Archive for June, 2007
Beware of Web pages bearing gifts
Web pages are full of ads offering all sorts of amazing free stuff like Toshiba laptops and copies of Windows Vista Ultimate. (Incidentally, a lot of these originate from Google AdSense.) Obviously, there’s a catch somewhere and I decided to find out what it is. So I set out to get a free [...]
Mac vs. Windows cost analysis
Microsoft fans often make the claim that using a Mac costs more than using a Windows system. Although this was probably true before Apple switched to Intel chips, my impression is that a new Mac and a new Vista system of similar power are generally going to be more or less comparable in cost. Of [...]
100 best products of 2007
We are constantly getting lists of the best this and the best that. For what it’s worth, here is PC World’s list of the 100 best technology products so far this year.
Ultra-confusing Microsoft licensing
Greetings from the forests of western Michigan. Ed Bott has a post on Microsoft’s licensing mess that I want to pass along. I have often complained about how Microsoft seems to go out of its way to make its licensing as confusing as possible. Microsoft has a very large legal staff and they seem to [...]
Vista poll
I am going on vacation and will not be posting much for the next two weeks. In the meantime, I need your help. I want the posts on this blog to mesh with the interests of those who read it but I have little input on what those interests might be. In particular, I do [...]
Dog lovers beware
Everybody loves a cute puppy and the scammers are out to take advantage of that. InformationWeek reports:
The American Kennel Club and the Council of Better Business Bureaus are warning consumers about a new e-mail scam that is conning people into spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on puppies that they actually never receive.
Tips on protecting your privacy
Advertisers, phishers, and others are always eager to gather as much information as possible about you when you are online. Previous posts have mentioned the efforts of Google as well as Microsoft to create profiles of Web surfers. There are various ways to guard against all this snooping, including keeping tracking-cookies out. At PC [...]
Bill Gates meets Steve Jobs
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs put in a rare appearance together at a recent conference. If you want to see what they had to say to each other, there is a transcript at this link. There is also a video clip.
eBay buys StumbleUpon
I always thought of StumbleUpon as a social search engine but it seems that there is a commercial aspect. At least eBay, not noted as a search engine, thinks so. They’ve bought the business.