CHRISdotTODD

Dell recently release a report (30-Jun-08) on loss of laptops at airports, and a whopping 12,000 are lost every week. For class B airports such as LAX, JFK, Dulles, the average is 286 laptops per week per airport. In addition, over 50% of those surveyed said their laptop contained sensitive information. Sixty-five percent of the same survey group said they do not take any special precautions to protect their data. In addition, 42% of the respondents do not have their data backed up. What are you doing to protect your laptop and its data when you travel? Of course if you are a Dell customer, the now have some offerings to help address this problem. About.com offers 8 tips for travelers with laptops . The rules for inspecting your laptop when coming in and out of the country has recently changed too. Did you know that your laptop can be seized at the border for inspection for no reason at all? International travelers entering the United States face potential inspection and seizure of t...

I recently found a chart that lists common electronic gear and the power and money spent while they sit idle. For plasma TV owners, you far outpace anything else at $160 / 1452.4 kwh annually ($0.11 p/ kilowatt hour). Many of these devices can be plugged into a power brick, and when not in use the brick can be turned off, therefore not consuming any power.

The Director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, released an advisory on Thursday July 24, 2008, encouraging people to change the way they use cell phones as a precaution against cancer ( PDF ). Recently I have become aware of the growing body of literature linking long-term cell phone use to possible adverse health effects including cancer. Dr. Herberman in particular cites concerns over children using cell phones, "Do not allow children to use a cell phone, except for emergencies." This was the first item of 10 precautionary guidelines to help you reduce the possibility of cell phone induced cancer. Other guidelines include using a Bluetooth headset or speakerphone over putting the phone up to your ear. Also worth noting, as mentioned as guideline 10, different phones have varying power levels that affect how much radiation is absorbed by the body ( SAR ). Guideline 10 encourages users to use the lowest possible SAR rated phone you c...

I haven't had to use MS Access in 7 or 8 years, so recently when I had to do some simple data conversion, it took me longer than it should to figure out how to best accomplish the task. I needed to run some reports against some Salesforce.com data, and the data set was too large for the built-in report tool to handle, so I decided to import the data into Access to perform the reporting. I quickly learned that the date/time format from Salesforce.com is not in the same format as Access. The solution is actually quite easy... transform the data when you import it. I began with my Salesforce.com data in the form of a CSV file (too big for Excel). Here are the steps I used: Link to the CSV data source Create a Make Table Query against the CSV datasource, selecting all data columns -- of course you only need to select the columns that you want to import Replace every date/time field with a forumla that parses the format and writes it in the format Access will accept. Salesforce.com fo...

Here's a quick tip for cycling through Firefox 3 tabs using the keyboard: Hold the CTRL key and press Page Up (left) or Page Down (right)

When you are not using your computer or game machine, what are they doing? Just for the cost of electricity, you can contribute to worthy causes such as protein folding or searching for ET. Organizations from Stanford ( Folding@home ) and Berkley ( SETI@home ) have small programs that you can download for your computer, that will only run when your computer is idle. Folding@home and SETI@home are able to do this through using Grid Computing technology. The Folding@home project started in 2000 with assistance from Intel, Google, and others. What is protein folding and how is folding linked to disease? Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery. So with the help of the Folding@home project, researchers are able to process data faster t...

As we have all been struggling to keep up with the rising gas prices, one service Internet service has been developed to help you find the lowest price in your area. That would be GasBuddy.com . GasBuddy has any easy interface (despite the busy distractions): click your state and enter your zip code - that's it. You can also find the average price for gas in each state plus Washington DC. Here in Oregon, we're currently averaging $4.268, 45th of 51. The lowest average goes to Missouri at $3.854 and the highest goes to Hawaii at $4.552. With the gas temperature map , you can see the range of gas prices within your state (or for the country). And finally, you can view the trend of gas prices for up to 3 cities over the last 6 years.

With the last Microsoft patch this past Tuesday, if you were a user of ZoneAlarm , you were no longer able to access the Internet. I happen to be one of those users. I could get to my router, but not the Internet. Other devices on my network, of course, also were able to access the Internet. When I finally discovered that ZoneAlarm was the problem, I found a reference on the ZoneAlarm site . Apparently the patch was fixing quite a serious flaw in Internet addressing. "You'd have the Internet, but it wouldn't be the Internet you expect. (Hackers) would control everything." - Securosis analyst Rich Mogul I find it funny that fixing the flaw caused ZoneAlarm problems. Anyway, if you're finding this post, then you were not affected or you have solved the problem.

First it's Microsoft that bloats Vista with MPAA DRM protection software , and now PC manufacturers such as Dell are bowing down to the RIAA . These manufacturers seem to forget who their customers are, and are ripping off unsuspecting buyers. Can you imagine spending $1000 of your hard earned dollars on a laptop to find out later that you cannot record audio -- even though the sound card supports it? Of course teech savvy people like Chad are going to find a solution; and the real copyright violatetrs are going to as well. But the average consumer who wants to dabble in a little audio and video, perhaps for their church or their son's or daughter's sports team, are left with a bag of bolts. So next time you need a new computer, start with your objectives -- what do you want to use it for -- and then do your homework before you buy to make sure the hardware will support it. If you're thinking about audio, photos, and video, you might give Macs a hard look. Using their ...

Just one more of many tributes to Bill Gates, TWiT (This Week in Tech) this week, episode 149 , spent significant time talking about Bill Gates and the history of Microsoft. Leo Laporte had on old time industry followers John C. Dvorak, Jerry Pournelle, and Bill Machrone. If you have any interest in personal computer history, this is a great podcast to catch. You can download it on the TWiT site or subscribe through your podcatcher.