2008 November 28 updated

ASUS Showcases Expanded Eee PC Family of PCs

EeePC 900 specs:

225 × 165 × 35 mm (WxDxH) and weighing around 1 kg
Celeron CPU as the Eee PC 700, BUT running at its full 900 MHz, 1 GB RAM
8.9-inch 1024×600 LCD
three USB ports, 1.3 megapixel webcam, microphone, speakers
multi-touch trackpad that allow two-finger scrolling & zooming via a "pinch" gesture
10/100 Mbit Ethernet (Attansic L2), 802.11b/802.11g wireless LAN mini PCI-E card
The Linux version is named the EeePC 900 and comes with a 20 GB SSD
Windows XP version is named the EeePC 900 Win and has a 12 GB SSD
in US for $549 on May 12, 2008

Lenovo X-301

• under three lbs.
• Integrated DVD burner – Hard to find in such a thin system
• Extended-life batteries – Get up to 10 hours unplugged
• Easy connectivity – Advanced wireless options
Gigabit Ethernet Convenience – hardwire NIC
• three USB ports, microphone/headphone ports and more
• latest IntelCore 2 Duo
• 64GB or 128GB Solid State storage
• with MS Windows – NOT non-standard, Mac'n'Crap OS X

Apple introduces MacBook Air—a thin notebook

.16 to .76" thick
3 lb.
13.3" LED-backlit widescreen display
2GB of memory
80GB 1.8-inch hard drive [option larger]
1.6 GHz [or 1.8] Intel “Merom” Core 2 Duo CPU
802.11n Wi-Fi
one USB port
“integrated 37-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery.” [“five hour”]
actually ~ three hours
[User canNOT change/remove battery—optional external battery]
Starting at just $1,799
NO CD [option using USB]
NO DVD [option using USB]
NO Ethernet port [option using USB]

Computerworld FAQ

“60 Minutes” 2 December
“Nicholas Negroponte has a simple idea which could change the world.
The founder of MIT's legendary Media Lab wants to provide low-cost laptop
computers to as many children as possible in every developing nation.
The ambitious project is called "One Laptop per Child" but Negroponte finds
himself facing an unexpected challenge. Lesley Stahl has the story.”

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202805268

Onr Laptop per Child Foundation

http://www.laptopgiving.org/en/

Free Collaborative [online] timeline tool

screenshot of Dipity

Stuff happens. Generally it happens over time. Sometimes understanding a topic requires that you see just how things have changed over time—they've gotten better, they've gotten worse, they've gotten bigger, and so forth. A biography, a history book, even a class schedule are timelines of a sort.

Dipity is like Wikipedia for timelines. It bills itself as "…the easiest way to make and share interactive timelines about the people and things you care about." If you've got something you're interested in, and it happened over time, you can build and share a timeline of it. The rise and fall of Mesoamerican culture, the history of UFO sightings, Monty Python episodes—they're all fair game.

Timelines can have creators, editors, and fans, so you can create a timeline, collaborate with others in fleshing it out, and then share it with the world. Along with text, you can also incorporate images, links to other Web locations, Google maps, YouTube videos, and more. In addition, you can embed timelines in your web pages, so that your Mesoamerican ethnography site will include the timeline along with all the pictures of pyramids.

Dipity is a free online service. It should be compatible with most modern web browsers.

Download Dipity

IDrive offers 2GB of free online backup space without any backup and restore restrictions or bandwidth limits or file type restrictions. Easy and Hands-free Complete, hands-free, automated, remote backups of your files/folders Secure and Reliable World-class infrastructure for the data centers, advanced data encryption High-end Features True Archiving, Versioning, Continuous Backup, Mapped Drive Backup, Sync and Web-based Backup Management


Shuttle Columbia's hard drive data recovered from crash site Specialists have retrieved about 99% of the data on a disk drive on board the crashed space shuttle Columbia.

Technology

Google's Android Makes Phones Act Like PCs

Listen Now [7 min 1 sec]

All Things Considered, March 22, 2008
“ The blogs are agog about Android, Google's entry into the already-crowded mobile phone market. Google says it's not developing its own phone, just the platform necessary to run cell phones as if they were PCs. Andrew Rubin, Google's senior director of mobile platforms and co-creator of Android, talks with Andrea Seabrook.”

Awesome HIghlighter

“You know you've gotten this email:
"Oh my goodness, will you look at THAT?!?!"
There's inevitably a URL attached, indicating that you've just GOT to look at that page. You dutifully click on the link, look at the page, and decide that your friend / coworker / spouse must be nuts, 'cause you don't see anything of note on that page. Sure, they could have given you a hint in the subject line of the message, but where's the excitement in that?

You don't need to return the favor. When you run across that web page that you've just got to share—will you look at the price they want for widgets?—it's easy to take pity on your reader and make sure they know just what's gotten your knickers all up in a knot.

