure doesn't always work as it should and there's an important update to an important update.

And speaking of stupid ...

AOL has apparently found some scapegoats. AOL has fired its chief technology officer and 2 others following the release of search results from thousands of subscribers.

Nerdly News

Microsoft edges closer to IE7: If you visit Microsoft's website for Internet Explorer 7, you'll see that "beta 3" has been replaced by "release candidate 1". If you have a Mac, don't bother. Microsoft has apparently decided that the Mac world should be frozen at an early version 5 release. Dumb. But then Mac users have no shortage of browsers that run under OS X. It's just that IE isn't one of them.

What does AMDATI spell? Both companies -- AMD and ATI -- hope that it will spell success. CPU maker AMD has announced plans to acquire video card manufacturer ATI. One has to wonder what Intel, Nvidia, and others are planning to do in response.

August 20, 2006

Product update: Logitech Bluetooth Headphones (Bah!)

Several weeks ago, I mentioned buying a set of Logitech Bluetooth headphones. I described how handy they were in the gym because they eliminated wires. Although this is true, I cannot recommend that anyone buy either the Logitech MP3 Bluetooth headphones or the Logitech iPod Bluetooth headphones because they break in approximately 3 weeks.

A big thumb drive

When I got my first thumb drive (an amazing 16MB), that's all it was. Now manufacturers install "U3 Smart" applications that include a useless Tray icon and applications I don't want or need. Maybe these "preview" applications allow them to sell the devices for less -- my new 2GB Kingston device cost less than $50, which was the price of the original 16MB thumb drive. When I plug it in, I get 2 icons -- a phantom CD with applications and the storage space. Not acceptable.

From W2K to WXP

This week I heard from someone who is migrating from Windows 2000 to Windows XP and is concerned about USB hard drives: "Is the new setup going to want to format the external drives when installing them? (I hope not.)" I have good news.

Nerdly News

Apple says its Chinese factories will adhere to a standard 60-hour week: No, that's not a typo. Sixty-hour work weeks are apparently the norm in China, where most Apple hardware is made. Apple has released a report that says workers at its Ipod assembly plant worked more than 60 hours per week about one third of the time and that they worked more than 6 consecutive days one quarter of the time.

Dell recalls batteries: Unless you've been off the planet for the past couple of weeks, you know that Dell plans to recall more than 4 million batteries because a small number of them might overheat. In some cases, the batteries have actually caught fire. Dell isn't the first company to recall batteries. And others may join this recall. The batteries involved are made by Sony and are used in computers made by other manufacturers, including Apple.

August 13, 2006

Coming soon to a computer near you: A worm

If you're a Windows user, a patch Microsoft released earlier this week is of crucial importance. Less than 24 hours after Microsoft released patches for 23 serious vulnerabilities, the US Department of Homeland Security advised users to immediately apply the patches in the MS06-040 bulletin.

AOL is spelled "oops" (again)

Tens of thousands of people have copies of a file that contains "anonymized" search records for half a million AOL users over a 3-month period. AOL says it made the information available for "research" purposes. Those who are under the microscope might fee just a bit violated because some of the searches contained names, Social Security numbers, and other identifiable data. Anonymized? Yeah, right.

We return once more to 1996

Last week, I said the Internet Wayback Machine can be embarrassing. Even if you've removed a page from your website, it may still be available. In looking around some old copies of Technology Corner that are no longer on the website, I ran across an article I wrote in early 1997 about the coming Y2K problem. Despite all the hype, my opinion was that it wouldn't be a particularly large problem.

Nerdly News

Vista cracked even before it has been released: Microsoft's upcoming operating system (Vista) has reportedly been cracked. The threat, referred to as "Blue Pill" is being discussed on the Internet. Microsoft says Vista is its most secure operating system to date and the company has spent a lot of time looking for problems. That's one reason why this development cycle has been so long and why Vista is so late.

IBM challenges Microsoft and Oracle: IBM announced will pay $1.6 billion for FileNet, a maker of software that helps companies manage documents and other digital information. IBM is trying to get a solid foothold in content management, a large and growing segment that specializes in maintaining control of corporate documents, e-mail archives, and other digital data.

August 6, 2006

Welcome to 1996

The Internet Wayback Machine can be embarrassing. Even if you've removed a page from your website, it may still be available. This week I hopped in the Wayback Machine on a mission to find the earliest Technology Corner column that I could. This one is so far back in history that it's no longer on the website. The website goes back to January 1998. I believe that I purged the earlier files because of space limitations, but those limitations no longer exist on the website or on my local computer. In 1996, I was comparing computers to cars -- an analogy that I've continued to exploit over the years.

Remember the IBM Selectric typewriter?

The Selectric (the one with the ball) was the undisputed king of the office for a couple of decades. When personal computers began to take the place of typewriters, IBM sold the business unit in the mid 1990s. Selectrics continued to sell for a few years, but the division eventually sank out of sight. In late 2004, IBM announced that it would sell its personal computer division to China's Lenovo Group.

Nerdly News

The incredible shrinking AOL: Nearly a quarter of AOL's workers will soon no longer be employed by AOL. The company says it will terminate 5000 employees within 6 months. AOL has been struggling for a long time because once broadband connectivity comes to the home, many people see little point in paying AOL an extra $10 per month for a dumbed-down interface. Tech-savvy users typically avoided AOL even when nothing but dial-up was available.

