Computer 101: What Are All Those Wires For

Computers today have a million different ports on them for every different piece of equipment you can image.  Knowing what all these different connectors and wires do can get pretty confusing, especially if you haven't looked at the back of your computer in a while.  Or if you are looking to upgrade your system it's good to know what these connectors are capable of so you get what you want in your computer.  Gizmodo has a great article explaining the basics of these connectors and even offers pictures of each of them along with a brief description.  Anyone looking to learn about computers or wants to understand their own computer better should definitely give this article a read.  

Nintendo Leaves Everyone in the Dust

Nintendo managed to rise above the competition is the gaming console industry over the past year.  The main reason for Nintendo's success is staying true to what they do.  Nintendo makes games and game consoles, and that's all they try to do.  Both Microsoft and Sony tried to make their game consoles so much more, by making them the center of out living room media.  Nintendo offered simple and innovative design that made their consoles affordable and fun.  By staying clear of cutting edge technology (Blue-Ray and HD-DVD) and aiming for a more fun loving, casual gaming crows (not the die-hard gamers) Nintendo kept their costs down, while making games fun again.  The Nintendo Wii is still one of the most popular consoles out there.  It is still in high demand and regularly sells out.  And unlike Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo has not changed anything with their system since its release.  Both Sony and Microsoft have changed their pricing, packages, and technology since releasing their systems last year.  Nintendo's business plan seems to be flawless, as the company is just printing money.  They are able to offer fun, cheap, and simple games for everyone to enjoy.  Hopefully both Sony and Microsoft take note and implement more innovation into their systems instead of just increasing their processing power. 

Dell Studio Hybrid: A Step in the Right Direction

Yesterday, Dell released the Studio Hybrid, a new small factor, low power desktop PC.  The PC offers a eco-friendly design by using 70% less power than the average desktop and offering a version incased in bamboo.  Other reasons Dell claim the desktop to be eco-friendly is the packaging is 95% recyclable and the documentation included uses 75% less paper.  The hybrid base model starts at a very affordable $499, which could make this very appealing to the average college student or someone looking for a second computer, but that price can quickly rise with features such as Wifi, Blue-Ray drive, monitor, and TV tuner.  Prices are still reasonable for a powerful and compact desktop though.  The small form factor PC's are becoming the future of desktop computers.  They are not really made to be used as a traditional desktop.  By that I mean you wouldn't set this computer up in a computer room somewhere and just use it occasionally.  This is more something for having in your kitchen or you living room as part of a home theater system.  The small form and eye-catching design makes the PC more of something to show off and integrate into your normal day to day life.  Expect to see many more companies coming out with desktop PCs with small form factors and green designs.  The days of the huge tower desktop PC's are being left to gaming rigs and servers. 

Computer Maintenance with CCleaner

CCleaner is a Windows only freeware program for keeping your computer running like new.  The program scans your computer for excess files takings up valuable space on your hard drive.  The files are ones that are no long associated with programs, are left over from software installations, or things added to your computer while browsing (i.e cookies and tracking files).  I've been using CCleaner for a couple months now and have really liked it.  I run it every time i get off the computer (it usually deletes about 20 mb of data each day and takes about 10 seconds to run).  It keeps my hard drive clean, and my computer running up to speed.  It doesn't completely replace running disk defragments or deleting files yourself, but it does provide a nice clean up to keep everything running smoothly.  Here is a screen shot of the program, you select to analyze first to see what you are deleting then you can run the cleaner to permanetly delete the files.

Ex-Google Spinoff: Cuil

Google has become a breading ground for future tech execs and entreprenuers.  In part due to their policy of allowing every emoployee 20% of their workweek to a personal project.  These personal projects have been the starting ground for many of the things from Google Labs, including Gmail.  Some of these projects even become their own companies.  The newest spinoff from a former Google employee is Cuil.com (pronounced "cool"), a new search engine that claims to index 3 times as many websites as Google.  Cuil was started by Anna Patterson, a person who definately knows a things of two about search engine design, her first search engine was bought by Google in order to improve their own technology.  Cuil is still in its beginning stages of development, but with a 33 million dollar backing and a few other Google engineers working there, this search engine could create an intesting buzz in an already over crowded, but very profitable, search engine market.

via physorg.com

Blackberry Media Sync: Bringing Blackberry and iTunes Together

 

Blackbery phones have been becoming more media centric in an atempt to compete better with the Apple iPhone and  appeal to a younger, non-corporate crowd, and Blackberry Media Sync is the newest addition to their media software line up.  Media Sync allows for your Blackberry to sync with your iTunes library, as well as other media on you computer.  This makes it much easier to use playlists on your Blackberry rather than the old way of drag-and-drop file transfers.  Media Sync is available for the Pearl, Curve, and 8800 series.

Weekend Fun: Make Any Webpage Editable

Here is an interesting trick I learned the other day.  Go to any webpage you want.  For my example I used Google, one of the most recognizable websites out there.  Once the page loads, go to the address bar at the top of your browser (the place that you type http://www......).  Select everything and replace it with this text

javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on'; void 0

Hit enter, and you should now be able to edit the webpage just as if it was a word document.  You can move stuff around, delete things, and add your own text.  It's a fun little trick to play around with or to play tricks on other people.  This trick goes to show that you can't always trust what you see on the Internet.

Facebook Getting a Facelift

Facebook is prepping a new look and feel for it's popular social networking profile.  To test out the new look and new features, go to new.facebook.com and log in as you normally would.  This is similar to how Blogger has a draft website to test out its new features before a complete release or transition to a new system. 

How Much Of Your Life Is Online?

