"Hey Doug, I was thinking I could go testdrive a car without brakes this afternoon, you know, to let the company know it doesn't have brakes" -You

Expected to officially release later this summer, Office looks to coincide with the release of Windows 8, also expected to release during the second half of this year.

That likely means that Office will be designed as a Metro-app for Windows 8, to take advantage of the new Win8 UI. It won’t hinder the company’s development on a desktop flavor of Office though. The profit margin of their desktop consumer base is far too great to leave in the corner. Expect to be using a new Office and Windows8 by the end of the year.

-Stephen Rawlings

Wii U

Up first we’ve got the Wii U and its new TV-in-a-controller. The Wii U’s controller takes immersion in gaming a step further with a built in touchscreen thatt interacts with the game you’re playing on the main display, of course being your living room TV. The new controller has been showcased doing a variety of things like acting as your inventory, being a window into a three dimensional space, giving one person a personal TV while everyone on the big screen tries to hunt them down, and even using the controller itself as a prop, like a shield or a window of a helicopter. Wii U’s new controller aims to capture even more of the casual gaming crowd.

Ice Cream Sandwhich

Androids new facelift, Ice Cream Sandwhich, promises to add even more functionality to the homescreen and personalization to your static buttons. ICS has been showcased as having customizable static icons on the bottom of your homescreen that stays there no matter which screen you’re on, as well as updating the old menus and contact lists to make them more intuitive. ICS, however, is experiencing flash problems and will continue to do so at launch.

iPad Mini

More a mini in price than model, Apple reportedly plans to launch the tablet in Q3 of 2012. So far it seems to be a middle ground between the iPad and the iPod Touch, perhaps trying to cater to the personal digital assistant market, or perhaps to create a niche of its own. It will of course interact seamlessly with the Apple Digital Environment, and perhaps appeal to the eReader crowd with a smaller profile and more battery life. The mini is expected to start out at a cool $200.

UltraBooks

More and more tech companies are realizing the potential of making extremely portable, yet extremely powerful Netbooks. Of course since the term “Netbook” has been sullied by underpowered, and ultimately disappointing, tech products, the new term “ultrabook” has been coined by the corporate populace. Ultrabooks pride themselves on decent battery life, powerful performance, and mid cost. The best thing about ultrabooks? Flash memory that doesn’t use a noisy, battery sapping hard drive.

15” Macbook Pro/Air?

Hipsters and Baristas rejoiced at the rumor that Apple might unveil a next gen Macbooks Pro and Air this year, and who’s to blame them? The new macbooks will be more durable, have a longer battery, and of course be more slim and powerful. In competition with the aforementioned ultrabooks, however, Apple has some serious thinking to do on pricepoint and selling options, since similar devices are starting to do what Apple does, but better and cheaper.

Apple Airplay

Apple’s new WiFi feature showcases the ability to stream Audio and Video over a WiFi connection, however, the products that are compatible with the feature tend to be pricey and overhyped. Streaming data over WiFi is certainly no new thing, but the feature on Apple products is new and, frankly, long overdue. If they can just get the pricepoint down, it may be worth looking into. Until then, we’ll have to be content with Apple TV and AirPort Express.

Kindle Fire 2

The Kindle Fire has been all the rage with bookworms who need a bit more color. The Tablet is certainly no slouch, but it isn’t the next big thing either. Kindle Fire 2 promises to be the answer to what Kindle is capable of. With promises of better features, more supported formats, longer batteries and higher rez screens, KF2 might be the next big thing. Add in Kindle’s plans to release a 10” tablet that’s cheaper than Apple and Kindle might be the top seller in its class this year.

iPhone 5

Apple may finally jump on the 4G bandwagon this year, but when is anyone’s guess. The iP5 is plenty of upgrade from iP4, but as to what it includes, is also anyone’s guess. Apple, as always, keeps a tight lip on their new toys.