Circuit City appears to be itching for a fight: Let's say you have a DVD. You bought it. You'd like to convert it to play on a hand-held device. There's just one problem with that. It's illegal. The geniuses in Washington created the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which makes any use of DVDs other than just putting them into a player and watching them illegal.

July 30, 2006

Linux: Ankle-biter or real threat?

If you're a Windows 98 or Windows Me user, you're an orphan. This is something Microsoft wanted to do in 2004 but put off until now to give users time to upgrade. The problem is that several million users (maybe 50 million) didn't. And now those users have an operating system that Microsoft no longer supports. And they probably also have older computers that would run Windows XP slowly, if at all.

Get Cerious: Thumbs Plus issues an update to an update

If you use Thumbs Plus from Cerious Software, you probably downloaded an installed SP1 within the past couple of weeks. Already there is an update to that. A maintenance update (build 2222) is available for ThumbsPlus 7 SP1. It resolves a problem with renaming a file in a zip folder, a bug that could cause a crash in image filtering, a failure to export keyword, and several other minor issues.

Personal computing reaches middle age (almost)

Eweek Magazine this week features the top 25 products from the past 25 years. That's how long personal computers have been around. Yes, Atari and Commodore and others were there first, but IBM's first Personal Computer garnered Eweek's #1 slot for the 25 most important (not "best") products of the first 25 years of personal computing.

Feeling big and important?

This week I received a forwarded message with 5 images. I wish I could tell you who created the images so that the right person would get credit for the work. The images compare the relative sizes of planets and stars. There was no text with the images, but the images told a story nonetheless.

Nerdly News

Firefox is still my favorite browser, but ... Every time there's a security update (and there have been a lot of them) several of my favorite extensions are disabled because they are not compatible with the latest version. There's been another update. You'll want to load it because it fixes some serious problems, but it will break some of your extensions.

Making fun of spammers: Are people really dumb enough to sign up for these? Fake diplomas, fake drugs, fake names, fake addresses. Every now and then I like to take a look at the current state of spam. It's not getting any better.

July 23, 2006

Pervasive networking

No, not perverse. Pervasive. The Internet is available wherever phones are available. Increasingly, wireless networks are becoming available. Cellular telephone technology reaches something like 90% of the population, although that still leaves large land areas without coverage. Wireless Internet access is available in businesses and, in a few cases, throughout towns. I spoke with the CEO of Phantom Fiber, Jeff Halloran to ask where this technology is going.

Nerdly News

The MPod? Microsoft makes it official: Microsoft announced last Friday that it will release a music and entertainment player before the end of the year. No, it won't be called the MPod or the mPod. It's as far from Apple as it can get in the alphabet -- "Zune", which presumably rhymes with "dune" as in "sand dune". Microsoft is a few years late to the party that has been dominated by Apple, although other companies have micro shares of the market segment.

Good news and bad for Advanced Micro Devices: AMD, the #2 maker of personal computer processors says profits were up in the 2nd quarter, but sales declined. AMD, in competing with Intel cut prices.

July 16, 2006

Corel Graphic Suite X3

X is 10, so version X3 is 13. Whether Corel chose X3 because of superstition involving the number 13 or because the letter X is sexy or because they just couldn't let a good pun like X3 slide by, I don't know. Long-time Corel users know about the "even-number curse" but they also know that the odd-number releases are usually solid. Fortunately, several versions ago, Corel decided to stop trying to fill every new version with hundreds of new features and instead to concentrate on making the application work better. There is one long-time bug that I keep hoping the company will fix and with every version to date I've been disappointed. Some things just never change.

Is any amount of disk space "Too Much"?

I've told the story more than once of buying a 16MB hard drive for around $1000. Now, of course, a 16MB flash drive is something you might find in your breakfast cereal as a prize. 500MB flash drives go for $20 or so. And even 1GB flash drives can be had for less than $50. I'm astonished whenever I think of having more than 1TB of disk space on-line and I recently bought 300GB of storage for less than $150. The disk drive (a rebate was involved) cost less than $100 and, because the disk drive was a Seagate SATA unit, I had to pay more than expected for a case with a USB2 connection. Overall, I spent less than $150 for the drive and the case. That works out to about about 5 cents per MEGABYTE instead of $63 per megabyte. Wow!

Nerdly News

Same old pony with new tricks: You already know not to follow a link that's supposedly from your bank, PayPal, or a store if it claims that you should "confirm" your information. But what about calling a telephone number?

This laptop is really hot! You may have heard about the Dell laptop computer that exploded and burst into flames at a conference in Japan. The technology publication Inquirer has photos of the event and Dell is hoping for fast answers to explain what happened.

July 9, 2006

Windows Media Player: It's still free and well worth it

Microsoft has released the Windows Media Player version 11 (beta). It's pretty. It plays lots of kinds file types. It can connect you to a music store to download files. And I'll continue to use Itunes, a Mac application that was ported to Windows and described by Steve Jobs in his usual understated manner as being the best Windows application ever made. Not exactly. But it's better than the Windows application for my purposes.

Odds and ends

Not exactly newsy enough to be in Nerdly News and not exactly long enough to get their own individual space, sometimes I run across topics that should fit somewhere. This is that place.

• Support ends for Windows 9x and Me
• Office 2007 delayed (again)
• Thanksgiving excrement

Another card you don't want

Not long ago, I talked about receiving a "postcard" notice that claimed to be from a family member. Without going any further, I knew that the notification was a fake. The postcard company wouldn't know my relationship to the sender and virtually all electronic postcard providers send a message that includes the actual sender's name and e-mail address. Neither was present. The people who create these lures are using better bait, but it's still easy to spot a phony.

