I just love 'em

Verizon Droid Release/Review

From wired.com...

Why I’m Not Getting a Droid Today

(editorial comment - actually he really likes it!)

By Dylan F. Tweney
November 6, 2009

I’ve been testing the Verizon Droid for the past few days, and it’s an awesome phone.
But even though I’m eager to ditch my iPhone and eighty-six AT&T, I’m not going to switch to Verizon for the Droid.

Don’t get me wrong: I am very impressed with what Motorola has built. In my mind, the Droid and the iPhone are the two best smartphones on the market today. The Droid can compete with the iPhone in almost every respect.

In some features, such as the screen, it comes out way ahead: The Droid’s vivid, high-resolution 854 x 440 pixel display blows away the iPhone’s 480 x 320 screen. It’s simply crisper, clearer, and easier to read. (Note: The photo above does not do it justice.)

Voice-call quality is much better than on the iPhone. Callers sounded crisp and clear. And I was able to set up Google Voice to work with both incoming and outgoing calls and SMS messages — something you cannot do with the iPhone.

For that matter, since all of my contacts, calendars and e-mails are hosted by Google now, setting up the Droid to work with my information took me less than five minutes. Because I have more than 3,000 contacts it took the Droid nearly an hour to sync them all to the phone over the 3G network (and during that time, the phone got alarmingly warm), but I never had to install desktop software or even plug in any cables.

Entire posting.

CNET 7 Essential Free Security Apps

Seven essential free software apps for a new PC
by Tom Merritt

Many of you are getting new PCs these days, either as a gift, or just because there's a shiny new operating system out there. But once you get it fired up and the operating system installed, it's time to populate it with good software. Don't just take all the dreck off your old machine people. Use this as an opportunity to start fresh. Let me give you the seven essential pieces of software for your new PC.

First, there's security. You need an antivirus app, and it's not something you need to pay for. CNET's Download.com gave AVG Free Antivirus edition five stars out of five. And if you're not a big company, it won't cost you a dime.

Entire article.

CNET: Must have Utilities for Windows (7)

Mus have utilities for your Windows toolkit

from download.com CNET.

The SyncBack freeware is the best of the bunch... here's the complete posting.

And we're discussing healthcare as a right... what about Internet access for all?

Finland Makes Broadband a Legal Right
1 Mbit by next July, 100 Mbit by 2015!

From networkworld.com article.

The Finnish government has done what no other nation has; it has made broadband Internet access a guaranteed legal right of its citizens. According to Finnish news site YLE, The Ministry of Transport and Communications says everyone in the country will be entitled to a guaranteed 1 Mbit connection by next July...

Happy Windows 7 release day!

Oct 22, 2009 - Microsoft Windows 7 general public release day. Let's see how it goes... but, so far so good for Microsoft with this new OS.

From pcworld.com: Five Reasons to Upgrade to Windows 7

Twitter... and the Google Outage

It was great to be able to verify this evening's Google outage (gmail.com, google apps, google.com) by taking a quick look at twitter and searching google. Google outages were noted from various cities by loads and loads of tweets. When google came back up, that was known, too. The outage was only a few minutes but it's good to know what's going on by a simple twitter search.

Social Networking - Basic Fundamentals

Interested in learning some of the fundamentals of social networking tools like Twitter, Facebook, and general social media strategy.

Take a look at some of the video's from the Case Foundation "Gear Up For Giving" Campaign.

http://www.casefoundation.org/social-media-tutorials

Beginner info and some advanced for non techies included.

Microsoft First Free AV Release

Microsoft releases free anti-virus software

By Suzanne Choney

msnbc.com
09-29-09

Complete posting.

Microsoft Tuesday released its first free anti-virus software called Microsoft Security Essentials for computers running its Windows operating system.

The company said it is not looking to compete with commercial makers of software, such as Symantec and McAfee, but rather to "encourage broader adoption of anti-virus protection across the consumer audience," said Amy Barzdukas, general manager for consumer security at Microsoft, in a statement. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

The software has been available for testing since June, and its release comes about three weeks before the company's newest version of Windows, Windows 7, goes on sale Oct. 22. Security Essentials works with Windows XP (Service Packs 2 or 3), Windows Vista and Windows 7.

ARM attacks Atom with 2GHz A9; can servers be far behind?

ARM Attacks Atom with 2Ghz A9, can servers be far behind?

From this posting. The processor battle continues...