The PC Informant

Microsoft updates MSN.com

Vic Laurie — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:38:41 +0000

Microsoft is giving a new look to its Web portal MSN.com. Computerworld reports:

Microsoft plans to start rolling out a redesigned MSN.com on Wednesday in the U.S., the first major update for the page in more than 10 years.

Frequent visitors to the site will immediately notice one major change: The new page has only half the number of links as the old one. That’s a sharp departure from the previous design, which featured around 40 links on just the top third of the page. The site has also dropped the trademark blue background for a simpler white page.

Scroll a window with your mouse wheel by pointing

Vic Laurie — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:37:12 +0000

In order to activate scrolling in a window with a mouse wheel, you have to first click in the window. Apparently, this extra step annoys some people so Antibody software offers a free little program that lets you just point your mouse at a window and scroll away without the extra click. It’s called “WizMouse” and works on Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7.

Via PC World

Google in favor of different password scheme

Vic Laurie — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:19:21 +0000

Having a multitude of passwords for all our different Web activities is a hassle and many people go the unsafe route of one or two passwords for everything. Google is advocating a method it calls “hybrid onboarding”:

Does anyone actually like passwords? Most people can’t stand them because they end up having to keep track of a long (and often memorized) list of usernames and passwords to sign into the websites they visit. Website owners hate them because it’s hard to get people to create a new account on their website, and almost half of those account registrations are never completed. Thanks to the utilization of new technology, we’re now seeing large-scale success in eliminating the need for passwords while increasing the successful registration rate at websites to over 90%. The most visible examples come from Plaxo, Facebook, Yahoo! and Google using a technique the industry calls hybrid onboarding.

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At PC World, Jeff Bertolucci comments:

It’s one of the basic tenets of online security: Never use the same password/username combo for every website that requires one. The logic is sound, of course. A single security breach could expose your most private information — such as banking and credit card numbers — to the bad guys.

Problem is, who can remember multiple passwords and usernames? Many times I’ve signed up for a service, returned to the site a few weeks later, and quickly realized that I couldn’t remember my login details.

Google and other major online players, including AOL, Facebook, Microsoft Plaxo, MySpace, and Yahoo, are pitching a simpler alternative: A single password/username combo, such as your Google or Yahoo ID, for multiple sites. The concept, based on the industry standard OpenID 2.0 protocol isn’t exactly new. In fact, Google announced over a year ago that it would support the single single-in plan.

So it’s a single sign-in but with some additional safety over just using the same password everywhere. However, Bertolucci doesn’t think Microsoft and others will buy it:

OpenID is a great idea, but wider acceptance is needed for it to become truly useful. I suspect that Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google aren’t truly comfortable with a single sign-in approach for their key properties. Today, for instance, I can’t use my Yahoo ID to sign into my MSN account, nor can I use my Windows Live ID to enter Yahoo Mail.

An appliance just for tweets

Vic Laurie — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:47:13 +0000

Are you a devoted tweeter? Then there’s an appliance just for you. Its sole function is tweeting. It’s called TwitterPeek and CNET describes it:

A new gadget designed specifically for people who want to tweet on the go was launched Tuesday by gadget maker Peek.

The device, dubbed TwitterPeek, does one thing and one thing only: it lets people tweet. It doesn’t access e-mail. It doesn’t make phone calls. It tweets. That’s it.

TwitterPeek, which looks like a smartphone, features a QWERTY keyboard and comes in black or aqua blue.

The idea behind TwitterPeek is simple. After buying the device, users need only to input their Twitter credentials to get going. The gadget lets them tweet, reply, retweet, send direct messages, and download followers. It supports one account at a time. Users can also view TwitPics by clicking the “view content” option from the TwitterPeek menu. The company claims its battery lasts three to four days with average usage.

Not everybody thinks this is a good idea. At PC World, David Coursey says:

Who needs this device? That’s a fair question. Smartphones already have Twitter applications, so this is not a great second or third device to carry around.

Another skeptic is Colin Gibbs at GigaOm:

For those who thought its email-only device targeted too broad a market, Peek Inc. has gone even more niche — and more absurd — with the first mobile device dedicated entirely to Twitter.

For a hands-on review, there is John Biggs at CrunchGear. He seems to like it.