Nerdly News

You, too, Apple? Microsoft Windows check in with Microsoft periodically, to the great annoyance of some users. At Apple, they think different. Starting with the just released OS X 10.4.7, Apple's operating system periodically checks in with Apple, to the great annoyance of some users. Apple calls it the Dashboard Advisory and said that it's designed to keep widgets up to date. Apple also says that the connection transmits no personal data to the company.

Google Checkout, but not at Ebay: Google recently launched Google Checkout, a service that allows people to pay for on-line purchases. Ebay says the service isn't welcome. This is hardly a surprise given Ebay's relationship with PayPal. But it is surprising in that Google was careful to point out that Checkout would not compete with PayPal.

July 2, 2006

Independence Day

I'm taking a few days off for Independence day, so there's not much of a program this week.

Not exactly technology news

The San Jose Mercury News (Murky News) has always been a good source of information about events in Silicon Valley. The newspaper will continue but a long-time newspaper company is gone.

Replacing the battery on your Ipod

I have a 3rd generation Ipod -- "only" 20GB -- that I take with me to the gym. It gives me a choice of about 5000 selections (rock, jazz, vocal, rap [1960s], country, new age, folk, blues, etc.) It's 3 years old (maybe more) and the battery life was down to about 5 minutes. I found a way to fix that.

June 25, 2006

Use the best applications even if you have to pay less for them

I've been using a commercial file transfer protocol (FTP) application for several years, but I needed to find a free FTP application for an organization that had no money to spare. Checking Sourceforge.net, where cross-platform open-source applications live, I found FileZilla. After downloading the installation file, I tested Filezilla and found that it more than met the organization's needs. And it appeared to be a better application than the one I'd paid for.

The mysteries of Microsoft

I visited Microsoft's website recently to get some information about the company's new Windows Media Photo file format (WMP – and how many people will refer to this format as "wimp"?) when I noticed a new version of the Windows Media Player (also "WMP", by the way) and a new version of DirectX. I got the information I needed about WMP and downloaded WMP 11 Beta. But DirectX turned out to be a bit of a problem.

Don't scorch your lap with that Apple

Notebook computers get warm. "Hot" might be a better word. In a pinch, you can flip a laptop computer over and fry an egg on the surface. (Just kidding. Don't try this at home.) Some Apple notebook computers are running even hotter than normal and Apple says it's because of a manufacturing fault.

Nerdly News

A new version of Google Earth: Google has new versions of Google Earth -- version 4 beta. The existing version 3 is still available. Google Earth is usable only by people who have fast computers and high-speed Internet connections, but in the past year, the application has been downloaded more than 100,000,000 times. Google makes the application programming interface (API) information public, which has allowed 30,000 websites to add geographic information of their own.

Faster than speeding silicon: IBM and the Georgia Institute of Technology say they've developed technology that will allow semiconductors to operate more than 200 times faster than today's chips. Usually advances increase the speed of a chip by half. Occasionally, improvements double the speed. But increasing the speed from 2.5GHz, which is common today, to 500GHz is astounding.

June 18, 2006

Feel the burn

Nero's latest version (Nero 7 Ultra) is an impressive piece of work. Limited versions of Nero have been included for several years with some DVD burners, but the program hasn't -- at least in this country -- received the respect it probably deserved. Version 7 may change all that. A list of just the new features is impressive.

Thank you, Apple, for Itunes and Ipods

Opera isn't my thing and I have a limited tolerance for twangy country music. Although I enjoy modern in small quantities, long exposures are too much. If you look at the music that's available on my "World's Largest Ipod", you might think that I'm nuts. You'd be right, of course, but all of us are a little nuts when it comes to selecting music.

Finding podcasts on Itunes

I've been running a podcast for a few weeks now. You can subscribe to the feed direct from the source (each website page has an RSS link near the top) or you can use Itunes to get it. Because Technology Corner is (belatedly) introducing some people to podcasts, I thought it might be a good idea to put together a little illustrated summary that shows how to find and hear podcasts on Itunes.

Nerdly News

Excel zero-day flaw bites spreadsheet users and more: If you use Microsoft Microsoft Excel 2003, the older Microsoft Excel XP, or Microsoft Excel for Mac beware a new exploit that causes an unspecified vulnerability. These problems are described in such general and evasive terms because the goal is to let people know there's a problem without telling the bad guys how to take advantage of it.

The MicroPod? According to Reuters, Microsoft has a music and video device to compete with Apple's Ipod in the works and it also working on a music service like Apple's Itunes. The news agency says Microsoft has already conducted some licensing discussions with the music industry and prototypes of the device have been demonstrated to insiders.

June 11, 2006

Deep in the Congoo

Have you ever followed a search engine link only to find that the website you've gone to has "premium content" that requires a subscription fee that you must pay before you'll be allowed to see the article you want? Newspapers and magazines pay writers and editors to prepare content, so they can't be expected to give it away for free. But if you're doing research that takes you to a premium content link that you won't need on an ongoing basis, will you be willing to pony up $25 or $50 or $100? Most people won't. A new service called Congoo might have a solution.

Customer service done the right way

Last week I grumbled about T-Mobile's customer communications, or lack of it. I did this because I'm involved in marketing and communications and because T-Mobile is a high-tech company that comes up short on the "touch" part of the business. This week, it's a different kind of story. There are advantages in buying a computer from HellPaqWay (a combination of HP, Dell, Compaq, and Gateway), but there also advantages in dealing with a local assembler who has a good reputation and uses quality parts.

