Tags:
Internet
I
just got a ping from a friend who I'm meeting for lunch from Hey
Where Are You (HeyWAY), an iPhone
location app (and it looks like he's running late!) I pinged him
back since I'm still at home and then was a little startled to realize
that the latest Google
Map satellite update of my home
shows my truck outside with remarkable clarity. I have to admit,
it was a little freaky. Now, I can date the picture as being from
over a year ago based on where my truck is, where my motorcycle cover is,
and where the camper is in the yard, as well as the leaves on the trees.
I don't know how Google Maps is updated, but I know that picture
has not been there until very recently, yet it's still pretty old. And
I still feel a little creepy - I think I'll close the blinds before I head
out.
Tags:
Internet
The
Internet is a funny place. There is an amazing amount of information
out there. There's also an equally amazing amount of misinformation
out there too. Whenever I want to make a big picture I like to go
to the Internet to read reviews. If Amazon carries it there are usually
a lot of good reviews up there and Amazon is of course a great place to
buy. For technical stuff I have had great luck with Newegg as well
- lots of good reviews there by knowledgeable people.
The big purchase I am currently researching
is mattresses. For this purchase I actually started in the stores.
OK, no offense to any mattress salespeople, but what a bunch of pushy
salespeople and liars. I know they are liars because every shop we
went to contradicted the other shops. No way everything that everyone
told me was true. The problem also is that you can't just lie on
a bed for a few minutes and know how it's really going to work out for
you. We pretty quickly decided to go with a temperature-sensitive
memory foam bed. But wow, those Tempur-pedics are PRICEY.
Next I hit up the Internet to try to
get some better idea of the market. I'm fairly convinced that Tempur-pedic
has very good, very expensive marketing. I don't really believe that
they're worth 3 or 4 times more than the competition though. But
there really isn't very much good information out there. There is
a LOT of bad information out there. Epinions.com often has pretty
good reviews. I found another company producing supposedly similar
mattresses that had a lot of really good reviews on Epinions, along with
a few bad reviews. It looked promising, but as I delved into the
writeups a little more something felt a little... off. The more I
Iooked the more I became convinced that the writeups were probably planted
there. It's hard to explain why, though. Too many 1-post accounts
that signed up the same day the review was written and then never came
back didn't help much.
The other thing about reviews on the
Internet is that most are going to be negative anyway. Who buys something,
likes it, and then reviews it for no good reason? More likely, someone
has a bad experience, is really angry, and spouts off on the Internet for
all the world to see.
So I finally found another Tempur-pedic
type mattress that got a few good reviews on Epinions (as well as some
bad ones of course.) This one was different though - the top reviewer
has reviewed a lot of other things, has a link to his website, and, the
kicker, wrote back to an email I sent him. OK, definitely a real
person who has actually been sleeping on the mattress for the last two
years (a little aside - that's the other problem with this purchase - most
reviews were done after a couple of nights - not too many updates years
later. And these things are supposed to last many years.) So
we've corresponded a bit and he even called me - it turns out he can get
a $50 customer referral fee, something I found and brought to his attention,
not the other way around.
So... I'm still torn. I can find
any opinion I want on the Internet. But I still don't know which
mattress to buy!
Tags:
Internet
I
obviously stopped taking Twitter seriously a while ago. I still get
new followers all the time, but how can you take it seriously when most
of them have no followers, are following hundreds of people, and have just
one update, promoting their porn site. It's annoying and makes Twitter's
value far, far lower than it might have been. I have to shut off
e-mail notification of new followers because they're almost always spammers.
I don't even bother to block them any more because it's just not
worth my time.
Tags:
Internet
Google
frequently changes their logo on the search
site to reflect holidays and special
events. I thought today's logo was one of their best. Who knew,
was Google to the moon first...?
Also check out the latest version of
Google
Earth, where you can now browse
the moon.
