Category: Computers, Internet & Technology

NewMexiKen is a Netflix customer though not a fanatic about it, but I have to admit that for this day and age this is world class customer service. From Pogues Posts:

Faithful Pogue’s Posts readers (if there is such a thing, for a blog only two weeks old) may remember my note from last week about the rare and exquisite bird known as Netflix customer service. I wrote about how I lost one of the Netflix DVD’s I’d rented, and discovered that the company’s lost-disc policy is sensible and casual: you report it lost, they charge you $20. If you find it, they give back the $20.

But reader Peter N. topped that one:

“I once somehow managed to stuff one of my own DVD’s into a Netflix return envelope and not realize it until it was in the mail. I was certain that I would never see that disc again.

“I sent an e-mail to customer service anyway. I got a prompt reply saying that they would locate my DVD and send it back to me — and that’s exactly what they did. With no charge at all.

“I continue to be astounded by this every time I think of it.”

Me too, actually. That’s just amazing.

Walt Mossberg sums up the sad state of Windows-based PCs.

But for the vast part of the public whose computers aren’t bought and deployed by corporate computer departments, things have gotten much worse lately. For these consumers and small businesses, the burden of using personal computers has grown dramatically heavier in the past couple of years because of the plague of viruses, spyware and other security problems that now afflict the dominant Windows platform.

To cope with this assault from an international criminal class of virus and spyware writers, hackers and sleazy businesses, average users have had to buy and monitor an arsenal of add-on programs. They have been forced to learn far too much about the workings of their PCs. And too many users have had to take drastic steps, like wiping out their hard disks and starting all over.

So instead of being able to view their computers as tools for productivity, research, communication and entertainment, consumers have been forced to devote rising amounts of time and money just to keeping the machines safe. The PC has, in many cases, gone from being a solution to being, at least in part, a problem.

Read more.

From David Pogue’s weekly Email:

Last March, in this column, I described my fondness for Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the dictation software for Windows that lets me “write” at 120 words per minute. You wear a headset microphone, you speak normally (except that you speak the punctuation), and NatSpeak pumps the words into whatever program is frontmost.

Last week, the company (ScanSoft) unveiled its new version 8. The shocking twist: the best feature is improved accuracy. That’s it. Not bells, not whistles, just doing what it’s supposed to do, only 25 percent better. (The company calls it 99 percent accurate, but that’s hard for me to measure; I’ll generally dictate an entire column without a single mis-transcription. For that document, it’s 100 percent.)

From Ed Bott, news, reviews, tips & tricks about Windows, Office & other stuff…

The folks at Techweb claim that without SP2 or a third-party firewall, your computer will fall to hacker bots in just four minutes …

I’ll say it again: Tens of millions of computers are running SP2 successfully. If you try to install it and you have problems, that means you have an issue with your hardware or your software. In either case, it should be relatively easy to find and fix. That won’t be the case if your machine is compromised by a worm, a virus, or a virulent piece of spyware.

NewMexiKen spent umpteen hours this past weekend with a laptop infected with serious spyware. It was no fun I assure you. Get SP2, use Firefox, or get a Mac.

[Update: It wasn’t my computer that was infected!]

David Pogue of The New York Times has started a blog:

I’m the weekly Circuits columnist who reviews all things techie — computer stuff, personal electronics, cellphones, home theater gear, digital music and video — and I’ll be here each day with my musings on the state of consumer technology.

NewMexiKen is a fan of Pogue’s and has found the blog interesting in just its first few days. Here’s a taste:

As longtime readers know, I’m a big fan of Netflix. It’s mail-order DVD rental service, so brilliant in execution that it ought to win some kind of Genius Business Plan Award. You pay a flat monthly fee of $12 or $18 a month (the price recently dropped, if you can believe that). In exchange, you get to pick out two or three DVD’s from Netflix’s library of 25,000 titles. They arrive by mail; you watch ’em and send ’em back in a prepaid mailer. You can churn through a dozen or more movies a month, or you can keep the same three lying on your TV for six months. Either way, all you pay is that fixed monthly fee, with no return deadlines or late fees.