Apple TV

Trying to get its hands into the LCD TV cookie jar, Apple plans to release the Apple TV this year, with promises of WiFi capability and seamless integration with the Apple Digital Environment. With support from AirPlay, ATV will be able to stream audio and video with its fancy Wifi connection, but how and how much it will cost is another mystery altogether.

iPad 3

Another number to another product in Apple’s inventory, the iPad 3 is rumored to debut in Q2, though when and for how much is a good question. Higher resolution, better battery life, and an upgraded OS are all rumor mill stock. There’s little information on the particulars at this point.

PlayStation Vita

Sony’s lost a lot of customer base in recent years, and hopes to pull itself out of a slump with the new handheld Vita. The Vita promises dual anolog sticks, a nice big touchscreen, and graphics to rival the PS3. It will hit U.S. shelves on February 22 (an actual release date for one of these products? Holy Circuits, Batman!). The WiFi only bundle will be sold for $249, while the WiFi/3G flavor will be a penny shy of $300, plus the added cost of a basic 3G plan. This could be the device that gets Sony back in the black.

4G

We’ll see a LOT more 4G phones and hopefully a wider 4G service area. I know in my hometown in Columbia, MO, we’re expected to finally have 4G this year. Here’s to hoping small town USA gets access to this lightning fast skynet.

Nook Tablet2

Barnes and Noble’s answer to the Kindle Fire 2, expected to release in Q4 this year, continues to build on the great success of the Nook Color. Competition is always good for the consumer, so as long as Nook and Kindle duke it out, we win. Hopefully better battery life and a little Bluetooth are included in this round.

Nikon D800

Looking to misplace three grand and find a full-frame, 36 megapixel, prosumer camera instead? I didn’t think so. But, in case you really do like losing money and finding more megapixels than your brain can comprehend, the D800 will likely launch in early 2012.

Canon 5D Mark III

Maybe you’re a savy camera shopper and you only want to fork out $2500 for a full frame ManyMegaPixel thingie. Maybe you’re a professional and 2500 bucks isn’t a big deal. Maybe you’re hoping it will come out in mid to late 2012. Maybe I’ll stop writing in hypotheticals.

Windows 8

Yes, yes, the next highway robbery/circus sideshow act is slated to release late this year. Microsoft is trying to get all its ducklings in a row with integrating the Xbox 360, Metro Smartphones, and Tablets with its next gen operating system. No word on how much you’ll spend trying to figure out how to get your programs to run again.

And that just about wraps it up. This year, expect to see more of the same, but better, faster, stronger, harder. In the wake of recent natural disasters, the tech market has some catching up to do, and might just be playing it safe until a new idea comes along.

-Stephen Rawlings

Enter Kingsoft Office Suite Free 2012. It’s a great little software made by a Chinese company of the same name, based in Hong Kong. Kingsoft seems to be heavily influenced by MSO 2010, and for good reason. ’10 simply works, and Kingsoft does too.

Kingsoft is a full suite, offering counterparts to Word, Excell, and powerpoint, and does good on the MSO addicts by offering file compatibility with MSO. It’s been rated highly all over the net, so feel free to look into its credentials to see just how well the software holds up through rigorous testing.

Kingsoft also seems to perform faster than MSO. Even on my high end laptop, MSO still takes forever to load up just one text only document.

Now don’t get me wrong. OpenOffice, GoogleDocs, and LibreOffice are still great alternatives, and Kingsoft’s free version doesn’t include everything the Pro version includes, but if you’re willing to give it a try, you won’t be disappointed. Who knows, maybe it will catch on in your office and save your company hundreds of dollars a year on software costs.

Just try not to thank me all at once.

"Press OK to install mouse fart button. LOLOLOLOLOLOL" -Good old days

SpyEye uses advanced track covering techniques. First, it monitors all the transactions the criminal makes, then it changes the characters on the infected machine to erase all evidence of the transaction, giving the criminal time to push the money to his own ends, and the consumer has no idea. The virus doesn’t actually change the bank systems, just what is displayed on the infected machine’s web browser, meaning the only person who would know about the attack is the consumer if he happened to check his balance at an uninfected machine, or at an ATM.

The virus’ evidence wiping is “a very scary tactic,” said Avivah Litan, a financial fraud analyst at consulting firm Gartner. “Everybody thinks all they have to do is check their transactions and their balances. That’s not true anymore.” He goes on to say how important it is for consumers to report virus attempts and infections, as they’re still a staple in following the latest hacking trends.