Tags:
Internet
I
have been using Verizon's Mobile Email on my LG Dare for months now. It's
not great, but it's useful enough to check my e-mail and respond to important
messages when I'm out and about. I connect up to my company Lotus
Domino server via IMAP, which synchronizes messages. I could delete
messages, move them to folders, and reply.
Some time back, I'm not sure when, I
started noticing that when I deleted messages on my phone they weren't
getting deleted on the server. It was annoying but not enough to
worry about. Until it got really annoying. And until my clients
started complaining as well. I resisted calling Verizon technical
support, knowing what was going to happen, but eventually I had to do it.
I talked to a tech a week ago who actually seemed helpful. He
even tried it on a Dare himself using an account I set up for him on my
server. Then he disappeared. He didn't do anything and won't
respond to e-mail any more.
Take two, I called back today. Several
times. Eventually I managed to get through to someone who passed
me on to tech support. The guy I talked to said that Mobile Email
doesn't work that way - it just downloads messages. Um, it USED to
work that way. I mean, c'mon. Then he put me on hold for a
while so he could go back to school to learn about e-mail systems and telephones.
I doubt he ever heard of Alexander Graham Bell. He's probably
still stringing up tin cans. He finally came back and told me there
aren't any other settings on my account he can change - I should uninstall
and reinstall the application on my phone. Been there, done that.
He wasn't listening - it's not my phone, not my server. It's
a Verizon thing, and their service is far less useful than it used to be.
He's putting in a ticket with some other group but he didn't seem
very hopeful. I'm not either.
Is there anything more frustrating than
dealing with these companies...? When is my contract up again...?
Tags:
Internet
Everyone
knows to be aware when purchasing anything online, right? There are
way too many ways to get caught up in a scam. The latest for me was
an ad I responded to on Craigslist for an item I was interested in. Wow,
brand new in box, and less than half the price! It's gotta be a scam,
right? Yup. So how did I know, besides the obvious? Well,
first I emailed the person. Eventually I got an email back:
Thank you for your interest in my products!
All the products I sell are brand new, with warranty, bought from companies
in bankruptcy!
Also, I have an agreement with Green Dot and for each product I sell ,I
get a bonus if I use and promote their services.This way,I can offer you
the lowest prices on the market and free shipping.
If you want to pick up the product, have to say that I have a lot of products
for sale, a lot of buyers, a lot of packages to be sent and lack of time!
For these reasons, I am not available for local pick up.
You will find below all the info you need in order to get the brand new
*********************** , just follow the instructions :
http://********.biz/gd/productdetails.php?i=32
Regards,
Stephanie **********
First tip was that the item "she"
wrote back about was a different model than what was advertised. So
I followed up about that and she said she had both. Uh huh.
Then I went to the link she included.
Very impressive, she's a BBB Accredited Business. You can even
click on the BBB logo to pull up the report. Except there's no real
identifying information in the report and the report is NOT on the BBB
site. Hmmm.... So I went to the BBB site and searched for her
business. No surprise, it wasn't there. Then I started changing
the number in the first web address and found other products that were
for sale by different people. When you click the BBB logo on those
websites you get a similar BBB report. A closer look at the URL for
the BBB report makes it obvious that it's passing the seller's name into
the report - how fun, I can make a Satisfactory Record with my own name
right on the scammers website.
When I clicked on the payment link in
the first website I got to a very sparse form that asked for my information,
hosted on an IP address out of Texas (not even a domain name - just an
IP address.) After filling in fake information there, the page doesn't
go anywhere. I can only assume that once the scammer gets your "Green
Dot" number he/she gets the money out of the account and takes off.
Meanwhile I tried to get more info out
of the seller, but she (he? who knows?) disappeared and doesn't respond
to my e-mails any more.
So... I flagged the offending post on
Craigslist, posted my own warning about it there, sent an e-mail to the
Better Business Bureau with all of the information, and also filed a complaint
with the Internet
Crime Complaint Center. We'll
see what happens.
Let's be careful out there.
Tags:
Internet
With
all my complaining about Twitter lately I did neglect to mention the real
reason I started playing with it, thanks to a marketing buddy of mine.
