Let’s get into the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Good software, bad software and good/bad (grey) software: Good software would be the operating system, a word processor like Word 2010, Outlook 2010 for your email, Adobe Acrobat 10 PDF viewer for the attached documents, etc. I don’t mean to highlight Microsoft or Adobe. The general rule is: any software you had to purchase or is of mutual value to the software company and to the end user to perform as best as possible is fine to install on your PC. I want to make it clear that some free software is OK. For example, Adobe Flash, Acrobat PDF Reader, Microsoft Silverlight player, and Microsoft Security essentials are good examples of free software where both the publisher and the user want speed, efficiency, and ubiquity of use. Both Adobe and Microsoft, in this example, make money from the people/companies who use their software to generate the electronic document and/or audio/video media. A lot of time is spent, when programming this software to optimize the application as it mutually benefits both parties to perform well.

Bad software I would define as software which appears to provide a service to you, but has hidden or alternative agenda’s aside from the veneer sales pitch service they attempt to convey. In this category, without debate I would place pretty much all browser toolbar add-ons. Examples would be coupon, Google, and Yahoo toolbars. The argument here is that you like the toolbar because you get a service from it. However, the service is grossly over shadowed by the real intent of the software which is to log where you go online, and upload the contents to a remote database which organizes and sells it right back to you via spam, sponsored links, or in the worst case if it is a malicious toolbar, you are being phished for data. Phishing is a way of attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity. All of this activity takes CPU, hard drive, and memory to perform which therefore slows down your web browsing and general computing experience. Rather than listing all the free bad software out there let me punch out some of the limited free software I use daily and trust.

1. Microsoft Security Essentials. A free light weight real time malware scanner.
   
2. Adobe Acrobat Reader. Simply an essential document reader.
   
3. Adobe Flash Player. Many sites (such as Youtube) publish media visible only via this software.
   
4. MalwareBytes. Free edition has great features. Probably the best software to remove a virus which has already infected a computer.
   
5. Comodo Registry Cleaner. Cleans out temporary files and removes invalid registry entries.
   
6. Firefox. A great web browser period.
   
7. Windows Live Movie Maker. This software used to be crap. I have come to enjoy the later versions and is now my “go to” when needing to create simple videos / slideshows.
   

On new computers that I build for clients this is the short list. Mind you there are hundreds of good free apps out there but don’t take that comment as justification to install whatever you want. Look around the internet if you land on something you want to make sure it’s ‘clean’. For example search for ‘google toolbar spyware?” and you may be surprised to learn how much data is being collected about you and your search.

Grey software: I define grey software as software which provides a critical service yet still slows down your computer experience by adding other non-essential “tools”. Two good examples of this are Apple Itunes and Intuit Quickbooks. Both of these add other non-essential add-ons which always run on your computer even when you aren’t using the application. Generally it is great that there is very little regulation on software, however, the exploitation of this means that if the software declares, in an end user license agreement (EULA) they will be reporting your activity then said software is pretty much covered legally. However, EULA’s are worded in such an abstract and misrepresenting way not even legal experts can define clear lines on what is stipulated. Another variant of ‘grey software’ is when the installer includes other software you had no intention of wanting. Google toolbar is often bundled with software, such as Winzip, which you must be very careful to uncheck prior to completing installation. Furthermore, if and when you have “bad software” installed the uninstaller is often very poorly written. A poorly written uninstaller will simply remove the application and icon while doing nothing to properly clear itself from the registry of your PC. This may slow down your PC dramatically as the registry is vital to functionality of your operating system and applications. I use Comodo Registry Cleaner, after removing the bad applications, which goes through your entire registry finding and removing invalid entries.