As a Netflix member, I’d had nothing but good experiences with Netflix. But the other day, I ran into a customer-service issue that demonstrates just how deeply the company’s cleverness runs in its DNA.

Basically, I lost a Netflix DVD on a trip. I grumpily logged onto Netflix.com, not looking forward to trying to find its lost DVD policy and discovering what kind of penalty they were going to whack me with.

It took me about two clicks to find the answer. It told me to choose the lost DVD’s name (you don’t even have to type it in; the Web site knows perfectly well which titles you still have checked out). They charged me $20. That was it.

Well, not quite it. If you ever find the disc, you send it back in to them, and they give your $20 back.

Isn’t that just an awesome, humane, sensible policy? May that particular Netflix gene make its way into other companies’ DNA.

A recent study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration suggests that drivers who use hands-free cellphone adapters are actually no safer behind the wheel than drivers who hold the phone with one hand and steer with the other.

From a report in The New York Times.

Searching for NewMexiKen

Google: 40,700

Yahoo! Search: 12,700

MSN Search: 1,188

Speaking of Google, their Halloween logo was kinda cute.

Firefox 1.0 is available.

Firefox is much, much better than Internet Explorer and NewMexiKen encourages you to make the switch. Be aware however, that some web sites hiccup with Firefox, as developers have had to conform to Microsoft’s idiosyncrasies.

iPod Photo — All your music and all your photos on an iPod.

A delight for the ears. A feast for the eyes. Though it’s no bigger than a pack of playing cards and weighs in at just over 6 ounces, iPod Photo delivers a one-two sensory punch. Letting you carry an entire library of your favorite music — up to 15,000 songs — or enough photos — as many as 25,000 — to fill nearly 200 slide trays or cover nearly 5,000 square feet of wall space.

Connect iPod Photo to a projector or TV and give slideshows — complete with music.

Update: iTunes 4.7 (now available) includes a very useful duplicate track feature.

flickr

shutterfly

picasa

A9

Google Desktop Search

A handy new remote —

Altman’s key-chain fob was a TV-B-Gone, a new universal remote that turns off almost any television. The device, which looks like an automobile remote, has just one button. When activated, it spends over a minute flashing out 209 different codes to turn off televisions, the most popular brands first.

For Altman, founder of Silicon Valley data-storage maker 3ware, the TV-B-Gone is all about freeing people from the attention-sapping hold of omnipresent television programming. The device is also providing hours of entertainment for its inventor.

Source: Wired News

This thing would pay for itself in every noisy restaurant and airport lounge.

MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) — Some Mexican priests, tired of Mass being interrupted by ringing cell phones, are using counterintelligence technology made in Israel to silence the devices.

In four Monterrey churches, cell phone blockers the size of a hand-held radio have been tucked among the paintings of the Madonna and clay statues of saints to bring peace back to Mass.

“There are still many people who don’t understand that being at Mass is sharing a moment with God,” said Juan Jose Martinez, a priest and spokesman for the Monterrey Archdiocese. “Sadly, we had no other choice but to use these little gadgets.”

Another wonderful program from Google — Picasa. Go get it and get your digital photos organized!

Google now has a desktop search capability that allows you to search your own computer including email messages in Outlook or Outlook Express, web pages and Word, PowerPoint and Excel. It’s a small download and you need Windows XP or 2000.

So far it works wonderfully, and amazingly fast.

France’s industry minister has approved a decision to let cinemas, concert halls and theaters install cell phone jammers — on condition that emergency calls can still get through, officials said Monday. Jean Labbe, president of the National Federation of French Cinemas, said the measure was a response to “a long-standing request” from cinemas of all sizes. Industry Minister Patrick Devedjian gave the go-ahead Friday, backing a decision by the Telecommunications Regulation Authority to allow jammers, his ministry said in a statement.

Associated Press via Wired News

Once again NewMexiKen encourages you to consider Mozilla Firefox as your browser. As the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg puts it:

I suggest dumping Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Web browser, which has a history of security breaches. I recommend instead Mozilla Firefox, which is free at www.mozilla.org. It’s not only more secure but also more modern and advanced, with tabbed browsing, which allows multiple pages to be open on one screen, and a better pop-up ad blocker than the belated one Microsoft recently added to IE.