Namely, SEO, or search engine optimization. Basically, Google
(and other search engines, but let's be real - Google is king right now)
loves new content. Search engines also love lots of links to websites.
And some of the best way to generate new contents and links is to
tweet stuff, like the tweet I'm about to make announcing this new blog
post. So far the jury, consisting of me, is still out on the benefit
of this, but it's worth looking at more. It's also why I sometimes
have tried to jam a lot of key words into my tweets, so that people will
find me by searching, either on Google or on http://search.twitter.com
. Does it really work though...?
Tags:
Internet
I'm
about to give up on Twitter again. I can admit it: my name is Bill
(actually, GoodComputerGuy),
and I just do NOT get it. Sure, I've occasionally stumbled across
an interesting link, and there's one guy who I think is a riot. But I hardly
ever see his updates because they're mixed in with so much noise. And
I'm not even following that many people. I've tried to jump into
conversations, but people seldom reply back to me (because I'm boring,
or because they don't see my replies in with all the other noise?) I've
heard that Twitter is the fastest place to get answers so this morning
I tweeted a techie question - I got nuthin'. I can solve that question
in seconds with a Google search anyway.
So please, what the heck am I missing?
How do people get anything useful out of Twitter? How do they
follow so many people without missing "important" tweets (are
there any?) I can barely handle following 4 or 5 people who I think
might possibly be interesting. Seriously - how do you handle dozens,
hundreds, or thousands (yes, I've tried Tweetdeck, Twhirl, etc)? There's
just waaaaayyyyy too much noise to pick out anything useful unless you're
searching for a very specific topic. And even then, good luck. Is
there anyone actively getting use out of Twitter who actually has a real
job? My burning question: why does Twitter have so much buzz? It's
everywhere and doesn't look like it's going away.
Tags:
Internet
OK,
seriously - in the last few days my Twitter
followers have doubled (and here comes yet another one. What the
heck did I do to suddenly attract all these new followers? And how
do I do it again??
Actually, on closer examination, most
of these new followers seem to be pretty spammy. Is this the way
to try to sell on Twitter now? Follow as many people as you can,
hoping they'll follow you back? I made that mistake, following someone
who repeatedly sent out a link to buy a $97 book on how to get more followers
on Twitter. Uh, no thanks - time to Unfollow.
So yeah, I'm using Twitter again. And
feeding it to Facebook again too. And I still don't know that this
is such a good idea. But I figured it's worth a shot again. What
else would I do, work? BTW, follow me at http://twitter.com/GoodComputerGuy
.
Tags:
Internet Software
I
think everyone has now heard of the Conficker virus that is out there.
How could you miss it, it's made a lot of main-stream media. Call
me crazy, but I suspect this is the next Y2K scare. The media needs
to be able to scare people into listening/reading/watching them, so they've
made a big deal of things. I suspect that come tomorrow... nothing
is going to happen. If I'm wrong though, this post may be the first
thing to go... :)
Tags:
Internet
Everyone
on Facebook
knows about the recent home page redesign, and not too many people are
very happy about it. Facebook is now rolling out some tweaks to appease
some of the most vocal complaints. My favorite new change is the
ability to hide updates from individual third party applications (those
annoying quizzes, etc) that clutter up the News Feed. To do so, just
click on the little drop-down arrow to the right of the update, then hide
it (not your friend, well, unless you WANT to hide your friend, too.) Ahhhh
- much better now...
Tags:
Internet
As
I mentioned in my last post, I am finally starting to see some light with
social networking. A little light anyway. Now that I have some
friends on Facebook, including my best friend from elementary school and
one of my close teenage friends from Cape Cod summers, Facebook is making
more sense to me. I KNOW it's supposed to be for business networking
too, but I really like the idea of (re-)connecting with far off friends
instead. I could post pictures of my family, fun stuff that we do,
etc. Except that I have some business contacts on there too. Those
contacts really don't need to see pictures of my kids or my airplane. So
how the heck am I supposed to be using this? I'm still paying some
attention to Twitter too, but still think that's a complete waste of time.