Basically your plastic credit card is cleaner than your online credit card.

“Most banks let the first transaction through, because if they stopped everything that was potentially fraud, consumers would get annoyed,” she said. In most cases this lets the criminals get their one important transaction through, and they usually only steal from an account once.

Evidence covering techniques have been used by viruses in the past. A simpler version of the virus helped criminals stay undetected with the same web interception trick, but this Trojan has a better potential for success, because it involved third party debit card used and multiple banks and multiple security systems.

Basically, if you have financial malware on your computer, it’s game over. Regular virus screenings will help combat this, as stopping the virus before it strikes is the most effective way to deal with fraud in the first place.

The National Weather Service has the answer. The Earth is currently experiencing the worst blast of solar flare since 2003, currently rated at S3-level, or strong. According to the Space Prediction Center, even passengers aboard high altitude flights are at risk for higher than normal radiation exposure.

This will not happen to you, don't worry.

Solar radiation can affect the Earth’s magnetic poles in detrimental ways, which in turn affects high frequency communication, much like the ones cell phones, WiFi signals, and Satellite TV uses to communicate over long distance. You may not see a dip in performance over your personal WiFi, but you might likely see a dip in 4G and 3G cell phones speeds, and you’ll definitely see a dip in satellite feeds like GPS and television channels.

The National Weather Service has predicted the storm will last until the middle of the week, tapering off slowly each day until the weekend. Until then we’ll all just have to deal with the decreased performance of our high frequency long distance communications. Try not to cancel your TV service in the meantime.

There are several things in play here, since you noticed that the speed isn’t what it used to be.  Perception, hardware, software to name the obvious.  When you first bought your computer, it was so much faster than your old one.  Hence the term “old”, maybe not a dinosaur, but by current hardware standards it is definitely “old”.

The hardware itself, is the latest…greatest…fastest and that may seem light years faster than your last computer.  Processors are much more powerful, no longer a singe core, but up to six and even eight core processors.  And the code is no longer transferred in little 32bit chunks it’s now moved around in 64bit chunks.  Hence – faster.

Your old computer more than likely, had additional programs you found and downloaded off the Internet or bought somewhere.  And then down the road, you either removed them or attempted to remove them leaving behind remnants of information that can also cause your computer to choke.  Some of those really cool programs were nothing more than computer resource hogs creating another drag on computer speed. (ie. weatherbug)  Then there are all the constant updates by Microsoft for your operating system, updates from quickbooks, antivirus and any other program you may have, being added onto your computer, many of them extremely large and requiring more power.  Those updates haven’t started on your new computer…yet.

And then there is the change in what you are currently using your computer for and what you said you were going to use it for in the first place.  With the introduction of facebook, and youtube and streaming music you’ve now discovered a new world, which also now demands more power, more speed, and more storage space.  None of which your old computer has. 

This is a cycle you may as well get use to. Technology is growing faster than even a lot of software developers can keep up with, so don’t feel left behind. Just know that whatever you decide to buy tomorrow….will be almost worthless in about 4-5 years.

By the way…if you’re looking for a new computer, you might want to consider a custom built one instead of the “cookie cutter, kleenex” computers out there.  Yes, you can get one of those cheaper, but that’s because they are more compact, which leads to more over heating and your ability to expand your system in an effort to thwart off the next major computer investment will be next to impossible.

There are basically three parts that all work together and yet separately. Just what you thought…confusing right? Well let’s try and make it as simple as possible and only stick to some basics, because it can become very involved very fast.

The first part to getting a website up and going is the ‘Domain Name’ you are going to need. And you can only purchase a Domain Name from a “Registrar” on the Internet and of which there are quite a few. For the most part, domain names run close to the same price. But you can find cheaper ‘Domain Names’, just understand that the reason for such a price difference is because that price is usually associated with a special offer or is part of the hosting package you are expected to sign up for and for a specific amount of time. Probably the most important part you need to remember if someone else registers the Domain for you, is that the information for the “Registrant/Owner” is either you or your company’s information. I have had to help others reclaim their Domain Name, who thought they owned their domain, but came to find out that an old employee or their IT company had used their personal information as the “Registrant/Owner” of the domain and now those people were gone. And trying to reclaim a domain is not all that much fun. There’s more we could cover, but that’s the more involved stuff.

