Issue 426 - December 13, 2006
ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements © 2006
==== 1529 Subscribers in 48 Countries ====
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
CONTENTS
Opening Thoughts
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 NEWS
'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."
Read the TechRepublic
article...
Leave a comment...
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.
Read the New York
Times article...
Leave a comment...
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.
Read the E-Commerce
News article...
Leave a comment...
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.
Read the CNN article...
Leave a comment...
Return to the top
Digital Photography
Tip of the Week
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.
Read the full review...
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.
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PCIN.net UPDATE
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.php
Update 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.php
Omega One Software Battery Pack Pro 2.1 Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/bpp2.php
Makayama Interactive DVD to Pocket PC 3.0 Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/dvd2ppc3.php
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THE TIPS and OTHER
STUFF
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.
Leave a comment...
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.
Leave a comment...
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.
Leave a comment...
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PCIN.net AFFILIATED
SITES
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:
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DISCLAIMER
and OTHER STUFF
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.
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and paste.
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follow the appropriate links.
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I will add it to the subscriber web pages that I have on my site.
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by clicking on the PayPal link below:
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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.
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