Archive for February, 2007
Software for babies
An article at PC World says that a company has developed software for the very young. According to the article:
Giggles Computer Funtime for Baby is a software application aimed specifically at babies and toddlers aged 6 to 24 months. Mac and Windows-compatible, it costs US$24.95, and two versions are available — one with shapes [...]
List of software that works with Vista
Microsoft has released a list of 800 applications that are supposed to work on Vista. Some are “Certified for Windows Vista” and some are classified “Works with Windows Vista”. According to Microsoft:
The “Certified for Windows Vista” logo is a compatibility designation for applications and devices that have passed a rigorous testing program on computers [...]
World-wide bank attack
If you don’t believe that sophisticated organized criminals are at work on the Internet, read this article at InfoWorld about a recent caper. It says:
An attack this week that targeted online customers of at least 50 financial institutions in the U.S., Europe, and Asia-Pacific has been shut down, a security expert said Thursday.
The attack was [...]
Some facts about search engines
An international conference on search engines was recently held in London and a report is given at SearchEngineWatch.com. Some of the facts that I find interesting are:
256 million people visited a search engine in December 2006 – 81% of the global Internet population
France and Spain have the heaviest users of search; US searchers [...]
Social bookmarking and social search
The Internet is constantly generating new things and a current one is “social search.” The term is a loosely defined one but basically means Internet search results from a bunch of people instead of from a computer algorithm and searchbots. Numerous sites have sprung up where the members post sites that they recommend. These are [...]
Software for thumb drives
Thumb drives or flash USB drives or whatever you call them have become ubiquitous. They are now used for a variety of purposes, including carrying around your personal software wherever you go. There is now quite a lot of software designed specifically for use on thumb drives. To see what’s available try this useful list [...]
Keeping Internet Explorer Favorites sorted
Some time back, I posted a tip on how to alphabetize the list of favorites in Internet Explorer. A jumbled list of favorites is a common problem for many home PC users and the question of how to sort them keeps coming up. The problem is that IE favorites get out of order every time [...]
Is Vista any faster than XP?
The computer world often reminds me of what the Red Queen said to Alice in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass”:
Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.
Every time a new Windows operating system comes out, it seems to require bigger and faster hardware [...]
What should an operating system really be?
John Dvorak has some provocative comments on operating systems in general, as well as Vista, in one of his columns at PC Magazine. He reminisces about what an operating system originally meant and contrasts that with what it has become. He begins:
Since the early days of DOS (and even with the Mac OS), there has [...]
Gmail for everybody
Having a web-based email service has many advantages. One of the best known free services is Google’s Gmail. Until now this popular service required that you get an invitation from an existing account owner before you could sign up. Now Google has announced that Gmail is open to everybody.