Category: Computers, Internet & Technology

Google

From The Mossberg Report:

As for how they rank, Yahoo Mail takes the lead. It’s fast, and its gigabyte of free storage is more than enough to free most users from deleting old mail. I also like Yahoo’s autocompletion of addresses, as well as its folder and filter systems. Plus, its overall user interface is clean and clear.

Google’s Gmail is also pretty good, though its quirky design could put off some users — it’s clearly still a work in progress. Gmail has the most free storage of the Web-based providers, which is a big plus, and searching all that mail is fast and accurate. But a simple operation such as deleting an e-mail takes more steps than in Yahoo. …

Hotmail comes in last. It offers only a fraction of the free storage of Yahoo and Gmail, which, for my money, flatly disqualifies it as a serious contender.

Outlook thinks it’s junk mail and put it in the junk mail folder but I don’t know. What do you think? The subject line is: “did Jamal also sent you this.”

BBC News has the clearest explanation NewMexiKen has seen of RSS (Really Simple Syndication).

In a world heaving under the weight of billions of web pages, keeping up to date with the information you want can be a drag.

Wouldn’t it be better to have the latest news and features delivered directly to you, rather than clicking from site to site? Well now you can, thanks to a very clever service, RSS.

…

In general, the first thing you need is something called a news reader. There are many different versions, some of which are accessed using a browser, and some of which are downloadable applications. All allow you to display and subscribe to the RSS feeds you want.

Once you have chosen a news reader, all you have to do is to decide what content you want.

There’s more.

No place does spamming and scamming quite like South Florida.

Together, Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties are home to more spammers than any country on Earth. And it’s not just the annoying pitches for mortgages and sex pills. Increasingly, law enforcement officials are finding that junk e-mail is a favored weapon of predators, an easy way for criminals to target a world of potential victims from behind a wall of anonymity.

More than a quarter of about 180 hardcore spammers tracked by watchdog group Spamhaus are based in Florida, and most of those are in the tri-county area. The city with the most spammers in the world is Boca Raton. Eleven are listed by Spamhaus as based there, though anti-spam groups say they think that figure misses dozens who send spam at least part-time.

Why South Florida? Spammers and anti-spam groups cite a combination of reasons. They include the warm weather and laid-back lifestyle, lenient bankruptcy laws, proximity to Internet data centers, a history of telemarketing and e-mail marketing, and the state’s longstanding image as a good place to do dirty business.

Sun-Sentinel.com.

Boca Raton, doesn’t that mean rat’s mouth?

Link via Discourse.net

If you’d like to try an RSS feeder, NewMexiKen suggests FeedReader, a lightweight, totally free program (Windows).

Update May 11: FeedReader lost all my feeds (a substantial investment in time). I know not why.

For more information you might check out NPR, which has a little background and lists a number or availble readers, including FeedReader.

Google Web Accelerator claims to speed up downloads (with only minor invasions of your privacy). NewMexiKen is giving it a try and so far it claims to have saved me 39.6 seconds. Of course, that’s in one and two second bites, so it’s difficult to assess.

Besides don’t most people browse at work to kill time?

Update after six hours: It’s probably just me, but I sensed that this thing was slowing things down. I removed it already. We’ll wait and see.

Walter Mossberg has A Guide to Using RSS, Which Helps You Scan Vast Array of Web Sites. It’s just the basics, but if you’ve been wondering, not a bad place to start.

The top 20 stupid client stories.

For example, “A client called for help because ‘someone shook the box the computer was in when we moved, so all the icons got shuffled out of place.'”

And: “I just printed out the pdf file you sent me, and all the pages printed upside down! How am I supposed to read this?”

Link via Discourse.net

Are you tired of trying to hit the tiny maximize/restore button in the top right corner of a window? There’s an easier alternative: Double-click anywhere on the title bar. The entire title bar acts as an oversized toggle. Double-click to maximize the window; double-click again to restore the original window size.

Ed Bott

Researchers at the University of London Institute of Psychiatry have found that the constant distractions of email and texting are more harmful to performance than cannabis.

Those distracted by incoming email, phone calls and text messages saw a 10-point fall in their IQ, more than twice that found in studies of the impact of smoking cannabis, according to the researchers.

vnunet.com

NewMexiKen hates to think of the drop in IQ that results from blogging. Or maybe I hate to think because of that drop. Hmmm!?!

Justice can be swift, and very funny: Hacker deletes own hard drive:

A CHAT CHANNEL spat ended when a wannabe hacker was duped into deleting his own hard drive.

The 26 year-old German claimed he was the baddest hacker in town and threatened to attack a moderator on #stopHipHop’s RC Channel because he thought he’d been thrown out.

He demanded the moderator cough up his IP address and prepare to be hacked.

So the moderator said that his IP number was 127.0.0.1 (which is IP for “self”). Then he leaned back and waited.

Finally the hacker declared success. “I can see your E: drive disappearing, he gloated. “D: is down 45 percent!” he cried, before disappearing into the ether.

But he hasn’t been heard from since.

Translated transcript of the IRC session

Discourse.net

NewMexiKen hasn’t located any news on what happened to the UC Berkeley professor’s laptop thief, or even if he has been apprehended.

