A few days ago I wanted to get onto a website which I occasionally use to store Web bookmarks. There are easier ways to store bookmarks online, like Delicious or spurl.net, but these were bookmarks were from some time ago.

Anyway, I was quite surprised to get a warning from McAfee Site Advisor that this was a “Reported Attack Site”. Not thinking, I clicked on the “Ignore this warning” link, and the ZoneAlarm Security Suite started popping up warnings. After I had hastily exited the web browser, ZoneAlarm informed that it had removed some spyware from Firefox’s cache.

I was rather glad that I had been browsing with McAfee Site Advisor installed (it works with both Firefox and Internet Explorer). The ZoneAlarm Security suite has previously warned me about websites,  but didn’t pick this one up as a threat.

McAfee Site Advisor is part of the McAfee Internet Security Suite 2008, but I use the free version. There are also a number of similar products available. A Firefox add-on called “LinkExtend” uses the McAfee Site Advisor database as well as a number of other sources. There is also the “Web of Trust” which has a free add-ons for Firefox and Internet Explorer. These tools can save you a lot of problems on the World Wild Web.

Sony Sliders: I could be referring to the new Sony PSP Go or the Sony MYLO, but I’m not.

This is not the first time I’ve had a problem with a slider button on a Sony product. My very first Sony PlayStation Portable was occasionally a source of aggravation, but only with certain games (most notably Grand Theft Auto : Liberty City Stories). In the heat of battle, I would accidentally flip the sliding On-Off switch and oh no, where did my game go? Sometimes I got it back, other times it was just tough luck - should I have being playing GTA in the first place?
This problem wasn’t just limited to the first PSP. I had the same problem playing a Pinball game on the Sony PSP 3000, the most recent PlayStation Portable (the last one which still handles UMDs). In both cases I just had to adjust my grip slightly and the problem went away. Don’t get me wrong, the Sony PSP is still my favorite handheld gaming console.

The last time I was blogging, I happened to be using my Sony VAIO VGN-S460P Laptop, and when I clicked the  “Save” button, I got an error message that there was no internet connection. It took a frantic few seconds to realize that I had accidentally flipped the Wireless switch to the off position, not that hard to do since the slider switch is just where my right wrist rests. Poor design? Maybe, but I still like the laptop.

I looked at two computers today, and tried to figure out which was the best laptop.

The first one has 4GB RAM and a 320GB Hard drive, as well as 14 inch screen. The second has 2GB RAM and a 160GB hard drive, and a 13 inch screen. Both have Dual Core Pentium Processors, DVD writers, IEEE802.11 Draft N wireless and a built-in webcam.

The first sells for around $650, the second for at least $1100. The first is a Toshiba Satellite L515-S4925 Notebook. The second one is an Apple MacBook Pro.

I guess it depends on whether you can afford the MacBook Pro, and whether you don’t mind that it does not have a user-replaceable battery. Other than that, it is likely to provide a solid computing experience. It also has a oversized multitouch trackpad.

The Toshiba Satellite costs $500 less than the Apple MacBook Pro, and has better hardware specs. It has double the memory and double the hard disk capacity. Since the Toshiba runs Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit, 4GB of memory is the recommended minimum of memory (1 GB is required). It also has a user-replaceable battery.

Which one would you choose?

Is Windows 7 merely a cleverly disguised update to Windows Vista, or is it a brand new Operating System?

The skeptic in me would label Windows 7 as simply being a Major Update to Windows Vista. Of course Microsoft would not want to call it “Windows Vista Update 2“, as Windows Vista really doesn’t have a good name in the marketplace. So Windows 7 sounds
better and Microsoft can charge for the update instead of releasing it for free.

A number of Tech folk who have spent months with Windows 7 would not agree. Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report on ZDNet Blogs “Windows 7 first look: More than just “Vista, fixed“, says “if you assume that Windows 7 is simply “Vista, fixed,” you’ll miss many small but meaningful changes and several large ones that give Windows 7 its own identity.”

CNET’s Review of Windows 7 says:
“Although the look of Windows 7 may seem to be nothing more than some polish applied liberally to the Vista Aero theme, make no mistake: This is a full replacement operating
system, and more than just “Vista done right.””

The “Bottom Line” of CNET’s review has this interesting statement:
“How much damage Vista did and whether Windows 7 is enough for people to finally abandon Windows XP are questions that nobody has the answers to right now.“

It is so sad to see an Operating System die, particularly one which has been around for so long, and which I’ve grown with and even written programs for.  I’m not referring to Windows XP, but to the Palm OS for handheld computers and smartphones. Some would say that it has been dead or dying for some time. When a Operating System dies, it seems that the software development tools start dying first. A week or so back I logged onto a website of a Palm OS development tool I’ve used to be dismayed at the news that the website and the forums were closing down soon.

The Palm Operating System’s replacement is the Palm webOS as featured in the Palm Pre. At present there is only one smartphone being sold by Palm which still runs the Palm OS – the Palm Centro. With Palm (the company) it is hard to tell how long the Centro will be around. On the Palm website, the Centro is referred to as “Access Powered“, but that merely means “Running Palm Operating System licensed from Access, previously known as PalmSource”.

If the Palm Centro was to be killed off tomorrow, and the Palm OS was officially dead,  people would continue to use Palm OS devices, from old Sony Clies to Tapwave Zodiacs.

Even though the iPhone is getting more useful with each firmware release, I’m still using a Tungsten C which runs Palm OS, while moving to a Treo 680, which also runs Palm OS. Of course, if the Palm Pre or another webOS based smartphone comes to Verizon, I would take a good hard look at it.