The next area to discuss regarding slow PC operation is the computer hardware. Many people quickly jump to the incorrect assumption that the reason their PC is running slowly is because it is old. Although, this may be true, a number of things should be looked at prior to ponying up for a new PC. First question to address is; how much RAM does your system have? If you were to ask me how much RAM you need my response would be, what do you do on your computer? The amount of RAM your system has determines how many simultaneous things you can do on your computer. Generally speaking you want at least 2 GB for older computers and 4GB, preferably 8 GB if you are buying a new one. Keep in mind RAM does not solely determine, but it is a huge function of defining how many applications you may run. Many times, when a client is borrowing one of my standby PC’s, they don’t want to give it back, so to speak. The much older PC, I provided to keep them running while theirs is being worked on, simply doesn’t have any bad software on it. Often times it has less RAM, smaller hard drive capacity, and not as powerful of a CPU. I hold my tongue to not say this computer was assembled from parts I have laying around as this would really make them feel like their $1200+ PC is a lemon. In fact, it is a lemon, but only due to the bad “free” software.

A fun question to consider: Running Windows 7 Professional with MS Security Essentials for AV how much RAM would I be using (roughly) if I had the following open?

1. Internet explorer 9 (with 8 tabs)
   
2. Notepad
   
3. Word 2010 (2 documents)
   
4. Excel 2010 (3 documents)
   
5. Powerpoint 2010 (1 document)
   
6. Access 2010 (1 database)
   
7. Publisher 2010 (2 documents
   
8. Windows Media Center
   
9. Outlook 2010 connected to a hosted Exchange Server.
   
10. Windows Media Player.
    

Answer: 1.96 GB RAM used. This example goes beyond most typical real world business scenarios to show how many different applications I can run on a clean computer while staying below 2 GB of used memory. So, the answer to how much RAM is needed first depends on if you are running a clean computer without any bad software.

Here is a video of my 5 year old laptop running a solid state hard drive and a clean install.

Another critical component to consider is the hard drive. Brief story: My first computer I assembled for myself was in 1991. The computer had a Intel 386 DX CPU, 4 MB of RAM, 70 MB hard drive. After about a year, I wanted to upgrade the hard drive to something larger. So, I bought a 120 MB drive. At the time I knew enough to understand that the size of the hard drive had nothing to do with the speed at which data was accessed. After getting everything re-installed I was pleasantly surprised to find that my PC ran roughly twice as fast as it had with the other hard drive. Nothing else had changed other than the hard drive. After carefully comparing the specs of the two drives it became clear. The seek time (time taken to find the data) was much faster and the read/write through put was much higher. Literally everyone else I talked with claimed the speed of a computer was a function of the amount of RAM and CPU. I followed up by asking a very ‘knowledgeable’ person, “Would I see any difference if I changed out my hard drive to a newer drive?” Their answer was a dismissive, “absolutely not.” Everyone, including the IT people were, at the time, drinking the commercial ‘kool-aid’ which was selling the idea that a fast computer was due to the quantity of RAM and speed of the CPU. No mention to anything else. Come to think of it, I still see the computer speed being sold in this same way. This little “light bulb” moment got me really interested in computers to understand what really makes them tick! I was telling this to another friend of mine who was really into drag racing (real dragster cars, not the cars you and I drive down the road with). I told him my story, as I felt quite proud of my little accomplishment, and he quickly understood where I was coming from. He told me; in drag racing he would win race after race at the local strip. Many other racers with much more powerful, and much more expensive cars would lose to him. He would always tell them he had great reflexes off the line. That was a lie to obscure his real advantages. He adjusted his motor and transmission to put more weight over the rear tires, and adjusted the front wing with a higher angle to keep the nose down. The more weight over the back axle allowed better tire grip and the higher angle of attack of the front ‘wing’ allowed more down force on his front tires so he could stay hard on the gas not having to worry about his front end drifting out of control. Others with more powerful motors spun the tires and couldn’t fully utilize all their power in higher gears as the front end would get too light and drift.

It became clear to me that computers, just like drag racing cars, even though they had been around for many years, still had a lot of room for tweaking performance in areas most had written off as non-effective.

Back to the point at hand; hard drives are still the largest performance influencing component on a business level computer. Solid state hard drives (SSD) have now lowered in price enough to make them viable for business level computers. All of the new computers I assemble for my client base have a solid state hard drive for the operating system and applications. Laptops have a huge performance gain when using a SSD as well as increased battery life due to no moving parts. This does not negate the fact that the CPU, motherboard, video card, and RAM are all additive toward the speed of a computer, however, they come in well behind a fast hard drive when looking at what is most influential regarding computer performance.

