Apparently, a data breach occurred between January 21, 2012 and February 25, 2012 and both major credit card companies and approximately 10,000,000 accounts have been compromised. Please make sure to check your credit statement for charges (you can do this by phone), or if you’re like me – change your card number. If you opt to do this, you’ll get a new card in 7-10 days, and then you’ll have to activate it. Please do your due diligence: Best t...
If you don’t care about the info collected about you by any website you decide to visit, then at least do this: “Disable third party cookies’. Almost every website you’ll visit has ad banners, and they give you ad tracker cookies. Now not every cookie is bad. Some sites actually need cookies to be displayed correctly, and even speed up site rendering. So what’s a cookie? A cookie is a text file which collects and stores information and can only be ac...
You wouldn’t believe me if I told you who the Easter Bunny really is. Anyway, he couldn’t resist leaving me a really yummy Easter Egg. I’m not even making you guys and girls go hunting for this one. Thanks, Easter Bunny. You warm, cuddly, crazy wabbit! For the FAQ about the deal: http://www.acronis.com/promo/easter/faq.html Get it here: http://www.acronis.com/promo/easter/?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRoguq7OZKXonjHpfsX%2B4...
Sometimes you don’t feel well. You have some symptoms and don’t know what to do about them, or maybe your friend told you he/she isn’t feeling well. In the latter case, and if you aren’t a Doctor, best to tell him/her to talk with one…. this isn’t something you try to do at home without really knowing what you’re doing. Sometimes you just want an idea of what might be wrong and what to do as initial self care. In that framework, i...
Neowin software blogger Razvan Serea wrote a brief article on PicPick v. 3.1.3 today so I thought I’d give it a mention as well. It’s free (for home users), but continues to be developed probably thanks to the sales of its commercial version. I use Snagit10 and Ashampoo Snap 5, and find them more intuitive and somewhat easier to use. They however are not free. I put together a composite of screenies to illustrate it’s features: &#...
It’s amazing. Simply and totally amazing. It supposedly makes CS5 look primitive, and that takes some doing. You can watch Russell Brown’s video on his six favorite new features: Adobe’s Mercury Graphics Engine has also speeded up the “Liquify”, “Puppet Warp” and “Crop” tools. Some stuff Russell Brown didn’t mention: “Shadows and Highlights” – No more halos (unless you go to truly insane val...
Really fast and thorough defragging can speed up your HDD. Both Iobit’s SmartDefrag2 (with skinnable – its own skins) and Auslogic’s Disk Defrag have both been updated. I have no preference… both look ok, although SmartDefrag2 might have the edge there as it has a dark (charcoal gray) and light interface. Auslogic’s Disk Defrag: Features : Defrag and optimize Free space consolidation System files smart placement Keeping the MFT reserved z...
Stardock’s newest app to make Windows 8 more usable for desktop and tablet pc users was reviewed by Matthew Nawrocki on his blog over at TechRepublic. He has immediately adopted Start 8: “I immediately adopted this add-on for Windows 8, since it does wonders for working within the new interface and it makes Windows 8 a good bit more tolerable to use. Who knows, perhaps Microsoft may pay heed to Stardock’s tweak and officially reincorporate the Start button ...
Yesterday I wrote about BCI – brain computer interface and medical, etc. (hopefully non military) applications. Today it’s Tobii’s turn… well, I have written about that before as well as gaze control for Windows 8 (demonstrated at CES 2012). Tobii (no, I haven’t invested in that Swedish company, and have no interest beyond reporting news) has now created an asteroid shooter game and a way to interact with it … without the clumsy glasses. Here’s a pic from Tobii. ...
Back in June 2011 ( http://drjbhl.joeuser.com/article/409427/Just_Think_About_This ) I told you about a company named Emotiv and the possibilities ahead of us. At CES 2012, I admit it managed to skate by my attention but it seems they’d managed to demonstrate mind control over a skateboard! Please watch “The Board of Imagination” video here : http://vimeo.com/37232050 How cool is this? Awesome! Beyond skateboarding, lie...
Hankers sent me to Neowin to find this one (I was lazy), so thanks, Hankers. What I found there, and after reading the original at Incapsula truly amazed me. I knew there was bad stuff out there but this much? Incapsula published research done on 1,000 of its customers (anonymous) and found the following (nice graphics, Incapsula!): So, 51% of the traffic on these 1,000 sites was bot related. Now, that isn’t all bad. There are ceaseless bot searches being d...
Thanks to both the web team and support team we have a brand new Support page ! The new page has all the important links to those urls we all have been gleaning from various different threads. It’s all just become a whole lot easier. It’s very well organized and functional as well, and even has an instant chat (mibbit) widget embedded, so you can (M-F, 9am-5pm) reach support folks. To access this page and put it on your browser’s “Favorites”: https://www.stardock.co...
Ideally, Windows should balance the programs which access your computers CPU and RAM. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. That’s frequently why boots are slow, and freezes happen. “…default priority classes, default CPU affinities, disallowed processes, keep running processes, per-process power schemes, a process watchdog, and process instance count limits.” – Razvan Serea, http://www.neowin.net/news/process-lasso-51054 Should have been part of Win...
Just caught an interesting headline: “Exclusive: Unmasking the World’s Most Wanted Hacker” here: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/06/exclusive-unmasking-worlds-most-wanted-hacker/ Hector Xavier Monsegur is alleged to be “Sabu The Elephant Boy”, the head of Lulzsec. He was arrested during the summer of 2011 by the FBI after he was “doxed” (identified) online. Apparently he’s a 28 year old unemployed computer programmer living...
I started writing this two days ago but delayed publishing because I felt I should defer to Binyamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel as I thought he would touch on the points I intended to make in this post. I am heartened greatly that in fact, he did last night in his speech to AIPAC. Purim - “The Festival of The Casting of Lots” will be upon us soon. How appropriate and ironic, in so many ways. Ahmadinejad and the Iranians of today should read it well or, si...