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Archive for May, 2011

GNC #671 On the Road

Posted by geeknews at 9:03 PM on May 16, 2011

Geek News Central Podcast It is survey time again and I hope you will take 60 seconds to fill out my listener survey. We have streamlined this so you can click, click, click and be done. Thanks for your support in advance. Quick show and an absolutely funny in the shower story.

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Show Notes:
Endeavor
Bing Facebook Effect.
PSN is Back sort of.
Miramax comes to Netflix.
Wireless Hard-Drive?
Felony to Stream!
Google TV $179.00
Lodsys reveals their extortion.
Nuance in OSX Lion.
UK Super Injunction expands.
Second Monitor do you need it.
Jetbag your Wine Purchases.
New Scareware fakes drive Failure.
No More “You” Tube?
FCC Commissioner on defense.
Firefox 3.5 No More Support.
Hackers can get 3 years.
Android not Secure?
Facebook wins in court.
AT&T Security Service for Consumers.
Google News Grows.
Baby Named Like.
Sun Versus Comet = Sun Wins
Galaxy Windstorms.
FCC Cracks down on Reporting.
Senators not Happy with ICE Response.
Pirate Bay Server Upgrades.
Alt Operating Systems.
AIM AV.
Microsoft to buy Nokia.
New DJ tools.
Gag USB Cable.
Car Tip.
Waterproof bags for your iPad.
WordPress App.
ChromeBook Thoughts.
TAX on SD Cards!
Leica Art.

New Infographic – The Demographics of Social Media

Posted by Alan Buckingham at 6:40 PM on May 16, 2011

The website Advertising Age released a cool new infographic comparing various social media – namely Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Twitter.  There are some interesting facts revealed here.  For instance the Social Media space is lead by the 35-54 age group, the leading country for Facebook is the US, but the second is Indonesia, the leading country for LinkedIn is also the US, but it’s followed by India, and females outpace males as Twitter users.

While some of this strikes me as common sense (like Twitter being dominated by the 35-54 age group), some of it amazes me (like there are significantly more female users and visitors to Twitter).  For anyone who runs a web site this is pretty good information to have.  It can provide a lot of aim to your marketing and SEO efforts.  For those who don’t run a site it’s still a bit of pretty interesting information to parse over.

demographics of social media

G Data Offers Free Fake Antivirus Removal Tool

Posted by Andrew at 3:19 PM on May 16, 2011

If you or a friend have been conned into installing one of the fake anti-virus tools that has been doing the round recently, you’ll be delighted to hear that G Data are offering a free tool to remove the most prevalent type of scareware, “System Tool”.

Many of us will have seen those pop-ups claiming that our PCs have been infected and most of us will have dismissed them for the scams that they are. However, some people are taken in and G Data has seen an increase of 35% over the past 15 months in this type of fake AV. And if you are taken in, it’s a double whammy, with the criminals getting your credit card details while your PC remains under their control for further malicious activity.

The development and deployment of scareware has become a highly profitable business. Fake antivirus programs have a double benefit for cyber criminals: they receive money from users who purchased a ‘full version’ of their useless tools and they get hold of the victims’ credit card data. To make matters worse: the fake AV programs often also put online criminals in a position that allows them to download additional malware onto their victims’ computers”, explains Eddy Willems, Security Evangelist at G Data.

The instructions for running the cleaner program is:
1. Download G Data FakeAV Cleaner from the G Data website: http://www.gdatasoftware.co.uk/support/downloads/tools.html. It’s down at the bottom of the page.
2. Run the G Data FakeAV Cleaner setup file. The G Data FakeAVCleaner “System Tool” has to be executed with the Windows user account that is infected. As the FakeAV “System Tool” shuts down all user initiated programs which do not have any kind of reserved name, like explorer.exe, winlogon.exe or svchost.exe and many more, the file name for the G Data FakeAVCleaner is svchost.exe
3. Reboot the computer to finalise the installation.

If you are interested in the background to this kind of threat, G Data have a complementary blog post discussing some of the issues and demonstrates a scareware infection.

The Chrome-book Will it Succeed?

Posted by KL Tech Muse at 12:46 PM on May 16, 2011

Update: We have an unboxing of the new Samsung ChromeBook below! Plus we will be launching The Chrome Show in coming days!

One of the biggest mistakes that people make is to take what is important in their world and assume it is important for everyone. I believe this is what is happening among some tech journalist and bloggers when it comes to the new Google Chrome-books. The first complaint that many power users especially gamers have about the Chrome-book is you can’t play games like Portal on it. Well guess what, most people don’t play games like Portal on their computers as it is. They either don’t play them at all or they play them on a console.  What most people are playing on their computers are causal games like Farmville or AngryBirds and games like these can be played online and therefore the Chrome-book. The second complaint is that the cloud by nature is not secure and never will be. That putting one’s life on the web is too dangerous and your data maybe at risk. Well I have a couple of  questions on this subject first so Windows is secure now, because that is what most people are on. The second question is where do you do most of your banking, I am guessing that most people do their banking on line and don’t think twice about it. If a browser is secure enough to do your banking through then maybe it can be secure enough to do other things through. The fact is no operating system is fulling secure, especially if it is connected to the Internet. If it’s not connected to the Internet, then for most people it is not much use.. Security is going to be a problem no matter how you store your data whether on-line or off.   The third complaint is that you can do the same thing and more on a net-book Plus net-book are lighter then the Chrome-book.  First I question how much more you can do well on a net-book compared to the Chrome-book. Yes net-books are smaller and lighter, however the Chrome-book has a full size keyboard and a nice screen size. Another advantage that the Chrome-book has over a net book is that  all updates are automatic including security updates. For a power user this may not be a big deal, but I know too many non-power users who forget or are afraid to update and so don’t. The Chrome-book does it automatically, so there is nothing to forget. The final complaint is that because the Chrome-book is dependent on the Internet if your connection goes down the Chrome-notebook becomes useless. This is not totally true, you can still use Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar off-line as will some third party apps.