All the rest: I don’t really want to get into the details of a motherboard and CPU at this time as this is just a huge ‘can of worms’ which I will open on another article. However, one component that has me intrigued is the video card. Most people don’t know that they have two very powerful CPU’s in their computer. The obvious CPU is the one touted on all the commercials made by either Intel or AMD. This CPU is the workhorse of the computer and is an essential component. The other CPU is called the GPU (graphics processing unit) which is technically a non-essential component. Only when specific programming is executed does this GPU get called in to action. The most prevalent use is with computer games. The chip design is fundamentally different on a GPU catering to a high amount of parallel processing needs vs. a CPU which caters better to accomplishing one demanding task. Like the a-typical stereo type of a man and woman where the woman can get a lot of little things done at the same time and the man can lift the 100 pound sofa out of the truck and into the house. The GPU and CPU share this same relationship where there are tasks best performed by one chip rather than the other. I preface this as Microsoft has ratified a standard which allows GPU’s to get more involved in business type applications and other non-gaming applications where before the CPU was solely called to service the program. Called DirectCompute this interface allows programmers to write software to take better advantage of the right hardware for the job. Every computer sold today has a GPU so it is safe to say that GPU’s are ubiquitous. Application interfaces (API) like DirectCompute provide software developers an easier and quicker way to create applications which holistically utilize computer resources which can, for example, take a CPU from 75% usage down to 1% because the work is shifted to the GPU which is better at powering through the job anyway.

In conclusion, there is a lot you can do to make sure your computer remains fast and responsive, and it is simple! Scrutinize everything you install based on the policies I outlined above. Make sure your hardware drivers and software are the most recent updated versions. Drivers and updates aren’t available solely to plug security and memory holes. Many updates are written to improve efficiency by as much as 25%, in some cases. By doing this your computing experience will remain snappy fast and extend the usable life of your computer far beyond what you previously thought!

Seems to me the culture around IT service has this aura that you should somehow magically know how to use your computer, smartphone, etc. Maybe it has, in part, to do with the stereo typical unapproachable IT ‘guy’ with a “know it all” attitude and condescending tone. Make no mistake, computer systems are probably the most complicated thing you and I work with on a daily basis. To me it feels like looking through a telescope to see a star. Quickly then drawn to another star, and another that you didn’t even know was there. Computer technology hardware / software both, are very analogous to looking through a telescope. We know very little, myself included, and I work on computers eight to sixteen hours every day. The only consistency I have found is that finding one answer leads to many more questions; more stars that I never knew were there.

Over the course of our lives / careers we each focus time learning competencies which further our abilities. This inherently implies we aren’t focusing our understanding of other areas. It does not mean someone is dumb. If you or someone else leads you to think you are dumb from lacking the know how in a specific area I would invite you to check this thought and internalize what you do know. Reproach from a perspective of “I know how this works, but not that”. You may find this goes miles toward your sense of confidence and directness in quickly dealing with issues which otherwise may go unresolved for longer than they should.

Seems academic in nature but a lesson we all could use; myself included!

Allow me to cut to the chase. Don’t buy a new laptop unless you have and exercise the option to get a solid state drive instead of the spindle based hard drive. Sure, they cost a bit more, but you will be thanking me later and won’t even think of an extra $200 six months later; when your laptop still works. Nine out of ten laptop repairs I perform point solely to the hard drive failing. This can become extremely costly for such a cheap part after factoring in my labor and your time cost; never mind if data is lost. A spindle based drive is the laptop’s “Achilles Heel” of an otherwise robust piece of tech. I know there are some of you who have never had a problem with your laptop’s hard drive and you are simply lucky. If your laptop happens to take a short fall, even from a foot above a hard surface, you stand a very strong chance that your hard drive will fail immediately or in the near future.