Awesome Highlighter does one job, and it does it well. When you run across that all-important page, simply enter its address into the Awesome Highlighter address box.
It'll take you to your page, and let you highlight the section you're interested in.
What's more, it then gives you a special short URL. Send that to your intended audience, and when they click on it, the page you saw with your highlights intact, will display on their browser. No more guesswork. Neat.

Awesome Highlighter is a free online service, so it should run on any system with a modern web browser. You don't have to register, so it really is quick and easy to get going.”

highlighted text from PRoComputing's website ==>http://awurl.com/iyrjqq38036
(see if you can find the original)

Awesome HIghlighter from ==> freedownloadaday

is a free software tool that will identify and automatically paste to the clipboard
the HTML color code of any pixel on the screen with just a single mouse click.

“The Lego of Gadgets” - CNet
BUGLAB is a collection of easy-to-use electronic modules that snap together
to build any gadget you can imagine. Each BUGmodule represents a specific gadget function
(ex: a camera, a keyboard, a video output, etc). You decide which functions to include and BUG takes care of the rest letting you try out different combinations quickly and easily.
With BUG and the integrated programming environment/web community (BUGnet), anyone can build, program and share innovative devices and applications. We don't define the final products - you do.

Tom Merritt's video from the CNET Stage

free lecture notes, exams, and other resources from
more than 1800 courses spanning MIT's entire curriculum

Waking up Pleo
Offical Site of Pleo

The Evolution of Pleo (w/photos)

Stand-alone Mozilla Calendar ==> Sunbird

or integrated (extension) for Thunderbird 2 ==> Lightning

Everything you ever wanted to know about Macintosh (*but were afraid to ask)

The 25 patches in the security update Apple issued Thursday constitute the fourth time this year Apple has sent users a set of fixes.
Apple Megapatch Fixes 25 Vulnerabilities

Dell is bringing XP back

“Amid significant customer demand, the computer maker said on Thursday that it has returned to offer the older Windows version as an option on some of its consumer PCs

email: more essential than chocolate, coffee and TV (story)

ZAMZAR Incredible online file conversion - audio, video, xml, txt, anything FREE ==> http://www.zamzar.com/
The World of Hello World A map of programming languages and rough locations in the world where they were created. Colors correspond to four major epochs: blue - first languages, green - establishing paradigms, yellow - consolidation and modules, pink - the Internet age. Created by Bo Majewski
WINDOWS VISTA UPGRADE ADVISOR Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor is designed to help Windows XP users identify whether their PCs are ready for an upgrade to Windows Vista, which edition of Windows Vista meets their needs, and which features of Windows Vista will be able to run on their PCs
XP, Vista , Google Premium or Linux ???? Dell Linux Community Web
Micrsoft said the 'support life cycle' for Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Media Center Edition would be stretched to April 2009. Similar support would be provided for users of Windows XP Professional, according to Microsoft.
PRoComputing: “use XP until Vista works out its kinks” (KINKS = HARDWARE & SOFTWARE INCOMPATABILITIES. Wait ~one year ??) Just like if you use/own a Mac, where WILL you go WHEN you need help ???

April 23

Q&A with Charles Simonyi: Space trip was "rich, fascinating"

April 21

US space tourist Charles Simonyi, 58, has safely returned to earth after a fortnight in space, the Itar-Tass news agency reported on Saturday. The Russian Soyuz spacecraft landed at 14.31 pm (12.31 GMT) on Saturday in the western Kazakh steppe.
At 11.11 am the capsule had undocked from the International Space Station (ISS)
some 380 kilometres above the earth. Simonyi's return was delayed by a day because the original landing point had been flooded by melting snow. Also on board were the two astronauts Mikhail Tyurin (Russia) and Michael Lopez-Alegria (US), who had been working at the space station for 215 days as the 14th long-term crew.
The Hungarian-born developer of Microsoft programs Simonyi paid
around 22 million dollars to realize his life's dream.

April 12

The world's richest man, Bill Gates, is considering a flight into space,
a cosmonaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) said Wednesday,
citing Gates' colleague and space tourist Charles Simonyi(below - aboard ISS)

April 11

April 7
US software mogul Charles Simonyi and two Russian cosmonauts have blasted into orbit aboard a Russian spaceship. The Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft lifted off from the Kazakh Steppe with a roar of its engines into the night sky at 11:31pm (local time)

Saturday's launch of a Russian rocket will mark the 5th time a tourist has flown into space. This time around, the high-flying passenger will be Charles Simonyi (left), who became a billionaire in part because of his leading role in developing Word and Excel for Microsoft.

Get Microsoft's Rare Out-of-band Security Patch

Microsoft released a patch today for the dangerous zero-day Windows flaw involving animated cursor files and Windows XP SP2.
Attacks against the flaw continued over the weekend, and the release of publicly available exploit code prompted Microsoft to release the patch out-of-schedule....

