These are direct links. No coupon codes or any of that b.s. to deal with.

Hanns-G 23.6-inch monitor, $149 with free shipping

If you were looking to upgrade your monitor to something big that looks good, functions well and is as cheap as they come, this is it.

Specific Apple authorized resellers starting Black Friday sales early

Whether looking for a MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac mini or iMac, you’re covered. See link above to see who’s selling the stuff at discounted BF rates right now.

Free shipping on a ton of stuff

NewEgg fortunately has a direct link (click the above) that lists all the items there with free shipping. With the holiday season in full swing they’ve increased the number of free-ship items quite a bit. See link above for details.

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Pre-Black Friday Deals

You can tune into the show every Saturday at 1PM EST on the SOS Computer Talk Show, on 820AM WWBA.

Here is my news transcript for this week:

Back in September, I talked about the release of Google Chrome. Chrome is the web browser that Google designed that has some advanced features like a private browsing mode, integrated search, plus the separation of individual browser tabs into separate processes. It is open source and free to download. Since the release, it has been a beta browser, meaning it is still a work in progress. Well, in Paris, one of Google’s vice presidents said that Chrome was soon to come out of beta. The motivation behind this is simple: They want to get Chrome shipped on new computers. In order to do that, it can’t be a beta product. So, while Google Gmail has been out since 2004 and still is called beta, they’re going to push Chrome out of beta after only a few months. The question is: Can Chrome ever steal market share away from Firefox? Over on PCMech.com, about 50% of our audience uses Firefox whereas only about 4% are using Chrome. Chrome doesn’t yet support any add-ons and that’s probably the biggest single selling point to Firefox. As soon as Chrome tackles that, usage will climb quickly. And again, Chrome is free to use and you can grab your copy at google.com/chrome.

If you’re into smartphones, you pretty much know that the big contenders right now are the Iphone, the Blackberry, the Windows Mobile phones and a few others. Palm has been off the radar for some time because they hadn’t really done anything new in years. That might be about to change. Word has it that Palm is inviting people to visit them at next month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to "see all the Palm New-ness you’ve been waiting for". So, maybe, just maybe, Palm is about to become a contender in the phone markets once again. And as far as I’m concerned, they better come out swinging because this is pretty late in the game.

If you use Google Gmail, Google just released another feature in the Google Labs. Its the task list. Now, I’ve been railing against Google for some time for not having a todo list in their offerings. It just makes sense. Well, the todo list in the Gmail Labs is pretty light-weight and certainly not all that I’d like to see, but it is a start. If you want to use it, go to the Labs screen in your Gmail account and enable it. When you click the Tasks link, a little pop-window will appear in the lower right of your browser to control your task list. Not bad, but I hope to see more, soon.

As we approach the end of another year, the major search engines are releasing reports on the most popular search terms. Well, all is normal in the world because Yahoo reports that Britney Spears remains the top search term for 2008. The WWE is #2. For more on the Yahoo report, go to buzz.yahoo.com. On the Google side of things, their report is a lot more interesting. Sarah Palin actually ranks very high, as does Obama, Facebook, AT&T, the Iphone, etc. Quite honestly, it seems as if the Google audience is a little higher brow. While Yahoo users are looking for skin pics of Britney, Google users are searching political candidates. Either way, a search on Google for the 2008 Zeitgeist will show you the full report.

On PCMech.com, we are holding a giveaway contest where the prize is a very cool computer case from Ultra Products. For a video of the prize and how to enter, head on over to pcmech.com/giveaway/.

Lastly, if you’re interested in how you can turn the Internet into a medium to generate an income for you every month, you’ll want to check out David Risley dot com. This is my personal blog where I talk about what I do for a living and how I do it. I also do a ProBlogger Flip Tip almost every day in video form. So, that’s at David Risley dot com.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Radio Tech News – Recorded 12/11/08

Every week, I record the technology news for 820 AM WWBA here in the Tampa Bay area. My news is played here in the Tampa Bay radio market as well as in several other metro areas throughout the state of Florida. Rather than post audio recordings, I thought I would simply post my transcript.

