Newsbits
Newsbits for everyone fill the space this week; if there’s nothing for you in here then you’re not a geek.
---Microsoft has released a new beta of Internet Explorer 7 and after about a billion dollars and a decade these folks are starting to get the hang of the browser thing. Swiping the best of the other browsers, like Firefox and Opera, the new IE is better than before, including more secure. The biggest change users will notice is “tabbed browsing,” which is old hat to users of other browsers but new to IE. Basically this lets you keep browser windows open like tabs on a spreadsheet (except these are on top.)
The biggest benefit for me is someone, finally, figured out that printing Web pages is a major pain. IE 7 offers lots of printing options, including shrinking the page so it fits on one normal sized sheet.
If you want to give it a try (PCs only) then head to www.microsoft.com/ie/ and download it for free. Before you install it I would recommend you back up your system or at least your data files. I try to play with beta software on systems I don’t really rely on; the term “beta” means the software is not yet complete and ready for release.
---Experts at a conference in Berlin said an estimated 60 billion e-mails are sent out every 24 hours globally. That’s an amazing number… even more staggering considering 50 billion are for herbal Viagra and 5 billion claim you won the lottery.
---Ebay, which along with Google is aiming for world online domination, has launched “Ebay Express,” a new idea along the lines of its “Buy It Now” concept. The new store features items from merchants who already sell products at fixed prices on eBay. But unlike the regular eBay, purchased items from multiple sellers on eBay Express can all be placed into a single shopping cart and bought at once. That way you don’t have to pay each individual seller.
Give it a look at www.express.ebay.com
---Apple has rolled out a slick new 17-inch version of its MacBook Pro, the Intel-powered replacement for the Powerbook. It’s cool, lovely and fast (up to four times faster than the old one) and can run Windows thanks to Boot Camp software. The downside? Price… expect to fork over $2,800 for one with a gig of RAM. I love Apple hardware but that price makes me think more than twice when you can get a couple of decent Dells and change back for the same coin.
At $1,999 the thing is worth a look; at $1,599 it’s a category killer. It just needs to get a thousand bucks cheaper somehow. Does Moore’s Law apply to Apples?
---Activision finally released the 1.2 patch for Call of Duty 2, including the long-awaited “Punkbuster” anti-cheating technology. The free upgrade will appear for download when you insert Disk 1 to play the multiplayer option (also get the patch for hyperthreading CPUs if you have one.) I played the game over the weekend and found that, indeed, I don’t stink at it as badly as I thought and tons of people had been cheating.
It’s fun again and thanks for the patch. Don’t take so long next time.
WEEKLY WEB WONDER: Send a bit of cheer to the troops overseas at www.americasupportsyou.mil
James Derk is co-owner of CyberDads, a computer repair firm, and computer columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His e-mail address is jim@cyberdads.com
Boot Camp or hell freezes over
A small bit of hell froze over recently when Apple released “Boot Camp,” a tidy piece of free software that allows Windows XP to run on Intel-based Apple PCs.
After decades of fighting with Microsoft, there had to be a bit of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” in this decision, which boosted Apple’s stock price and sent thousands of people to the stores to buy Apple laptops and desktops.
But there are a couple of things to keep in mind.
One, Boot Camp is beta software, meaning Apple is not going to support it. The functionality to run Windows will be included in upcoming version of the Apple operating system (which will be supported) but for now you’re on your own if something goes wrong. (That is to say, you can rely on the excellent peer support forums and such offered by Apple but don’t expect Apple’s support lines to bail you out.)
Two, you have to have one of the new Apple PCs with the Intel processors. Boot Camp won’t run on the older Power PC machines (some of which are still being sold by Apple.) So if you are buying an Apple with the expressed purpose of running Windows, make sure you are buying one with the Intel processor. (Older Apples can run Windows via emulation using software called Virtual PC, something I am using on my Ibook. It’s slower but still works okay for non-gaming applications.)
Thirdly, keep in mind that installing Boot Camp will change the configuration of your hard drive. Boot Camp creates a second partition on the drive that will hold Windows XP, so be prepared to lose some hard drive real estate to Windows.
Fourthly (is that a word?), installing Boot Camp doesn’t give you Windows XP. You need to provide your own full version (not an upgrade version) of Windows XP Service Pack 2, which will run you about $100 to 200 depending on where you buy it (www.newegg.com has some decent operating system prices but shop around, especially if you’re a college student who can qualify for academic pricing.)
Once you get Windows up and running (assuming you do) then you may need to get some more specific drivers and updates downloaded using Windows update. Keep in mind there have been some horror stories of people having real problems of this software majorly hosing their systems so just like any other major upgrade… do a full backup first. This is not a minor patch…this is beta software that creates a separate partition and does some other major disk operations and it would be foolish to proceed without a backup.
If you do get hosed up keep in mind you may have to start from scratch with your initial Apple disks so make sure those are handy or don’t install Boot Camp.
Also keep in mind that once you get Windows XP happily running on your Apple, you also will need anti-virus software running on that partition so install AVG on it.
On the Apple side, the Windows partition won’t be able to see the Apple partition (without some special software such as MacDrive) so unless you’ve done that you’re probably safe.