Nerdly News

Something wicked this way comes: Somebody is working on something nasty. Antivirus companies are seeing an increase in activity that suggests an attack in imminent. I've seen, and you probably have too, messages "from" you and "to" you that contain nothing more than a random string of numbers. This will turn nasty sooner or later. Probably sooner.

Something Vista this way comes (If I do that again, Ray Bradbury is going to demand a royalty): If you're brave enough, you can download a beta version of Microsoft's next Windows operating system to give it a try. If you're thinking of doing that, keep this in mind: Never test a new operating system on a "production" machine. A production machine is any computer that you need for day-to-day work. Operating system tests should be conducted only on spare computers. So if you don't have a spare computer lying around, skip the test drive.

June 4, 2006

My must-have extensions for Firefox

Despite the features available in Opera and despite the improvements in Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 (still in beta), Firefox remains my default browser. The tabbed browsing is handy, but everyone has that now. Even Microsoft in IE7. What really makes Firefox the standout is its ability to be use extensions that provide functions and capabilities far beyond what the basic program provides. The key to extensions is that they allow all users to create a browser that exactly meets their needs.

Excellence in customer support: Easier said than done

Cellular providers continue to be in turmoil. Churn is endemic despite the companies' best efforts to create barriers. We recently added a 3rd phone to our family plan and that required extending our contract with the carrier for 2 more years. Leaving will cost us $200 per line, so the company is essentially guaranteed that we'll continue to be customers for 2 years. This is a bad way to create loyalty, though, because it doesn't create loyalty. It creates servitude

Nerdly News

Are your fingers small enough to use this computer? I started seeing computers that were about the size of a deck of cards a couple of years ago. They were prototypes that sometimes worked and sometimes just sat there overheating. I remember seeing one with a keyboard and large monitor plugged in. It had a small LCD screen built in and a soft keyboard that appeared on the screen. Interesting idea, but the technology wasn't quite ready for use outside trade shows.

ISPs meet with DOJ: Internet service providers and the Department of Justice met in New York this week to talk about ways they can cooperate to identify people who use the Internet. The stated purpose it to find a way to track down people who trade in child pornography or who are suspected of terrorist activities. The technology could, of course, be used for other purposes, some of which worry privacy experts.

May 28, 2006

This podcast followed me home. Can I keep it?

I'd hoped to have a podcast ready to go last week, but didn't quite manage to get it done. This week, I'm ready. In fact, I had a podcast ready to go by about noon on Saturday last week, but it took quite a bit longer to document the process of installing an RSS feed aggregator (think of it as a tuner for your computer). The process is easy, but it involves several steps. (Pod20060528a)

Fraud is easy

The other day I received a message from a greeting card site, or so it said. The message said "a family member" had sent me a card. "How does it know that?" was my first thought. If the sending site collected information, it would tell me the sender's name. If it collected no information, how could it know that the sender was a family member? Alarms were ringing. (Pod20060528b)

Symantec: Oops!

Symantec has confirmed a vulnerability in its Antivirus Corporate Edition 10.x software. Although this flaw can give remote users system-level access to computers, it's not something most of us need to worry about.

May 21, 2006

Attack of the pod(cast)s

Until such time (if ever) that Technology Corner returns to the air we'll give podcasting a try. Joe and I probably won't be able to schedule time during the week to record the show, so for now it'll be just me. I'm learning the procedure for creating a podcast as I write this article, which will give you the information you'll need to listen.

Beware the zero-day Word exploit

There's been a lot of talk about "zero-day" exploits – so called because there is no time between the discovery of a security problem and someone's ability to exploit it. Such an exploit exists with Microsoft Word. Apparently it is being used now in precisely targeted attacks, which means that most people won't see it in its current incarnation. But this gives me another good opportunity to state my primary rule for dealing with attachments: Open no attachments unless you are absolutely certain that they're from someone you know and that they were intentionally sent by that person.

Microsoft Vista is coming ...

... and you'll have to upgrade your computer. Right? Maybe not. Microsoft has released hardware specs for the new operating system and that sucking sound you heard was from Intel and AMD.

May 14, 2006 – Happy mother's day!

Radio's Challenges

Recent events have caused me to think a bit about where commercial terrestrial radio is, where it's been, and where it might be going. In the 1950s, radio was thought to be dead because of television. That didn't happen. I even remember a car that my father had for a week-long test drive that had a 45-RPM record player that worked on a glass-smooth road for any speed up to about 10 MPH. In the 1960s, owning an AM radio station was the same as having a license to print money. Then came FM and AM radio nearly died. That was followed by cassette players and CD players in cars. Other challenges radio has faced include CB radio, CD players, Apple's Ipod, and now satellite radio. Nothing has killed terrestrial radio. At least not yet.

The future of Technology Corner

Wow! I'm amazed. Over the past couple of weeks, Joe and I have received a lot of messages from people who will miss Technology Corner Sunday mornings on WTVN. Sometimes those of us who are involved in broadcast forget how important we become to those who listen. I'd expected to receive a couple of messages when the program ended. Maybe a dozen. I wasn't in any way prepared for what happened. If you have written and I haven't responded, I apologize. I do hope to reply to each message, but it may be a while.

Nerdly News

Ignore it and maybe it will go away: Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) continues to be "I can't" and seems to believe that ignoring a parable will make it go away. The organization has voted against a proposed agreement for a "XXX" top level domain.

