Monthly Archives: September 2010

Microsoft Security Essentials Goes Free For Small Business

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I love Microsoft Security Essentials. In my opinion, it’s the best free anti-virus solution because it’s fast, uses minimal resources, and does an excellent job. Well, now Microsoft has opened it up to small businesses to use for free. Previously it was for personal use only, but now if your company has 10 or less computers, you can use it for free. Why? Microsoft says that enterprise security is too expensive for small businesses and they want to offer something nice for free. This has got to anger Symantec and the likes who have been charging so much money for companies to implement anti virus solutions. Well, they need to learn that security is not a luxury, it’s essential. Maybe by lowering their price and making their software better, more people would use it. Just an idea.

Source: Ars Technica

Verizon Sets up Teaser Pages for 4G Service

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Verizon has set up a teaser page for its upcoming 4G service. Not much else is known about it at the time, but I’m not surprised by the move at all. Sprint has it, and Verizon is the largest provider in the country, so I assume they want to jump on the bandwagon ASAP. An interesting note: I was recently looking at getting a Droid from Verizon, and when I was talking to the people at their retail store about upgrading, they told me to wait until February because their phones are going to drastically change. Perhaps this has something to do with it? We’ll see as soon as more info is released.

Source: Engadget

IE 9 nets 2 million downloads

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Awesome news for for Redmond friends, the beta version of IE9, released last week, has already seen 2 million downloads, which is super impressive for a beta version of a Microsoft browser (IE8′s beta got about half this amount of downloads). I’m glad to see IE9 taking off so quickly. I’ve been using it for the past few days, and I absolutely love it. It’s got so many nice new features (JUMP LIST!) and is very standards compliant, which makes it less of a nightmare for web developers to deal with. I’ve even said to friends that it’s good enough to become my default browser. Unbelievable, yes, but it’s true. Give it a shot. You won’t be disappointed.

Source: Windows Team Blog

Craigslist Kills Adult Services Section

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I’m sure you all know Craigslist, the internet classified ads killer of sorts. One of the things it was well known for was its shady adult sections. Well, Craigslist has removed one of them: Adult Services. This is rather unfortunate because it was one of the more amusing sections of the site. A lot of the reasons why it shut down the section revolve around legislation and the burden of having to check over each and every posting that comes in. I’m sure there will be someplace for users of this section to go in the future…and for onlookers like myself to laugh at their exploits. For now, Missed Connections and Casual Encounters will serve my Craigslist humor needs.

Source: Ars Technica

PS3 Getting 3D Blu-ray Movie Support

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If you happen to have a Playstation 3 and a 3DTV, this is your lucky day! Next week (September 21 to be exact), Sony is unleashing yet another firmware update to the system. This one will allow you to play back Blu-ray movies in 3D to your 3D capable TV. Very nice that PS3 is getting this capability, but it begs the question: who has a 3DTV? I honestly don’t know anyone that has one or is in the market to get one. But regardless, it’s still neat. Also, if you’re one of those lucky few that have a 3DTV, be sure to check out the PSN store on your PS3 to get some game demos that take advantage of it. I hear they look really awesome. Unfortunately, I’ve never seen them in action.

Source: Playstation.Blog

Twitter Starts Launching New Interface

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The first major interface overhaul in Twitter’s history was announced on Tuesday. Knowing its interface is pretty limited right now, Twitter’s new interface adds so many new features that will help its users stay connected. The biggest change: the main interface now has two columns, and reminds me of how the iPad version of Twitter looks. The left side is reserved for showing tweets, mentions, lists, etc and the right side displays more content. For example, if you click on a picture link in a tweet, it will open in the right hand side of the interface so you can see it without ever having to leave the site. Here’s a video that Twitter put together which showcases all the new functionality:

The changes haven’t been rolled out to everyone yet. It will be done over the next few weeks. So, keep checking your account, you might have it soon. I haven’t got it yet, and I am so jealous of those who have.

Source: Mashable and Posted in Social Networking, Twitter | Leave a reply

Chrome Gets Google Instant

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The big hit of last week, Google Instant, has been taking the internet by storm. Hoping to capitalize on this trend, and make the experience more seamless, Google has begun implementing Google Instant in its Chrome browser. Now, don’t go up to your address bar and try it quite yet. It’s only on the Canary channel as of the moment and requires a command line switch to enable. However if you want to get a taste of the future, go Canary install page to change your channel to Canary. Next, add the following to Chrome’s shortcut: “–enable-match-preview”. Once you do that, you’ll have Google instant built into Chrome. Pretty neat. Can’t wait for this to hit the main channel.

Source: Lifehacker

HDCP Master Key Supposedly Unlocked

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This could be a problem. HDCP is the encryption standard used by HDMI which prevents making perfect copies of HD content over HDMI. Pretty much every HD device sold these days supports HDCP since it’s pretty much mandatory for Blu-ray. When one of these devices is made, the company making it goes to the HDCP licensing board to get a set of keys for the device. If these keys are ever broken, they can be revoked by HDCP content, which means security holes are patched pretty well. However: this could change. There have been rumors of a master key that all HDCP devices can use as a fallback, and now it has supposedly been found. The key is a 40×40 matrix made up of 56-bit hex numbers, and contains over 20,000 characters. No word on if this truly works, but it’s impressive nonetheless.

Source: Engadget

App Downloads to Overtake Songs This Year

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Here’s an interesting bit of information. Asymco has predicted that by the end of the year, App Store sales will overtake regular song sales. My biggest question is how many of these “sales” are actually free apps. Since a vast majority of the apps downloaded are free. Still, pretty interesting how the App Store has caught on so quickly with the general population.

Source: Asymco

Apple’s Ping kinda flops

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Early numbers are in for Apple’s new Ping social network, and they are not good. Of the 3 million people that have downloaded the new version of iTunes which includes Ping, only 1 million have checked it out. Ouch, not very good. However, Apple have been tweaking it ever since launch and have been adding various interface improvements and keeping spammers at bay. Still no way to access it over the web, though. As for me, I’m sticking to last.fm thank you very much.

Source: MacWorld