Be Careful When Making Backups

When Grokster, one of the most popular Internet file sharing sites announced a few months ago that they were shutting down operations, many folks, including the Recording Industry Association of America and Motion Picture Association of America breathed a sigh of relief.
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How Can Blogs Help You?

How do you know a fad is more than just a passing fancy? When the government gets involved. A couple of weeks ago, the Federal Election Commission announced it was considering imposing rules on blogs that would require disclosure if a blogger receives political funding.
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Wi-Fi Everywhere!

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Attention all you mobile business tycoons. If you haven't gotten on the Wi-Fi bandwagon, it's about time you did. More »

The Art of Picking a Laptop

It seems not a week goes by that we are asked "what's the best laptop computer out there nowadays?" Sure, we can spout off with a slick answer involving the use of "best practices" to "assess your requirements" and get your "best value." But of course, the real question is "who makes reliable computers that are cheap?" The truth of the matter is that no matter how many different criteria come into play, first and foremost is cost.
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Review and Comment In Adobe Reader

One of the very nice additions to Adobe Acrobat version 7 was the opportunity to enable PDF files for Adobe Reader users for Comment and Review. The term enabling simply means you add special features to a PDF file that permit Adobe Reader users to do more with a PDF document than the default tools and menu commands offer you with a PDF without any special features.
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How to Buy Software

A reader of this column recently inquired about software costs and the myriad of options available. If you're just buying software for your personal use, the options are quite simple. Go to the local big-box retailer, find what you're looking for, and buy it off the shelf. Or you could buy it off the Internet, but unless you will be downloading it you will pay shipping costs. Those of you lucky enough to still be in school can usually buy the same piece of software at a significant discount. For college students and faculty, this can usually be accomplished at the campus bookstore.
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'Release Candidate' Software Almost Ready for Prime Time

ONE of the most common complaints we hear in the IT industry is that we're full of buzzwords and acronyms that "normal" folks can't understand. (IT, for example, means information technology.)
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Web 2.0 is Hot but Greater Gains Await

People talk about Web 2.0 as though it is a huge sea change in Internet technology. But the fact of the matter is that Web 2.0 represents a relatively slow set of improvements that have come out over the space of a few years. More »

How to Make Peace With End of Life

End of life. Or as we used to say when we were kids, "make die dead." Of course, when we were kids, that statement was usually in reference to the gecko we kept in the mayo jar with holes poked in the lid. In the acronym-filled IT world, it's abbreviated as EOL.
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Internet Misuse Can Be Costly to Employers

By now everyone knows that the public Internet is not always an appropriate place to hang out. In the early days of the World Wide Web my main concern with employee use was focused on discovering and eliminating malicious code such as viruses, worms and other insidious items from files, mail, mail attachments, etc.
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Are U Texting?

A few years back I wrote about text messaging on the computer using instant messaging services on your computer like AIM (AOL Instant Messenger). In 2005, the teenagers were going like gang busters with IM'ing (Instant Messaging) via their computers and giving up voice communicating via the landline telephone or cell phones. Fast forward to 2009 and what has changed? More »

Seven Come Eleven

Seven come eleven... if you live in Hawaii and don't know what that means... wow! So, what has it got to do with technology! Well, if you are Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer or any of the huge number of Microsoft employees, you know just what it means... Windows 7 is almost here! Without getting into all the pros and cons of Vista, the fact is Windows 7 will be released on October 22nd... that from Microsoft making it official. More »