I’m all Wordled out
September 5th, 2008
Posted in Sujeetism | No Comments »
Trend Micro protects you against bots, dislikes Panda
June 14th, 2008
Trend Micro’s got this neat little utility that claims to protect you against bots - those little programs that sneak onto your system via some of those, ahem, interesting websites you visit from time to time; or from other sources like infected email messages that get carelessly opened, etc. The worldwide statistics on home and office computers infected with bots run in the high millions, and the numbers continue to grow.
The average bot calls home, a.k.a the bad hacker residence; and gets orders from Mr. Bad Hacker that effectively involve commandeering your demure little home computer to do some downright shameless things, including sending out spam, attacking other computer systems on the Internet, and much more. If the concept weren’t so widely known to law enforcement authorities all over the world, they could just come knocking on your door to take you to the big house.
Most antivirus applications claim to scan computers for bots; but are often known to fail because bots aren’t technically “bad programs” at all times. They’re “sleeping” at most times, until woken up by their batphone - and that’s usually at a time when the antivirus isn’t running or scanning. Even if it is, their activity on the Internet just seems like harmless Internet activity since they’re not necessarily funneling out information from your computer or the sort.
Enter the Trend Micro “R U Botted” freeware application. It claims to rid you of all bots, for free. It’s been around for a while now, and the friendly folks over at ZDNet Blogs have posted their experience with it about six months ago. Sounds good, looks good; and by the looks of it, works well.
Will it work for you? By the looks of its system requirements, it should fit most systems today. Here’s what it asks for..
Did you spot the Panda love? If you didn’t, here it is one more time..
Tsk, tsk, Trend…can’t you two just get along?
In case you were wondering, yes; the image up top was shamelessly lifted from one of the promo stills for Paramount’s latest release “Kung Fu Panda“, and no, neither Paramount nor Jack Black, nor Panda Security nor Trend Micro, have any idea about yours truly or the subliminal messaging that my awesome edit job on that image up top, is sending out to you right now.
Posted in Sujeetism, Seriously?!, Computers and Internet, Sujeetech | No Comments »
It’s official: The 3G iPhone. $199, July 11. The line begins here.
June 9th, 2008
You probably didn’t hear it here first, but since you’re here anyway…here’s the deets:
- 300 hours of standby
- 8-10 hours of talktime for 2G use
- 5 hours of talktime for 3G use
- 7 hours of video
- 24 hours of audio
- GPS, the A-GPS kind
Pricing:
- 8 GB: Black: $199
- 16 GB: White: $299
Release date: July 11th
Posted in Sujeetism, In the paper today, Computers and Internet, Sujeetech | No Comments »
The TUAW folks set up a live stream, get over 2,500 viewers in 5 minutes.
June 9th, 2008
Here I was, chugging along - following the TUAW tweetfeed and their live blog from WWDC…and a Yahoo! Live link pops up, claiming to be a live feed from WWDC; moments after Steve’s on-stage. Naturally, I click; thinking, y’know - I’ll be amongst the first ones to get there since I’ve been diligently following the feed…
After a couple of “Taking too long to respond” responses, I push my way in, only to see that…
The viewer-number counter is spinning faster than a Vegas slot machine. Here’s what it looked like just before I got done typing up these two lines and posting this article:
Wooohooo…talk about taking traffic away from news’ sites Well, now that you know, come on in…it’s a party!
Posted in Sujeetism, In the paper today, Seriously?!, Computers and Internet | No Comments »
Breaking WWDC news: KRON4 confirms the 3G iPhone
June 9th, 2008
I’ll keep it short, and in pictures.
Also, Twitter’s already stressing out. The Replies tab is disabled, the Followers / sidebar has vanished, and tweeting is pretty much the only thing you can do on there for right now. The SMS gateway seems to be holding up just fine, though.
The Whale Rescued was spotted at 8:13 AM this morning:
Posted in Sujeetism, In the paper today, Computers and Internet | No Comments »
Will Twitter survive WWDC tomorrow?
June 8th, 2008
Alright, kids..if you thought Twitter outages were a pain before, tomorrow may just bring you some enforced rest; some rest for your tired little keypads. On the upside, perhaps this may let you actually interact with that social network that Twitter lets you keep updated on a regular basis. On the downside, perhaps all y’all could force Twitter further back into it’s overloaded existence if you keep hammering at that SMS gateway.
And for the rest of us, tomorrow could bring us more than what Steve tells us at WWDC. Tomorrow may well be the day that Twitter breaks even further into the social - global - mobile limelight with the world coming around to realizing that Twitter isn’t just a means to respond to “What are you doing?”, but also a means for mobile microblogging - perhaps one of the best methods to get breaking news to the online media in the most expeditious manner.
Perhaps tomorrow will be when the world realizes how the phrase - “A little bird tells me that…” has turned. I’m looking forward to it.
In the meanwhile, the Twitter nest has been prepping for the WWDC deluge. On their blog, they say:
“Throwing Some Weight Around
We’ve moved much of the load off our database by utilizing more memcache, employing more read-slave servers, and by fixing some bugs for improved efficiency. This work is in intended to help handle the load and keep Twitter up and running while Steve Jobs talks about all the new products and services Apple has planned. Of course these improvements will continue to serve Twitter beyond the WWDC as well.
Operation: Gray Mode
In the event that our estimates and preparations fail, we have designed a way to keep Twitter updates moving quickly through the system to their respective recipients. We have isolated and created on/off switches for many Twitter features. Should it become necessary to shed incoming load quickly, we can turn off features such as stats, pagination, and several others to preserve the reliability and timeliness of your Twitter timeline.”