The newest release of Firefox also allows you to create RSS bookmarks (Live Bookmarks)!

A spacecraft that looks just like something out of Flash Gordon. Can Dale Arden and Emperor Ming be real?

Completing the first leg of a quest for a $10 million prize, a test pilot took a privately financed plane past the cusp of space on Wednesday morning in a flight that had equal measures of white-knuckle moments and triumph.

The rocket ship left the ground at 7:10 a.m. and reached a height unofficially reported at 337,500 feet (63.9 miles), well above its 328,000-foot goal set by the X Prize. That goal altitude, 100 kilometers above the Earth, is an arbitrary but widely accepted definition for the border of space. By 8:34, the squid-shaped craft had glided safely back to the runway.

But the best news of all, the pilot, Michael W. Melvill, is 63-years-old.

NewMexiKen doesn’t know what machine does but I want one.

Click to enlarge.

Link via Kottke.

NewMexiKen hates going to the grocery store. No particular reason; just hate it. The New York Times has an article about online grocery shopping today and the article led me to this list of Home Delivered Grocers and Food Providers.

NewMexiKen liked this exchange in the Times article —

A customer service representative named Jeff asked me what kind of a computer I was using.

“A Mac,” I said.

“That’s your problem,” he said. “We have some compatibility problems with a Mac.”

“Actually, it’s your problem,” I said. “I’m the one who’s trying to give you $205, remember?”

Voyager 2, the first of two Voyager spacecraft (Voyager 2 was launched before Voyager 1 — go figure), was sent to explore the planets of our solar system on this date in 1977.

NewMexiKen wrote about The Golden Record on board each spacecraft some months ago. The record is “a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth” so that extra-terrestials might learn about life on our planet. Among the music is Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, various native music and Chuck Berry performing “Johnny B. Goode.”

If we ever hear from extra-terrestials, I imagine their message to us will be, “Send more Chuck Berry.”

Walt Mossberg takes a look at SP2, the Windows free upgrade —

I’ve been testing SP2 on two Windows computers, and it seems to work fine. I recommend installing it, if only because of the under-the-hood security improvements Microsoft claims it contains.

But SP2 falls way short of what Microsoft could have done to fix the miserable state of security in Windows. While the update will make it harder for malicious software to enter your PC, SP2 doesn’t detect or remove viruses or spyware or spam.

What’s more, some of the key features of SP2 are inferior to those in third-party security software. In fact, even after you install SP2, you will still have to use add-on security programs, if you want to be reasonably safe.

He concludes: “Overall, SP2 is worth installing and will definitely improve Windows security. But it’s limited. You’ll still need to look beyond Microsoft to really secure your Windows PC.”

From Wired News —

Effective with this sentence, Wired News will no longer capitalize the “I” in internet.

At the same time, Web becomes web and Net becomes net.

Why? The simple answer is because there is no earthly reason to capitalize any of these words. Actually, there never was.

True believers are fond of capitalizing words, whether they be marketers or political junkies or, in this case, techies. If It’s Capitalized, It Must Be Important. In German, where all nouns are capitalized, it makes sense. It makes no sense in English. So until we become Die Wired Nachrichten, we’ll just follow customary English-language usage. (Web will continue to be capitalized when part of the more official entity, World Wide Web.)

Works for NewMexiKen.

Jill, official oldest daughter of NewMexiKen, reports:

Our computer died on Wednesday. Well, maybe it didn’t die. But it is seriously ill.

Anyway, I have books due to my evil editor, so I’ve been in a panic.

Byron set up his office laptop for me last night. He hooked it all up and wrote me a long description of how to log in and use it.

I came down this morning and couldn’t get it to work, no matter what I did.

I would turn it on, but I couldn’t get it to do anything once I had it on. I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete and nothing happened. I couldn’t even get the cursor to move, using the mouse.

I called Byron in a panic. “The laptop is freezing up, just like our regular computer was! Maybe the problem is with the line, not the computer.” He told me that was ridiculous, and walked me through two restarts, eventually wondering aloud if perhaps it was a ghost doing this.

Which is when I realized the problem. I was typing and using the mouse for our regular computer, not the laptop.