Symptoms of a failing/failed hard drive:

1. Laptop boots and runs very slowly.
2. Clicking noise is heard from the laptop where your hard drive is located and the laptop randomly locks up.
3. The BIOS (screen before the windows boot screen) tells you there is an imminent drive failure.
4. When you start your laptop BIOS does not report a hard drive present.

Solid state drives (SSD), as the name implies, have no moving parts. They are faster, very robust, and energy efficient. However, not all SSD’s are created equal. I have had horrible reliability with OCZ drives. Conversely, I have never had a problem with Intel’s solid state drive. All my computers, both desktop and laptop alike now have a solid state drive as the bootable drive. This means the operating system resides on this hard drive. Also, I install all my applications to the SSD to take full advantage of the performance. On my desktop computers, where I need a lot of storage, I have two spindle based hard drives which mirror each other in case one fails. A backup solution to ‘offsite’ the data is also in play to make sure, even in the worst case scenario, my data is recoverable. All of my custom builds for clients follow this same build practice.

On every desktop and laptop I sell, my bare minimum is an Intel SSD, especially on a laptop. At the time of this writing, I have a number of clients running the Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook which retails for $1200. Everyone who gets their hands on this is immediately impressed by the size and weight. Myself, I have a Lenovo W520 with two drives. Primary drive is an Intel SSD and I have replaced the DVD drive with a second 500 GB spindle drive. The second drive is only needed due to the nature of the work I perform as an IT consultant, when on site with a client, and isn’t necessary most of the time. FYI: this model, W520, is a workstation replacement, so it is heavy, bulky, and powerful. Kind of like a semi-truck compared to the sleek lines of a Porsche which would more closely resemble the Acer S3 Ultrabook.

If you take away nothing else from this, understand one thing! Don’t buy a new laptop unless it comes with a solid state drive. I don’t want to make money off the backs of people buying into old technology which, sooner or later, will create big problems, all of which could have been avoided.

Back in grade school I remember, at recess, playing this simple little game.  We stood on a chalked line on the soccer field, usually the half field line, and when a designated person said, “go”, they jumped to one side of the line or the other.  All you had to do was jump to the same side they were on.  One caveat; the designated person could only once, choose to change their mind regarding which side of the line they stood on.  The fun factor was trying to see that one person and which side they were on.  When we played this game with forty plus kids it became a giggling good time of diving back and forth not wanting to be the one left out who was therefore removed from the game.

I always think of this game as analogous to social media and business.  To define the analogy, the one person who we all try and get on the same side of the line with is the social media company or companies.  The kids are all the companies out there.  To extend the analogy I see a bunch of companies, like kids, jumping on the social media “side” in order to not be the one who didn’t. However, when asked, “What are you hoping to achieve specifically, with your business on to a service like Facebook, Linkedin, twitter, etc.?” The answer I usually get is, “Well, because everyone else is doing it and I don’t want to be left out.” Or, “To get more exposure to other Reading between the lines, they don’t want to be the kid standing on the wrong part of the field. Simple as that.  However, those same business owners have failed to qualify their actions beyond that comment toward a measurable quantifiable result. So, let’s look at how you may define solid effective directions with measurable results when looking at why you create a business version of social media.

Creating a brand is about telling a story.  Why do you think so many people are die hard Apple fans.  Steve Jobs is the story behind Apple.  When we see the humanity of a company our guard goes down and our sense of relatedness goes up.  The most successful brands have a story behind their name and if the story is really good the humanity of the company transcends the product or service.  This may sound kind of ‘out there’ but you won’t find anyone standing in a very long line on opening day waiting for the newest Apple device because they have firsthand experience with it. They are already sold on whatever that company is offering.   This is where emotion plays an important yet illogical role in our purchasing decisions.  Your company’s social media presence creates a platform for you to tell a story about who you are.  No, not what you are; be careful here!  Don’t get dragged into regurgitating a brick and mortar website with bullet points on what you do and how you do it.  Really, who cares?  Without creating a story which people can relate to you’re just another monkey jumping up and down next to the millions of others. A great story would be, for example, starting with why you created your company.  Most entrepreneurial types created their business to fill a niche, not to do the exact same thing they saw everyone else doing.  So, when you create your story and your muse is not flowing then think of every other business like yours and why you aren’t them.  Why are you better; and it’s OK to have an opinion.