The Internet is making any piece of information or media we want accessible from anywhere with a connection.  And with wifi hotspots everywhere, getting connected is becoming increasingly easy.  All-in-one devices are even allowing us to get out Internet fix without a computer.  You can go online with a cell phone or an mp3 player.  Almost anything electronic is now becoming "networked" or in some way capable on Internet connection.

Since starting this blog, I have begun to do more and more online.  Traditionally, I'm pretty skeptical about relying on things being online.  I don't like the idea of trusting my data to some company's server.  I like to keep my own hard drive backups of anything I create or use so I always have it and can access it.  I've never had a problem with something being stored online, its more of a precaution for my peace of mind.  But this is beginning to change.  With more of my life being on the computer and more things being done on the computer I am beginning to learn that I can't keep everything, there simply isn't enough storage or any practical way to store everything.  I now trust more of the unimportant things to the Internet servers and more of the media intensive files (i.e. music, TV shows, general entertainment) that take up too much space to begin with.

 

image from PC Mag

The idea of everything being online is fairly new in our technological society.  It's referred to as "Cloud Computing."  The idea is pretty simple, everything you need is kept in the "cloud" (on the Internet) and you are able to access the cloud from any computer with a connection, no matter where you are.  Its somewhat like creating a personal server.  All the data and files you want  are stored in a central location and no matter what computer you are on you can access this information.  The major downside to cloud computing though, is that the central location is the Internet.  That's a massive central area.  You can use a large variety of services to store you information and have it across multiple servers controlled by all different companies and people.  This isn't the most secure or smartest way to keep your data.  Think of it as outsourcing your hard drive.  You no longer control what is on your hard drive, it's someone else's data once it's on their server.  You are subject to their rule about the hard drive, usually presents in the terms and service agreement every website makes you agree to and almost no one reads.  This lack of security and control over your data doesn't stop many people from signing up for these services.  The convenience of being able to access your information from anywhere at anytime and have a different company deal with the technical aspect is too appealing for many people to pass up.

So where is the digital age heading in terms of information storage.  People have already begun to make the shift from keeping hard copies of everything to keeping only digital copies on their hard drive.  Now the shift if going from the hard drive to the Cloud (Internet).  What's next?  Once cloud computing can be done in a much more secure manner and people grow used to it, where will we go from there.  It's hard to imagine another from of data storage that would be better than being able to access all your information from any device with a connection.

Phones You Should Be Excited For (hint it's not the iPhone)

With Apple's iPhone 3G getting all the press lately, I felt it'd be a good idea to let you know about a couple other phones that you should be just as excited for.

First is the long delayed but recently released Openmoko's Neo FreeRunner (released July 4th).  This phone has been years in the making and has hit a lot of hurdles, everything from company changes to different software to merging with other open source movements.  The final product though is something that could have a big impact on the cell phone industry.

The phone's main claim to fame is the is the first completely open source smart phone.  This means that all the hardware and software on the phone is completely open to customization and change.  This also usually means that everything for the phone, software wise, will be free.  The way open source usually works is the company releases a basic operating system for the device, like a base for everthing else to build off of.  Then programmers and developers are free to change and add to that base as much as they like to create new software and functions for the device.  With a good community of developers and the appeal of everything being open, this phone could shake up an United State's cell phone industry that is largely controlled by proprietary (company controlled) software.  The closest thing the average cosumer now has is a SymbianOS based smartphone, that offers an open source software but not hardware as well.  (Most Nokia and Sony Ericsson smart phones are SymbianOS based).

The phones basic design is similar to the iPhone with its large touchscreen interface and minimal physical buttons.  It also offer comparable processor power, gps, and a couple other bells and whistles.  The main thing though is the software.  With the right community backing the Openmoko FreeRunner you could see a lot better applications than the iPhone.  Also with open source to attract developers with the prospect of free developing, where Apple charges a fee to any developer submitting apps to their "App Store" for use by the iPhone.  Hopefully this combination of great hardware and open source software is enough to change people's perception as to what they expect from a "smart phone" in the future. 

*Update: Openmoko has also made deals to release the FreeRunner world wide.  As well as potentially become a Google Android handset.

The second phone you should be on the look out for is the Blackberry Thunder.  The Thunder is Blackberry's first attempt at a touchscreen phone and is in direct competition with the Apple iPhone.  The Blackberry is to the corporate executive as the iPhone is to the hip youth at the moment.  If one company can truely compete with the iPhone in terms of functionality and popularity, its Blackberry.  Blackberry already has a huge customer base and a solid reputation for providing reliable and easy to use systems, and is a phone of choice for most the corporate world (along with Windows Mobile phones).  Blackberry has also made great steps in terms of integrating media into their business oriented phones.  The Curve is a great example of this.  The curve is able to play both mp3 files as well as mpeg video files, with a solid user interface.  Don't expect a media experience quite like the iPhone, which is media first and buisness second and the Blackberry is business first and media second, but the interface will be usable and simple with little thrills.  Blackberry interface is about functionality and simplicity. 

Little is known about the exact specs of the Thunder, but since it's in direct competition with the iPhone, expect very comparable specifics with Blackberry trying to one-up Apple with certain things.  The phone is supposed to be release by the end of 2008 exclusively on Verizon.

Here Comes iPhone 3G

This Friday, July 11th, at 8 am doors open at The Apple store for the official release of the highly anticipated iPhone 3G.  People have already begun to wait in line, and the same frenzy is expected as with the old iPhone.  The 3G version has been anticipated and expected since the iPhone original release last year, and more consumers are expected to buy this new version.

The iPhone 3G is set to be one of the most popular smart phones of the year, and greatly increase Apple's growing market in the mobile headset market (as well as make AT&T a good amount of money).