Never Spend Hours Reinstalling Computer Drivers Again!!

So it’s been a minute since I blogged here but I am back and with a goodie. I actually thought I had blogged about this before but it was on my work blog and not this one. So anyone who has ever had there computer hard drive go blah or fixes computers knows that getting the computer back in working order is really as easy as reinstalling the operating system that can take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and really isn’t that difficult. But I will tell you what is difficult and often very time consuming and that is FINDING and reinstalling the drivers. Drivers are on of those things that you never really notice until you don’t have them. You don’t notice them when you buy the computer because they have already been loaded for you, but a lot of times once you rebuild a machine even if you have the recovery disc its a pain in the you know what.

Never more I say. A few years back I found a tool that has caused me to never have this problem again.

ZKT’S Blackberry Storm Review

So ever since I first heard about the Verizon Wireless exclusive, Blackberry Storm, the first touch screen blackberry I was intrigued. To be quite honest while I have always understood the value of a Blackberry I have never really been in a rush to get one, to me it was for super corporate types who needed to be “connected” all the time. But alas when my LG Voyager all of the sudden started acting up and rebooting itself every45 seconds the opening was made.  I went into my local Verizon store to see if I could get it fixed but was told that since the phone kept restarting there was really know way to fix it without probably frying the phone. They didn’t have my phone in stock and instead gave me a new Titanium Voyager pretty much no questions asked. Now as my phone was out of warranty, I thought this was pretty strange which lead me to think they had seen this problem before and subsequent conversations with other Voyager owners confirmed this but hey I got a brand new phone so I am not complaining.

It’s not an iPhone killer, but it might be able to give it a really nasty wound.

While waiting for my phone to get fixed I couldn’t help but play around with the Storm and next thing I know I was buying the thing and having it shipped to my house since it wasn’t in stock there. I got my Storm a few days ago and this is what I think.

Bottom line up front, is it the iPhone killer that some predicted, NO. Is it a very solid phone yes. The big draw which is the touch screen

Say Goodbye To Your Monthly Phone Bill, At Least For The Most Part

I was surfing around the web today and I came across something very interesting. Now by now most of us have heard of Voice-Over-IP (VOIP) phones and some of us even use them with services like Vonage and Skype. I have evaluated both services and neither was impressive enough to make me consider using either one but then I came upon  a new product, that once it gets some traction could become go to gadget in this space as well as other things.

This little device could save you a LOT of money.

The product is called Ooma.  Ooma is a cool little device that could make your phone bills disappear like magic.

Computer Security On Your Home PC: The Basics Part One

This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart because this is one of my specialities. I don’t want to use this topic to talk about the deep intracies of computer security but rather the basic strategies that a home user can use to make thier home PC more secure. The tips are for Windows users but Linux and Mac users should follow the same basic principles.

Passwords

Passwords are perhaps the easiest and most basic security precaution you can take. The best way to keep someone from getting access to your computer is to make it as hard as possible for them to get in. Now as a person that ahs been working in computer security for a few years now, passwords are NOT what they used to be. Today, there are free programs that you can download off the internet that can crack a password in no time flat. There are several kinds of password attacks but most are either brute force or what I like to call finesse attacks. Brute force attacks basically crack passwords by shear computation.

Facebook’s New Look.. Does It Work?

I wake up this morning and what do you know, Facebook has a new look. Yes, you can choose to switch back and forth from it to check it out. At least they are giving users a choice this time, seems they are learning from the whole Beacon fiasco.

The new looks is clean and sleek, as they are adopting more and more AJAX. They are, however, running into a problem that I see with a lot of sites that go heavy with AJAX. Because AJAX can give you such a clean look, folks tend to over do it. Facebook seems to be no different as it appears that they may have deconstructed the content a little too much, nothing a few focus groups won’t fix. By over organizing the content, they have made it a little harder to use. They have trained thier users to browse and interact with their content in a certain manner and now they seem to be changing that whole paradigm. This will meet with some resistance.

Enterprise 2.0 Conference Day 1: Social Computing Platforms hosted by IBM & Microsoft 9-12

That’s right its your boy, and I am here at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston giving you the live updates real time. In this session there will be presentations by:

Speaker – Heidi Votaw, Program Director, Social Computing Software, IBM

Heidi was part of the team that was responsible for providing the first social software offering from IBM. She currently runs the team that is responsible for the overall Lotus Connections business which includes a mixture of Product Management, Offerings Management and Program Management that is part of the Lotus Software Group within IBM. Her team provides the strategy and direction for the emerging area of Social Software.

What’s Wrong With The “New” AVG Anti-Virus?? (Will The Real AVG Please Stand Up)

I have been a loyal user of Grisoft’s AVG anti-virus software for almost 5 years now and I am sad to say this is the first time I have been truly disappointed in it. As an IT specialist and go-to computer fixer for all my friends, I have either recommended or installed AVG hundreds of times. If anyone asked me I would tell them that it was the best available freeware. I used to tell them with AVG as the core you could build quite a formidable security scheme around your computer… I USED to tell them. I just recently upgraded to the new 8.0.1 version because it informed me that come the end of the month, the old version would no longer be supported. I had tried to avoid this as soon as long as possible because I had installed it on my test machine and noticed some strange things.

Does a Microsoft-Yahoo Merger Equal Trouble for Google?

Today, Microsoft announced that it has made another unsolicited bid for Yahoo valued at $44.6 billion in cash and stock. The deal would pay Yahoo shareholders $31 a share, which represents a 62% premium from where Yahoo stock closed on January 31, 2008.

Now I know there are a lot of folks out there that are like here we go again, considering Microsoft made a bid for Yahoo last year that ultimately failed, so what’s different this time? Well for starters Terry Semel is no longer CEO and I think that Jerry Yang will be much more open to the idea. (Terry Semel also resigned from the Yahoo Board of Directors on Thursday). Since Semel was a major voice against a merger last time around with him out of the way the deal could suffer less opposition.

Facebook’s Future Success: Why I Wouldn’t Bet On It

First off I use Facebook. I was one of the early users back a few years ago when it was only for college kids. Way back when you had to request to have your school added, I requested my school be added. Back then Facebook was brilliant, it let me connect and share things with my friends in a way that we never could before. It was brilliant. It had all the things that you needed, it was hip, exclusive, and a darn effective tool. All was good with the world. They were adding great new stuff like AJAX and photo albums, yes I remember when they weren’t there and you were like man they really get it. I guess it didnt hurt they “they” were us, young adults who understood what other young adults wanted.

And then Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a series of terrible mistakes. First they opened Facebook up to the world, a bad move in my opinion because