I not saying the Chrome -book is for everyone, if you are a power user then it is not for you. I can see it being used in schools, and small business where having a system that is easy to update and simple to use is important. A school may want students to have the ability to do research on line or work on documents, but don’t want them to have access to a full computer then the Chrome-book may make sense. I received a Cr48 ( the beta Chrome notebook) when they first came out and I gave it to my husband a couple of months ago and he loves it, it was exactly what he was looking for. He uses it to do research on the Internet, watch YouTube videos and take some notes. He doesn’t need or want a full computer at home. I think the Chrome-book will succeed over time as long as Google continues to maintain and improve it. What do you think are you interested in the Chrome-book.

Robot Underpants #2 05.16.11

Posted by Langley at 12:01 AM on May 16, 2011

Well, we made it to episode 2!

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TMS #21 To the Cloud!

Posted by geeknews at 12:37 PM on May 15, 2011

The Morning Tech Show Video This weeks Morning Tech Show has Jeffrey Powers from Geekazine and Rob Greenlee from ZuneInsider.com as guests. We wrap up the tech news for the week. With a number of great stories.

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Netflix Finally Meets Android

Posted by tomwiles at 8:22 PM on May 14, 2011

Netflix is finally coming to Android devices, albeit slowly, to specific devices at a time. So far, the free Netflix app will show up in the Android Marketplace on the HTC Evo 4G, the HTC Incredible, the HTC Nexus One, the HTC G2, and the Samsung Nexus S.

I have (and still love) a Sprint HTC Evo 4G, so upon discovering that Netflix was available I immediately installed it. The app appears to have a design very similar to the iPod/iPad/iPhone/iOS version, which I also have installed on my iPod Touch 4.

Check the Android Marketplace on your device as well as the Netflix.Com website for additional Android devices as they are added.

CinchCast iOS Beta

Posted by tomwiles at 7:33 PM on May 14, 2011

Podcasting since December of 2004, more than once I’ve thought of a podcasting “dream” device. It would be a small hand-held all-in-one device that would allow me to produce the perfect podcast and upload it and post it with a single tap of a button.

This perfect integrated podcasting device doesn’t exist as of yet, but with Blogtalkradio.Com’s free CinchCast iOS/iPod/iPad/iPhone app, the ideal software/hardware solution is closer than ever to actually meeting my dream for the ideal podcasting solution.

CinchCast is a free app available for download in the iOS App Store. Once installed, in order to use the software one must create a free account at CinchCast.Com. After the free account is created, it becomes possible to record audio from within the CinchCast application. Once you have finished making your recording, simply go to the next step and type in what you were talking about. The remaining and final step is to automatically upload your recording to the CinchCast server, where a real podcast is automatically created with an RSS feed.

CinchCast iOS Beta uses the built-in iPod Touch 4 microphone. The recording quality is decent, but the 64kbps bit rate the app uses is not adjustable. On the other hand, recording at 64kbps in mono results in compact MP3 file sizes.

The iPod Touch itself has a surprisingly good built-in microphone which works extremely well in quiet areas. However, trying to record audio in a moving vehicle is likely to result in heavily distorted recordings because of the deep bass frequencies generated by the tires moving against the pavement so depending on the microphone you are using be forewarned.

Of course, CinchCast iOS Beta has no way to play or incorporate pre-recorded audio clips or jingles. CinchCast excels in allowing one to record and immediately upload a podcast MP3 file with just a few taps on your iPod/iPad/iPhone/iOS device.

WordPress In Your Pocket

Posted by tomwiles at 5:56 PM on May 14, 2011

WordPress has been around a long time and is quite a powerful web publishing platform available to virtually everyone at no cost.

I finally got around to installing the official WordPress app onto my iPod Touch and I have to say I’m impressed with the app. It quickly accepted the credentials to my own WordPress blog, and I found I could update my site directly from my iPod. More impressive to me was when I discovered the ease with which I was able to take photos (or videos) with the iPod’s camera and instantly embed them into blog posts.

Nothing is more powerful than to be able to quickly update one’s own site with not only words but images as well. The official WordPress for iOS is a free download on the iPod/iPad/iPhone/iOS App Store. If you have a WordPress blog and an iOS device, this free app is worth installing.

Microsoft Endorses “Walshed” Tool for Updating ChevronWP7 Devices

Posted by Alan Buckingham at 2:29 PM on May 14, 2011

It was a bit of a surprise when Microsoft didn’t have a problem with developer Chris Walsh’s ChevronWP7 to “fix” NoDo installs that weren’t working, even inviting him to visit their headquarters.  It now comes as less of a surprise that Microsoft is endorsing Walsh’s latest tool, especially since it helps to get those “hacked” phones back on the official update path.

The new tool, called “Walshed Phone Support Tool” solves the issue behind the “80180048″ error code in the Zune app, and an equivalent one in the Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac app, that has prevented the upgrade from even starting.

The ChevronWP7 tool was used by Windows Phone 7 users who wanted to receive the NoDo update before it became available.  The patch was delayed several times due to a variety of issues.  Unfortunately, ChevronWP7, while working flawlessly, rendered devices as “unofficial” and not eligible for future updates.  The new “Walshed” tool will fix that and put those devices back on the right track.  So, Microsoft’s endorsement of both has become a win-win for them.

Perhaps the next platform update, known currently as “Mango” will go much smoother.  Given that this was their first update I can grant some slack, but if they want to make a real dent in the mobile market they will need to get it together.