Quote of the week
The learning curve is real and needs to be addressed
—Tami Reller, chief marketing officer and chief financial officer of Microsoft’s Windows division, commenting on Windows 8 in a New York Times interview.
The phone that once was
Source: Shoebox Blog
Educational and informative sites
Here are some sites where you can learn something new and interesting:
- App Pompeii – Visiting museums via your phone
BBC News describes apps for visiting museums - Silicon Valley
PBS video about the history of the electronics industry. (Suggested by Sol Libes) - Cloud computing explained
At TechRadar, Jamie Carter answers the question, “What exactly is cloud computing?” - Hardware Secrets: Uncomplicating the Complicated
Hardware Secrets, a US based website, was created in 1999 to produce and distribute technical PC hardware knowledge on the Internet. It is structured and written to the entry level PC enthusiasts. The primary editorial goal is to address the lack of refined technical information on the Internet.Our goal is to provide tutorials, news, and reviews about computer hardware in very easy to follow language.—A prime place to go to learn about computer hardware - Tour Google data center
Washington Post slideshow tours a Google data center. There’s a lot of hardware there.
History of digital storage
It isn’t often that you have an area where there are changes that amount to many orders of magnitude. My first personal desktop had a 20 MB hard drive. My present desktop has multiple drives and several are 2 TB. So my main drive has 100,000 times the storage capacity that my first one had. Some history of digital storage is shown in the infographic below.
Source: Daily Infographic
A personal opinion about Windows 8
Well, I tried—I tried to like Windows 8 but it just was not to be.
I have been using the new operating system off and on for a year, beginning with the beta and I have it installed as the main operating system on a laptop and in a virtual machine on a desktop. But it just doesn’t work for me. Oh, it’s usable alright but too many things take extra steps. Almost everything I want to do on a computer has to be done on the desktop and that is part of the problem. Microsoft really, really wants you to use the tiles, and apps, and the Start screen. Using the desktop is just not as convenient as it used to be. And I already have a very nice iPad for much of what Windows 8 is touted to be good at.
I’ll continue to use Windows 8 because I write about it and give lectures about it. But I won’t be recommending it to my friends. I have finally learned how to deal with many (but not all) of the things I dislike about Windows 8. But why should the average PC user have to go through learning what amounts to a new operating system?
If you would like a review of Windows 8, I refer you to an article by the blogger Dedoimedo written in his inimitable style. Be aware that the author Dedoimedo is fond of four-letter words.
Tuesday links
- Why Does Windows Have So Many Viruses? A Perspective On Microsoft’s Biggest Foe
Many people who use Windows probably wonder why viruses and Trojans plague this operating system so much compared to other operating systems…The answer to this question is a very complex one, but we’ll explore it in detail in this piece. Hopefully, by the end, you’ll have understood why Microsoft has to constantly step up security—Miguel Leiva-Gomez tries to explain the Windows virus problem at Make Tech Easier - The Flattening of Design
At the New York Times Bits blog, Nick Bilton comments on the new trend in technical interfaces, a type of visual scheme where everything has a smooth and even look - A Score or More of Languages in Your Pocket
Language translation apps have improved because more people are using them, allowing the software to make more accurate associations with sounds, text and meaning—At the New York Times Bits blog, Kate Murphy reports on progress in computer language translation and how the results are getting better and better. - YouTube users now watch 6 billion hours of videos a month
People are now watching more than 6 billion hours of video a month on YouTube, the Google-owned video service announced on its blog Wednesday afternoon. That’s twice as much as just a year ago: In May 2012, YouTube announced that its viewers were watching three billion hours of videos a month. In August, that number had grown to four billion hours— Janko Roettgers at GigaOM - Want the best tech support? Buy a Mac, says Consumer Reports
At ITWorld, Gregg Keizer writes about Consumer Reports giving Apple the best tech support rating
Monday links
- New adverts ‘could track your eyes’ in supermarkets
An advertising system which is able to track your eye movements while you shop has been created by researchers based at Lancaster University—BBC News - Wash. Hospital Hit By $1.03 Million Cyberheist
Organized hackers in Ukraine and Russia stole more than $1 million from a public hospital in Washington state earlier this month. The costly cyberheist was carried out with the help of nearly 100 different accomplices in the United States who were hired through work-at-home job scams run by a crime gang that has been fleecing businesses for the past five years—Krebs on Security - What Can I Buy With Bitcoin?
If you’ve never heard of Bitcoin before, then don’t worry because you’re in the majority. Let’s just say that it’s a virtual currency (meaning you’ll never be able to hold an actual Bitcoin in your hands) and leave it at that. For some people, that might sound silly. For others, Bitcoin is slowly but surely becoming the currency of the future—At MakeUseOf, Joel Lee discusses the virtual currency that is getting a lot of coverage - Breaking Up Is Hard When the Web Site Isn’t Ready to Quit
Ending your relationship with a social networking site isn’t easy; more users make the site look better to advertisers—At the New York Times Bits blog, Azadeh Ensha explains the obstacles to disabling accounts at social networks - Does it make sense to buy a PC with a touch screen?
Smartphones with touch screens? Great! Tablets with touch screens? Duh. But PCs with touch screens? Meh—Rick Broida at PCWorld
