In a nutshell, it is instant search results. As you type into the seach box, it will begin pre-populating search results. It will also predict (as close as it can) what you may be trying to search for and give it to you.

A few bullet points:

• It is rolling out starting today in the U.S. It will be rolling out to other countries over the coming weeks.
• It only works if you’re logged into your Google account.
• There is an option right next to the search box to turn it off if you think it is annoying.
• It only works on the web at this point. Having it work from browser-started searches is in the making. “in the next few months”, they say. Mobile browsers will be supported soon, too.
• You’re going to need a modern browser to make it work. Firefox, Chrome, IE and Safari.
• They’ve built in censors so that Instant doesn’t pop up questionable stuff without consent. You’ll have to hit the Enter key to get that, like usual.

The timing of this announcement is rather ironic for me. Just days ago, Rich and I were having a private chat about this. My prediction at the time was that this wouldn’t see the light of day for some time. I thought that people would find it annoying and I thought the extra load on Google’s systems would be too much. At the least, I told Rich it wouldn’t come out without an option to turn it off. At least I was right about that one.

In terms of load issues, Google actually addressed this in their announcement. They found a lot of ways to minimize the load and make it doable on a widespread basis.

My Take On Google Instant

I checked it out. It is handy, I must say.

In most day-to-say searches, I think it doesn’t add a whole lot to the experience. If you know what you’re searching for, then you’ll end up just typing it. Where Instant comes in handy is when you’re trying to find something that you can’t put into words on your own. It does a pretty handy job at it, too.

For example, start typing something into the box. The results will begin coming. If you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, you can use the arrow keys to go up and down in the Suggested searches. As you do it, the search results refresh.

In terms of people freaking out that this will change things like search engine optimization, it won’t. It only impacts the speed of results, but the rankings and the way that works remain the same.

All in all, I think Instant is a worthy addition – especially since they’ve provided an easy way to turn it off for people who don’t prefer it. Google claims it will save about 350 million user hours per year. The number is unprovable, really, but hey – you never know.

Will this work out for Google? The jury is out. It sounds like they put some real testing into it. Since search is their #1 bread-winner, they wouldn’t mess with it just for the sake of giving it a try (think Google Wave). You would think they’d be a lot more careful about it. The feedback I’ve seen on Twitter as the announcement unfolded was almost uniformly positive.

Basically, it comes down to this…

Google did it. I think a lot of people will dig it. But, a site as popular as google.com can’t change something without pissing people off. The typical haters who like to bash anything new will frown upon it, but that’s about as predictive as gravity. In the end, they can just turn it off. Besides, you need to be logged into a Google account to see it anyway. In the end, this will stay (at least I think so). The one thing that may possibly happen is to make it default to NO instead of YES on whether to use instant results. We shall see.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Google Instant – Google Gets Psychic

These scams which were determined based on the most frequently identified by PandaLabs include:

• Nigerian Scam (of course)
• Lotteries
• The Girlfriend Ploy
• Job Offers
• Facebook / Hotmail
• Compensation
• The Mistake

Just keep in mind, if they didn’t work scammers wouldn’t use them. Since most scams are simply “retreads” of what has worked in the past with a modern twist, knowing the red flags are a good start to avoid being a victim.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

The Top Web Scams Of The Past Decade

A technology you’ve heard about but probably have never seen in practical application is the ability to get water straight from the air.

Are you an ultra-greenie and want some super-awesome water technology? The EcoloBlue 28 Atmospheric Water Generator does in fact make water out of air. It claims to make up to 28 liters (7.4 gallons) per day and can deliver the water hot or cold.

If you want one, it costs $1,000 – but even if you have the money, be sure to read the manual on how it works. To quote from the manual:

The Atmospheric Water Generator is a humidity and temperature-driven machine. This means the machine’s ability to generate water depends entirely on the level of humidity and atmospheric temperature. To achieve optimum performance, the indicated relative humidity should be 50% or more. In regions with lower humidity levels, the machine will produce water at a slower rate and with less volume than that of a higher humidity environment. In a residential environment, higher levels of humidity tend to be found in kitchen areas, near bathrooms used for bathing, near open windows (in warmer weather), or in more spacious rooms.

