Steve's Geek Speak

How digital media stores have changed our behaviour

Steve — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 10:00:35 +0000

I still buy lots of physical media. However, my collection of games bought off Steam currently is large enough that the backups/installers for the games I have actually taken time to download fill an entire 2 terabyte drive. There are games associated with my Steam account that I haven't ever downloaded yet. I still have countless boxed editions of games going back to the early 1990s, and for rare occasions I still buy boxed games when I think the game warrants it. Nearly always the Collectors Edition. But I also have the Steam versions of many boxed games I have purchased. So some games I have paid for several times. Why?

Why IE9, Windows Phone 7 and Windows can’t replace my Chrome, Android, Google Apps combination

Steve — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 08:01:52 +0000

I have a very serious admission to make. I used IE9 today for the first time in ... well ... I don't think I've ever opened it before and actually looked at it. I might throw the URL to google chrome into the run box, start the download and then close the browser. But I don't think I've ever actually paid it attention before. I looked at the interface of IE9 for the first time today, had a play with using the browser. Purely on aesthetic alone I deem it to be.....

New Facebook policy gives your data away to apps

Steve — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 06:21:30 +0000

Facebook is about to update the privacy policy (yet again) and this one has a couple of doozeys. For starters it will no longer be called a Privacy Policy. It is now a “Data Use Policy.” That alone demonstrates the direction they’re heading. For example, it has new permissions in it such as : Read…

CyanogenMod 7.2 RC1 available

Steve — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 02:39:27 +0000

CyanogenMod 7.2 RC1 is out. This is the latest (and presumably last) major Gingerbread release. It now supports 70 devices and includes features back ported from CyanogenMod 9 (ICS.)

Privacy On the Web

Steve — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 03:59:30 +0000

Remember, anything you post on a website belonging to someone other than you becomes their property. Read the terms of service and the privacy policy for the sites you use to see just how much permission you have given them to do as they please with your information. If you are not comfortable with that, then don't post it to those sites.

How social networking use is evolving

Steve — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 02:57:24 +0000

Sixty-seven percent of American women and 58 percent of men who maintain social media profiles delete people from their network, according to Pew’s findings, published Thursday in a report titled “Privacy management on social media sites.”

WinRT is coming. That’s not a bad thing.

Steve — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 09:51:13 +0000

Personally I'm kind of looking forward to WinRT and Windows 8. I doubt I'll ever buy Windows 8 unless it comes bundled on some future computer I buy instead of build. (Likely a laptop.) But consider that its the first real step to finally unifying the various Windows platform's APIs into a single code base. Eventually, the same software you run on your desktop will run on your laptop, netbook, ultrabook, tablet and cellphone.

Pocket – Secure data wallet for your phone

Steve — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 02:07:48 +0000

Pocket is brilliant. It is simple. You enter your secure data into groups and they're encrypted and stored away. When you want to log in to a website, instead of extra plugins or extensions, you just click a button to copy the login password to the clipboard. Then you open your web page and sign in, pasting the password from the clipboard.

How to deal with Bandwidth Bandits

Steve — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 08:13:46 +0000

So I was going through my Apache logs for the first time in a very long time. Its just not been a high priority for me. But what I did notice is that two of my blogs, especially stevesgeekspeak.com, have had their bandwidth stolen quite significantly by a few Russian forum websites hotlinking to images on them. Here's a bit of a story and tutorial about how I dealt with the issue using mod_rewrite rules in my .htaccess files.

Google Plus Adds Games, Gives Away Your Private Info

Steve — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 03:10:50 +0000

Google Plus has now got Games support. Great. Except that one of the permissions games can ask for (and often get) is for a list of all the people you interact with across all Google sites, apps and web properties. Not just those limited to solely on Google Plus. This bothers me a HUGE amount.