July 2010 archive

RedLaser – Check Prices Online Before You Buy

During this past week, some of my colleagues sitting in my immediate area were talking about an iPhone  app called “RedLaser”. Basically, the app takes a picture of the barcode on an item and does an online search for prices, gives you a list of the prices and where you can buy it as well …

Continue reading

Facebook Pulling the Plug on its Gift Shop

Unless you read Facebook’s own blog you may be unaware and completely oblivious to the fact that it is going to shut down its “Gift Shop”. You may have noticed  in the past when you have gone to wish someone “Happy Birthday” that the comment box was larger and containing a space for you to …

Continue reading

Rotten Tomatoes – Your Online Film Guide

Have you found yourself spoilt for choice at the cinema and wanted to find out what is the best pick of the flicks? The missus and I have found ourselves in this situation many times, usually over lunch on the weekend or after work on Friday afternoon. Sometimes the previews don’t show a film in …

Continue reading

Borders Selling Kobo In-Store – Bold or Desperate?

Last weekend, the missus brought it to my attention that Borders had started to sell their own eBook reader in-store. This comes at a time when Amazon have had the market to themselves for ages with their Kindle before the Apple iPad made its recent entrance and the launch of the iBooks application on the …

Continue reading

The Days of HDMI may be Numbered – All Hail HDBaseT!

As part of my daily browsing, I came across an interesting article regarding HDMI and a new proposed standard with the moniker of “HDBaseT”. The networking gurus amongst us would know that we already have 10BASE-T (10Mbps Ethernet over twisted pair), 100BASE-T (100Mbps Fast Ethernet) and 1000BASE-T (1Gbps Ethernet). Given those standards and naming conventions, …

Continue reading

Should Broadband Become a Utility Service?

These days, everyone should have access to electricity, water and a telephone line (although I have a brother-in-law of mine that doesn’t have drinkable tap water). Back in the days of analogue and digital dialup modem technology, the telephone line was not only there for emergencies and keeping in touch with people but also opened …

Continue reading

Backup Your Facebook, Twitter and Blog with Backupify

Are there some things that you have uploaded to a social medium that you don’t have stored anywhere else? Perhaps you are implicitly relying on Facebook and Twitter remaining operational so that all those funny comments, memorable photos, shared links and event calendars are not lost? If you have been following this blog for a …

Continue reading

Is Facebook Trying to Replace E-mail?

Whilst I was out and about today I got thinking about how deep Facebook has its hooks in the online social interactions between many people around the world. It didn’t seem too long ago that we were quite happy with online forums, e-mail and SMS before Facebook and Twitter showed up. Outside of work, I …

Continue reading

Always Eject External Drives Before Removal

Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media

Over the course of my career where USB flash drives and external flash drives have become more commonplace (compared to the 1990s where floppy disks and compact discs were king) I have been shocked by the number of people that simply pull out a drive without first ejecting it. In some cases, this has lead …

Continue reading

When All Else Fails, Use Malwarebytes

Today, a work colleague and friend of mine had an issue with her computer being overcome by a nasty piece of malware formally known as PolyCrypt and commonly disguised as “Security Master AV” (which looks a lot like the Windows Security Centre). The computer was still operational and remote accessible via LogMeIn (which I have …

Continue reading