WEEKLY WEB WONDER: For great coverage of Boot Camp check out MacWorld’s coverage at www.macworld.com
James Derk is co-owner of CyberDads, a computer repair firm, and computer columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His e-mail address is jim@cyberdads.com
LinkedIn and Jigsaw: Social Networking for Grown Ups
With all the furor around teens and MySpace, it can be lost that there are quite a few "networking" sites on the Internet that are full of positive buzz, including some aimed at grown-ups and business-people.
First, we ought to set our terms straight. Social networking sites, such as MySpace and Friendster and others, are designed really just to connect people together like virtual Dixie cups and string.
Some, like MySpace, are aimed at the social scene. Others, like the cool 30Boxes (www.30boxes.com) are designed to let you put your entire social calendar online so your friends can “book” you for events.
But businesses and business-people have been watching sites like these with great interest and adapting them for their needs. For example, 30Boxes doesn’t have to be used for social events; it can be used to reserve a conference room, plan a retreat or whatever.
Some sites are launching strictly aimed at business-people.
My favorite of these is “LinkedIn”, which has more than 5 million registered users already. This free site lets you create a business profile of yourself, sort of an online resume, which you then link to people you know. It sort of is played like the Kevin Bacon 6 Degrees game. If you know someone well and want to endorse their work, you can do so on their profile. The more people you like to, the larger your potential network becomes.
This is very interesting for sales people and headhunters, who are always looking for new talent, and also very interesting for HR folks. Many people like to “pick off” employees at certain companies and sometimes don’t know anyone there or can’t get the right way in. With LinkedIn you can search your network of people who know people you know and get an introduction that way.
The site is free for basic users, though power users can pay a monthly fee for the ability to search across larger portions of the network or make introductions directly.
Many jobs are now posted on the site, many exclusive to LinkedIn, the theory being that the person on the site probably is employed and probably has some folks on there to vouch for them.
Another site called JigSaw (www.jigsaw.com) treats contacts like commodities, giving people points for finding new contacts and getting them added to the system and penalizing you points if you add bad data. Membership costs most people about $25 a month although the site can be free if you add enough contacts per month. (That site strikes me a lot like too much work but I am not in that kind of business, I guess. It’s clearly aimed at sales and less at one-to-one relationships.)
What’s happening with JigSaw is people are being compensated, basically, for uploading their company Rolodex into a Web site, which strikes me as a fundamentally bad idea. It’s not quite as easy to make quick cash doing it as some of the blogs would have you believe (“rat out your friends for $1!!”) because you’d have to upload a couple hundred contacts to get started. But again, it’s creepy because at least with LinkedIn people are hooking themselves up and offering only the information they want out there about themselves.
With Jigsaw you are just a data-entry clerk with someone else’s information.
WEEKLY WEB WONDER: One of the better tech blogs out there is TechCrunch. Check it out at www.techcrunch.com
James Derk is co-owner of CyberDads, a computer repair firm, and computer columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His e-mail address is jim@cyberdads.com
Digital photos rule the world
Today’s installment includes a few reader questions about digital photos and the growing use of home PCs as the darkrooms of today.
Q. I have a new digital camera and I love it. I am storing my photos on my home PC and I am worried about losing them all if my computer dies. I read in your column about backing them up onto CD or an external drive. Can I also store them online?
A. Sure. Online sites like Smugmug, AOL Photos, Shutterfly, or any number of other sites will store your photos for you. Some will do so for free; some for a modest fee. Some will store them for you for nothing if you periodically order prints from them. If you have a high-speed Internet connection that’s one way to back up your photos and always have an extra copy off-site. However I still would make a copy to CD or to an external drive. That would protect you further if the external site were to go out of business or whatever.
Q. I have about 5,000 photos on my hard drive and keeping them all organized in folders is becoming a real pain as you can imagine. What image organizer do you recommend buying for Windows XP?
A. I use and recommend a free utility called Picasa from the folks at Google (I did mention they were going to take over the world, didn’t I?). Picasa searches your hard drive (if you want it to) for all image files and indexes them for you. It makes small thumbnail photos of everything so you can see tiny images of what the photos look like. Then when you launch Picasa you can search by those image thumbnails, by date and even by content keywords you can add.
You also can do basic photo editing, make CDs, drag and drop into albums and much more. This is the tool that everyone should start with. Best of all, it’s free. You can get it at “picasa.google.com”
Q. You mentioned that is better not to reformat flash cards but just clear them. Why is that?
A. In some cameras, the camera keeps a running numeric of the pictures taken like “img001, img002” etc. If you reformat the memory card, sometimes you can start that numbering system over again which is a hassle when you copy them to your computer and it wants to overwrite the files already there. Read the manual to make sure but often there is a “clear” option instead.
Q. When I connect my camera to my computer I get a pop-up box that says I can get faster performance if I connect my camera to a USB 2.0 port, which I don’t have on my computer. How can I get rid of this?
A. Isn’t Windows so helpful sometimes? Yes, you would get faster performance but you’re right, you probably don’t have the ports. If you clicked on the helpful box it likely would tell you as much. To turn off the unhelpful warning, in Device Manager, click on all the USB host controllers, click the Advanced tab and then check the box on the bottom of the window that says “Don’t tell me about USB errors.”
You can buy a PCI-based USB 2.0 card for about $25 that would speed up your USB performance but you have to pop open the case to install it.
WEEKLY WEB WONDER: Check out your American Idol favorites at www.idolonfox.com
James Derk is owner of CyberDads, a computer repair firm, and computer columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His e-mail address is jim@cyberdads.com