You can tune into the show every Saturday at 1PM EST on the SOS Computer Talk Show, on 820AM WWBA.

Here is my news for this week:

When we buy our software, we naturally look for the best deals. Many turn to the Internet to look for name-brand software such as Microsoft Office. But, be careful. Many times, the software you might buy online is fake, a pirated and illegal copy of the real thing. This is especially common in online auctions such as on Ebay. For example, the latest scheme is to sell copies of Microsoft Office "Blue Edition". The sell it as an insider version of Office that doesn’t require a serial number. In reality, it is just a hacked version of Office. There is no "Blue Edition". Microsoft has filed 63 lawsuits in 12 countries in an effort to stop sales of this "blue edition". The company has also had problems with people selling fake copies of Windows XP online. Windows XP remains the most pirated version of Windows on the Internet. You don’t want to use pirated software on your computer. For one, you won’t be able to get any updates for your product from Microsoft. So, be very careful if buying retail software in an online auction. It might not always be what it seems.
Source: CNET

The tale of the fake Macs continues. Psystar, the company who created PCs with OS X on them, hasn’t been doing very well in court up against Apple. All of Psystar’s claims against Apple have been thrown out of court by the judges. Now, Apple wants to change it’s complaint against Psystar, claiming that there are other players at work here behind Psystar’s tricks. Apple wants to find out who is behind Psystar and sue them, too. Apple is also alleging a violation of the DMCA, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Psystar is now sitting like a mouse at the mercy of a very angry cat. And Apple may have a point. Psystar was extremely blatant in how they openly sold Mac Clones. It is almost as if they were trying to get sued just to pick a legal fight. What motivations went into this are suspect, but it appears as if Psystar is being pummeled, tarred and feathered by Apple.
Source: the Inquirer

Another week, and another security warning for Windows users. A company called Secunia, who specializes in computer security, says that more than 98% of Windows computers harbor at least one unpatched application., and nearly half contain 11 or more programs which are at risk. They got this information based on their own utility called Personal Software Inspector. It was installed on people’s computers and they used the collective information from scans to determine this information. The information came from a random 20,000 computers in their database of 120,000 scans. The company says Windows itself, as well as web browsers, are usually more up-to-date because they have automatic update features. But, third-party programs on the computer many times do not have an auto-update feature and are thus more likely to be old versions. The motto of this story is this: Go through the software installed on your PC and check for updates. Chances are you have one or more programs that should be upgraded to fix security problems.
Source: ComputerWorld

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Radio Tech News – Recorded 12/04/08

You can tune into the show every Saturday at 1PM EST on the SOS Computer Talk Show, on 820AM WWBA.

Here is my news for this week:

About two weeks ago, spammers were dealt a huge blow on the Internet when their hosting company, McColo Corp, was shut down. This company, based in California, was believed to be responsible for up to 75% of all spam on the Internet. When the company was shut down on November 11th, worldwide spam rates dropped by about 80%. Unfortunately, the spammers that used McColo as their hosting company are moving to Plan B and, as of last weekend, we are beginning to see spam rates increase yet again. Spam rates have climbed about 37% of the amount of the original decrease. The only problem is that these spammers are now moving to offshore hosting companies where the laws are a lot more relaxed. This means it will be harder to shut down the sources of spam in the future. But, it was a temporary blow that will hopefully increase some costs to spammers and put some out of business. And alas, the battle against spam on the Internet rages on.

Microsoft has a service called Live Mesh. It is a file synchronization service and it is free. It will allow you to keep a group of files of your choice in sync between multiple computers. If you change a file on one computer, it will automatically reflect those changes on your other computers. Its pretty cool and it works fairly well. But, up until recently it was a Windows-only option. Of course, that makes sense seeing as Windows is a Microsoft product. However, they just announced that Live Mesh is available now for the Mac. Your data storage is limited to 5 GB. You can access your data from any of your Mesh-enabled computers or via the Mesh website. Expect Mesh to be a fairly visible component to the upcoming Windows 7. If you want to check out Microsoft Live Mesh, go to Mesh.com.

