CHRISdotTODD

Yahoo! reported on the 24th that Sony has another recall -- this time it is their Cyber-shot camera . "The liquid crystal display screens of eight camera models might not display images correctly, images could be distorted or cameras might not take photos at all." This affects cameras sold over 16 months from September 2003 to January 2005. Apparently this is not the first camera recall for Sony. Compared to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq over the last three months , things do not look good for Sony. I do not expect the PS3 to help them much either.

I found two sites that look at the inside of a Wii game machine from Nintendo. Popular Science has 16 photos while informit.com has a complete tear down with instructions. Both are very good, but informit.com gives you much more information including a nine minute video . In addition, CNN posted an AP article on how the motion controls for the Wii and PS3 work. I also found a link to some handiwork where someone figured out how to get to the Wii Shop store.

I had tried the free Google Desktop at work, twice, and each time uninstalled it. First because I could not search my network drives. (I like to use network drives to share files with my colleagues, and to make sure they are backed up.) Later I had decided to try again, and then discovered the possible security issues. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Google now has addressed the security concerns and they have released an update that will index networked drives. I have been running this now for about two weeks, and it generally has performed well. The Google Desktop Search is based on keywords, so it does not always give you the most relevant results. I also had some troubles with PowerPoint running very slow while editing. (I turn the search off when I am working in PowerPoint.) With those caveats, it seems to be a good solution. A nice, new feature is that if you hit your CTRL button twice, a search dialog appears in the center of your screen. Of course Google Desktop will

Barracuda Networks reported November 15th that they have seen an increase in spam of 67% since August of this year. I learned this fact while reading about spam linked to Russian gang from eWeek , "...authorities have traced the operation to a well-organized hacking gang controlling a 70,000-strong peer-to-peer botnet..." This hacking gang is using the trojan tool that removes other viruses before setting-up shop on breached computers, which I reported in October . The most common compromised machine is XP with service pack 2 at 47% . Another 37% is XP with no service pack or service pack 1. This I do not understand at all -- if you are going to use your computer on the Internet, you absolutely must keep it up-to-date with patches and fixes. Over 12,500 of the compromised machines are in the US . Finally, this group push two messages, "pump-and-dump" and penis enlargements. The "pump-and-dump" is penny stocks. It is believe the reason must be that these tw

Microsoft just released their new Zune player -- will it be a hit? My bet is no, and here is why. The software is difficult to install; it has crashed for many people. Does not support Microsoft's PlaysForSure music platform, including Windows Media Player. Therefore, you cannot play music you bought from other stores that used the PlaysForSure music platform. Microsoft closed their music store and opened a new one specific to Zune ( Zune Marketplace ). To buy music, you need to buy points from Microsoft in $5.00 increments. Each song is 79 points, which is about $0.99. So you will loan Microsoft $4.00 (or more), each time you buy more points. Yet another DRM in isolation . Supports video, but there is video available from Microsoft's Zune Marketplace store yet. Does not support podcasting. Paying Universal an undisclosed sum for each unit sold since all users are pirating music. Wireless only works between 2 Zunes with DRM music. Does not allow you to sync with your PC or

I have put together another keyboard shortcuts tri-fold , this time for PowerPoint. Whether you use PowerPoint a lot or just occasionally, I think you will find this to be a valuable tool. I have some really good shortcuts in here. For example, did you know that if you enter Ctrl + Shift + [plus sign] with text selected, that it will change it to superscript? Or that Ctrl + D will duplicate a selected object? That is just two of over 100 keyboard shortcut combinations. Download

Bill Moyers, Moyers on America, has developed an extremely informative piece on the current risk to open access on the Internet call The Net @ Risk . Moyers and his team dig into big media, telco, cable, and government, and shine a spotlight on how we risk losing open Internet access for everyone. Let us not forget how in as little as two years from rule changes by the FCC , big media bought all the little radio stations, and now we have little to no local programming. That could just as easily happen to the Internet. Take a company like Google. Eight years ago, Google was two guys in graduate school -- the Internet has allowed founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin start their own company and compete against incumbents Alta Vista, Yahoo! and Microsoft. With net neutrality, telco and cable companies could make it more expensive to get Internet telephone companies like Vonage and Skype , then it would be to buy it from them -- they would do this by forcing Vonage and Skype to pay them hi