Microsoft Allows Users to Remove Software

by Taylor Flatt on March 8th, 2009 at 10:41 am EDT - 6,150 views

Microsoft finally allows users to remove software that they include on your system when you buy their new Operating System, Windows 7, next year. In response to the EU’s protests and the US’s anti-trust suits they are finally allowing users to remove key programs like Internet Explorer and Media Player from their system by placing an icon in the Control Panel.

However, when you “remove” it from your system, it will remain installed but lack substinence. This is a big step forward from all the years of problems Microsoft has faced under Bill Gates regarding these issues. Now, it seems, that the new CEO will be complying more and more with international governments to eliminate such obstacles.

These new developments are gold to the ears of companies like Google and Mozilla who have been bottle necked by the bundling Microsoft has done to quell competition over the years.

Image courtesy of thetechherald.

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Yahoo Restructure Looming

by Taylor Flatt on February 22nd, 2009 at 2:51 pm EDT - 1,871 views

Carol Bartz, the new Chief Executive, is said to begin reconstruction of Yahoo sometime next week. From sources within Yahoo, Carol is supposedly placing a traditional structure on Yahoo much like the one she employed at Autodesk. From another prominent source,

Most expect Bartz to do a C-level style set-up, with executives like a chief operating officer, chief technology officer and also a new, more powerful chief media officer (who will also head PR), all reporting to her.

After losing many of their executives to Microsoft including Larry Heck (VP of search and advertisement sciences) and Qi Lu (VP of engineering for search and advertisement sciences), it looks like there might be a tough task ahead of Ms.Bartz.

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Google Hacked?

by Taylor Flatt on January 31st, 2009 at 11:26 am EDT - 1,560 views

Saturday, all searches on Google resulted in errors saying the site may contain harmful material and that you should pick another website. Webmasters, including ourselves, were going crazy when we noticed this glitch. However, Google has since fixed the “glitch” and is going to be releasing an official statement soon.

There was a fault. We don’t know the nature of it yet. Everything has been solved. We are still making initial enquiries

a Google spokesperson told BBC News. These kinds of “faults” are something that Google isn’t really well known for which has surprised us all. Although they have fixed it, everyone is wanting to know, What happened? Let us hope something worse doesn’t happen if they were truly hacked or if it was just a simple mistake.

Update: Google attributes the fault to human error. The error occured for about 40 minutes when Google accidently flagged all sites as dangerous. Marissa Mayer, VP of search products and user experience had this to say, “What happened” Very simply, human error. We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in place to prevent it from happening again”.

Source: BBC
Image courtesy of BBC

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Google Earth Pot Bust?

by Nathaniel Ed on January 30th, 2009 at 10:09 pm EDT - 575 views

Apparently in Zurich, Switzerland, Swiss police were using Google’s Google Earth to find the address of a pair of farmers who were suspected of being involved in a drug ring, however, they found more about the farmers than they intended. The bust resulted in 16 arrests and 1.2 tons of marijuana confiscated [two acres worth], plus 900,000 ($775,795.19) Swiss Francs worth of valuables and cash.

I think that this is hilarious. I don’t think that having marijuana is all that bad of an offense, however it’s hilarious that the same technology that the U.S. government wants to stymie  because it could compromise security, is also able to help the Swiss government. Maybe our [The United States] police force will take a hint and use this to their advantage.

Sources: MSNBC, PC World
Image courtesy of PC World.

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Internet Usages Reaches Over 1 Bil

by Nathaniel Ed on January 24th, 2009 at 10:49 am EDT - 987 views

In the month of December, over one billion individual users were served worldwide. 41.3% were from the Asia-Pacific region, according to comScore, and internet traffic measurement firm.

Second place went to Europe with 28.0 percent, then North America with 18.4 percent. Latin America made up 7.4 percent, and the Middle East/Africa region made up 4.8 percent.

The statistics of actual users are: Asia/Pacific with about 416 million users, Europe had 283 million users, North America had 185 million users, Latin America had 75 million, and the Middle East/Africa had about 49 million unique users.

Country wise, China came in first with 17.8 percent, or about 180 million users,  then the U.S.A. with 16.2 percent, or about 163 million users, and Japan came in third with 6 percent, or about 63 million users.

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Is Google Preferred Site Worth It?

by Chris Burns on January 19th, 2009 at 3:45 pm EDT - 617 views

So I wanted to write a bit about my personal experience with the new Google preferred site option. This is a feature that Google is beta testing with certain account members.