It appears that when you buy a book in electronic format, you are not actually buying it. Some users of Amazon’s Kindle found this out when some books they had purchased were remotely removed from their devices by Amazon.

Apparently the copyright holder notified the Amazon that the books were being been sold without its permission, so Amazon removed the two books from the accounts of users, and refunded their money.

The irony is that the books were “1984″ and “Animal Farm” by George Orwell.

This has generated many humorous headlines (as well as countless tweets). Among the best were “Amazon Kindles Outrage With Ironic Removal of Orwell Titles” on the BeliefNet Blog and “Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others” from Pogue’s Posts on The New York Times Blogs.

On a more serious note, this incident highlights some of the scarier aspects of DRM (Digital Rights Management) of E-books. Apart from the fact that you cannot resell them, or lend them to someone else like a real book, now you don’t even really own them. Dennis D. McDonald has a point in “Amazon Kindle Orwell Deletion May Be Legal — But It’s Still Doubleplusungood“:
“it demonstrates how this technology can be applied and managed remotely without the owner’s involvement. Next time it will be a title embroiled in some kind of legal dispute, or a government agency will beg that a title be deleted for national security reasons.“

The special pre-release upgrade pricing for Windows 7 Home premium and Windows 7 Professional ended yesterday. I only realized that today. Rats!

With Windows 7, Microsoft has tried to address all of the many complaints of Vista users. Instead of a new Operating System, Windows 7 shares the same core as Windows Vista. It could almost be a Revision of Windows Vista if it were not for all the improvements.

Paul Thurrott, on his Supersite for Windows, says of Windows 7:
“it looks like a prettier version of Windows Vista. But it’s small and fast, usable and secure. It is the first version of Windows, perhaps ever, that I can recommend wholeheartedly, and without reservation, to virtually anyone.”

This is a recommendation from one of the industries leading Windows experts, although one who regarded Windows Vista, as far better than Windows XP. There are also numerous people who are already running Windows 7 (previously the latest beta, now the Release Candidate) as their main Operating System.

As some have said, Windows 7 is a Vista that works.

The iPhone 3G S could be turning out to be a hot item in more ways than one.

It was first reported on Nowhereelse ( a French website) via Engadget, by a user of a 16GB white iPhone 3GS who noticed that their iPhone got very hot while using the GPS and 3G of the phone. The only damage appeared to be that the back of the iPhone had a pink discoloration.

Then two PC World journalists had similar problems. Melissa J. Perenson from PC World reported in “Apple iPhone 3GS Overheating Reports” that her 16GB iPhone 3GS become very hot during use while being plugged in. David Coursey wrote of his problem in “Fahrenheit 113: Hot iPhone’s Tragic Number“.

So far Apple has not responded except for blaming hot weather or user negligence in their support article “Keeping iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS within acceptable operating temperatures“. Notably, this article covers both the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS. It advises users not to leave the iPhone “in a car on a hot day” or “in direct sunlight for extended amounts of time“, and not to use “certain applications in hot conditions or direct sunlight for long periods of time, such as GPS tracking in a car on a sunny day or listening to music while in direct sunlight“.

So, is this just a general problem with the iPhone getting warm under high usage, or is there some hidden fault somewhere? What do you think?

Just after the iPhone OS 3.0 was released I was waiting to upgrade to iPhone OS 3.0 until it could be “easily Jailbroken” (see “Need for Speed II“). Well, I couldn’t wait. Within two days I had upgraded my iPhone to OS 3.0 then Jailbroke it almost as soon as the iPhone Dev Team released their “redsn0w” multi-platform Jailbreak utility. The main cost of being on the bleeding edge was discovering first hand a number of apps which were not iPhone 3.0 OS compatible.

But enough about Jailbreaking. I’ve been using the iPhone OS 3.0 for over a week now, and I like it.

One of the new features of the iPhone OS 3.0 is that you now have more pages for Apps. It looks like it has been increased to 11 pages (or “Homescreens”). Now instead of a maximum of 148 Apps, the max is 180 Apps, although I have heard that this is affected by available (storage) memory. This is great, because now there are more pages for me to try to group my apps more logically, the most used ones on the first couple of pages, eBook and reader type apps on one page, games grouped together over two pages and other apps after that.

The new landscape keyboard also really does make a difference, and is much more conducive to “Thumb- typing”, with my typing speed considerably faster than in portrait mode.

At the everythingicafe forum, members came up with this list of the more than 100 changes in the iPhone 3.0 OS and iPhone 3G S.

Once again, I’ve been listening to a voice and following its instructions without question. Of course it helped that I really didn’t know where I was and the voice was saying:
“Take slipway right onto I-87”

Almost a year since our last road trip, we went away for a long weekend to Lake George, in upstate New York. The voice was from a Garmin nuvi 760, a GPS with Text-To-Speech, and clearer maps and instructions than the old GPS. It always helps to be told which side of the road to find your onramp or your destination. Its successor, the Garmin nuvi 765T has even more features.

I must admit that I’m really sold on the Text-To-Speech feature. Combined with intelligent lane instructions it really takes a lot of the guess work out of driving with a GPS. This was one of the longest road trips so far with a GPS instead of a map. At stops along the way it was simply a matter of unplugging the unit from DC power, and letting it power down by itself. Then, when we were ready to go, the GPS quickly started up where we had left off.

The Garmin nuvi 760 is also good at finding satellites. I was pleasantly surprised that it was able to get a satellite fix while laying on a table about two feet from a west-facing window at home.

The Garmin nuvi 760 is not perfect. I’m not sure If it was the particular unit I had, but the volume just didn’t seem loud enough. This was solved by connecting it to the car stereo.