Also, if numbers from Twitter-query feed services like Summize and TweetScan are to be believed, then there are about 50 tweets per minute with “WWDC” in them, thereby making “track WWDC” pretty much a plan-killer for most text-messaging plans unless you’re on an all-you-can-eat plan.
Ergo, a few tips:
- Pick one or two, at the very most, reliable / reputable news sources for your fix on the state of all things Mac at WWDC. I’m sticking with one - the friendly folks at TUAW. If you don’t like ‘em, then I’d suggest picking some who are actually at WWDC rather than on the sidewalk or adopting some second-hand means to get the news.
- Given the state of all things Twitter, it may be quite simple for second-hand Twitter newsfeeds to be almost as good as the good ones - if they are passing the proverbial baton as soon as they get it. Translated, if it’s all real-time and a digital copy, then it shouldn’t really matter if the source is reputable. Sorry TUAW, but I gotta say it as I see it. I’m still sticking with y’all, though.
- If you’re at a desk, relay the news online as soon as you can. This can be via IM, your blog, the phone, whatever. This may just offset the strain on Twitter and other similar news services.
- And the final, big kahuna tip: STOP BEING AN APPLE FANBOY! They make overpriced eye, er, iCandy; and you know it.
If you want to see just how crazy the Twitter network’s going with references to “Apple”, “Mac”, “Steve Jobs” and, of course, “WWDC”, here’s what the folks at TweetVolume have managed to scrape up…
So, till 10 AM tomorrow, here’s the question, illustrated, for our ADD-riddled, graphics-hungry existence:
Posted in Sujeetism, In the paper today, Computers and Internet | No Comments »
Honestly…a rabbit?
June 7th, 2008
Ladies and gentlemen…welcome to Nabaztag! An “ambient device” that movies its ears and lights up and offers a plethora of other such ridiculously cute actions that, er, warm your life and cool your pocket by a C-note. That’s right, y’all. It goes for $100.
Here’s my idea. I’ll make a variation of this:
…and sell it for $500. It’ll tweet when you get a tweet, and perhaps it’ll have an LCD display underneath, to show the text of those tweets.
$500. For real.
Posted in Sujeetism, Seriously?! | No Comments »
Wiiphoria: Day 15
June 7th, 2008
It’s been 15 days since the serene little tablet that we affectionately call “Stewie’s snowboard”, has come into our lives; and it’s been 15 days since we can truthfully say that we’ve been getting some regular hip-twirling, body-shaking, sweat-dripping exercise.
The batteries haven’t run out yet, and I don’t know if that means that we’ve been cheating, or if the auto-shut-off mechanism is really good. Nonetheless, au contraire to some reports on the Internet that claimed some serious and quick battery drainage; the fab foursome under the Balance Board are doing just fine so far.
More games and strength tests and yoga poses continue to get unlocked, and there are several “stamps” to choose from now - to mark the calendar with. Methinks a regular run on the snowboard slalom could actually help me with the slopes next winter, too. On the other hand, a discrete “trial” with a Hula Hoop at Safeway was quite dissappointing. I’m sure it was really funny for the security guard staring at me through the camera overhead, though.
I’d say Rhythm Boxing is pretty much one of the best reasons to get the Wii Fit, aside from the ski / snowboard slaloms that could help you on the slopes and the Strength Exercises that have a couple of really good ones; like the Plank Challenge and the Pushup with a Side Plank.
Wii on!
Posted in Sujeetism, Reviews | No Comments »
Coming soon to a t-shirt near you…
June 7th, 2008
Posted in Sujeetism, Humor | 1 Comment »
Decoding the Jabra BT5020 ad copy
June 6th, 2008
Jabra’s BT 5020 poses an interesting conundrum. I’d say that the device looks gawd-awful; but then I’m presented with the Kodak moment of a guy wearing it in bed; and I’m presented with the obvious debate: wearing a headset to bed would imply that it’s so light that one forgets it’s on, and that one is a certifiable geek; but the company (in bed) indicates otherwise.
So, if I’m translating right - “The Jabra BT 5020 is a lucky charm for geeks, that is also an ugly Bluetooth headset.“
There…I’m not as rusty as I thought. Where’s that Rubik’s cube?
Posted in Sujeetism, Seriously?!, Sujeetech | No Comments »
On my mind..
Memories...on memory
Second Yelpings
Categories
- Automotech (1)
- Computers and Internet (28)
- Food and drink (2)
- Humor (5)
- In the paper today (18)
- Reviews (8)
- Security (4)
- Seriously?! (35)
- Shutterbug (9)
- Sujeetech (21)
- Sujeetism (86)
- The bargain bin (2)
- Travel (2)
- Uncategorized (6)
- Wildlife (3)
Archives
- September 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
Links
Right here, right now..
- Sunshine, moonshine No, not that kind of moonshine!
- San José weather The national weather forecast for San José, California. As good as it gets.
- Downtown San Jose, live A live webcam atop the Meteorology department building at San José State University
- San José traffic A live snapshot of San José trafic.
- Live traffic A live feed from the San Francisco traffic system. Needs Java.
- Live, from the Lawrence Hall of Science A live webcam on the Peninsula with a detailed data overlay
- The phase of the Moon The phase of the moon tonight.
- From up above.. A weather satellite's view of the west coast, showing the cloud cover.
- Did you feel that? A live report of seismic tremors in the San Francisco Bay Area
Things that make me go 'Hmmm..'
- Cube coolth Thought "MagLev" was just for trains?
- Free stock charts on your Windows desktop Thanks to Google and Windows, you can embed live stock charts on your desktop!
- Searching smart with a Windows XP PowerToy Quick and smart searching using a forgotten and free Windows tool
- Results from a Rodale study Randomized, anonymized results from a recent Rodale study I participated in...
Tech-splanations
- RSS and Atom explained Everything you always wanted to know about RSS and Atom