I wonder if I can make Facebook my personal space and concentrate
on LinkedIn for more business oriented stuff, which is sort of the focus
of those media anyway...? I'm open to suggestions here.
Tags:
Internet
I've
been struggling this year to figure out the whole social networking scene
- Facebook,
MySpace,
Twitter,
LinkedIn...
without a lot of luck. At least from a business perspective. It's
all just so much online diarrhea for the most part. But this morning
I got a "friend request" from my best friend from elementary
school, along with pictures of his family, etc. OK, now this makes
more sense to me - the "social" part of it. Of course earlier
this year I moved right down the street from him and I was over there helping
with a computer problem over the weekend so we don't really need Facebook
to reconnect, but still, this feels like a much better use. At this
point though I already have a handful of business contacts on Facebook
so I don't think I can transition to a personal account with pictures of
my family (plus I know I wouldn't keep it updated anyway.)
On the other hand, my brother "friended"
me a couple weeks ago - I don't keep in touch with him much so this may
be the only way we'll ever communicate. Weirdest thing - while I
was typing this my brother just instant messaged me on Facebook and we've
been chatting for the last half hour. Who knew...?
Tags:
Internet General
I
actually don't know if this is a technical or Internet-related story at
all, but I just got off the phone with my credit card company's fraud department.
They called to confirm an iTunes purchase of 1 song for $1 about
a half hour ago. I don't use iTunes (that will be another blog post
- I have a great alternative) so no, I didn't buy a song. It wouldn't
be too out of line to think that I could have bought one though. So
how did they know it wasn't me? My guess is that the purchase came
from an IP address that wasn't anywhere around here, maybe even from a
foreign country. I don't know how else they would know but I'm glad
they did. As for where the card got stolen, who knows? Could
have been a restaurant, could have been an Internet purchase - there's
no way to know.
Once the bank realized I had not made
the purchase they immediately cancelled my card and issued me a new one
which should be here on Tuesday. While I pay off my balance every
month, we're used to using credit cards for everything so it's kind of
weird to be without, although I think I have another open account kicking
around that we could use in the interim (of course I'm blogging about this
instead of looking for the cards - I have my priorities straight, right?)
One important point - I was immediately
suspicious of the call. But they never asked for my card number or
any identifying information, which of course I would have refused to give.
After the call I immediately called the bank back to confirm that
the first call wasn't some kind of scam.
Tags:
Internet Software
Instant
messaging has come a long way since its beginning. The focus today
is on IM clients. Today, people talk on one or more of several different
systems. The top three being AOL
(or AIM), Yahoo,
and Microsoft
(formerly MSN Messenger, Live Messenger, etc.) Google
Talk is also becoming more popular
as more people use Gmail.
So what do you do if you know people and want to communicate on all
these different systems? I used to run all the different programs
- I had 2 or 3 running in my task bar. What a pain, though. And
what if you have more than one account on each system, say one for business
and one for personal use?
A much better solution is to use a client
that can log into multiple services. There are several good programs
out there but I'm going to discuss only my 2 favorites. For many
years I used Pidgin
to log into 2 or 3 AOL accounts, 1 or 2 Yahoo accounts, an MSN account,
and a couple of private client IM systems (called OpenFire.)
Pidgin is great - lots of extra plug-ins, free, works on both Windows
and Linux, connects to about 16 different services. But the development
was starting to slow down and the application was getting a bit stale.
Enter one of the newer kids on the block,
Digsby.
Digsby is my new favorite. Very slick, current interface. It
connects to all the main IM services and can even check your e-mail (Pidgin
can do that too.) Digsby takes it a step further and can connect
to social networking sites as well (Facebook,
MySpace,
Twitter,
and LinkedIn)
updating you on new content there. Finally, the "killer
app" part for me - the Digsby
Widget, which allows me to embed a version of the Digsby client right here
on my blog. Look over in the right column and say hi if I'm around.
