TechByter Worldwide for 2012
More recent programs are at the top and older programs are further down. That is to say that we use an inverse chronological ordering. Click the program date to visit the summary for that program. The audio for each program will be near the bottom of the page.
Windows, OS X, or Ubuntu? All of my current production or test machines run Windows 7 or Windows 8 these days. I no longer have any computer than runs any version of Apple's OS (unless you want to count an 11-year-old laptop that works only when plugged, has a 10GB drive, a G3 processor and version 10.3 or 10.4 of the operating system). I had a G4 notebook but it died a nasty death that was no fault of mine or Apple. The Windows 7 machines that used to dual-boot with Linux now dual boot with Windows 8 except for a netbook that has Windows 7 and Ubuntu. I recently upgraded Ubuntu to version 11.10 and I'm once again impressed.
When Too Much of a Good Thing is Too Much of a Good Thing: You probably already know that I spend a fair amount of time watching Lynda.com training videos because it's a great way to learn which features power users feel are the most important to learn. But sometimes too much of a good thing can be overwhelming. Lynda.com is constantly adding titles to the hundreds (or thousands) that already exist. I've had trouble in the past organizing titles that I planned to watch but now there's a Netflix-like solution, a queue that allows users to schedule upcoming training and to specify the importance of the training.
An (Inter)Face Only a Mother Could Love: When an application's documentation begins with "DO NOT PANIC!" it may be because you've fallen into a slight variation on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but more likely it's because you've downloaded and installed the Bulk Rename Utility. If you occasionally need to rename a lot of files, you need this free utility from the United Kingdom.
Short Circuits: Apple Shamed Into Auditing Foxconn: Apple's leaders say that the company has been trying to clean up operations at Foxconn, the Taiwanese manufacturer of many of its prodcuts but following last week's high-profile delivery of petitions signed by a quarter of a million customers calling for change, Apple has suddenly called for an audit of Foxconn factories. As I mentioned last week, Apple is not the only high-tech company to have its products manufactured in Asia and it's not the only company that employs Foxconn. Other US high-tech companies also have dirty paws.
Steve Jobs, the Book: I finally got around to reading Walter Isaacson's book about Steve Jobs and I highly recommend it. Isaacson was surprised that Jobs didn't want to control the writing of the book and the result is a candid review of an uncommonly complex man.
Carousel Becomes Revel and Moves to Android: Less than a year ago, Adobe announced Carousel, a mobile photo manipulation and sharing application. Now the name has changed to Revel and this week it became available for users of Android phones and tablets. Note that Revel is a very Mac-centric application at this time. Still, it's usable via Android devices.
Excitement Builds as Windows 8 Beta 2 Release Date Nears: Microsoft will release the second public beta of Windows 8 sometime this month. "Late February" is the announced target, which could be anytime from the 15th through the end of the month. And February has an extra day this year. The version of Windows 8 that I've been using is dozens (if not hundreds) of builds earlier than what Microsoft will release this month. Pundits of various stripes are already saying that Windows 8 will prove to be far better than Apple's latest operating system or that it will be dead on arrival. Both of those extremes are silly and are largely designed to sell magazines or build website traffic. I'll try to stick to the factual middle ground.
Is That Website Safe?: There have been lots of stories about malware on commercial websites and you might be wondering how to tell the difference between a healthy site and an infected site. VeriSign has released a white paper that's intended for use by website operators but also contains information that is of interest to the rest of us.
Short Circuits: 250,000 Users to Apple: Clean up Your Act: Apple is by no means the only electronics manufacturer to have its devices built in China and it's not the only US electronics company to use Foxconn's factory, where several workers have committed suicide and where around 150 Chinese Foxconn workers threatened to commit suicide last year by jumping off the factory's roof. Foxconn is the world's largest electronic manufacturer.
Yes, Windows 8 Will Have Angry Birds: Ipad and Android users have Angry Birds and the next Windows 8 beta will include access to the Windows Store (Microsoft's equivalent of the Apple App Store and the Android Market). If you're going to have a store, you need products. Among the products available at launch time: Wordament, Angry Birds, Crash Course, Toy Soldiers, Rocket Riot.
In other words, important business-related applications.