Own a Mac and believe you're safe? Dream on! Macs are still harder to infect than PCs, but those who feel (and act) as if Macs are invulnerable will wake up someday to a nasty infestation. McAfee has joined the group of companies that provide anti-virus support for Intel-based Apple computers. McAfee VirusScan for Mactel 8.0 runs under Apple's Rosetta emulator to protect Apple computer users from Macintosh and Windows-based viruses, Trojans, and other threats.

May 7, 2006

Hey! Lookie! A new banner!

Have I ever used 3 exclamation points in a single headline? I don't think so. (And if your first though is "What do YOU think?" you're old enough to remember Chickenman on radio. As of now, I have no clue whether Joe and I will be back on the air and, if so, where that will be. There has been some progress, but nothing is definite.

Should Microsoft be worried about WordPerfect?

That seems like a fair enough question. WordPerfect was once the leading word processor. It killed WordStar and dozens of other competitors. WordPerfect was once so popular that the support phone number in Orem, Utah, had “phone jockeys” who played music and kept callers apprised of the wait time. With the advent of Windows (and maybe some slick deals) Microsoft captured the catbird seat. WordPerfect was acquired by Novell, a company that had no clue about how to position, develop, or sell a word processor. Novell sold the asset to Corel at about the time the company was trying to develop a demand for Linux. Wordperfect received some attention, but most of the company’s resources seemed to be directed at the Linux project, which was eventually scrapped. For the past several versions, Wordperfect has become stronger and stronger. Today's office suite product is the right choice for a lot of people.

April 30, 2006

No, we're not on the radio right now

Neither Joe nor I can remember when we started doing the Technology Corner segment. We know it was more than 10 years ago because I can find documents from 1996 and some of my references mention 1994. Prior to that, it was less formal -- 15 minutes here, half an hour there.

The National Cable Show understands the challenge

The National Cable Show was held this month and commentator David Gregg says companies that demonstrated their wares at the show understand that users can easily be intimidated by the technology. When I caught up with David, he was standing in the Gaming Pavilion.

April 23, 2006

SnagIt 8

Windows can capture a screen image all by itself (Alt-PrtScn), so why would anyone need to buy a program that captures screen images? That's a fair question and there are lots of good answers. The best answer for me is that using the built-in screen capture utility takes too much work.

Changing the items on your (computer's) menu

Listener Mark Young wanted to change the way his computer's Start Menu works. "I have XP Home and have added some software. Now when I go to start then all programs I have 2 columns it adds the listing of the new software to the bottom of the second column and you can barely see it. I can't figure out how to add another column. Any help would be appreciated." Answering the question gave me an opportunity to show off with SnagIt, too.

Nerdly News

New version of Opera is out in beta: Late this week, Opera Software announced the public beta of Opera 9, which includes widgets. The Opera 9 beta also features support for BitTorrent, a popular file downloading technology, in addition to a content blocker and thumbnail previews of tabbed sites.

Foil war profiteers and make a bundle yourself ("Yeah, right.") A new twist on an old e-mail scam dupes recipients into believing they could receive millions from a bank account belonging to a victim of the Concorde air disaster. Guess what: Criminals then steal victims' identities and make a profit.

April 9, 2006

Technology Corner Update moves to Topica

It's official. After several weeks of testing and tinkering, I sent March 19th's Technology Corner update using my website host's Mailman program and Topica's list distribution service. Topica easily won. If you want to continue to receive the weekly show update, and you haven't yet confirmed your address to Topica, you'll need to send a blank e-mail message to tc_update-subscribe@topica.com and then confirm the response from Topica.

A free website development tool

"If it's free, you can be sure it's worth at least what you paid for it." I can be skeptical about free tools, but I often give them a try because the price is attractive. It's unlikely that I'll stop using Macromedia's Dreamweaver for website work, but the free open-source Nvu HTML editor is impressive.

Good, Bad, or Indifferent: The Internet

"Is there a direct subway link from LaGuardia to Manhattan?" my younger daughter asked. I thought there wasn't, although I haven't been to NYC for a couple of years. I'd heard that the NYC MTA had finally extended the A line to JFK but that LaGuardia still depended on the Q33, Q45, and M60 bus lines. I wasn't certain, though. Less than 10 minutes later, I had definitive answers from the MTA's website. Without the Internet, I wouldn't have been able to answer the question without a call to New York.

Nerdly News

Practical joke leads to spyware and prison time: A couple in Israel will spend some time in prison and they've been fined more than $400,000 for creating spyware. Michael Haephrati says he created a spyware program as a practical joke, but his wife decided to market it to private investigators.

You may already have heard about this: Google accidentally deleting the company's official blog web site late last month. A user, Trey Philips in Austin, temporarily took possession of the Web address, but did so only to keep the blog out of the hands of creeps.

April 2, 2006

Utility programs that have come my way

You know I'm a sucker for a good utility. These little special-purpose programs that add features to other applications or operating systems are usually inexpensive and sometimes free. They're almost always the work of one or two people who saw a need and decided to fill it. Today we'll look at some utilities I've found (or had recommended to me) recently.

How safe is the information on your computer?

Symantec has released its 9th semi-annual report on Internet security. It covers the period between July 1, 2005, and the end of the year. The report shows that the face of computer viruses continues to change.

If you think it takes intelligence to steal your information ...

... think again. A retired police officer, when he was on the force, carried around an aluminum clipboard that had an emblem on the back: WDGTSO. "We don't get the smart ones." And so it is with phishing attempts or spyware. People who are can't figure out a legal way to earn money try to steal your money. As for intelligence, none is required.