Tags:
Internet General
OK,
so I don't have the best timing. Buying a bigger house earlier this
year wasn't a bad decision, but trying to sell a house was. I had
4 deals fall through and the 5th nearly fell through (I probably shouldn't
jinx it since we're not closing until noon today - oh well.) This
last deal nearly fell through because of a zero-balance, closed home equity
line of credit on the house I'm selling. How strange is that? I
just could NOT get the bank that held the HELOC to discharge it in a reasonable
time and send the discharge to the closing attorney (the bank, which shall
remain nameless to protect the guilty, does rhyme with "Rank of America.")
I lost track of how many customer service reps I talked to, how many
times the closing attorney faxed the title search, and how many times I
visited the branch manager in Sudbury, but after nearly 3 weeks it just
wasn't getting done and I was about to lose my 5th potential sale.
Enter Google.
With a couple minutes of research I found a list of 17 e-mail address
of top level executives at the bank, including the Chairman, CEO, and President.
I fired off a desperate e-mail plea to all 17 of them. Two
hours later everything was all set and the correct documents were overnighted
to the attorney. A senior vice president has e-mailed and called
me twice to make sure everything is OK. Now that is the way
to get things done.
Tags:
Internet Software
Well,
I have officially switched back to Firefox
as my primary web browser. For now. I had been using
Google Chrome since early September
and I really liked a couple of the features, especially the ability to
move tabs out of and into windows, but I really missed the Adblock
Plus add-on I have with Firefox,
and Chrome just wasn't quite stable enough. Chrome also does not
integrate with Google
Bookmarks (how dumb is that?)
It was pretty good for a beta, but I had too many slow-downs with
videos and had a couple too many crashes. It also did not work with
LogMeIn,
a tool I use frequently for remote access to my clients. So for now
it's back to Firefox for the most part.
Tags:
General Internet
Today
is day three of my experiment of giving my my daily newspaper, the Boston
Globe. I've been reading the Boston Globe for... well, longer than
I can remember. I don't love the paper, but it's the best choice
around here and it pretty much gets the job done. I don't watch any
TV news. I'm spending more and more time in front of the computer
(I didn't think that was possible, but it's true) and my latest deal with
the Globe is over so the newspaper is now costs over $35/month. And
a lot of days I don't even get around to reading it. So it's on hold
for a week while I experiment with replacing the hard copy with the Internet.
Of course this opens up all kinds of possibilities - I don't just
need to rely on the Boston Globe website for news - there are far better
options. But for right now I'm going to stick with this to see if
it's a direct replacement. So far the results are obvious - not as
easy to skim and I'm probably not quite as well-informed as I had been.
If I continue with this I'll add other news sources to my morning
read, in addition to all the blogs I follow, which are in a different category.
Of course the biggest problem was....
what do I do about the comics?? 
Actually, they're all online
too, if you can find them. They're all over the place, including
some "comics aggregators." But I found it was easiest to
find what I wanted, bookmark them all in one folder, then open all those
bookmarks in tabs.
Tags:
Internet Software Security
Passwords
are important - they protect our e-mail, financial information, our files...
everything. But they're also a huge security hole. The problem
is there are just too many places that need passwords, so most people end
up doing one of two things - either you use the same password everywhere
(which is what most of my clients seem to do) or you write them down. There
are obvious problems with both methods of course. Also, while it
makes my job much easier, you really shouldn't be giving your passwords
to the computer guy.
There are a few fixes to this problem.
First, companies can try to simplify systems instead of complicating
them. I have one large client where I'm forced to keep track of at
least 7 passwords to various systems I need to use there (and then 5 more
Lotus Notes test IDs.) None of the passwords are synchronized with
each other, all have various schemes of complexity required, and some need
to be changed every so often. It's really hard to keep track of all
that so, yes, I wrote them down (gasp) on a sticky. At least I kind
of hid the sticky note.
