CHRISdotTODD

Business Week has released their top 20 and bottom 5 tech products of 2008 -- how do your picks compare to their picks? The top of the list is the iPhone App Store. As I mentioned in a prior post, this is not the first App Store, but perhaps the most popular. Though I do like the concept, I find it hard to be released at number 1 with the restrictions Apple places. The Blackberry Storm beat out the iPhone. Having not used the Storm, I can't give it a fair comparison. I do know that I like my iPhone much better than my last smartphone, a Blackberry. The MacBook Air made it an number 5. Here's another one I don't agree with. I doubt many Windows-to-Apple switchers would be happy with this as their first Mac product, with its missing connections and under-powered performance. It may be a fine product as a netbook, but at the price point, it's only for those with disposable income. Perhaps switching palces with number 10, the Sling Catcher would be better. Chrome, Firefox,

I recently found that my Word and Excel files were associated with another program and I wanted to change them back. Windows XP as with prior versions of Windows allows you to do this through Explorer, but it's time consuming and easy to do wrong. Here's the quick and easy way to associate a file type with an application. Right-click on a file of the file type (e.g. "My-Word.doc") Click Open With... Click Choose Program... (last option in the list) Choose Select the program from a list and click OK Select the program you want associated to the file type If you don't find the application program you're looking for, click Browse... and locate the programs .exe file Click the box next to Always use the selected program to open this kind of file Click OK This opens the file in the program you chose and the icon of the file will change to the programs icon.

I suspect this will only impact a very few people, but the threat is real . If you are viewing Word 97 documents using WordPad, because you do not have Word installed and you use one of the following OSs, then you're at risk. Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 Windows XP Service Pack 2 Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 Unfortunately, unless you get a Word file in the new .docx, I don't know how you easily tell different Word versions apart. If you fit into this category of having a vulnerable system, I would suggest not opening any Word documents sent to you, unless you know very specifically what the user has sent. If you are unsure of the source, but you still want to open it, at least go through the extra work to make sure it was not created in Word 97. To do this: Right-click the Word file Click Properties Click the Summary tab Scroll down to the Application Name and make sure it does NOT read Microsoft Word 8.0 If you really must open it, find

When you create Excel charts, you can populate the title with a formula. You might find this helpful to display a total quantity, such as in this example. Suppose you have 30 students and you are displaying their grade distribution in a pie chart. Here's what you do. Steps 1 - 4 set up the data; step 5 creates the Title formula; step 6 creates a pie chart. In the first column, skip the first line (A1) for the Title (we'll come back) In rows 2 - 6 of the first column (A2:A6), add the letter grades, A - D and F In column 2, rows 2 - 6 (B2:B6), add the number of grades of each type In column 2, row 7 (B7), sum the number of grades to get your student total Now go back to the first cell (A1) and add the following formula: ="Grade Distribution, " & B7 & " students" B7 is the same cell we put our total in, in step 4 If you want to format the value contained in B7m remember the TEXT functioned discussed in an earlier post Create your pie chart Highlight t

05-Dec-08 update: Webware posted an article describing the Koobface virus coming from Facebook. I just received an email from our corporate IT department, as they are temporarily blocking Facebook and MySpace due to a worm infected file. The method of infection is: There is a prompt to update your flash player when visiting one of these sites . This executes a worm that infects explorer.exe and other critical operating system files. To date there is no easy method to clean an infected system. The IT staff is working to clean the 20 odd systems that have been affected to date. I'm not sure how real it is, but it serves as a good reminder to make sure updates are coming from known URLs.

If you're a Sprint or Cogent customer, relying on them for your Internet connectivity, you're probably already aware of this article from Scott Woolley of Forbes. In late October, due to differences between these companies, Sprint severed the Internet backbone connection between them. The result was customers on both sides not being able to reach all parts of the Internet. The feud goes back several years, with what appears that Sprint is being a bit of a bully. It is common practice for the Internet backbone carries to exchange traffic between them for no cost. The rationale is that it benefits both companies' customers and the traffic is even enough both ways where there is no profit to be made by one company or the other. In this case, "...Sprint stood to gain $1.5 million or so in annual revenue, which would add .004% to the company's $40 billion in annual revenue." (Note that this was based on Sprint's billing justifications; there's nothing to s

It's not uncommon during birthdays and Christmas to get new electronic gadgets and have the need therefore to throwout the old gear. Before you throw them out, consider the toxic metals that you may be adding to our landfills. Instead go to Earth911.com and find a recycler near you. In addition to electronics, you can search for locations that will take paper, metal, hazardous materials, plastic, and more. So the next time you need to dispose of electronics or other materials, start with Earth911.