Nerdly News

A journey of 1000 jobs begins with a single layoff: Lenovo, the Chinese company that purchased IBM's personal computer business says that is plans to cut about 1000 jobs to reduce costs. That's about 5% of the company's workforce.

Windows XP on an Apple? I've been able to do that for a long time. Load a copy of Virtual PC on a Mac and run Windows. Slowly. But it runs. But now Apple is switching its entire product line to Intel processors and maybe Virtual PC is no longer needed.

March 12, 2006

Spam: The report of its death was an exaggeration

Some progress has been made in the battle against spam in the past couple of years, but the problem is still very much with us. In January of 2004, Bill Gates said that spam would be eradicated by 2006.

Questions and answers (or at least equivocations)

The answers might even more or less be in some way related to the questions. We'll talk about some of the questions that we've received lately and then show you the answers we've sent to the hapless questioners.

640K of memory should be enough for anybody

You've probably seen that statement attributed to Bill Gates. There's just one problem with the quotation, though: Bill Gates never said it. "I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that," Gates wrote in 1996, but the rumor persists. "No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time," said Gates.

Thoughts from a "flack"

"Flack" is pejorative that Andy Marken doesn't deserve. He's a public relations professional I've dealt with for the past decade or so. A couple of weeks ago, Andy sent a non-PR piece. At least one that he didn't create on behalf of a client. Because it was long, I filed it away for a couple of days until I finally had time to read it on the weekend. It's worth your time, whether you're a writer or "just" a reader. I present Andy's comments essentially as he wrote them.

Nerdly News

Normally I wouldn't make a fuss about an 8GB hard drive: But this one is in a telephone. Samsung's SGH-i310 will include 8GB of memory on a hard disk. Earlier Samsung phones had 1.5GB and 3GB hard drives.

Google's checkbook was out again this week: The company bought Upstartle, the California business that developed "Writely", an Internet-based word processing application that allows users compose documents on the Web and share them.

March 5, 2006

Where next?

My mother and father lived through the transportation revolution. My wife and I have lived through the data revolution. What wonders will my children and their families see? Joe and I will natter on about the changes we've seen.

High tech or high touch?

A company that advertised on WTVN many years ago talked about being both "high tech" and "high touch". That's an important distinction and the best companies do both well. The credit card industry is definitely high tech, but some providers are also high touch. Getting either side wrong is a recipe for disaster.

How to identify a real request from your bank

A big West Coast company just sent a reminder to all of its employees about phishing messages that claim to be from PayPal. I said to the security lead "Should anyone in a high-tech company such as Xxxxxxxxx fall for this nonsense? If so, I'm frightened" and the response was "I totally agree. I hope that this is not the case." Is it really so hard to tell the difference between a phishing attempt and a legitimate message?

Nerdly News

AOL goes after phishers: AOL has filed lawsuits against three major phishing gangs and wants $18 million from them. The suits cite Virginia's anti-phishing statute that became law in mid 2005. The suit also invokes two federal statutes – the Lanham Act and the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act.

Apple puts Intel in the Mini: This week Apple announced a new version of the Mini with Intel Core Duo processors. The new machines will be quite a bit faster than the previous models -- under some circumstances, 4 times faster. Apple also added more expansion ability to the Mini.

February 26, 2006

Do you know the way to my PC?

GoToMyPC is a service I've used for several years. It allows me to log on to my office computer from home or from a hotel, or to log on to my home computer from wherever I am. It works for computers that are behind corporate firewalls and the latest version of GoToMyPC displays the remote computer in full color and high resolution. (Yes, a high-speed connection is helpful but not essential.)

Security is up to you

Audits of 5 federal agencies (Bureau of Prisons, Drug Enforcement Administration, FBI, Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the United States Marshals Service) by the Department of Justice in 2001 may shock you. Three of the agencies lost or had stolen 400 laptop computers. Data from the DEA was so unreliable that it couldn't be used and the INS didn't make note of missing computers.

How much technology does FedEx have?

My office moved to a new building this week. We have VOIP telephones. We have networked printers. We have a network server that not much more than an inch thick and about 19 inches square. We also have a relatively low-tech copier, but only because FedEx has some high-tech gear in place and a no-tech willingness to help.

Nerdly News

Dutch police close down a "419" scam: You've probably received mail from the 12 people Dutch police arrested. They picked up the dozen suspects in several raids and seized computers, bank statements, forged passports, and 25,000 Euros in cash. They're accused of being part of a gang that bilked gullible people out of more than $2 million.

One billion and going strong: Apple says the 1,000,000,000th download from Itunes was "Speed of Sound" by British artist Coldplay. The person who downloaded it got a little something extra -- a 20-inch Imac, 10 5th-generation Ipods, and a $10,000 gift card for anything in the Itunes Music Store.

February 19, 2006

Diskeeper 10: The same, but better

A fragmented disk is both normal and problematic. As files are deleted or changed and replaced by new or modified files, the drive becomes fragmented. This is normal . Opening fragmented files is slower than opening files that are located in contiguous blocks. That is problematic. I've been using Diskeeper instead of the Windows defragmenter for the past several years. That isn't likely to change anytime soon.

More security problems for Microsoft (and Apple)

This month's Windows update includes measures to patch a Windows Media Player vulnerability. If your computer isn't set for automatic updates and you haven't yet bothered to get the update, "sorry about your luck." And if you own a Mac, don't smirk. Your machine is vulnerable, too.

