Here is another audio clip from Website Wednesday Night, this time talking about what antivirus and antispyware programs are and why they are essential to protecting your computer. If you have Real Player [or an alternative audio player like Jet Audio or Real Alternative that can handle .rm files], you can listen to our recommendations online.
I've been a huge fan of Lavasoft's free Ad-Aware for the past three years and have strongly recommended that people download, install, and use the program frequently. Ad-Aware is a program that scans for and removes spyware and malware from your Windows-based computer.
In his most recent Washington Post Security Fix blog entry, Brian Krebs points out something that I forgot to mention on WGN Radio and here on my blog: It's time to upgrade from Ad-Aware SE to Ad-Aware 2007. Lavasoft stopped shipping updates for Ad-Aware SE on December 31.
Fortunately, the upgrade process is relatively painless. Just download the free Lavasoft Ad-Aware 2007, install it, and ... well ... that's it. The installer removes the old version and installs the new version.
That's the good news. The bad news is that if you're still running Windows 95, 98, or 98SE, or ME, you're kind of stuck. Your old version no longer works, and the new version only works on Windows 2000, 2003, XP, or Vista. Fortunately, Spybot Search & Destroy still works with legacy versions of Windows.
About three weeks ago I had the honor of being a featured speaker at the 20th annual Georgia Educational Technology Conference. As in years past, the folks at the conference recorded two of my sessions and turned them into podcasts:
Keeping Up With the Googlebots: What’s New at Google (as of November 2007)
What’s New and What’s Different in Microsoft Office 2007
Podcasts for presentations of many of the conference's other featured speakers--including David Pogue, Leslie Fisher, Gail Lovely, Curtis Bonk, Doug Johnson, Annette Lamb, and many others--can be found on the GaETC Podcast page.
Enjoy!
Brian Krebs at the Washington Post's Security Fix blog [one of a handful of blogs I read every day] recently posted a list showing when most popular, third-party apps like Firefox, iTunes, and WinAmp were last patched. Since I am a big believer in "patch management," I strongly recommend that you check the apps on your computer against the list to see if you have the latest patches and updates.
Is there such thing as a safe browser? Not really. But in this podcast from mid-July, Steve, Johnnie, and I talk about some alternative web browsers that may be be safer, faster, and better than the default Internet Explorer or Apple Safari web browsers that came pre-installed on your computer.
Near the end of this podcast I mention IE View Lite, a free Firefox add-on that lets you open Internet Explorer-only web pages in Firefox. Once you install IE View Lite, there are two ways to use it:
Run Windows Update, y'all [in Internet Explorer go to Tools > Windows Update]. Today is "patch Tuesday" and Microsoft just released 19 patches. You can read more about these patches at Brian Krebs' Security Fix blog at the Washington Post.
Back in the mid-1990's, Sun's Java programming language held forth the promise of cross-platform programming. Write a program in Java and it would [or at least should] run in Linux, Apple OS-X, and even Windows XP or Vista. Unfortunately, [in my humble opinion] Java never lived up to its promise.
Project Apollo is Adobe's stab at "a cross-platform system runtime that allows developers to leverage their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, Ajax) to build and deploy desktop rich internet applications." What does that mean in English? Well, here's what Mike Downey at Adobe had to say at the recent Demo 07 conference:
Via Adobe
Notice how Downey's eBay demo didn't require a web browser [except to download eBay's desktop application]? Adobe Apollo lets developers write Web 2.0 applications that can run outside of a web browser.
To learn a little more about the nuts and bolts of Apollo, check out Mike Chambers' free Apollo Alpha Preview training movies at Lynda.com. [Full disclosure: I am a Lynda.com author.]
Folks, if Apollo works as well as I think it's going to work -- and not everyone thinks it will -- we could be witnessing the start of the second great internet revolution [the first revolution being the universal adoption of graphical web browsers in the early to mid-1990s.]
If you are looking for a discounted copy of Microsoft Windows Vista or Office 2007 and either don't want to buy an OEM version of the software [which is nontransferrable and comes with no end-user support] or don't have access to a volume discount program through your employer or school, stop by one of the soon-to-be closed CompUSA stores. The CompUSA store in Tustin, CA, that I visited this past Saturday was selling full, retail versions of Vista and Office at a 10% discount.
I don't know if the Tustin "sale" is an aberration or is something that is happening at all of the closing CompUseless stores, but any discount on a Microsoft product is better than paying full price.
Update: I just called the Chicago CompUSA SuperStore. Not only is the sale nationwide [at the closing locations], but the discount is now 15%.
A little over two weeks ago our friends at Microsoft released a brand new version of Office: Microsoft Office 2007. I've been using the new Office for the past six months now, and I love it. But you need to be aware that the new Office is quite different than what you've used in the past.
Fortunately, Microsoft recently posted a bunch of free videos that show you what's new and what's different in Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Word, et al. That's the good news. The bad news is that you have to dig a bit to find them.
The easiest way to access the videos is to open any Office 2007 application, press the F1 key, and then click on the Demos link at the bottom of the Help screen. This shows you the Demo movies for the Office 2007 product you have open.
If that doesn't work for you -- or if you just want to check out the movies without having to install Office 2007 -- just point your web browser to Microsoft's Office Online Help site and, on the left side of the page, click on the Demos link. Finally, in the middle of the page, click on the "2007 Office System" tab. That's it. The rest is self-explanatory.
Enjoy.
Image source: Gizmodo
Yes, I am still on a self-imposed GRE-studying sabbatical. But I thought this was important enough to crawl out of my hole, see my shadow, and declare that there will be six more weeks of V!@GR@ spam.
Actually, for the past few days the internet has been abuzz with the news that it is nigh impossible to do a clean install of Microsoft Windows Vista from a Vista upgrade disk. If you have an upgrade disk, you reportedly have to install Vista on top of an already installed copy of Windows XP.
I say "reportedly" because the folks at DailyTech [via Gizmodo via Digg] have found a workaround. The workaround isn't exactly easy, but if you bought the $259.95 upgrade version of Vista Ultimate instead of the $399.95 full version, you can [after jumping through a BUNCH of hoops] do a clean install from the upgrade disk and save yourself $140 bucks. Of course, there is no guarantee that this workaround will work forever.
As for me, I'm sticking with XP Professional for a while. I don't have time to install, configure, and learn a new operating system right now. I'm too busy cramming for the GRE.
Talk to you again on February 13th.