But I’m not running a business where my client base is online. Well, then you will, sooner or later, go out of business, sorry.  Quick story for you;  So, I am looking around for someone to put a concrete slap in my back yard to replace the deck which will also lead to tiling the concrete and roofing the area.  I ran into System Pavers online and although I haven’t used them yet, they have a blog which I follow, which gives great information on paving, stone walk ways, walls, and so on.  When ready, I am sure I will use them as I already have some comfort in how they think of their work.  Keep in mind this company works with stone, concrete, and rebar.  They aren’t a tech company yet they leverage social media to create interest, understanding, and relatedness with their potential clients.  If you are experienced and good at what you do you have a story to tell.  The ‘gotchas’ people should avoid.  The tips to make the hard job easy.  This leads to a following and when the time is right, leads to new clients.

Final point; synergize your web presence.  So, you have or will create a social media site.  Make sure to link this back to your existing web site and vice versa.   Updating your story with tips, articles, how-to’s, and so on, all help synergistically move your search rankings higher.  Search engines want to see change.  A stagnant site will drop lower and lower for one reason: change = relevance.  The easiest way to do this is to have dialogue with your clients or prospective clients.  This creates serious interest and mind share; people think of you first.  Realize what time you have to dedicate toward watering your social media seeds.  Some have just a minute or two so Twitter would be a good choice.  Others may need to explain a more complex point where a WordPress blog would be more appropriate.

The internet is evolving daily. Social media for a business cannot be viewed the same way we think of social media for the individual.  Don’t miss the ball by creating a social media site which states what your company does.  Create a living site telling your story, your thoughts, goals and even fears, where appropriate.  Communicate with your subscriber base and you will find, one day, this process shifting from work to enrichment along with more clients!

On that note, let’s look at the operating system form a perspective of innovation.  Innovation is defined as the creation of better or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society.  Microsoft has a huge responsibility to innovate responsibly as the direction(s) they choose define the global productivity experience.  Let that comment sink in.  If time is saved or not, if power efficiencies improve or not, if application interoperability is improved or not, all lead, when looking at the additive whole across all devices, toward mind boggling statistics.  If a computer device now runs just 1% more efficiently imagine how much power is saved when you take 1% savings multiplied by the number of devices around the world? On that note Windows 8 beta runs very fast, very responsively on my laptop.  There are no delays moving around the system.  Even launching the control panel I fail to see any delay.  It would be hard to quantify the time savings; however, I can say without any reservation Windows 8 is a solid refinement of performance when compared to an already refined Windows 7 computer.

Look, everyone’s a critic, and a hypocrit.  Right now, March 2, 2012 I hear people complaining about the weather.  Too cold, wet, grey, or windy.  In five months those same people will complain it’s too hot to go outside and they can only sit in the shade etc.  The point, many of us complain either way.  We complain if things change, if they don’t change, if change is too fast, or slow.  I respect my clients, but had to laugh when one said, “I’m sick and tired of having to buy a new computer all the time.” And in the same breath added, “As soon as I figure out how to use all this crap [software] they go and change it.”  They were referring to Microsoft Outlook.  I had to respond, “I understand what your complaint is and I have a great solution which hasn’t changed in years, continues to work very reliably, easy to use, and very inexpensive.”  Before they could ask, with keen interest, what this amazing solution was I had my uncapped pen on their desk on top of a piece of paper; ready to write.  Grinning I added, “All for less than fifty cents total cost too.  Maybe I should charge more for such excellent solutions.”  Just imagine the real cost of trying to replace email with pen and paper and the local post office.  Forget it! Shut the doors, game over! Anything capable of dramatically increasing our productivity, our experience, has a learning curve.  Daily we learn new things on the computer; new hot keys which get us to areas quicker than before.  New software provides better reporting, expanded compatibility and yes, new operating systems which embrace application diversity while strengthening their inter-relatedness.  I am not beating Microsoft’s drum as I really don’t care who creates the ‘better’.  The only thing which concerns me in the long run is an answer to one simple question; is this step in the right direction?

