Nov 16, 2010 | General, networking, News
I know, if you were just born then this is already old news about Facebook being used for everything except actually living your life. But quit running from the truth and acting like you are too good for such a thing as being social on a network. The truth is that Facebook is instantaneous information in your face internet intensity. The internet is supposed to be all of that allowing people across the globe to communicate with each other easily with fast speeds.
Email has been the first choice for communication, mainly in business, replacing the telephone. This AirTrans commercial is a funny one explaining this trend.
But there is a figure on the horizon, and it is in the shape of an ?F?: yes, Facebook is coming out with another idea to make messaging better. Not that it isn?t better already, I mean we have come along way from lighting signal fires and dialing a rotary phone, but how much more can we communicate better, faster, easier?
Well, let?s email Facebook and see what they have to say.
I haven?t heard back from them, but I got an instant response on Facebook, and this reveals the appeal for Facebook to combine email with instant messaging: contact. Everywhere you go online or anywhere that is related to sharing business, videos, music, ideas, advertising, you see a link to put it on Facebook. It is a connection that goes where email cannot go.
So when CEO Mark Zuckerburg remarked about comments concerning the revamp of the social messaging system Facebook and how it will be the ?Gmail killer?, he said ?It?s not email.?
What is it? The new Facebook will allow you to get email on Facebook. Wow, after all the virus and hack breakdowns that Facebook has had, I am surprised they are tempting such a thing. We will probably be hearing about people being hacked and having to call Geek Choice to clean up all the viruses on your computer, but until then if you live life on Facebook then this new edition will fit the bill perfect.
Email and instant messaging are becoming the normal ways to communicate, talking is awkward, email is less personal and you can put your thoughts down easier to communicate better.
By combining the two, the new Facebook will grab multiple types of communication such as email and turn it into a more real-time messaging service. Say you use Gmail to get messages from clients and since you run your business on getting updates from customers instantly online; receiving fast updates beats out regular email since you will get all you need on Facebook.
To wrap this up, Facebook is just looking to pioneer out from the boundaries of their target market, almost like Google has been doing for the past couple years. They are looking at voice-chat and new ways to communicate.
Talking face-to-face is just boring, it is so much more fun writing it down and adding a smiley face!
Nov 6, 2010 | Computer technology, General, News
Ever wonder what people are talking about when they are explaining the features of their new computer? Or are you in doubt on whether or not to upgrade your lap or desktop to a better network called “4G”?
There is a lot of misunderstanding when it comes to these numbers and letters.
3G stands for Third Generation, its real name is International Mobile Telecommunications-2000, and it is what you see today in cell phones and other mobile devices. The 3G network allows you to access television, have a video chat, and the web all on your cell phone. Remember when cell phones just had a green and a red button, call and end? Not anymore. With 3G phones are hand-held computers that do everything. Who needs just a phone in today’s world?
The Nokia phones were one of the first to use the 3G network. The Koreans came out with the first networks, and since then it has evolved into a standard for broadband connections with better signals all over the world. Today the race is on to reach that magical number: 4.
You may have seen on T.V. the advertisement from T-Mobile saying that they have the 4G. This is what you might call bending that little thing we call truth. It is not 4G, just faster version of 3G, the real 4G is yet to be reached. The speed is measured in Mbit/s, or megabits per second, and companies are getting close to 4G standards but the closest is only 3.9G.
So what do customers do with all this running around trying to find the fastest “G”? Wait and see, sooner or later phones like Sprints new HTC EVO 4G will be the basic phone and we will be surrounded by networks speeding in 20 Mbit/s(that is fast!)
The only catch with getting these 4G phones now is this: there is no 4G network! Companies like Sprint and T-Mobile are trying to get a “one-up” on all their competition by boasting of the first 4G phone. Don’t buy into that crap, because even if it says 4G on it and it goes fast, the so-called 4G will revert back to 3G in most areas because it is not covered there.
That means that upgrading to 4G is really wasting your money. Stay with your phone that has 3G and do not worry about all the hubbub concerning 4G with the fastest broadband signal. Eventually yes, you will want to make the upgrade to 4G, but what is the point of having 4G when it does not really work?
You will know when the real 4G hits the market. It operates in Giga-bit speeds(1 Billion) so it is super fast. That is the one thing that makes the difference: speed, and companies like WiMax and LTE(Long-Term Evolution) have come close to reaching the 1 Gig mark, but not quite. 4G will have seamless mobility in file-transfers and internet access without interruption, like when one broadband signal moves to another area of coverage, and offers more in terms of gaming and streaming multimedia.
Nov 5, 2010 | Computer technology, email, General, News
If you have not already made the jump to Office 2010, then you are still sitting on the lily pad, with all the other frogs deciding when to jump into something better.