In the future, all memory will be solid state

Or will it? Solid state (flash) memory has advantages: It's resistant to shock and it's faster than even the fastest hard drive. But it has one gigantic disadvantage: Cost. I recently bought a 100GB hard drive for $40 (after rebates) while an equivalent amount of flash memory would cost at least $2000. Companies such as Micron continue the push for flash memory, but companies such as Seagate keep raising the bar by making smaller drives with greater capacities.

Nerdly News

Will somebody please invent a functional browser!? I've said from time to time that Firefox is my default browser, and so it is. I like the extensions, many of which are still exclusive to Firefox. I like the tabbed browsing, which is now available in other browsers such as Opera and even Internet Explorer 7, now available in beta. I don't like the crashes.

Office 2007 approaches: We've talked about the next version of Microsoft's office suite. The look and feel of the next version will be substantially different. Microsoft will need a powerful marketing campaign to convince users to hand over relatively large amounts of money for the new version, particularly when many users already feel that the applications do more than they need to do.

February 12, 2006

Vista: No longer "if", but "when"

2006 promises to be a big year for Microsoft. I've already seen (although I wasn't allowed to touch) some pieces of the next version of the Office suite. That will probably ship sometime this year. And Vista, the latest version of Windows, will be out in two beta versions soon (first for business users and then for home users.) The new operating system should be released to manufacturing during the second half of 2006 and will be available on machines before the end of the year.

Waiting for Godot ... er, Microsoft

Microsoft plans to release (someday) a new version of Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer 7, which is now out in beta, offers tabbed browsing. Opera, Mozilla, Firefox, and other browsers have had tabbed browsing for several years. I don't doubt that Internet Explorer 7 will be a worthwhile advance, but I continue to be puzzled by the fact that fully 85% of Internet users still use Internet Explorer when there are more advanced tools available. We'll take a look at a particularly useful tool that allows users to tame Google.

Nerdly News

Blackberry users continue to wear puzzled looks: If you're a Blackberry user, you'll be happy to know that Research In Motion has a plan that it says will let you continue to receive e-mail even if it loses a patent fight that had been predicted to shut the service off in the US. A court hearing is scheduled for February 24 on NTP Incorporated's request for an injunction to halt US Blackberry service

WinPod anyone? Nobody else has been able to beat Apple in the portable MP3 player game and with Apple's recent announcement of small Ipod players at or below $100, Apple stands to grab the entire market. And (does this surprise you) Bill Gates says Microsoft wants some of the action.

February 5, 2006

A valentine from Corel

Valentine's day is approaching. Spring is just around the corner. So it's time for a young man's fancy to turn to thoughts of digitally enhanced photographs. Paint Shop Pro has, for a long time, been an application that I respect because it has offered uncommonly powerful features at a reasonable price. Corel acquired Paint Shop Pro, poured in some development money, and now has an application that's ideal for those who want to edit photos but don't have the money to buy Adobe Photoshop or the time to learn how to use it.

Is your computer still working?

The latest threat against your computer is one that threatened to delete Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Access files along with Photoshop files and others. The payload from the "Kama Sutra" worm (one of its many names) was scheduled to detonate on Friday. I hope you and your computer survived.

Browser madness continues

Before summer, there will be a new version (2.0) of Firefox and Microsoft is working on Internet Explorer 7. The new version of IE will offer tabbed browsing and other features that have been common in other browsers for a long time. If you want to see the latest IE on your own machine, you can. Beta 2 is now public.

Nerdly News

Did you lose any files on Friday? Most of the antivirus providers reported little or no activity on Friday, the day the latest worm nasty was scheduled to explode. I'm not surprised because people are getting smarter about these things. There are other ways to attack computers, but this worm required the victim to open an e-mail attachment. Two years ago, many people weren't sophisticated enough to delete files with attachments from people they don't know. That's largely not the case today.

100GB for $40? For someone (namely, me) who remembers when a 16MB disk drive cost more than $1000, the thought of buying a 100GB disk drive for $40 is amazing. Do the math: 16MB for $1000 is $62.50 per megabyte. 100GB for $40 is 40¢ per gigabyte. If that's not amazing, what is!

January 29, 2006

The Ultimate Troubleshooter: Diagnostics with an attitude

The Ultimate Troubleshooter is a utility application from AnswersThatWork, a British firm. If you ask the utility what it thinks of some of the applications that are running on your computer, it will tell you exactly what it thinks. I like that in a utility. And when it can solve a problem that's been annoying me for nearly 6 months, that's even better.

You could look it up!

I'm not going to suggest that you pitch your print dictionary anytime soon, but I hardly ever reach for any of the dictionaries at my desk, and that's quite a few: American Heritage Dictionary, Fourth Edition and the Oxford Canadian Dictionary are off my port bow, along with the Merriam Webster Dictionary of English Usage. Off the starboard bow are the Merriam Webster Ninth Collegiate and the second collegiate version of the American Heritage Dictionary. I have to lean and reach a bit to put my hands on the American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition. And if I need the microprint edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, I have to go to the office. I will suggest that there's a quick and easy way to check spellings and definitions of the words you use.

Nerdly News

More nasties in the e-mail stream: An interesting mass-mailer worm that's spreading itself offers a little something extra on the 3rd of each month. The 3rd of February is approaching and now would be a good time to be certain that your computer isn't infected because the extra treat the worm provides on the 3rd is an effort to delete all Word, Excel, Access, and Powerpoint files it finds on any drive connected to your computer. It will also delete any Photoshop, Zip, or PDF documents that it can find, along with some others.