The manual goes on to state how well the unit would work in an air-conditioned room and lists other features and general operation.

As with any water machine, this thing has filters. Setup does require the installation of one, which means that filter will have to be replaced periodically. It also means the machine has to be cleaned periodically as well.

Fortunately the EcoloBlue does have the ability to deliver tap water, so if you can’t wait for the thing to produce water for you, it’s easy enough to run your existing tap through the filtration system.

EcoloBlue 28 is a very futuristic machine. The price point is high, but it is a high-tech thing you’re getting.

As far as “do you get what you pay for”, here’s an example:

A standard-sized bottle of Zephyrhills water is one-half liter. Were you to buy this individually at a convenience store, it’s about $1.25 per bottle. Drink two of these a day and it’s $2.50. Over the course of one year that’s a tick over $900 spent on drinking water. If you drink a lot of bottled water daily, then yes the EcoloBlue 28 will pay for itself in a year’s time – but only if you bought the Zephyrhills water at full retail convenience store price.

The EcoloBlue 28 is what I consider to be one of the ultimate green things you can own – especially considering it even has a solar-powered option – but the hit on the wallet is a tad too much for me.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

EcoloBlue Proves Green Is Still Expensive

A few examples:

Netbooks were always disposable because they were introduced with a low price point and are even marketed as “companion” computers, which translates to “this is something cheap enough to throw away and not care about it”.

The ease of transition from one netbook to another is fairly simple because they all share similar hardware and limitations. For most people it’s as simple as installing your apps from a single USB stick and acquiring all your data from the cloud/Internet.

Personal Navigation Devices, a.k.a. PNDs (you know them as GPS devices) are now disposable because the price point has fallen below $100 for a Garmin PND. There are also other brands that go well below that mark. You couldn’t say the PND was disposable two years ago, but now you can because of the price point.

The only thing worth transferring from one PND to the next are your waypoints, a.k.a. favorites. This is easily accomplished (at least with Garmin PNDs) using Nuvi Editor. The time it takes to do this is less than 5 minutes, so ease-of-transition from one Garmin to the next isn’t an issue.

“Plain” cell phones are disposable because the only thing you care about on them is the contact list. Wireless phone stores such as a Verizon Wireless store will transfer all your contacts from one phone to the next free of charge whenever you get a new phone. There are also many utilities online to transfer contacts via USB, and also cloud-based contact lists like Plaxo.

Cell phones go all over the place as far as price is concerned, but they are cheap. As long as you can move the contacts from one handset to the next, that’s all that really matters.

Enter the smartphone

Smartphones are different because they’re more computer than actual phone. Apps can be installed, with each app having its own set of preferences. There are many options for cloud-based storage and sync for just about everything – including the contacts.

Concerning price point, the smartphone is at a disposable level because it’s busted the $100 mark. A Droid-based phone can be purchased at Wal-Mart for $99 using VZW service.

But is the smartphone disposable at this point?

No.

The only thing that makes a smartphone non-disposable has nothing to do with the phone and everything to do with the carrier. While the phones themselves are very reasonably priced considering all they can do, the carrier fees and lock-ins are where you’re forced to stay with a particular smartphone for at least one year.

Now it’s true you could buy an unlocked smartphone so you can ditch a carrier at any time, but you will pay dearly for one – and it’s unlikely you’ll ever get the money back you put into it.

What about prepaid smartphones?

This option is available but currently has limitations that turn some people off.

MetroPCS for example has a no-contract smartphone plan – but you have to use their Blackberry. Some people don’t like Blackberry phones at all.

With Virgin Mobile, same deal – Blackberry.

Verizon tries you bash you over the head with the Blackberry as well with prepaid smartphone options, but thankfully there are several Droid options as well.