Adobe Shockwave patch

Vic Laurie — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:14:39 +0000

Another security update is out for Adobe Shockwave player. The download is at this link.

Via Ryan Naraine.

Microsoft re-patching

Vic Laurie — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:38:26 +0000

Gregg Keizer reports at ComputerWorld:

Microsoft yesterday re-patched Internet Explorer, the third time it’s been forced to repair one of the updates from its largest-ever bug fix, which was delivered on Oct. 13.

Monday’s fix targeted MS09-054, the update that patched four vulnerabilities, all “critical,” in Internet Explorer (IE). According to Christopher Budd, a spokesman for the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), the follow-up hotfix patches Web page display problems introduced by the update. Budd downplayed the severity of the problems, saying that the number of users affected was “limited.”

More Google search functions

Vic Laurie — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:56:28 +0000

Yet more additions to Google search have come out.

One is called “related links”. Google Operating System describes the feature:

Google Related Links is a new Google Labs service that lets you add a list of related web pages and searches to your site. Unlike the homonymous service released by Google in 2006, the new Related Links restricts the results to your site.

A second addition is page previews; it is described:

Google added a new option to the web search toolbelt: page previews. If you click on “Show options” and select “Page previews” after performing a search, Google will show a longer snippet and a thumbnail for each search result.

Is Windows 7 the last major release?

Vic Laurie — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:34:18 +0000

Windows 7 is currently the focus of attention and will likely dominate the PC for a few years. But what about the future? At PCMag, technology industry analyst Tim Bajarin speculates about what comes after Windows 7:

So, Windows 7 does, in fact, matter. But for how long? At the moment, we live in a client/server world, so the operating system will likely matter on the enterprise level for some time. On the consumer level, the availability of thousands of Windows apps for PCs may well help this dominant OS live on as well. But as always, the world of technology is changing, and as such, it’s possible that this may be the last major version of Windows to come out.

He goes on to say:

With these factors in play, Win 7 may end up being the last major Windows release. Next time out, the OS may be much more focused on the cloud. Like Google’s Chrome, such a release would likely be free. Over the next few yeasr, Microsoft will have to figure out how to make money from cloud-based services, rather than from selling the operating system outright. In order to do this, the company will have to reinvent itself—something that will have to happen if Microsoft is going to survive and thrive in the future.

Another observer who wonders about the future of Windows is Christopher Dawson. Dawson provides IT for a school district and he writes an education blog at ZDNet. He compares Google and Microsoft:

I had a couple of very enlightening conversations with representatives from Microsoft and Google back-to-back on Friday. While our conversations were focused on their educational initiatives, some of which I’ll be featuring tomorrow on ZDNet Education, the more interesting aspects of the interviews actually related to their entirely different approaches to the Web, the cloud, and computing in general. These approaches, and the history behind them, beg the question, is it time for Microsoft to reinvent itself if it wants to avoid becoming the computing equivalent of fossil fuels?

About Facebook and other social sites

Vic Laurie — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:26:18 +0000

I am not personally involved with social sites but a lot of people are. Recently, I have run across a number of articles and posts about Facebook and other social sites and they seemed worth passing on:

An Application to Help Scrub Those Regrettable Photos From Facebook
An article in the New York Times about a Facebook application called “Wisk-It”
How To Spam Facebook Like A Pro: An Insider’s Confession
At TechCrunch, the CEO of an advertising agency reveals spam techniques
Facebook 101
Search Engine Watch article on how to set up and use a Facebook account
In The Fight Between Facebook And Twitter, Which One’s The Mac And Which One’s The PC?
TechCrunch discusses the role of two premier social sites and the future of the social Web
Virtual Estates Lead to Real-World Headaches
New York Times article on problems caused by the death of owners of online sites

Free movies on the Web

Vic Laurie — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:32:41 +0000

Although there are very popular commercial services like Netflix that provide movies for downloading or streaming, there are also sites with free movies. MakeUseOf recently reviewed three sites:

MakeUseOf also has a free PDF, The Internet Guide for the Movie Addict:

This entirely free PDF production will show you anything you’ve ever dreamed about knowing. Whether you want a quick heads-up, are looking for download and streaming possibilities, or even want to fix broken AVI’s — you’ll find it in there!

And don’t forget a site I mentioned before, Sol Libes’ video site.