You should get the fix (or a prompt, depending on your settings) via Automatic Updates, but it wouldn't hurt to kick off a Windows Update yourself and get it now yourself. The patch should come across as "MS07-017."
(from Today @ PC World)

Silica is scanning a wireless network at the ShmooCon hacker event for vulnerable systems. The gadget can scan wireless networks for vulnerable computers and
attack them. Silica is selling like hotcakes, Aitel said. The device costs $3,600,
which includes the hardware with pre-installed and configured software,
updates for a year, e-mail support and a two-hour personal training session.
One use for Silica: Mail it to your target's CEO, let it turn on and hack anything
it can as it sits on their desk, Immunity suggests on its Web site.

from ==>CNet's Sneaks and peeks at hacker confab

Computing Pioneer Backus Dies

By BRIAN BERGSTEIN
AP Technology Writer

“John Backus, whose
development of the
Fortran programming
language in the 1950's
changed how people
interacted with
computers and paved
the way for modern
software, has died.
He was 82.”

LAST FREEWARE VERSION

A site with the last freeware versions of a number of
programs that have since turned into $hareware

for you [GTa]

Vint Cerf (co-inventor of the Internet, then president of the internet society,
now at Google), over ten years ago, in his opening address to the INET'95,
warned us that we, the world of internet, are running out of IPv4 addresses.

My daily check of Daily Rotation on 8 March (see screen-capture, above)
pointed me to an excellent article on the current (as of March 2007) on ==>

Everything you need to know about IPv6
By Iljitsch van Beijnum

concludes we will run out of IP addresses by ~2015 and "Windows Vista
(and Windows XP with IPv6 enabled),..., and Mac OS X and BSD/Linux
[can manage the new IPv6 addresses NOW]"

A July 2003 article by Geoff Huston==>

IPv4 - How long have we got?

estimates that not until 2029 will we need to convert to IPv6.

What does that mean for us: Not much, since if we are using the same equipment and XP or Vista or OS X(with IPv6 turned on) when IPv6 arrives. Yeh, right. It does affect security (read the Beijnum article) and you will see how we will be buying new router/firewalls for our fiber/broadband connections to the IPv4+IPv6 internet.

faster modem

But think of all the problems this conversion will be for our service providers (ISP's).
ALL their routers, ... , will need upgrading -- what a nightmare !!!

(thx, Jed)

"I can spend as much time as I can doing what I like to do,
which is to work with computers and schools and kids."
from ==>

Astronomy Picture of the Day “Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.” Archive
ugobe We develop and market revolutionary robotic technology that transforms inanimate objects into lifelike creatures exhibiting stunning, organic movement and dynamic behaviors.
DEAD DISK DOCTOR “Recovers scratched, damaged disks. Insert disk into Disk Drive, run DeadDiskDoctor application, select files to copy, then select destination folder. Routine reads file by 10kb blocks and when hardware involves errors, the size of block decrease tenfold and so on until the moment when block of data will be read without any errors, or it reach minimum size of block, then program skips one byte and starts to read second one. After successfully reading data, block size increase tenfold again and again to reach maximum size - 10kb” [free] (from Shell Extension City.net Daily Update)

Linux Foundation formed with backing from HP, IBM, Intel The new group, which will employ Linux inventor Linus Torvalds, is being formed from the merger of Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group.
Linux Distribution Chooser
Create your own robot iRobot's Showroom/Laboratory/Penthouse
new Japanese models give Apple's iPhones a run for their money (story) Hello iPhone, Goodbye Cell Phone? “Apple announced the iPhone, and iTV. The iPhone is much higher-end than I thought it would be: It has not only GSM, EDGE, and Bluetooth (and notably, not one of the 3G high-speed cellular networks) but Wi-Fi and a gigantic, super-high-res touch screen. It surfs the Web with a desktop-quality browser and gets push email—but notice it's personal Yahoo! email, not corporate email, and there's no solution for editing document attachments. This is a consumer phone, not a business phone -- and it's very expensive.”

'Storm Worm' rages across the globe

Storm Worm is a Trojan horse with an executable file as an attachment. Cybercriminals took advantage of social engineering, using the news of the European storm to get people to open the attached malicious file, which promises more news on the weather emergency.
The recipient must open the file for it to execute. The file creates a back door to a computer that can be exploited later to steal data or to use the computer to post spam.