It’s very clear Microsoft looked long and hard at how and what we do with computers when they scoped out the features and capabilities of Windows 8. How do you provide a user experience which works well with touch only devices and traditional desktops? Not long ago there was no Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, cloud storage, Youtube, and so on.  We have seen dramatic changes in what we use the Internet for today compared to just a few years ago.  A contemporary operating system absolutely must consider, leverage, and support the new paradigm of Internet services.  Windows 8 creates the platform to allow applications unprecedented relatedness with each other and therefore with you, the end user.  So, when you can, learn about Windows 8 and how it will help your personal and business world.  If you frame this under ‘researching time efficiencies’  I don’t think you will be disappointed at what you will find.

More to come. . .

For years I have been expecting to see real money officially used as an option to purchase the same virtual items and although I am slightly surprised that it took this long to become formally introduced I never doubted the day it would arrive. Since day one of MMORPG’s you could trade items from player to player and because of this a black market was created overnight. Gold was immediately available to purchase through third party sites where payment is cold hard cash. The producer of the games quickly declared this a violation of the (quickly revised) end user license agreement (EULA) as it ‘unfairly’ upset the virtual economy inherent to the work / reward balance of the virtual economy. However, the Pandora’s box now open, the real reason they declared this a violation of their newly worded EULA is because they weren’t the escrow platform providing the transaction. They weren’t the middleman. Very soon a new game by Blizzard, Diablo 3, will be released which has the ability to natively accommodate fiat currency. As the escrow platform they (Blizzard) will take a cut, currently based on a flat fee to conduct the transaction. This officially opens up a huge number of problems. I don’t mention this in a negative way; just stating. A few games such as Second Life have had a virtual item to fiat currency relationship for quite some time, however, a main stream MMORPG has yet, until now, been willing to step into this level of economic complexity.

MMORPG’s are enormously time consuming, engrossing, and psychologically rewarding as I stated earlier. Now, with real money involved in the virtual economy the countless hours of game play may be easily justified. A few years from now your 15 year old son or daughter could be making hundreds or thousands of dollars per month holed up in their bedroom. Or worse, they could be losing the same amount which would be most swiftly deducted from the credit card on file. If you add real money to the game, haven’t you just created a job? A job where you just play a game all day to earn real money. This will lead to interesting philosophical discussions such as the value of work done. If I get an item in the game and sell it for $1000 then spend the $1000 on improving my virtual character where is the real economic value? The game producer as the venue for the transactions will make $5, for argument sake. If that item took you 10 gaming hours to get and the person buying the item took 40 hours to make $1000 then from a limited scope I may argue that it took 50 working hours combined to make $5 as the merchandise doesn’t exist in the real word, yet real word time and money was brought to the table.

Many people are very excited about real money being introduced officially into their gaming world as it creates a sense of legitimacy regarding their countless wasted hours of gaming. The age of the professional gamer, available to the masses is upon us. The massive economic ecosystems we see around professional sports, sooner or later, will look very similar with virtual world gaming.

My point of writing this: Be careful with your gaming habits if you are a MMO gamer. If you are someone who spends a good amount of time in MMO’s you will probably double that time spent when a real monetary system adds more ‘gravity’ to the virtual world. Be aware of that potential lure and define now how you will spend your time before holing up and giving in to countless hours of gaming. If you are a parent whose kids play MMO’s talk to them about their gaming habits. Find out why they like to play so often and set hard limits on the time allowed. Excess gaming with real money is analogous to getting paid to be drunk as it may be just as mentally and physically impairing and damaging in the long run.

This brings up the question, how do you remain operational when faced with power outages and no Internet service and how can you plan for this in advance?