Google news is news from Google: Four years in beta, Google News finally "ships". We need a new word to describe on-line applications that are finally deemed to be good enough to be taken out of beta. There's nothing to "ship", so they can't be "shipped", but that's the best we've come up with so far. But we also "dial" phones and a lot of people have never seen a phone with a dial.

January 22, 2006

Photography: It's not just the future that's digital

Now it's the present, too. Nikon currently makes 7 film cameras, but has announced plans to reduce that number to 2. Which models and when are topics Nikon won't talk about, but if you thought that film had a future, this is a good indication that it doesn't.

Konica Minolta exits the photo business

George Eastman is probably spinning at about 78rpm these days. A week or so ago, Nikon announced that it would all but halt production of film cameras (for the immediate future, Nikon will continue to produce 2 film cameras) and now Konica Minolta has announced that it's getting out of the photo biz altogether.

Have you heard from the "sergeant" in Iraq?

Antivirus distributors are reporting an e-mail scam that attempts to fool computer users into participating in a bogus business deal with a US military sergeant based in Baghdad. If you fall for this one, you'll get no sympathy from me.

Nerdly News

Columbus: The China connection: China's Lenovo (formerly IBM) is offering 2 ThinkCentre desktop computers at MicroCenter. This is the first time Lenovo or IBM has had desktops on retail shelves since the Aptiva disappeared in 1999.

Don't make Googley eyes at me: Google doesn't want to cooperate with the Bush administration's demand for a peek at what millions of people have been searching for. (NOTE: For those who believe that every time I mention any government agency I am bashing the president of the United States of America, allow me to point out that this is not an attempt to bad-mouth the Bush administration.)

Coming to Itunes: The almost hits: Universal Music Group plans to work with Apple's Itunes to make available more than 100,000 European tracks that are no longer available on records or CDs. They'll start with about 3000 tracks in the next month.

January 15, 2006

Buy or bye-bye: Let your fingers do the walking.

I’m old enough to remember having to go to a store if I wanted to find out if something I wanted was in stock. That meant getting into a car (or hopping onto a bike or walking) and going to the “business district” (all stores were downtown in those days). Things have changed since then and now my fingers can really do the walking.

The shape of things to come

In 1982, I went to work for a company that ran 5 Digital Equipment Corporation 11/73 systems running the RS/TS (resource sharing/time sharing) operating system, but we still had a Honeywell 200 that was used to run a single application. The DEC 11/73 systems had floor-mounted hard drives that were 40MB devices. The Honeywell had several tape drives and its core memory was really core memory – circular magnets on a matrix of wires. Each 64KB module was about 9 inches wide, a foot tall, and maybe 18 inches deep. Although a lot has changed in the past 25 years, one thing has changed not at all.

Free with the Mac you bought last month: Angst

If you bought a Mac Powerbook anytime in the past 6 months, you were probably shocked and dismayed by this week's announcement by Apple. To nobody's great surprise, Apple announced that the first Intel-based machines will be notebook computers. After all, that's where the company needed to build faster machines that wouldn't catch a desk on fire. They'll ship the new machines next month. What caught a lot of people by surprise is how much faster the new machines will be.

Nerdly News

The lowest of the low: FBI agents in Pittsburgh are investigating fake messages that ask for charitable donations for the miner who survived the recent explosion and fire in a West Virginia mine.

Big fines and jail time for spammers: An Iowa Internet service provider has been awarded $11.2 billion from a spammer. There's little chance that the ISP owner will ever see even a penny, but maybe this is a wake-up call for spammers. If not, maybe a 2-to-5 year prison term will do it.

January 8, 2006

The new look for 2006

I update the look of the Technology Corner website each January. My goal, each year, is to make the site a little more usable and a little less garish. Sometimes I succeed. In selecting colors this year, I decided to go with a bit softer look that uses analogous colors and includes the complement of the primary color. If you want to know what that means in plain English, you'll need to talk with my designer daughter. For advice this year, I used the Well Styled website, which has lots of recommendations for colors that work together.

Twenty four hours of spam

Shortly before the end of 2005, I thought I'd take a close look at spam. I wanted to see how many spams came my way, how much duplication there was, how many were actually delivered to my e-mail program, and whether any of the spams eluded my anti-spam system. Although spammers throw a lot of crud at my wall, little or none of it sticks.

The WMF disaster

During the holidays, I sent a special warning about a critical security issue: It's a security that affects all Windows computers, whether security patches are in place or not and it involves Windows meta file (WMF) documents.

Nerdly News

If you believe that Donald Trump wants you, that you can lose 6 to 20 inches (where? of what?) in an hour, that somebody is sending you a stock tip that will triple your money in an hour, or that somebody wants to give you any current trendy electronic device for free, then you deserve anything you get when you open the spam.

Have you installed the secret MSN Messenger beta? If you have, you're in trouble. Toward the end of December, a "leaked" copy of the MSN Messenger started showing up. Trouble is, it's not beta software and it's not from Microsoft. It's an application that will turn your computer into a zombie.

Annoying legal disclaimer

My attorney says I really need to say this: The TechByter website is for informational purposes only. I assume no responsibility for its accuracy, although I do my best. The information is subject to change without notice. Any actions you take based on information from the radio program, the podcast, or from this website are entirely at your own risk. Products and services are mentioned for informational purposes only and their various trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners. TechByter cannot provide technical support for products or services mentioned.