What do Pepsico, Intel, Microsoft, Google (eBay), Paypal, Frito-Lay, various media companies (ESPN, CBS and A&E), The California Olive Ranch and HP have in common? Don’t rack your brain for an answer – let them. LOL. You’ll never guess, anyway. It’s too far ‘out there’. These companies do a ‘unique brand’ of market research. It’s called neuromarketing . Q - Where does modern neuromarketing exist? A - At the very ...

  This one really caught my eye. It seems that one of the original designers of the PC thinks the answer is “Yes.” The engineer who thinks so is none less that IBM’s Middle East and Africa’s CTO, Mark Dean. He was one of the magic twelve who designed IBM’s PC thirty years ago. “PCs are being replaced at the center of computing not by another type of device — though there’s plenty of excitement about smartphones and tablets — but by new ideas about the role that...

  For productivity and efficiency, “Snap” is a great feature: If you wish to use ‘side by side’ equally sized applications. However, what if you want to see what’s beneath, or wish one “above” the other? That’s where PowerResizer becomes useful.  You can make the windows you’re dragging ‘transparent’ while dragging, too. Even better, you control the size of each app and can rotate them all from the systray in whi...

I like makeuseof.com a good deal. They’re honest and come up with lots of good stuff: Especially their “Guides”.   Today, there’s a new “Guide”: “Operation Cleanup: Malware Removal Guide”. To gain access to their fifty guides (in pdf format) all you have to do is join… it’s free and you get a newsletter, which is informative, and falls way short of what I’d call spam.     Anyway, we talk...

  Calibre is a free and open source e-book library management application developed by users of e-books for users of e-books. “It has a cornucopia of features divided into the following main categories: Library Management E-book conversion Syncing to e-book reader devices Downloading news from the web and converting it into e-book form Comprehensive e-book viewer Content server for online access to your book collection...

Well, they’re still at it… “The group known as Anonymous said Saturday it has hacked into some 70 law enforcement websites across the southern and central United States in retaliation for arrests of its sympathizers in the U.S. and Britain. The hacking group also claimed to have stolen 10 gigabytes of data, including emails, credit card details, and other information from local law enforcement bodies. "We are releasing a massive amount of confidential information that...

  Microsoft's August Patch Tuesday will be relatively moderate, though it does address 22 flaws. According to Microsoft, 13 of the patches addressed in August Patch Tuesday will address 22 flaws in a number of different programs, including Windows, Internet Explorer (IE), Visio and Visual Studio. The most important updates are to Windows,  Internet Explorer and Windows Server 2008. Again, care should be exercised with the .NET update (Bulletin 10). No advance notice about ...

  Yep, I’ve found a good app to add to my “Mr. Fixit” toolbox (thanks to TheWindowsClub and Anand@TWC). A  zipped file is highly structured one and therefore prone to corruption from defragging, etc. Your usual zip utility won’t work with the file as it’s damaged structure prevents the utility from working. “This is because all zip tools check archives for integrity. If CRC values of the original files of an archive don't match the extracted ones, the standard too...

McAfee announced in Boston, today that U.N. headquarters, governments and companies have been infiltrated by RAT (remote access tools) malware. This malware has been on their systems  harvesting secret information starting five years ago. The malware lay on the U.N. systems undetected for two years. McAfee released the report to coincide with the start of the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas today. Victims in the five-year campaign include the governments of the United States, Taiw...

  OK, you’ve been good, and secured your wireless network. If you haven’t (and I can’t imagine the why of that), then please… please do so immediately. You can get a good guide here . This is of paramount importance to your identity because illegal and costly activities can be perpetrated on "your" network. The last thing you need is Homeland Security knocking on your door, telling you about "kiddy stuff and piracy" you've allegedly been engaged in. If...

  This is limited to three "link safety" extensions available in the "Chrome Store". All are free.   Web of Trust, McAfee and Norton Safe Web.   1. Web of Trust : Based on user experience and reporting by (site claim) millions of users. States they are “trustworthy”, although how they conclude this is unclear. Like:  Unobtrusive, geared to color blind people as well, Shows trust ratings when using Google, Bing, Yahoo. Don’t like:&nbs...

Court Approves Cancer Gene Patent   Emily P. Walker, MedPage Today’s Washington Correspondent reported on a rather distressing Appeals Court decision: A company that makes tests for breast and ovarian cancer can patent breast cancer gene sequences, in effect ruling that human genes can be patented. The ruling (2:1) reversed a lower court decision which ruled the opposite. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit -- a court that specializes in patent cases -- rule...

  Well, this is a doozy. Skype made a major error and published Skype 5.5 with a major – no, make that a critical security flaw. If you have a facebook account, then you could use some of that functionality right in the VOIP software: Posting comments and status updates or seeing who among your ‘friends’ are currently online. David Vieira-Kurz published proof of the vulnerability here: http://www.secalert.net/index.php?en What could happen is that someone else ...

Some skinning for a change. Thought this would entertain our Dream makers especially, but these great creations really should be enjoyable for all…. These Cinemagraphs are what the 36 great contest entries were called on Gizmodo, but to me they look like hybrid dreams. No doubt our resident artists will explain this better than I, but Adobe After Effects to do the  cross fading and looping seems to have turned the trick for the winner.   I would reproduce ...

  For those who wish to frustrate the online profile builders, there’s a good extension now available‘ “The TrackMeNot Chrome extension takes a novel approach to protecting your privacy from search engines that can create profiles of you based on terms you search for. Rather than hiding your searches from them in some way, it takes the exact opposite tack: It inundates search engines with a blizzard of background searches from you, so that no practical profile can be built...