As if there aren't already enough ways to watch TV,
the serial entrepreneurs behind Kazaa and Skype have announced
Joost

Wikipedia: Micro$oft offers to pay writer to review and alter articles in the user-edited encyclopedia (Yahoo News story)
“ ULTIMATE LIST OF FREE WINDOWS SOFTWARE FROM MICROSOFT Microsoft has over 150 FREE Windows Programs available for download -- but finding them all is extremely difficult.” [free] (from Shell Extension City.net Daily Update)
Craplets “...a cute nickname for all of the software an OEM installs on your new Windows PC.... When asked about it, [Michael] Dell responded by asking participants how much they were willing to pay to receive a computer sans crapware. It seems that, at the end of the day, OEMs want that money to come in somehow, .... ...someone in the group who said that they would pay $60 to receive a PC without all of this bundled software. Dell's response was "sold!" The PC Decrapifier “...is designed to remove a specific list [of] unwanted software in an unattended fashion. Before running, the user may select exactly what software should be removed. Currently, it is targeted for use on most Dell machines; however it will theoretically run on anything....”

Waxy.org: Links

(try flicker screen & just click on button)
also rest mouse pointer on a picture image inside clock

A Web site that lets you send a file as large as 1GB, anytime, anywhere.
Send as many copies of the file as you like. FREE.

http://www.yousendit.com/

10 MINUTE MAIL

Gives you a temp disposable email address that is good for 10 minutes[free]

“Maybe you want to sign up for a site which requires that you provide an e-mail address to send a validation e-mail to. And maybe you don't want to give up your real e-mail address and end up on a bunch of spam lists.”

http://10minutemail.com/10MinuteMail/

The number of laptop batteries Sony is recalling will total 9.6 million worldwide, the company said Thursday, shedding more light on the scope of a problem that has rattled confidence in the company's image. TechNewsWorld story
Star Trek vs. Star Wars The Enterprise D locked in mortal space combat with the Imperial Death Star. FINALLY! It's a nerd fantasy trip, condensed into 7:04. And, it's very well done:
Welcome to Google Docs & Spreadsheets! With Google Docs & Spreadsheets, you can: Use our online editor to format documents, spell-check and more. Upload Word documents, OpenOffice, RTF, HTML or text. Download documents to your desktop as Word, PDF and more. View your documents' revision history and roll back to any version. Plus, since its online, you can: Invite others to share your documents by e-mail address. Edit documents online with whomever you choose. Publish documents online to the world, or to just who you choose. Post your documents to your blog. To learn more about Google Docs & Spreadsheets=>click here Take a Tour
YouTube video to fly free under Google's wing

PRoComputing -->Tools (updated 19 OCT)

SANDBOXIE

“Run programs and web browsers and apps inside an isolated environment so they can't affect your system. Think of your PC as a piece of paper. Every program you run writes on the paper. When you run your browser, it writes on the paper about every site you visited. And any malware you come across will usually try to write itself into the paper. Traditional privacy and anti-malware software try to locate and erase any writings they think you wouldn't want on the paper. Most of the times they get it right. But first the makers of these solutions must teach the solution what to look for on the paper, and also how to erase it safely. On the other hand, the Sandboxie sandbox works like a transparency layer placed over the paper. Programs write on the transparency layer and to them it looks like the real paper. When you delete the sandbox, it's like removing the transparency layer, the unchanged, real paper is revealed.....[free]”

http://www.sandboxie.com/

Sony To Ask Notebook Battery Customers For Global Recall
Sony appears ready to initiate a widespread global recall of its own battery packs, affecting most if not all of its customers.
Meanwhile, Toshiba more than doubled the size of its own recall
to 830,000 Sony batteries,
while Dell slightly expanded its own recall program.

Nerd? Geek? or Dork? (an online test)

Top Ten coolest things seen with google earth.

The ten best things you can do with Google Earth

capturing aircraft in midflight

XP MYTHS==> There are numerous Myths floating around the Internet regarding Windows XP, especially relating to Optimizations and Security. Hopefully this site will debunk some of these.
TestYourVoIP RESULTS
Microsoft Sets New Patch Record, Fixes 26 Flaws The flaws, more than half of which received a "critical" rating, run the gamut from Internet Explorer to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. *Informationweek article*
“Oh no, Apple is perfect, and does not have security problems like Micro$oft.” How many minutes do you think it took for the OS X (10.4.8 - 147 Meg!!!) update? (& PRoComputing uses an Oceanic-broadband internet connection)
PRoComputing on ==> (updated 10/13)


GRISOFT once again received the VB100% Award by independent malware advisor, Virus Bulletin, in June 2006. AVG Anti-Virus proved itself by detecting all In the Wild viruses, while generating no false positives, during both on-demand and on-access scanning in Virus Bulletin's comparative tests. http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1


	http://laughingsquid.com	email PRoComputing	WikipediA
Free add-on's

Free Collaborative [online] timeline tool

Google's Android Makes Phones Act Like PCs

Waking up Pleo Offical Site of Pleo

Get Microsoft's Rare Out-of-band Security Patch

Waking up Pleo
Offical Site of Pleo