It’s happened again — teenager armed with cell phone records two teens engaged in intimate behavior and sends the video to friends. The unsuspecting girl in the incident alerts the police, an investigation begins, and now charges of statutory rape could be in someone’s future.

Filed under: Off Topic, Tech Commentary | 9 Comments

Well, most (but not all) Comcast customers knew it was coming: notification of Comcast’s new bandwidth restriction policy. I got my email notification late last week and while I understood the technical aspect of the email I questioned whether the same could be said for the average Comcast customer.

Filed under: Tech Commentary | 7 Comments

In case you missed it, the big tech news last week was Google’s introduction of a new web browser titled Chrome. Numerous tech bloggers jumped on the band wagon with first-impression reviews and tech analysts speculated whether this new browser meant Google was taking on Microsoft. Now that the hype is starting to settle it’s time to take a step back and see Chrome for exactly what it is: just another web browser.

Filed under: Tech Commentary | 10 Comments

I’m not an advocate for illegal music downloads, but if you can’t find what you want legally, then what choice do you have? iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, and Napster don’t sell everything. CDs are still an option assuming the CD is still “in print.” And there’s the catch: What happens when the music is out-of-print, and [...]

Filed under: Tech Commentary | 3 Comments

If you live in a Comcast cable market, then you’ve seen the Comcast digital voice commercials touting “digital clarity” and flat fee dialing in North America. If you know even a little about Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) telephony, then you know that the “new” digital phone service Comcast advertises is nothing more than VOIP. [...]

Filed under: Tech Commentary | No Comments

Windows Vista has taken a lot of abuse since it first came out. And even though I had never used Vista myself, I believed the negative comments without question and even joined in the mud slinging a few times. But was I right to accept the negative comments without trying it for myself? Obviously the answer was “no.” And since I was starting to hate my current installation of XP Professional, I decided the time was ripe to take the Vista plunge and confirm or negate everything I heard for myself.

Filed under: Tech Commentary | 3 Comments

Twitter, FriendFeed, FaceBook, LinkedIn and Del.icio.us are just a few “social web” applications on an ever growing list. What, or who, is popular today may not be popular tomorrow, and what’s unknown today might be the “next big thing.” When everything was just a blog, it sure was a whole lot easier. We had Technorati [...]

Filed under: Blogging Related, Tech Commentary | 8 Comments

I was extremely skeptical about Twitter when I first heard about it. I even blasted it as a “fad” in a previous post. And while I’m still not convinced that Twitter has real long term value, I do agree it does have value — at least for right now. And now that I’ve changed my position on the current value of Twitter, I finally signed up and started tweeting.

Filed under: Tech Commentary | 3 Comments

On Friday, May 9, 2008, InfoWorld reported that Clear Hat Consulting has developed a rootkit that could run in an obscure part of a computer’s microprocessor making it 100% undetectable. Not only have they written such a rootkit but Clear Hat plans to demonstrate their “proof-of-concept” creation at the Black Hat Security conference in Las Vegas this August. Is it just me, or does anyone else have a fundamental problem with a guided tour of what could be the most malicious piece of software ever written?

Filed under: Tech Commentary | 2 Comments

I might not be a twenty-something college student living my life on Facebook, but I do have a LinkedIn account (actually, I also have a Facebook account, I just never use it). I guess you could say LinkedIn is the Facebook for working professionals. Not everyone will agree with that categorization but this 40-ish father of 3 feels more at home on LinkedIn than I do on Facebook. Regardless how I define these virtual communities, they remain extremely popular. And once something on the Internet becomes that popular, it’s only a matter of time before the “spammers” invade.

Filed under: Tech Commentary | 4 Comments