New York Times Looks at Multiple Monitors: Monitors have become larger over the years and some people think that adding a really large monitor is better than or at least equal to using two monitors. That is not the case. Replacing a smaller cluttered monitor with a larger monitor just leads to larger clutter.
No More Kodak Digital Cameras: Kodak, still trying to find a place in today's photography landscape, has decided to stop manufacturing digital cameras, video cameras, and digital picture frames. That's a good decision and one that's about 10 years too late.
A Different Sound for TechByter Worldwide: Thanks to a listener in Germany who once worked for the BBC, TechByter Worldwide has a brighter sound. Nicholas Bequet's ears are clearly better than mine and when he said that the podcast needed some technical changes, I decided to give them a try.
When You're Here and Your File is There: Many people who use computers have more than one computer. Maybe a desktop or two sitting around the house, maybe a notebook or two, an office computer, possibly a netbook, and—with increasing frequency—a tablet. How many times do you discover that the file you need is on another computer—possibly a computer that's miles away from where you are. Eliminating this inconvenience is easy.
Behind a Strange (to Speakers of English) Name ... lurks the "Daum Pot Player". What would you expect this to be? Maybe a despised musician in a Southern funk band? The Daum Pot Player is a free video player from South Korea. In case you haven't been paying attention lately, South Korea manufactures some of the most reliable and popular electronic devices and automobiles. So why not media players?
Short Circuits: Tweeting an #Outrage: Twitter is the social networking site that the unknowing like to dismiss. "I don't need to tell everyone that I just had a bagel for breakfast," they say, ignoring the fact that Twitter has been instrumental in organizing protests around the world, from Egypt to New York. Now Twitter says that it will block messages in some countries and that has set off a fire storm of protest.
Google's New Privacy Policies: Take Two: Google has announced that it will unify its privacy policies across a broad swath of its services on March first and now a bipartisan group of 8 US representatives has sent a letter to Google asking whether the new policy will allow users to opt out of the entire process. The representatives also questioned the security of users' information. This week Google responded to the letter.
And Then There Were Four (Terabytes, that is): Hitachi has announced the availability of Deskstar 7200RPM 4TB hard drives. The Deskstar 7K4000 offers not only a lot of space but also high performance because of its 7200RPM spindle speed.
Android Apps: Fun, Amusing, Useful, and Useless: Lots of useful apps are available for Android tablets and now that I'm a new user, I've started to find some that are indispensable. But there are also some apps that have no apparent reason to exist: Not useful. Not amusing. Not fun. And not discussed here. Let's take a look at some that you might like if you have an Android tablet.
Megaupload is Dead: The feds have shut down Megaupload, proving that even without SOPA and PIPA the federal government can shut down sites that offer illegal access to copyrighted materials. The Hong Kong site was clearly an illegal operation. Or was it? Might it be that Megaupload was the victim of a police riot?
Google's New Privacy Policies Raise Concerns: Google is changing its privacy policies so that they will be consistent across most of the company's offerings. This will be more convenient for users, Google says. But security experts caution that the new policies will make more of your information available to advertisers. And everyone is right.
Short Circuits: Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Likes His Android: You may have heard that Steve Wozniak likes Android phones but you may not have heard the entire story. In an interview with Dan Lyons on The Daily Beast, Steve Wozniak admitted that his Android phone offers more features than his Iphone. This is in contrast to the other Apple co-founder, the late Steve Jobs, who loathed the Android and threatened to bankrupt Apple if that's what he had to do to kill Android.
Symantec PC Anywhere Going Nowhere: If you use Symantec's PC Anywhere to work on remote computers, Symantec says you should disable it right away and wait for a patch update. The shady group known as "Anonymous" broke into Symantec's servers (embarrassing) and made off with the source code for PC Anywhere (even more embarrassing) so Symantec really had no choice other than to warn people not to use one of its products.
SOPA/PIPA: The Right Way to do the Wrong Thing: Or vice versa. OPINION: At the risk of being accused of engaging in politics, I feel that it's important to say that SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (the Protect IP Act) are ill-concieved and badly written pieces of legislation that virtually anyone who knows anything about the Internet is opposed to. In an attempt to make this a top-of-mind issue for more people and to encourage opposition to a bill crafted not by members of Congress but by the movie and music industries, Wikipedia and Google (among others) this week highlighted the legislation. This really isn't a conservative versus liberal, Republican versus Democrat issue: The bills both had support and opposition from all sides of the political spectrum.
