The PC Informant

Apple patches iTunes with new version

Vic Laurie — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:46:37 +0000

I know a lot of people who have Apple iTunes installed on their Windows computer. If you have iTunes, upgrade to the new version 10, which fixes a number of security problems. Download is here.

Google services you don’t know about

Vic Laurie — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:49:32 +0000

One of the things I used to complain about regarding Yahoo was that it had a lot of very useful features that were very hard to find or were so obscure you never knew they existed. I have had a Yahoo account for years and I still can’t find many of the Yahoo services.

It looks like Google is falling into this same trap of not letting you know all the features that it has or at least not making them obvious enough. And, of course, Google has a habit of changing settings or dropping features.

We get a little help from MakeUseOf, where there is a post, 10 Google Services That Don’t Get the Limelight They Deserve.

A PC in your car

Vic Laurie — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:29:27 +0000

Guess where computer screens are showing up more and more? In the car, that American home away from home. Modern cars have been full of computer chips for a while now but the circuits were hidden away in the operating innards. Now, computer screens are gradually making their way where you can see them. And so far, it’s a variant of Microsoft Windows that’s running things. Mike Elgan reports:

The right foundation for an in-dash entertainment system is a cell phone operating system. Guess which cell phone platform dominates automobiles? Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, which evolved from the venerable Windows CE operating system.

Microsoft Auto is Microsoft’s car dashboard operating system. It’s a variant of embedded CE and the basis for Ford Sync, the entertainment and navigation system in 12 Ford vehicles.

Elgan says Apple should get into the car game because it is a natural fit for an iTunes type of system:

Outside of our cars, most of our audio content, navigational aids, mobile video content and apps come to us through Apple iTunes. We’ve invested small fortunes in our music collections, apps and other content. What we really need is to bring iTunes into our cars. Especially when iTunes is available as a cloud service.

The “mummy” network

Vic Laurie — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:14:40 +0000

In Britain, mothers (known as “mums”) have become a powerful presence on the Internet. BBC reports the story:

They come in their thousands, and command dedicated followings who trust in their every word.

They are the so-called mummy bloggers.

Real mothers, blogging about the minutiae of family life to offer a no-holds-barred account of life with children.

For the mums, they provide a discussion and support network, but for advertisers they are the holy grail: popular, trusted – and worth paying for.

Car hacking the next frontier for malware?

Vic Laurie — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:37:12 +0000

As cars get increasingly computerized and connected to the Internet, opportunities for the ever vigilant malware writers open up. CNET reports on the possibilities of car hacking:

That nice, new computerized car you just bought could be hackable.

Of course, your car is probably not a high-priority target for most malicious hackers. But security experts tell CNET that car hacking is starting to move from the realm of the theoretical to reality, thanks to new wireless technologies and evermore dependence on computers to make cars safer, more energy efficient, and modern.

“Now there are computerized systems and they have control over critical components of cars like gas, brakes, etc.,” said Adriel Desautels, chief technology officer and president of NetraGard, which does vulnerability assessments and penetration testing on all kinds of systems. “There is a premature reliance on technology.”

Why you have to click “Start” when you want to stop

Vic Laurie — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:15:11 +0000

The shutdown menu in Windows has been reached from the Start menu since Windows 95. This has given rise to many jokes about having to start when you wanted to stop. The actual form of the Start button or orb and the shutdown menu have evolved from Windows 95 through Windows 7. Long-time Microsoft engineer and well-known blogger Raymond Chen gives some history of the shutdown function at TechNet Magazine and explains why shutdown is on the Start menu.

Gmail gets new feature

Vic Laurie — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 09:53:50 +0000

If you use Google’s Gmail, you will be getting a new feature called priority inbox. This feature will filter your mail into three categories: “Important and unread,” “Starred,” and “Everything else.” Google explains:

Messages are automatically categorized as they arrive in your inbox. Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, including the people you email most and which messages you open and reply to (these are likely more important than the ones you skip over). And as you use Gmail, it will get better.

The blogosphere is full of comment, pro and con. Not everybody thinks Google can distinguish what is important and what isn’t. Others see the feature as a great timesaver.

Packing more memory into computer chips

Vic Laurie — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:28:21 +0000

Technology stories continue to hit the front page of the New York Times. Today, the story is about a new way to get more memory into the same size chip:

Scientists at Rice University and Hewlett-Packard are reporting this week that they can overcome a fundamental barrier to the continued rapid miniaturization of computer memory that has been the basis for the consumer electronics revolution

In recent years the limits of physics and finance faced by chip makers had loomed so large that experts feared a slowdown in the pace of miniaturization that would act like a brake on the ability to pack ever more power into ever smaller devices like laptops, smartphones and digital cameras.

But the new announcements, along with competing technologies being pursued by companies like IBM and Intel, offer hope that the brake will not be applied any time soon.

About PDF readers

Vic Laurie — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:16:43 +0000

PDF files are a common format on the Internet so a PDF reader of some kind is needed on most computers. Adobe invented the format but, unfortunately, the original PDF reader from Adobe has become a bloated security problem. Alternative PDF readers have been the subject of a number of posts on this blog and I recommend the nice summary of various free readers at Gizmo’s Freeware.

CDs and DVDs may deteriorate faster than you think

Vic Laurie — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:12:11 +0000

Your important data and multimedia stored on optical disks may not be as safe as you would like. The dyes used in the recording medium may be less stable than is often assumed. BBC reports on a French study:

Preserving precious data, such as pictures and home videos, on CDs and DVDs could do more damage than good in the end.

That’s what the French National Centre for Scientific Research has found out after testing the longevity of the portable media.

“We were surprised to see that the lifetime of discs, some of which were designed to last for centuries, actually rarely lasted longer than five to 10 years,” said physicist Franck Laloe.

So keep your archives on a hard drive (or several) and make fresh copies of any optical disks every few years.