T-Mobile to the best of my knowledge has “FlexPay” options for all their smartphone offerings.

In the US, Verizon and T-Mobile have the best options for prepaid smartphone use. Per-month prices are reasonable in the no-contract arena and you have the most choice of which smartphone you want.

At the end of it all however, this does not make a smartphone disposable because you’re still subject to carrier limitations.

What do you think? Is the smartphone disposable? I don’t think it is, but I could be wrong.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Are Smartphones Disposable?

Laptop = infested with spyware. Held hostage by this thing such that everything I tried to run was intercepted.

NOTE: If a website triggers an ad about an infection on your computer, IT IS A FAKE. It is an ad which they design to look like a Windows application, but it isn’t. Do not click on it. Ever.

So, I was faced with fixing this laptop. It was an HP DV6000. It was running Windows Vista (I know, I know) and now it was completed screwed up (beyond the “screwiness” that comes with Vista normally). This computer was already junked through 3 years of use with little to no maintenance. My wife never defrags or does much of anything. Lots of “gunk” on this laptop.

So, I decided to start over. Here’s what I did:

1. Boot the laptop into safe mode and back up all the data. Now, if you don’t have anything wrong with the computer, safe mode isn’t necessary. But, this laptop was pretty messed up with spyware, so I got around that by booting into safe mode. I then plugged an external hard drive into the USB port and copied all of my wife’s files to it. To boot into safe mode, just reboot the machine and start smacking the F8 button over and over again. Eventually, it’ll give you a menu with the option to boot into safe mode.
2. Reinstall Windows. This laptop, like many of them on the market today, puts the backup of Windows onto a recovery partition. So, there was a “D” drive on this laptop which held the raw install files to reinstall Windows. To trigger the recovery mode, I again rebooted the laptop and, this time, started smacking the F11 button over and over again until it entered recovery mode. Go through the little wizard and put the machine on its merry way formatting “C” and reinstalling Windows.
   NOTE: If your computer came with a recovery CD (or DVD), then you’ll just boot your computer with that disc in the drive.
3. Update Windows. So, I go into the newly installed Windows Vista. At this point, the laptop literally looks like I just bought it – 3 years ago. Microsoft has issued a lot of fixes and updates to Vista to try to make it suck less. So, first thing to do is run Windows Update and install everything. It’ll take some time, but you’ve gotta do it.
4. Decrapify. New Windows computers often come loaded with crap. Trial versions of Office, stupid bookmarks all over the desktop, AOL software – you name it. Just crap, crap, crap. So, go grab a copy of PC Decrapifier. It is a free utility and it works very well. When you run it, have it create a restore point for you (it’ll ask, and you just say yes). Next, it will give you a list of the crap on your computer and you check off the ones you want to get rid of. What it will do is trigger the built-in uninstall routines of all these different programs, so you’ll have to run all of them separately. When you’re done, however, Windows will look quite nice and crap-free.
5. Install your core apps. Simply re-install the apps that you use often. Since my wife pretty much does everything online, I installed Chrome for her (because Firefox is the new bloatware), Picasa (she loves doing pictures), and the Windows Live Essentials suite.
6. Reinstall your backed up data. Time to put your backed up data back onto the newly fresh laptop. In my case, since I had backed up all that data from a rather fudged up system, I went ahead and installed AVG Free to the laptop and then ran a scan of all the backed up data on the external drive. I wanted to make I wasn’t bringing extra payload (i.e. viruses) with the data. It came out free and clear so I simply copied all the data back to the laptop.
7. Drive Image Backup. This whole procedure took me a LOT of time. Mostly waiting for the laptop to do it’s thing, but still, a lot of time. Knowing full well that it could happen again, I want to save me some hassle. So, I used the free DriveImage XML utility to create a full backup image of the drive in its current state. If I ever need to re-do the whole thing, I can avoid doing the full re-install and re-update process and instead just restore the image.

My wife now says it is like using a brand new laptop. Score!