The new edition of Office came out last June, changing the way people use the computer and how they conduct their business through it, and now is standard in new PC’s. Microsoft Office is really just an easier way to handle multiple operations at once when the operating system normally could not perform these tasks. For businessmen and professionals, Office has become the standard for email, meetings, and productivity.
Office provides Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access, InfoPath, Groove, and Publisher. That is a ton of operation for one program to handle, and Office fits them all together for you to use them with ease. So if you have the old version of Office, why not turn your ?ease? into ?easier??
New Features
One new add on to Microsoft Office is PowerPoint LiveWeb, which is perfect for anyone who uses PowerPoint. Who does not love this program? Students especially have benefited from using this program greatly because it offers such a detailed and neat presentation. No more posters or weird looking projects that you have to spend hours on making. With this new feature, you can add web pages right to the slide making your presentation perfect. The OLD PowerPoint is so hard to configure because you have to add the code to the page.
To top it all off, a new feature called Producer takes the cake on ease. It lives up to its name, it produces results allowing the user to import video, photographs, and audio right into your presentation. If you are involved in e-Learning, a conference, office communications, and public speaking, Producer lets you do what you want to do: the best!
Office 2010 gets into the social network scene with Outlook Social Connector. With this feature you can see what your friends and business associates are doing instantly through Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Window’s Live Messenger. Using this feature allows people to follow each others progress and status when at work, school, or home.
Offisync is more than a combination between Office and synchronization, it is a revolutionary change in the way people share, edit, and communicate documents. If you use Google Docs, another multi-usage platform that combines a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation along with storage, then Offisync is the right stuff. With this feature you now have access to your Google Docs within Office. This makes it easier because you are free from being confined to the Google Apps. It is the key you have been looking for to unlock the door to accessibility.
For all of you that travel across the world seeking business and/or pleasure, Office has combined with Bing to create: Bing Travel Planner for Outlook. Especially if you have trouble to begin with trying to plan a trip or multiple trips over the year, Bing Travel Planner helps you schedule flights and also remember them.
Perhaps one of the most useful tools that Microsoft has added to its new edition of Office, is Microsoft Mathematics Add-In for Word. You can download this free of charge at the Microsoft website. What this allows you math illiterate people like myself to do, or math geniuses like you to accomplish, is graphing 2D or 3D, solving equations in arithmetic and algebra, and even completing statistical functions. How awesome is that? This is something that has been missing in computers, an application that is easy to use and effective in helping the student or businessman who has to deal with numbers daily, finish the work they started.
So for all you Microsoft Office Addicts out there who are off the wagon and need a fix? Office 2010 gives you all that need to satisfy that craving for more.
Nov 3, 2010 | General, internet
How many times have you heard people say, when they are trying to find out some information on a question they themselves cannot answer, “I’ll just ‘Google’ it!”? They type the words in the search box, and like magic 100,000,000 results come up for asking the ‘meaning of life’. Google is actually in the dictionary as verb!
Behind Google Lines
Who is behind this giant? When did it become the number one provider for information globally? What is a search engine and what does Google do to stay on top of the market?Just how did this giant of an engine that grabs so many results, 99% of the results being random non-related content, come to be? These are questions I will answer for you.
At the head of Google, Inc. are two men named Larry Page and Sergey Brin. In 1996 these two graduate students who attended Stanford University were working on finding out how many “backlinks”, the number of web pages that link to a certain site, were out there in the world wide web and how to pull them all together.
Originally, the name 0f the project was called “Backrub”, a clever one talking about how it rubbed the backlinks of the internet. This web-crawler traveled across the internet picking up all the sites that had a connection to a certain web-page, instead of the conventional method of search engines at the time, which only counted how many times the search term appeared on a page. The super-information-highway was on it’s way to being paved.
The name ‘Google’ comes from the misspelled ‘googol’, a name for the number one followed by one hundred zero’s. This was a powerful name to choose for a search engine that boasts it can find that many search results. What is interesting today is that the googol signifies more than just search results.
The “Google Guys” have come a long way from the days when they had to put together 10 four Gigabyte hard drives in a case built out of Lego’s, hence the colors of Google, they are advancing rapidly into every territory you can think of.
After maneuvering through financial difficulties, Google was able to get into a unique online auction and sell their shares at a high price, instantly making many Google employees millionaires. They did not stop there, Google grew into an enormous beast of a company buying out YouTube and creating service such as Google Earth and Google Voice. At the rate that this company is going, there will soon be a Google Life!
Google is top-secret too, they are not kissing and telling. That is perhaps why they stay on top and always ahead of the market in terms of fresh, innovative ideas. They are even turning green: recently this year Google Energy was created, after an investment was made in a North Dakota wind farm to harvest mega-watts. What else will Google do?
In basic terms, Google connects the world to the internet, and allows people to get the most of what they are searching for. The real story of Google is still a mystery, since they won’t even tell how many servers they have, so you will just have to guess that this company will probably take over the world!