But for those unwilling or unable to watch the video, here’s a link to a transcript of what the professor said.

It seems a student stole a laptop from a UC Berkeley biology professor. Here is a link to a video of the professor’s warnings to the thief. (This is a RealPlayer video file. Skip to 48:50 of the 52-minute file.)

It will take you a couple minutes to set this up and watch, but worth it as you can almost feel the terror that must have been welling-up within the culprit as the professor continued.

Link via BoingBoing

Comcast customers who want their bills adjusted because of the Internet service problem April 9-13 should contact the company at 877-824-2288.

News report

Now that Firefox has become a popular browser, its security flaws are becoming more critical. If you haven’t already, Download Firefox 1.0.3 now (for Windows).

if wedging a small screwdriver blade into the volume knob slot on my laptop — and leaving it there — is what Toshiba recommends to resolve the problem when one speaker keeps shorting out?

Using Microsoft Word to check your spelling and grammar? The following sample passes without a hitch:

Marketing are bad for brand big and small. You Know What I am Saying? It is no wondering that advertisings are bad for company in America, Chicago and Germany. Updating of brand image is bad for processes in one company and many companies.

McDonalds is good brand. McDonald’s is good brand. McDonald’s are good brand. McDonalds’ are good brand. McDonald’s and Coca Cola are good brand. McDonald’s and Coca Cola is good brand. MCDONALD’S AND COCA COLA IS GOOD BRAND.

Finance good for marketing. Show me money!

4P’s are marketing mix. Four P’s is marketing mix. 4Ps is marketing mix. Manager use marketing mixes for good marketing. You Know What I Mean? Internets do good job in company name Amazon. Internets help marketing big company like Boeing. Internets make good brand best like Coca Cola.

Gates do good marketing job in Microsoft. Gates do good marketing jobs out Microsoft. Gates build the big brand in Microsoft. The Gates is leader of big company in Washington. Warren buffet do awesome job in marketing. Buffets eat buffets in city and town in country.

See the web page devoted to the inadequacies of the Microsoft Word checkers maintained by University of Washington Professor Sandeep Krishnamurthy.

Like NewMexiKen, Garrett at dangerousmeta! in Santa Fe has been “flailing away restarting, repairing my internet hookup. Flipping the cable modem off and on.”

It seems the problem — last night was the third prolonged outage in a week — is with our provider Comcast: “All [outages] involved issues with the cable giant’s domain name servers, which translate and route Web page requests from users. Although Internet applications such as instant messaging could continue to operate, all Web site requests either did not respond or were sluggish.” (CNET News.com)

If other utilities are absent, you don’t have to pay (the electric meter can’t move if the power is off). Is Comcast planning to reimburse its customers?

Walter Mossberg devotes his April column to computer security and includes a “quick guide to Windows security measures” including software (some free and some not). After listing the software he adds:

Beyond installing, monitoring and updating all this software, you need to be careful online. Don’t open e-mail attachments you don’t expect and that come from strangers. They may contain viruses or spyware. Don’t download software unless you really need it and are 100% certain of the author’s trustworthiness. It could be an infection in disguise. Never click on a link in an e-mail purporting to be from a financial institution, even if it’s your own bank and it looks official. It could be a scam to steal your identity.

Google just unveiled its latest service for cellphones.

If your phone has a Web browser (that works with XHTML — about 70 percent of current phones do), direct it to mobile.google.com/local. (Bookmark it so you won’t have to type all that the next time.)

In the What box, type in what you’re looking for, like “Italian restaurant.” In the Where box, put your Zip code (or city and state). Click search, and boom — Google shows you the Yellow Pages and Web results, in a list and even on a map (which you can scroll or zoom).

By highlighting a result, you can click to place a phone call to that place, or get driving directions from your current location.

It’s all free, and there are no ads. You go, Google.

David Pogue

It appeared to be junk email, but I have to admit the subject line — buttermilk Save on your Comhist LA — gave it a certain credence.

Walter Mossberg reviews photo-organizing programs:

These programs differ from traditional photo-editing software like Adobe’s Photoshop. They place less emphasis on tweaking and perfecting each picture, focusing instead on organizing your hundreds or thousands of photos and helping you share them with others. They do have basic editing tools, but they are mainly designed to help you manage your digital-photo collection.

Two of the best photo organizers have just been updated, and I have been testing them on my collection of more than 10,000 digital photos. One is Picasa 2, which runs only on Windows and is now a free offering from Google, which purchased Picasa last year. The other is Apple Computer’s iPhoto 5, which runs only on the Macintosh. It comes free on every new Mac.

The weather this morning in Albuquerque is best described as yucky. Snow, rain, sleet wind and hail. About 40°F.

Which brings me to Weather Watcher, a nice little program self-described as:

Freeware, adware-free, spyware-free, hassle-free, desktop weather. View the weather information for over 77,000 cities world-wide!

Recommended by Ed Bott who just updated his favorite software list.

NewMexiKen’s 17-month-old granddaughter checks out the latest “toy,” a Sony PSP (PlayStation Portable), which only came on the market Thursday.

Eat your heart out!