Keeping Your Computer Up to Date: On last week's program I mentioned the Secunia Personal Software Inspector and this week I'd like to tell you more about this free utility program. When I installed it and allowed it to scan my primary computer, I expected to find no problems. Oops. Although I earned a high score (91%) PSI still found some problems. If security and having up-to-date applications (which is a function of security) are important to you, check out the Secunia website and the free Personal Software Inspector.
Short Circuits: Bankruptcy for Kodak: We've known this was coming but it was still a sad day when the once mighty Eastman Kodak Company filed for bankruptcy protection. Kodak is filing for Chapter 11 protection, listing assets of $5.1 billion and debts that total $6.8 billion. The company owns thousands of patents pertaining to digital photography but has been unable to sell them.
After 17 Years, Yang Leaves Yahoo: Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang rode the Web portal business to its zenith and watched as mistakes nearly destroyed the company. Now he's announced that he will resign from Yahoo's board, the board of Yahoo Japan, and the board of Alibaba Group Holdings, which is owned in part by Yahoo.
Now Playing at Netflix: Getting Sued: It's as easy as 1-2-3: (1) Price hikes and an ill-advised decision (quickly rescinded) to split Netflix into two companies. (2) Plummeting stock value because of #1. (3) Now a class-action lawsuit because of #2. As surprise endings go, this isn't one.
What is that on Your Shoe? Online shoe retailer Zappos is being sued by a customer who's annoyed by a data theft that the company notified its customers about. Personal data from 24 million accounts could have been compromised. That creates the potential for a lot of unhappy people. The company is owned by Amazon.com. Does this call into question Amazon's data security? If not, it should.
Adobe Lightroom 4 Rolls into Public Beta: Version 4 of the juggernaut known as Adobe Lightroom is now available to anyone who wants to try it. As usual, Adobe is releasing the beta version publicly to obtain the greatest amount of feedback from people who might actually use it. This has, in fact, been Adobe's policy for several versions. I saw a demonstration of Lightroom 4 last month. The demonstration was provided in accordance with Adobe's non-disclosure agreement and it's been really hard for me to keep quiet about what this version adds to your photographic tool kit.
Free For All: It would certainly be great to have enough money to buy a commercial application for every need you have but that isn't always possible. And sometimes free applications are just as good as the commercial product. Occasionally, the free application is even better than the one you pay for. This week let's take a look at some of the applications you can install for free and with a clear conscience.
Don’t Put That in Your Computer! You Don’t Know Where It’s Been! What would you do if you found a thumb drive in your company’s parking lot? Would you pick it up, take it inside, and plug it in? A surprising number of people would. It’s not clear whether they’re being helpful (trying to return something that’s been lost) or attempting to exploit someone else’s misfortune (looking for data on the drive). Either way, your computer and possibly your entire network is at risk.
Miscellaneous Windows 8 Updates: I haven't said much about Windows 8 for a while but development continues to progress and today seemed a good time to report briefly on a variety of events that have happened, are happening, or will happen soon.
Short Circuits: PayPal Once Again Says My Account Has a Problem: I was more than a little disappointed that Norton Internet Security didn't catch this and spike it. Neither did the antispam add-in I use with my e-mail program (Antispam Sniper). And SpamAssassin didn't catch it, either. When something makes it through that many defenses, it concerns me because this is the kind of fraudulent message that will fool a lot of people despite the large number of red flags all over the message. Let's take a look at it.
Want to See a Movie from Warner Brothers? Prepare to Wait. Warner Brothers will soon announce that its latest DVD releases won't be made available to rental outlets until nearly two months after the discs can be bought in stores and websites. Take that, Netflix!
Consumer Electronics Show without Microsoft: The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is like the old PC Expo in New York City only larger. It's not just computers. CES is video and audio. It's robots. Its anything electronic that any consumer anywhere might think about buying. It's the perfect forum for a company such as Microsoft. Or not. In an era when Apple has abandoned Macworld it probably should be no surprise that this is Microsoft's last year at CES.
NSA Recommendations for Computer Security: The National Security Agency (NSA)—also known as the "No Such Agency" because of its secrecy—knows a thing or two about cyber security. The agency has some down-to-earth recommendations for how you can avoid having your information, identity, and bank account stolen.