Oct 29, 2010 | Computer technology, Entertainment, General, News
By now you are probably starting to see people carrying these big pieces of plastic that have a shining light coming out of it, transfixing the owner into a world you wish you could enter. That piece of plastic is probably called an iPad, released last April as a new tool to access email, internet, play games, read books and periodicals, as well as listen to music. But now there is an increasing trend that has started to pick up speed as companies try to catch up to Apple once again.
Perhaps the most impressive alternative as well as the most unknown, is the Toshiba Libretto which sold out 48 hours after it was put on the market. People who were lucky enough got their hands on a Libretto from Amazon for a price of $1,100. The cool and innovative feature of the Libretto is in its Dual Screens, a multi-touch screen which enables you to use an entirely virtual keyboard on one screen while working on the other. You can still find them available on Conics.com.
Blackberry is trying to put its stamp on the tablet industry by coming out with the Playbook. Not expected to be released until early 2011, the Playbook offers front and backwards facing HD camera’s, allowing you to view images simultaneously. With 1 GB of RAM and 1 GHZ of dual core CPU, the Blackberry could very well take over the tablet market.
Another contender is called the Fusion Garage JooJoo. With a name like that what can go wrong? It is a custom built OS that is a low-costing tablet that will enable you to browse the web but also participate in video calls and multi-tasking.
The world of tablets is growing.
Ever since Apple came out with the iPad, the market has been on fire with these portable personal computers, and I have a feeling that we will be seeing a lot more of these things walking around. Just like how the iPod came out and destroyed any other portable music device, starting a trend of mp3 players that tried to beat out the trend-setter Apple, the iPad will soon be the normal device attached to people as they move through life replacing laptops and other portable devices.
Should you sign up for this trend and become another user of the tablet? It depends on how cool you want to be, and what you want to get done. First, everyone will take a second look at you, not at your new shoes or nice hair cut, but at the new device that they want for themselves. Second, having a tablet which is smaller than a laptop yet powerful enough to make up for the lack of size, is important. All the things that you can do on a little tiny phone with all those little apps you can do on a tablet, as well as on some make video calls. This is perfect if you are a traveling business man who always needs to be in a conference or a consultant who in order to be ahead of his competitors needs fast and easy ways to access information.
The tablet my friends, is here to stay.
Oct 27, 2010 | Computer technology, General, Software
If you have a PC, then you have a problem. It comes with the package when you first open up the box and plug in your computer. You cannot escape it, this inevitable attack on your privacy is something we all have to live with, but is there protection out there that will totally 100% stop thieves and hackers from messing with our computer?
Opinions vary on this issue, some think the idea preposterous and others are more sure of an anti-virus security that is able to protect the computer.
It all depends on what kind of security software you are using. Beware: just because a software like Norton or McAfee comes built-in and ready to go on a new computer does NOT mean that it is a good choice in protection. There have been a lot of complaint recently about this conundrum of having to deal with all these programs that are already installed on the computer, and cannot be removed. So what do can you do to find the right software?
Research. Read blogs like this one. Educate yourself, knowledge of which security programs work and which suck ultimately comes down to experience. In the case of internet and computer security, hearing about other people’s experiences with certain anti-virus software and how they either saved them or failed them is important information to people like you and me who might be clueless.
Let’s look at the record.
Firewall does not always protect your internet from being invaded by hackers, especially Windows firewall. In the past this has not worked, so check the record, for the future do not put your PC at risk by settling on a crappy firewall service. Firewall comes from the original lack of internet security back in the 80’s when the Morris Worm spread its way to thousands of computers shutting them down because there was unlimited access.
Firewall was introduced to restrict access. It acts as a traffic check, looking at all the communication coming into the computer and seeing if it matches with its own protocol. Web browsing, remote printing, email transmission, and file transfer are common forms of traffic that are stopped at the firewall. If it does not recognize the packet of information in the files coming in, it will ask you for permission to let it into your system.
For example: you just installed a business application that needs access to the internet in order to get updates. In order for this program to work properly, you need to give it the okay to access the internet, a box appears with yes or no. Firewall is very important in protecting your computer against attacks.
Best Anti-Virus Software
If you are cheap like me, then you are looking for the best anti-virus software that has the magical four lettered word attached to it: FREE. For this I choose Avira AntiVir Personal, where a lot of people chose this option based on its virus scan engine called “Luke Filewalker”. Very clever, they deserve a round of applause for that one! Unfortunately, as is the case with free programs, it lacks what you could get with the premium package. There is no email protection, parental controls, anti-spam, or firewall with the free program.
I recommend downloading Comodo’s Free Firewall to bolster the defenses along with Avira to make sure your computer is completely safe. To answer the debate about perfect protection? The answer lies in what steps you are willing to take against attackers by paying money for software or finding security programs that are free and can do what you need them to do so you can go along your way without worries.