From the user side of things I have
2 recommendations. One option is to use "password safe"
software where you can record your passwords. I use a database in
Lotus Notes but there are lots of free programs out there that do this.
Of course you need to use a good password to protect your password
safe!
Another option which may be even simpler
is to devise a methodology for creating passwords or passphrases. One
of the easiest, yet still secure, methods is to use the first letter of
each word in a phrase you will remember. How about "This is
my online banking password which I created on 9/22/08"? Or Timobpwico92208?
It's relatively unlikely that anyone will figure out what that means
or where it came from, yet it's still pretty easy to remember. For
more secure passwords you can mix in special characters too. The
best, most secure passwords are a long strings of nonsense characters with
numbers and special characters mixed in but they're not much good to you
if they're so complicated that you forget them or you have to write them
down to remember.
How do you handle YOUR passwords?
Tags:
Internet
Comcast
business customers with static IP addresses actually get one extra static
IP with their account. That is because the static IP address assigned
to you gets passed through the Comcast SMC modem/router (which I'll refer
to as the "modem" to avoid confusion) to your own networking
hardware. But the Comcast modem itself ALSO has its own IP address
which you can make use of if everything is set up properly.
The modem has 4 ports. The first
port should be connected to your router which will be set up with the proper
port forwarding (web, e-mail, ftp, etc.) Your router will have the
fixed IP address information hard coded. However any other computer
(or another router) plugged into the modem will get a dynamic IP address
in another network. If you access the Internet from there you'll
see that you're coming from the gateway IP address (usually your IP plus
1.) You can make use of that other address however you want - a second
web server, mail server, etc. - by utilizing port forwarding in the Comcast
modem.
Tags:
Internet
I
have recently been spending a lot of time delving into the world of "social
networking." It's the next big thing. Most of my clients
are NOT really involved with LinkedIn,
Facebook,
MySpace,
etc. Then again, maybe they are and I just don't know it. But from
my point of view, the average homeowner and small business person is just
not interested. At least not most of my clients anyway. I need
some more feedback about this. And don't even get me started about
microblogging - that will be a topic of another post soon.
Tags:
Internet Software
One
of the great things about Firefox
is the multitude of add-ons
you can download for it. My favorite new add-on is Adblock
Plus. As I've been playing
around with Google Chrome and comparing it to Firefox and Internet Explorer
I found I REALLY miss the Adblock add-on on everything except Firefox.
Adblock does a fantastic job of filtering out all those annoying
banner ads and flashing graphics you run into on various websites and forums,
making your browsing experience much better. Some websites, such
as Howard
Forums (for cell phones) have
really intrusive ads all over the place. Adblock will also filter
out annoying signatures - some people have signatures that are longer than
the posts they make! There's one poster I run into all the time who
has a very large, very annoying flashing graphic in his signature that
is like nails on a chalkboard. Or at least he used to, until Adblock
took care of it for me. If you use Firefox, Adblock
Plus is a must-have.
Tags:
Internet
Comcast
High-Speed Internet customers just got an e-mail explaining Comcast's updated
Acceptable Use Policy. Specifically, as of October 1, 2008, Comcast
is now going to define and enforce their excessive use policy at 250 GB/month.
This is only for home users, though, not business. And while
it affects a very small percentage of users - most people won't go anywhere
near 250 GB - it has a lot of people very upset. Comcast suggests
that this limits is the equivalent of the following:
- Sending more than 50 million plain text
email messages
- Downloading 62,500 songs
- Downloading 125 standard definition
movies
- Uploading 25,000 high-resolution photos
So the question is, if less than 1%
of users exceed this 250 GB limit, why bother? For more information
check the Comcast
FAQ.
Tags:
Internet
Do
you use multiple computers, perhaps one at home and one in the office?
Do you use multiple browsers, maybe Firefox and Internet Explorer
(and now I've added Chrome to my list of browsers, too)? Have you
ever been on a friend's or coworker's computer unable to remember a link
you know you bookmarked at home? Wouldn't it be better if you didn't
have to maintain your bookmarks independently in each location? I'm
going to look at one simple solution today - Google
Bookmarks.