First and most obvious is electrical power. This is our obvious foundation upon which all else, technology wise, is built. A simple 4000 watt gas generator you can wheel out of the garage more than fits the need. Here is a link to one of many that would suffice. Next is how to connect this into your breaker panel so that you may manually transfer your incoming power from the grid to your generator. Here is a link to a transfer case. So for $400 we have the basic equipment to switch power to your generator capable of running your power needs for roughly twelve hours on one tank of gas. Any qualified electrician will have no problem quickly adding this to your existing wiring. I would estimate around two hours of labor to accomplish this, however, this is just an estimate and your exact needs might make this setup take a bit more time. Once this is in place, you need to define what essential circuits are needed to remain on while running the generator. The above mentioned setup is not capable of running your entire electrical needs. However, the generator would be more than adequate to power one to five computers and the related network and printer needs in a small office environment. Large appliances such as washing machines, refrigerators, and electric water heaters would want to remain off at the circuit breaker until power from your grid is restored and you have transferred back. I am not an electrician so please seek the advice of a profession electrician when determining what load can be placed on the generator.

The next key part is a UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply). A UPS should be on every computer, printer, and network equipment under any circumstance. A small UPS, great for the network equipment starts around $60. Linked here is one I would recommend. For a desktop computer I would recommend this one, which has a larger battery capable of supporting one or many monitors. Also, the desktop UPS will have A USB and/or serial cable. This is important as it lets your desktop shutdown automatically if you aren’t at your computer and the battery supply is running low. The single best ability of a UPS is to provide clean power. Very important when power goes out and/or back on as the spikes or surges play havoc on sensitive electronic equipment. Keep in mind, a laptop already has a built in UPS, its own battery, which make them very convenient in this situation. The UPS will provide you enough time to power down safely or get your generator running.

Finally, the last issue is Internet service. Cable broadband service, although very cost effective, is very susceptible to outage as most of the cabling is above ground and hanging lower on the same utility pole with the electrical power making it very likely to be torn down from falling trees and branches. For myself, I use a mobile 3G/4G hotspot serviced through Verizon. Looking down the street today, in my small town, I counted four lines down. However, with my main Internet service down, I am still happily running along with about 1.2Mbps download and 500Kbps upload. More than enough for web browsing, email, and posting this article. I am fairly certain it will be at least another day, looking at all the wires lying on the sidewalk, before my cable internet service is restored. By utilizing a slightly more advanced router I am able to have it fail over to my Verizon wireless Internet service when required. Keep in mind, any of the cellular carriers could be used I just happen to use and like Verizon’s offering.

In conclusion, a small generator, transfer switch, and wireless Internet service more than capably keeps me and my business running in full stride without breaking the bank. A solution like this is great for those who have a small office / home office and require computing and internet service running all the time so that you may provide the great service your customers have come to rely on.

Note: At the time of this writing my city is without power and the cable internet service is completely down, but I am not!

Many who are tech savvy have been assembling home theater personal computers (HTPC) which take full advantage of the different services now available. With a digital tuner card, antenna on the roof, decent Internet connection, anyone today is able to have, in my opinion, a far superior TV and general media experience than any one of the traditional media providers could possibly match at a price that has no or very little monthly cost. How?

Windows 7 comes with an application which is a true unsung hero; Windows Media Center. This application, along with a good PC based digital tuner card, provides your local channels over the air. The digital broadcast is excellent and usually available in high definition with up to 1080 vertical lines of resolution. The other streaming sites I use today are Hulu and Amazon. There are a number of others available but I won’t speak of that which I don’t use. With both Netflix, and Hulu Plus, I pay only $14 per month for “TV” service and the best part; only Hulu has commercials which only run for 1 minute per commercial break. For recording prime time shows, I use Microsoft’s Media Center which downloads the TV guide and has a very user friendly interface to setup single or complete series recordings. If one wants to get fancy there are tools which remove commercials from the recorded content, however, I find it just as easy to hit forward five or six times and I’m right back to the show seconds later.

So, now that we are in 2012, still a bad economy, it’s about time you experience this superior way to view TV and movies without paying the overpriced subscription fees.

Following are some links for the equipment needed which I mentioned above. Mind you, this isn’t dead simple, like plugging in a TV and turning it on, however, I am convinced it is well worth giving serious consideration. Also search online for “How to setup a HTPC” to learn more about the many possibilities you have been missing!

