Liliputing – Remember floppy disks? Once upon a time, every computer came with a floppy drive for saving files and loading documents. Now you’ll be hard pressed to find a PC with a floppy disk drive thanks to the prevalence of CD, DVD, and even Blu-Ray drives.
But we could be moving toward a world where even optical [...] read more

The IT Skeptic – When we speak of a new profession(alism), could it be that by focusing on IT we are focusing on the wrong thing?

My other interest besides being a nuisance is railroads. I just read the line “railroads nurtured the new profession of civil engineering in the 19th Century” [...in America. It’s one of those “the world ends at the shining seas” books.]

This resonated with me. Can we paraphrase to “Information Technology nurtured the new profession of”... WHAT?[...] read more

Connected Internet – At the moment downloading is big news in the UK.  Just today I saw a story on the news about how I games company where going after a unemployed single housewife for sharing a 3D Pinball game.  In total she was looking at 16k in damages.  Not a small amount for anyone, but even more [...] read more

Kees Leune – With the month of August coming to an end, schools, colleges and universities all over the country are starting up again. For IT departments in higher education, it means that the busiest part of the year is over. Because the… read more

Make Use Of – Have you ever wanted to send sensitive information to someone else over the internet? I’m sure you must’ve felt a little paranoid about your details getting stolen along the way. Ever wished there was a way to send messages across to a friend without others knowing? Or even not having the slightest hint that you’re [...] read more

IT Blogwatch – In Tuesdays IT Blogwatch, we wonder whether Windows Vista PCs are being downgraded to XP in bigger numbers than we thought. Not to mention cute choices…
Gregg Keizer reports:
More than one in every three new PCs is downgraded from Windows Vista to the older Windows XP, either at the factory or by the buyer… read more

The Security and Compliance Connection Blog – Yesterday, I shared some initial thoughts on the indictments handed down two weeks ago as part of the TJX data breach. The indictment makes it clear that the suspects used a tactic called wardriving to penetrate wireless access points at… read more

Liliputing – Intel will offer up details on its upcoming dual-core Atom processor today at the IDF conference in San Francisco. You can tune into the event live via a webcast at 11:00am PST. But there’s something to keep in mind: while the dual-core Atom will be a low power CPU that offers higher performance than the [...] read more

Network Security Blog – If the possibility of ending up on the Wall of Sheep at Defcon and Black Hat wasn’t enough for you, Mike Perry is about to release a tool that automatically steals the Gmail ID’s of any non-encrypted sessions it finds. If you’re surfing on the free, public wi-fi at your local coffee shop, anyone [...] read more

Appletell – It seems that enough people have complained, and Apple has decided it’s willing to lower its profit margins by a few cents and give away replacement MagSafe Power Adapters should yours fray and fall apart.

Many MacBook and MacBook Pro owners have reported their MagSafe Power Adapters fraying just below the head and, at times, shorting. These reports have been coming in since the introduction of MagSafe into the notebook line, but Apple has done nothing about it until this week.

A new support page confirms that whether the product is in or out of warranty, any [...] read more

Appletell – For many users, firmware update 2.0.2 was supposed to be the fix for 3G reception issues. I say supposed to be, because apparently, instead of fixing the iPhone’s hefty signal strength requirements for 3G, it makes that already bad reception worse for some users.

According to iPhoneAtlas, some 3G users are unable to get wireless access of any sort without disabling the [...] read more

Techie Buzz – Quite some time back we had shown you how to access FTP servers as a local drive in Windows, but we came across a much more advanced software called Sticky Folder which allows you to mount HTTP, FTP and Usenet news servers as a local drive in Window.

Sticky Folder will allow you to mount [...] read more

Data Center Knowledge – IBM will invest $300 million this year to build 13 data centers providing global disaster recovery for business customers. The new facilities are being built in New Jersey and nine international sites, including facilities in China, Japan, Turkey, Poland and France. IBM says the building boom is [...] read more

Xconomy – Every day it seems I learn of another fast-growing Web software startup in the Seattle area. Today, I discovered Tacoma, WA-based Konnects is launching a new user interface for its social-networking site. Konnects already has more than 350,000 users worldwide (most are in the U.S. and India), and it is carving out a niche in [...] read more

PCMech – This site really took off when I wrote my tutorial on building a PC. That tutorial, today, is ranked #1 in Google for building a PC. But, that tutorial was written some time ago. In this day and age, the question should be asked: is building a PC worth it anymore? [...] read more

The AppGap – In June, the New York Times reported on the emergence of a new organization dedicated to understanding information overload, the Information Overload Research Group (IORG). The context of the article referenced Basex research indicating an annual loss to in the United States of $650B per year in lowered productivity and hampered innovation. Colleague Celine Roque [...] read more

Geeks are Sexy Technology News – Four years ago at the last party conventions, when they nominated George W Bush and John Kerry, YouTube didn’t even exist (imagine that – a world with no YouTube).   But now, with YouTube a dominant force on the internet, Google is determined to make its presence felt in Denver next week [...] read more

Andy ITGuy – My apologies to Glenn Beck for borrowing his line, but I think that it fits well. Not trying to toot my own horn just proud of the fact that I don’t blindly follow the crowd. As you may know I haven’t posted anything in over 2 weeks which is a first for me. Life continues to keep me busy and the last week or so have seen some personal events that have taken up lots of my time. During this time I’ve done a good bit of thinking and watching. I’m not going [...] read more

4sysops – For Windows Administrators – A while ago, I discussed the seven disadvantages of server virtualization. Cost was one factor that I did not cover in that post. Questioning whether one can reduce costs with server virtualization sounds a bit like blasphemy these days. You will hardly find an article about server virtualization that does not claim that it is the best way to save costs in the data center. According to this [...] read more

Cyber Cynic – Angelina Jolie pregnancy was not a hoax John McCain is not going to Vietnam as part of his presidential campaign and Paris Hilton has not gotten married. But, if you click on the link in any of these fake MSNBC BREAKING NEWS e-mails the sender will attempt to shove malware into your PC. [...] read more