You'll need a free Google account but
you may have one already. If you don't, just create a new account
using your e-mail address (you're going to need this for other things I'll
be discussing in the near future anyway.) There are several ways
you can utilize Google Bookmarks. The easiest is probably to add
the Google
Toolbar, which I used to do automatically
before IE7 (I don't really like cluttering up windows with extra unnecessary
stuff.) With the Toolbar installed you can import your bookmarks
from your favorite browser/location by clicking the 
button
on the Toolbar. To add new bookmarks, simply click the 
.
The star will turn yellow, indicating that the page is now bookmarked.
Click it again to edit or manage your bookmarks. Now, anywhere
on the Internet, you can get your bookmarks, quickly and easily. If
you're on a computer without Google Toolbar, or if you want to get rid
of the Toolbar, you can still use Bookmarks by just going to the web page.
One other great feature about Google
Bookmarks is, of course, searching (this is Google, after all.) Maybe
I have too many bookmarks, but sometimes I can't find what I'm looking
for although I'm sure it's in there somewhere. Now it's possible
to run a Google search right on your bookmarks. There are some other
features I'll touch on in another post, too, but for now, try them out
for yourself.
Tags:
Internet Software
Several
CSS and LotusScript problems later and everything on the blog seems to
be working again. But please let me know if you spot something odd
or broken (thanks, Tom, for spotting that last item.) And now back
to blogging about more interesting things than just my blog.
Tags:
Software Internet
I've
been a Lotus Notes BlogSphere
fan for a couple of years now, but the project seems to have slowed down
(which is a nice way of saying that it seems to have died out) - no new
updates since March. On the other hand, the latest version of Domino
Blog from IBM appears to be pretty robust. On the other hand, I already
have this all set up and, really, does anyone except me really care? I
don't think so.
Tags:
Software Internet
The
majority of Windows computer users use Microsoft Internet Explorer to browse
the web. Most people should be updated to IE7 by now, but I still
see a lot of IE6 out there unfortunately. Mozilla Firefox is the
next most popular browser but still doesn't make much of a dent since IE
comes included with Windows. Typically people using Firefox are more
tech-savvy. As for me, I've been using Firefox lately simply because
IE7 sort of broke and I never got around to fixing it.
But now there's yet another choice -
Google
Chrome. Well there are other
choices besides that, too, but given that this is GOOGLE I think there's
a better chance that this will rocket up to 3rd place pretty quickly. Choice
is good, but do we REALLY need another browser? Probably not, although
it does have some interesting features, including my favorite - being able
to pull tabs out into a fresh window (or even bring them over to another
already open window.) It's painless to check out, although I'm not
sure that it really is all that necessary at the moment and it does not
have any of the extensions that Firefox has.
Tags:
Technical Software Internet
AOL
paved the way for easy dial-up Internet access years ago, making it easy
for newbies to get online with a minimum of fuss. AOL isn't quite
as useful any more with the prevalence of high-speed Internet access, but
many people are still hanging onto it, often because they don't want to
change e-mail addresses. Well, if you have an alternate means of
connecting to the Internet but are still paying for AOL, several months
ago they quietly started a new, free service. You need to call AOL
(and everyone knows how easy they make THAT) to request the change to free
service, but if you aren't using it for dial-up Internet access you have
nothing to lose but the monthly fee, which you're already paying to the
cable or DSL company.
Tags:
General Internet
My
favorite website for online directions has been Google
Maps for quite a while now. It
seems that they're always tweaking it and making it better, too. Who
doesn't love those satellite views? Lately I found out about a bit
of an Easter Egg hidden in there, too. Try getting directions from
Boston to London (just type in "Boston to London" and click Search
Maps, or click here
and take a look at step #9. Time to start training...
pdate: this doesn't appear to work
any more. Too bad!/font>
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