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I’m a newspaper guy

civilized
photo credit: chelseagirl

I never watch news channels or evening news programs. Since I could read, I enjoyed reading newspapers. Although seriously lacking in substance, I still enjoy reading a morning newspaper with my breakfast. I enjoy holding the paper, hearing the crinkle and being able to rip out articles, circle ads, and even separate circulars from it before bringing it into the house. I will continue to subscribe and receive newspapers at my house as long as they are available.

When the web first started up, en masse, about 15 years ago, The New York Times, LA Times, and Wall Street Journal all came outRead More »I’m a newspaper guy

Google buys reCaptcha

Google just announced that they have bought reCaptcha. reCaptcha has been a leading company in helping to thwart comment and account spam by requiring a human to decipher characters and words scanned from books before continuing on in a posting or sign up process. Check out the article here: Official Google Blog: Teaching computers to read: Google acquires reCAPTCHA.

A Pigeon is faster than the Internet

Zaajil
photo credit: Bu Yousef

I count this as sort of a misleading article, but it is fun none the less. A homing pigeon with a 4GB flash drive took off from a location 80 miles away from its destination. A download of the same amount of data was started at the destination at the same time the pigeon was released. The bird landed with the 4GB of information in just over 2 hours. The computer had only downloaded 5% of the 4GB file in the same 2 hours.

4 GB is a lot of data (1000 songs, or 3000 photos, or a 2 hour movie), but it does wound pretty pathetic that a pigeon can move that information faster than a high speed Internet connection. However, the story also illustrates howRead More »A Pigeon is faster than the Internet

System Engineer fed up with Windows vulnerabilities

Interesting article from a ZDNet author, Christopher Dawson,  who also works full-time as a school district computer engineer. Despite locking down Windows computers with security software, tweaking firewalls, and making sure all Windows updates are up to snuff, threats still sneak into their computers. I understand the frustration he exhibits in the article regarding the time and effort spent fighting… Read More »System Engineer fed up with Windows vulnerabilities

Google Strikes Deal with Sony

The Financial Times reported that Google and Sony agreed on a deal that will result in Google’s Chrome browser (barely a year old) being installed on new Sony computers sold in the United States. Google hopes to add more similar deals with other manufacturers. FT.com / Technology – Sony to distribute Google browser.

Wikipedia to start reviewing article changes

600px-Wikipedia-logo.svgWikipedia started in 2001 as an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. It drew a lot of attention then for its ambitious goal of gathering all information in the world and making it searchable and accessible. Today, it continues to draw millions of visitors per month and boasts more than 3 million articles, 75,000 contributors and has articles in 260 languages.

This week, Wikipedia made the news by making some changes to their article editing process. It used to be all one had to do was to create an account on the site and you could then make edits to any article that you had information to contribute. There has always been oversite and editing, but starting soon, manyRead More »Wikipedia to start reviewing article changes

Barnes & Noble to Offer Free Wi-Fi

If you like working in coffee shops and book stores, you will be happy to know that soon, Barnes & Noble will offer free wi-fi in all their stores. They are hoping that it will encourage shoppers to buy more digital content for portable, digital readers. Complete story from CIO Today here: After Hours – Barnes & Noble Offers Free… Read More »Barnes & Noble to Offer Free Wi-Fi

Intel Helped Google with Chrome OS

This article seems to confirm a suspicion I had and wrote about upon Google’s initial announcement of the Chrome Operating System. Intel has been working with the Linux community for months developing a compelling operating system called Moblin. The Moblin project already uses the Chromium browser (Linux equivalent of Google Chrome) and seems like a natural starting spot for Google’s… Read More »Intel Helped Google with Chrome OS

Password Problem at Twitter

Once again, the main stream media sensationalizes a story by inserting scary prose. Yes, Twitter had an attack of their computers this week. Yes, sensitive documents were stolen.  But NO, this was not a major breach of Twitter user accounts. And No, this does not mean online accounts are inherently unsafe.

I think Twitter founder, Biz Stone, summed up the situation best in this statement:Read More »Password Problem at Twitter