Five Minutes After I Bought an Android Tablet ... Eweek magazine wrote an article that said it's stupid to buy an Android tablet because Android "will lose the tablet race." And they go on to provide 10 reasons why I was stupid to buy an Android tablet. Stupid? Yes, let me count the ways. And then I'll let you know what I think of the tablet now that I've used it for a few weeks.
Paying for Journalism: Why do we need journalists? Do we need journalists? That second question may be the more important of the two. If you know anyone who has lived in a place where "the news" is entirely controlled by the state, you wouldn't ask the second question and you would know the answer to the first. A surprising number of people feel that journalists are, if not actively harmful, at least irrelevant in this Internet age.
Short Circuits: Can "PARC" and "Profitable" Occur in the Same Sentence? In the final (unintended) program of 2011, I reported the death of the founder of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), the organization that invented most of what is today's personal computing even though Xerox allowed the inventions to languish until some other company (Apple, Microsoft) noticed them and made billions. In 2002, Xerox spun off the business unit as "PARC" and gave it a mandate to become profitable.
Verizon and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day: The CEO of Verizon may have to forego buying a new yacht this year. The company, apparently noticing the figurative band of axe-wielding customers approaching the front door, has abandoned the proposed $2 fee that would have applied to some of its customers.
Netflix Streams, Stock Soars: There's been so much bad news about Netflix over the past several months that it feels good to have something positive to say. Netflix is reporting that its streaming-video customers watched more than 2 billion hours of content in October, November, and December. In addition to that, the company's stock is up by more than 10%.
Normally This Would Be a TechByter Vacation Day: The TechByter website changes this year won't be as obvious as in some previous years but there are more changes than usual in the 2012 annual site refresh. This year the typefaces will look different, the page is wider (but the e-mail is narrower), and the underlying code is HTML 5 instead of XHTML Transitional. Allow me, for a moment, to gaze at the TechByter Worldwide navel.
Microsoft Finally Drives a Stake Through IE6! (Almost): Report a problem to the IT help desk at a very large (50,000 employees) company and the first response will be "What browser are you using?" Regardless of what you say, the response will be, "Well, this Web application is certified for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6. Have you tried that?" IE6? Really? This is decade-old technology that even Microsoft tells people not to use. At long last Microsoft seems to be getting serious about this.
Being Your Own TV Producer: Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 is, without question, one of the most important applications used to communicate in print, video, and audio. By creating applications that work together, Adobe has made it possible for creative professionals to use content created by one application in another application. But Adobe has also expanded the powers of creative software for non-professionals. Premiere Elements is a good example.
Short Circuits: Opinion: SOPA in GoDaddy's Mouth: The big domain registrar, GoDaddy.com, announced its support for SOPA, the ill-advised "Stop Online Piracy Act" but when thousands of customers who were annoyed by that position threated to move their domain registrations elsewhere, the company relented. More or less. We'll examine the linguistics and the reasons why you should speak out against this lobbyist-inspired bill.
Fahrvergnügen for Volkswagen's Eurpoean Employees: Remember the 1990 VW ad campaign for fahrvergnügen—driving enjoyment? Now the automaker says that it wants its employees to have more fun when they're off the clock. No more checking your corporate e-mail account with the company-provided BlackBerry. That's because the devices will function only from half an hour before the work day begins until half an hour after it ends. The change applies to unionized workers but apparently not to managers.
Point-and-Shoot Cameras Will Disappear Soon: This is one of those stories that will seem obvious once you've read it. Serious photographers will continue to use digital SLR cameras or maybe Four Thirds cameras, Micro Four Thirds cameras, or even high-end point-and-shoot cameras. But the basic point-and-shoot digital cameras are doomed.
Oops. Wrong Beatle. What do you do when you list two members of the Beatles who are dead and you get one of them wrong? In my case, I updated the TechByter Worldwide website with the correct information (and a note about the wrong information) but I allowed the podcast with the wrong information to remain. In the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, pages were simply removed and new pages were inserted the "correct" history. I decided to leave the error in place and correct it later. Well, it's now later.
The author's image: It's that photo over at the right. This explains why TechByter Worldwide was never on television, doesn't it?