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

How To Give An Old Laptop That Shower-Fresh Feeling

CCEnhancer is a small tool which adds support for over 270 new programs into the popular program CCleaner. The tool uses the WinApp2.ini system built into CCleaner to easily add new rules and definitions for programs.

Once you have this free add-on installed, you can update the program definitions by downloading them directly from the Internet. Once this is complete, you will now see lots more options in CCleaner’s interface for the added program support which allows CCleaner’s engine to scour these programs as well.

This is a great tool for any system “neat freak” to have.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Beef Up CCleaner To Clean Popular Programs As Well

WN has a support for a ton of different types of email:

..and tons more besides that for sites you never thought you could get notified of new messages for.

When installed, WN places a small envelope at the bottom right of Firefox. For your primary email account, you can set that up as being first in the first, so on single click will launch your default webmail.

When new mail arrives, you see how many new messages you have.

If you’re at the computer when the new mail arrives, you’ll see a non-intrusive toaster popup.

Right-clicking the envelope will allow you to check accounts individually instead of all at once, and give you a quick shortcut to the Options panel.

The really cool thing about WebMail Notifier is that if there are no messages and you left click the envelope, your default webmail (first in the list) will load. However, if you have multiple accounts set up and new mail arrives, clicking it will open the account that has the mail. The way WN works is very intuitive.

It’s nice to have a notifier that doesn’t require an instant messenger loaded just to check mail. If you use Firefox, give WN a try, you may really like it.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

WebMail Notifier Makes Checking Mail Easier

This is very good information to follow because the replacement units are proprietary and not cheap ($79 at the time of this writing). Reading the reviews on the Apple site for these adapters seem to indicate this is a very common problem which may explain why the product has a 2.5/5 rating.

So take care of your MacBook Pro’s power adapter by properly coiling it and you should get a nice long life out of it.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

How To Properly Coil Your MacBook Pro’s Power Cable

A MiFi is a line of compact wireless routers made by Novatel Wireless, meaning MiFi is an actual product. Their function is to act as a Wi-Fi hotspots for mobile use. What makes it mobile is the ability to do what’s called “backconnecting” to a cellular data network. MiFi devices reportedly have a wireless range of up to about 30 feet.

MiFi devices were introduced in 2009 and the only time you ever seen them (at least in the USA) are when they’re wireless carrier-branded. For example, Virgin Mobile just released one for $150.

What’s the point of MiFi?

Three big points:

1. The devices are tiny, as in credit card-sized, meaning they can go anywhere you go.
2. Since it is a router, it is its own portable mobile Wi-Fi hotspot, shareable with up to 5 other people.
3. Connects up anything that can connect wirelessly, be it laptop or smartphone.
4. Grabs its signal from anywhere that your cell phone can.

Yes, it is slower compared to a normal wireless router, however the portability and share-ability are what really sell these things. It also could be argued that they’re in fact more secure compared to using open wi-fi because you’re in control of the router.

Verizon also has MiFi, and you can read a very detailed review of what it can do here. Bear in mind this is not future technology. It’s here. Right now.

Some of you may be saying, “COOL! Can I dump my ISP now?” Not so fast. There are bandwidth limitations, and if you used a desktop or laptop with this type of connectivity, you’ll run into overage charges faster than you can say, “What the..?” In addition it will probably cost you more than your existing ISP does now month-to-month.

If considering a MiFi device, the best advice I can give is this: Read the fine print, and read it carefully. Know exactly what you’re going to spend for access and what bandwidth allowances per month you have.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

What Is MiFi?

Measures both sustained and burst data transfer rates of your hard disks, cd/dvd-roms, flash cards/sticks, floppys, etc. Realtime graphical display.

While the name has HD in it, you can see that this utility will measure the values from just about any removable device. While this really isn’t a benchmark type of utility, if you are looking to compare two different hard drives or flash drives then this utility can be a good way to get some real world data.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Measure Your Hard Drive Data Rates With HD Speed