1. Take any new low end PC, which should run very quiet so it does not compete with your media’s sound.
2. Add a digital TV tuner card.
3. Add a wireless keyboard and mouse.
4. Install a fanless hardware accelerated video card.
5. Install Windows 7 Home Premium.
6. For the external Digital antenna I would highly recommend this one. Keep in mind your distance from the broadcast tower. Closer in, smaller antenna. Further away, larger directional.

Although this setup will probably set you back $600 to $700 consider how much you have been paying for TV over the past 2 to 5 years and this cost should seem very justified. This would be a good project for anyone technology minded. If computers aren’t your thing, then send me an email. Be happy to advise and help you toward a great solution!

A few examples:

FACEBOOK
(Posted by Joshua Johnson)

In December 2009, Facebook changed its website so certain information that users may have designated as private – such as their Friends List – was made public. They didn’t warn users that this change was coming, or get their approval in advance.

• Facebook represented that third-party apps that users’ installed would have access only to user information that they needed to operate. In fact, the apps could access nearly all of users’ personal data – data the apps didn’t need.
  
• Facebook told users they could restrict sharing of data to limited audiences – for example with “Friends Only.” In fact, selecting “Friends Only” did not prevent their information from being shared with third-party applications their friends used.
  
• Facebook had a “Verified Apps” program & claimed it certified the security of participating apps. It didn’t.
  
• Facebook promised users that it would not share their personal information with advertisers. It did.
  
• Facebook claimed that when users deactivated or deleted their accounts, their photos and videos would be inaccessible. But Facebook allowed access to the content, even after users had deactivated or deleted their accounts.
  
• Facebook claimed that it complied with the U.S.- EU Safe Harbor Framework that governs data transfer between the U.S. and the European Union. It didn’t.
  

APPLE (Posted by Brian X. Chen)

• The privacy scare stems from a discovery by two data scientists, who revealed Wednesday that iPhones and iPads contain an unencrypted file called “consolidated.db,” which has been tracking and recording your location data in a log accompanied with time stamps for the past 10 months.
  
• Apple is collecting information about nearby cell towers and Wi-Fi access points whenever you request current location information. Sometimes it will also do this automatically when you’re using a location-based service, such as a GPS app.
  
• The file used to store the geo-location information (consolidated.db) is completely unencrypted making it very easy for someone to grab this information.
  

Android based Smartphones: Google
(Posted by Knowlton Thomas)

• The software is a silent background app that logs your email, phone history, GPS location, SMS data and numbers, CPU, memory, and network information, and more. This is designed to be for HTC on a need-only basis. It’s also designed to be anonymous.
  
• A security flaw that left author Artem Russakovskii “speechless,” this pre-installed software actually includes a gaping hole through which third-party apps can access your information without permission. Moreover, malware can walk right into your Android device and have a party.
  
• According to the Android Police, HTC originally ignored inquiries about the issue, and has only began looking into the situation after the concern went public.
  

The list could go on and on, but I think you get the general theme here. This is a classical “apologize later” approach. Or in other words, willful intent to distribute private information without consent. I am not a lawyer so I won’t try and address a legal perspective. However, let’s look at this from a business ethics perspective. This is no different than your bank having a back door for anyone (willing to pay) to have access into your private information; minute by minute. This is a subversive method to sell your data shrouded in an “End User License Agreement” (EULA) to claim generically that ‘anything goes’ while also not claiming publically to expose your private data to anyone.

It’s funny and disgusting how every company, once exposed, claims this is a security flaw. No, this is willful programming with intent to obtain private information without consent.

At this point, across the board, I can’t give you advice on keeping your data private if you use social media platforms and/or smartphones. Let me create a scenario. Your young daughter waits for someone to pick them up on the corner of A and 5^th Street every day. What happens if that simple bit of information made it into the wrong hands? Your daughter waits there every day passing the time by using the smartphone you bought her to stay in contact; to stay safe.

I will leave you with that, sorry.
- Mark Muehlbauer