Microsoft has warned about an increase in security exploits of a software bug in Windows which was identified by Symantec. The bug was reported last month and a software fix for it was released last month as well. However, not everybody keeps their Windows operating system up to date as they should, which has led Microsoft to issue this warning. Interestingly, the software worm which exploits this bug exempts computers located in the nation of Ukraine. Sometimes worm programmers will exempt their own country to keep from getting local reaction, which leads to speculation that the creator of this worm is from Ukraine. Either way, the way to make sure your computer isn’t subject to this is to run Windows Update and make sure you install the latest security patches.

Youtube has officially switched to the widescreen video format, a move which gives the most popular online video site a distinctly different look. Standard size videos will still play widescreen, but will have black borders on either side. But, video creators can now upload widescreen videos and they will play in full definition. This move puts Youtube into compliance with what a lot of other video sites were already doing.
However, speculation is that Youtube is also positioning itself to work with some od the major movie studios in order to hopefully bring movies to Youtube. They already have deals with CBS and MGM. It is probably only a matter of time before we will be able to watch newly released Hollywood movies on Youtube.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Radio Tech News – Recorded 11/26/08

Back in 1998 (a long time before many people ever heard of that thing called "Linux"), Mandrakelinux (sometimes just called "Mandrake") was released. People liked it. A lot. Well here we are ten years later and Mandrake, now under the name Mandriva, has a new release.

It’s packed with GNOME v2.24, OpenOffice 3, Firefox 3, kernel 2.6.27 and a bunch more stuff. Read more about it (and by all means, download and try it out for yourself).

Google will (finally) get RSS for web search results

With just about any Google service you can get an RSS feed for it. That is everything except the one thing they do best – web search.

In about a month or less you will finally be able to get search results as RSS feeds. This is great for those of us who use RSS often (such as yours truly). Read more about it.

YouTube puts in audio preview feature for comment posting

As many people are aware, YouTube has the absolute worst web "community" on the face of the internet. It’s horrible. Actually, scratch that – it’s beyond horrible. So horrible there is absolutely no possible way it could ever be fixed.

However, YouTube (owned by the GOOG) continues to try to make sense out of that mess and has put in a new button when you go to post a comment called "Audio Preview". It’s exactly what you think it is. Write a comment, hit the button and the site speaks back what you typed.

And no it will not pronounce "OMG WTF THIS IS SO STOOPID GIVE ME MY 2 MINUTES BACK" correctly. Read more about it here (or go try it out for yourself).

The Woz says iPod is a dead horse

Do you know who Steve Wozniak is? If you’re an Apple fan you do.

Well anyway, he basically more or less said the iPod is dead. Yep. Woz also thinks the iPhone is going to live a very short life also. Read more about it here. (Be sure to read the part about how Apple’s stock is completely in the toilet too.)

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News From The ‘Net

• Another Google Chrome Security Flaw Identified
• Windows 7 hits Milestone 3
• Professor Given $100,000 to Study World of Warcraft
• VMware Fusion 2.0 Available

Related Links:

• Google Chrome
• VMware Fusion
• Microsoft Virtual PC

Thanks for listening.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

9/17/08: Chrome Security Issues, Windows 7

• Apple Event Fails to Dazzle
• Large Hadron Collider: Why You Really Won’t Die Today
• Are Linux Programmers Getting Too Fat?
• New satellite to give Google Maps unprecedented resolution

Thanks for listening.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

9/10/08: Apple Crap, Google’s High-Res Satellite

“One Bad Apple“, by Dan Lyons over at Newsweek.

In this episode, David comments on this Newsweek piece.

Thanks for listening.

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9/8/2008: Is Apple Turning Into Microsoft?

• Google Chrome Download
• Twitter: Far more than “what I had for lunch today”
• Introducing Picasa 3.0
• Fail Blog

Thanks for listening.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

9/3/2008: Google Chrome, Twitter, and Picasa

• Microsoft Skymarket coming for Windows Mobile 7 apps
• Don’t Like Palin’s Wikipedia Story? Change It
• 20 tech habits to improve your life

Thanks for listening.

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9/1/08: 20 Tech Tips To Improve Your Life