ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements © 2006
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Welcome to the 426th issue of the PC Improvement News. PCIN consists mainly of news and tips. There is something for everyone, and if this is your first issue, I'm sure there will be something for you. If you give me two or three issues, I know that you will come back for more!
You can reach me at editor@pcin.net with any suggestions or comments.
Support PCIN at http://PCIN.net/donate.php
We have another review for you this week. Chris has finished the review for the ExpoDisc White Balance Filter. You can read about it in the Digital Photography Tip of the Week section below.
Christmas is less than 2 week away. We had our work Christmas party last night and the boys had a great time. We've started to put presents under the tree tonight, so I'm sure Andrew and Matthew will be very excited tomorrow morning. What a great time of year!
Graham editor@pcin.net and Chris chris@pcin.net
'The world needs only five computers'
Industry lore likely is wrong to attribute to IBM Chairman Thomas J. Watson the famous misjudgment that there's a world market for five computers.
But Sun Microsystems Chief Technology Officer Greg Papadopoulos thinks the idea will pan out eventually.
"The world needs only five computers," Papadopoulos said on his blog. He then listed seven--Google, eBay, Amazon.com, Microsoft, Yahoo, Salesforce.com, and what he called the Great Computer of China--but let's not split hairs. He was trying to make the point that "there will be, more or less, five hyperscale, pan-global broadband computing services giants."
2006, Brought to You by You
Imagine paying $580 million for an ever-expanding heap of personal ads, random photos, private blathering, demo recordings and camcorder video clips. That's what Rupert Murdoch did when his News Corporation bought MySpace in July. Then imagine paying $1.65 billion for a flood of grainy TV excerpts, snarkily edited film clips, homemade video diaries, amateur music videos and shots of people singing along with their stereos. That's what Google got when it bought YouTube in October.
What these two highly strategic companies spent more than $2 billion on is a couple of empty vessels: brand-named, centralized repositories for whatever their members decide to contribute.
All that material is "user-generated content," the paramount cultural buzz phrase of 2006.
How Steve Jobs Came Up With 'The Perfect Thing'
How did CEO Steve Jobs rescue Apple and create the most important consumer product of the 21st century (so far)? The answer will not be comforting to those who work for relentless, hard-driving, impossible-to-please CEOs. According to Levy, the iPod became The Perfect Thing and a marketplace blockbuster because of Jobs, in all of his boss-from-Hell genius.
Hacker attack at UCLA affects 800,000 people
The University of California, Los Angeles alerted about 800,000 current and former students, faculty and staff on Tuesday that their names and certain personal information were exposed after a hacker broke into a campus computer system.
Only a small percentage -- "far less than 5 percent" -- of the records in the database were actually accessed, UCLA spokesman Jim Davis told The Associated Press.
Still, it was one of the largest such breaches involving a U.S. higher education institution.
The attacks in October 2005 and ended November 21 of this year, when computer security technicians noticed suspicious database queries, according to a statement posted on a school Web site set up to answer questions about the theft.
ExpoDisc White Balance Filter Review - Digital Photography Tip of the Week
This week I review ExpoImaging ExpoDisc White Balance Filter. Through a series of controlled tests in different lighting conditions and real world examples, I show how this filter can improve colour accuracy in your photographs.
Until next time, happy shooting.
Leave a comment on this week's Digital Photography Tip of the Week...
The digital photography tip of the week is written by the PCIN Assistant Editor, Chris Empey. Chris is a long time photographer and is currently the President of the Niagara Falls Camera Club. You can see more of his photography at his Photo of the Day website.
If you have a tip to send Chris, or a question about digital photography he can address in the newsletter, send it to chris@pcin.net.
Check out these new or updated pages on the PCIN.net site:
Paragon Software Group Partition Manager 8.0 Professional Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/ppm8.phpUpdate PCIN.net home page with "Top 10 Most Popular..." features
http://PCIN.net/Microsoft Digital Image Suite Plus Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/msdimagesuiteplus.phpOmega One Software Battery Pack Pro 2.1 Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/bpp2.phpMakayama Interactive DVD to Pocket PC 3.0 Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/dvd2ppc3.php
10 Minute Mail
Long-time friend and reader Shawn sent me this...
Check this out: http://www.10minutemail.com/
It might be good content for your ezine. It gives you a temporary email address so that you can sign up for more info on other sites, read/get the info you want, and then the address is gone (so you can avoid spam, too much email, etc).
You have to leave the page up after it gives you an address. It refreshes and shows the reply emails you get.
I haven't tried it myself, but it sounds interesting.
Yahoo! Top Searches of 2006
They seem to be a bit early with this, but Yahoo! is the first major search engine to release their top searches for 2006. The top ten overall searches are:
- Britney Spears
- WWE
- Shakira
- Jessica Simpson
- Paris Hilton
- American Idol
- Beyonce Knowles
- Chris Brown
- Pamela Anderson
- Lindsay Lohan
There are lots of different categories as well as links to relevant pictures.
Online Generators
Do you like to use wizards or online generators to create code, shrink graphics, or automate other common tasks? If so, then you should definitely check out a posting from Smashing Magazine where they have a huge list of online generators.
One can discuss, whether web-generators are useful or not. On the one hand, they don't challenge our creativity, but on the other hand they make our life easier and save our precious time. However, it doesn't matter really. What matters is that we use them if we have to solve some problem quickly and efficiently. We've taken a look at the most useful online-generators for web-development and listed them below.
Both of us have other sites other than PCIN.net. These are all sites that we are actively involved in (they aren't client sites). Don't forget to check them out from time to time for updates:
PCIN is brought to you by Graham Wing. The opinions expressed are those of the Editor, Graham Wing and the Assistant Editor, Chris Empey. Graham Wing and Chris Empey accept no responsibility for the results obtained from trying the tips in this newsletter.
Graham Wing can be reached at editor@pcin.net
Chris Empey can be reached at chris@pcin.net
Copyright 1998-2006, Graham Wing. All rights reserved.
This publication may be reproduced in whole, or in part, as long as the author is notified and the newsletter is presented as is.
Support PCIN by visiting http://PCIN.net/donate.php