What the feature allows you to do is to tell Google which sites you find as authority sites. Google with then give these sites priority rankings with any related search terms to your preferred sites.  This sounds like a great idea when you first hear of it, but upon further thought and use you start to wonder… what is it good for?

There are two ways to tell Google that a site is one of your preferred sites. You can enter the sites into a list as one option. Also, when you are logged into your account and browsing natural results in Google you will see an up arrow and a down arrow next to each search result listing. You can simply click the up arrow to add the website to your preferred list or down arrow to remove it. Not only can you bump your preferred site to the top of relevant searches, but you can even leave a comment about the site which will be displayed with future searches it comes up under.

This is very cool and interesting at first glance. I tested the system as you can see in the included screen shots. The keyword “florida mortgage company” when NOT logged into my Google account shows the regular natural search terms and my sample website is no where to be found in the top 10. Now when I log into my Google account and do a search for the same keyword I will ALWAYS find my preferred site ranked #1.

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IBM Remains US Patent Leader

by Taylor Flatt on January 14th, 2009 at 8:32 pm EDT - 522 views

IBM, for 16 straight years, has dominated in most patents per year. This year, they have topped off at over 4,000. IBM managed to beat out their challenger Samsung by 671 patents. IBM said this in their official release, “IBM’s 2008 patent issuances are nearly triple Hewlett-Packard’s and exceed the issuances of Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Apple, EMC, Accenture and Google – combined.” However, HP fired back saying they are seeking quality of the patents, not quantity.

While IBM grabbed 11.5 technical patents per day last year, they are looking to increase their technical production by upwards of 50%. This seems pretty odd to me that IBM is the leader in patents. I would think that companies like Microsoft or even Sony would be towards the top of this list. It just seems that many people have forgotten about the hero of old that rivaled Microsoft in the beginning.

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Steve Ballmer Microsoft Keynote Speech

by Taylor Flatt on January 7th, 2009 at 11:06 pm EDT - 454 views

Just hours ago Steve Ballmer, Microsofts CEO, gave the Microsoft Keynote speech which lays out the upcoming year. With this year so full of economic depressions I couldn’t way to find out what was in store for all of us consumers.

At the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas Ballmer announced a lot of interesting things like partnerships with Dell that will add preloaded Windows Live programs to Dell computers before shipment. Another partnership is with Verizon which will reload Windows Live on the cellphones before sale. Finally, another partnership with Facebook allows users to hookup their Facebook with MSN Live profile.

Alright folks, here is the biggest let down probably of the entire year. There will be no new Zune. Sadly, they decided to revamp their Live Search rather than come out with tangible items.

Windows 7 was also announced to be out this friday for Beta testing. Hurry and get it because they said they will be capping the downloads at 2.5 million downloads. The recommended hardware requirements are as follows:

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Baidu Sorry for Pornography

by Taylor Flatt on January 6th, 2009 at 10:57 pm EDT - 433 views

Earlier this week, China announced that it was taking action against the main search websites including Google and Baidu. Baidu has apologized for the published pornography on their website. They have announced they are taking measures to prevent such things from happening in the future while attempting to rid themselves of it in the present.

However, Google has yet to release an official statement on the matter. But has been reporting saying they are attempting to clean up their act by removing obscene content from their site.

I believe that China has the right attitude in matter, although, I do believe it is wrong to remove such things. The whole theory behind engines such as Google and Baidu is for indexing websites where you can find relevant information on the topic you are searching for. I am not saying these things should be advertised openly, however, they should not be excluded from such searches with the attempt of finding such a site.

These sites shouldn’t back down because a country doesn’t like their content. What happens when they or any other country doesn’t like having pictures or information on hurricanes displayed because it kills many people every year? Although not very practical, it is however theoretically possible since these sites are backing down quite readily.

Source: AP   
Image courtesy of noticastech 

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5 Reasons Why IE Fails

by Taylor Flatt on December 31st, 2008 at 12:57 am EDT - 2,196 views

 Internet Explorer, the gateway to the internet, or so it was back in the day is anything but now. Currently, there are several decent browsers that can get you to the same place faster, safer and easier. With an unbiased approach, I will look into the reasons why IE has and is beginning to fail. From CSS interpretations to memory usage IE has gone downhill.

Over the years Microsoft has prided itself in bringing technology and service to use who aren’t as fortunate to have the resources to do it ourselves. However, over the years, it seems that Microsoft has strayed from this path and has gone down a more adventitious avenue seeking more fame than actual usability and safety.

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