The second part, now that you have a domain name, is finding someone to create a website for you, if you don’t want to learn how to do it yourself.  We won’t go into all the aspects of websites there are way to many to deal with, but a simple single page (and yes that is still considered a website) or a website with a shopping cart or just multiple pages is going to require a server that displays that site to the world. This is called “hosting”.  As you recall, if you purchased your domain name from a registrar that includes the cheap domain with a hosting package, then you will need to use them for that service. If you had a company design your site for you, they will most likely have their own servers and the ability to host your site.  Either way, hosting fees can be a recurring monthly charge or yearly fee.

The third part would be email. Now just because you have a domain and a website, there is nothing to say you can’t use a third-party source for your email, such as gmail, yahoo, hotmail and so on. But most professional businesses utilize their domain for their email as well. Like your website, email requires “hosting”. This requires a server that will accept email from the world, has huge drives to store it for you then allows you to have access to it. Some email providers may offer spam checking and/or virus checking, while others may leave it up to you to filter out the spam. And even if they do offer virus protection, you need to have an antivirus program on your computer running at all times, since a lot of viruses are gotten while just surfing the Internet.

So while you need a domain to have a  website and/or email, you do not need to have every aspect located at the same place. You can register your domain at one place, have a different company host your website and still another company host your email.

What makes things confusing for some is that you can have separate charges for each part. The Domain Name purchase is a separate payment than the hosting fee, for those not using one company for everything. The website hosting fee may or may not include email. And if it does include email, then there may be additional fees should you exceed storage or bandwidth expectations. So whether you are intending on getting a website or already have one, just make sure you know what your fees are and what they cover.

digital image provided by: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

There are several tools on the market for restoring your computer to factory condition. Unfortunately, there are several scams out there too, just waiting for you to trust them with your precious machine.

Now, I use the term “scam” lightly. Obviously some of the services mentioned in this article are not illegal, just shady. In the same way that you’d hesitate to take a car loan from the cornerstore loan, you should be wary of these services.

First on our list of avoidance are the cold callers. Lately there have been reports of companies cold-calling people and informing them that their computer might be running slowly, infected, corrupted, etc, and that they are able to fix it. They instruct those they’re speaking on the phone to bring up the PC event log, which normally displays several warnings and other messages related to normal PC function, and explain that the warnings and errors listed there are indicative of infection. They offer an overpriced service and connect remotely to the machine in question, do a basic scan, and pretend to remove other errors. It’s all a bunch of show, as they aren’t really doing anything.

It’s unclear where the money is going or if they’re passing along the credit card information to cyber thieves or other criminals, but it’s safe to say they don’t have your best interests in mind. If you receive one of these calls, the best thing to do is hang up. No legitimate software company like Microsoft or any anti-virus provider will ever call you to inform you of your machine’s compromised integrity.

Then there are websites that offer similar services. Websites like MyCleanPC and FinallyFast offer legitimate services to optimize your machine and remove any infection. The problem is they usually offer this service at an inflated rate, and usually with hidden subscriptions and add ins that aren’t made clear first hand. It’s better to talk to a local professional if you aren’t sure about cleaning your machine yourself. Faces are easier to hold accountable than websites and phone calls.

There are several factors that go into PC integrity that you just can’t detect over the internet, and so these so called experts calling you, or telling you over a website that your PC needs work are really just misleading you into thinking you actually do need their help. The reality is you simply cannot hear undesirable noises coming from a PC over the internet, or judge the speed a computer is running over a remote connection, you can’t add or replace hardware or fix software that requires a computer restart, such as BIOS flashing or driver retooling.

There are four major things to clean up when doing routine PC maintenance: junk files, registry errors, defragmenting, and spyware/virus/malware scans. If the service you’re buying doesn’t cover all those, and doesn’t tell you how they’re going to do them, they aren’t worth your hard earned dollars. Trying to do them yourself, however, is potentially even more dangerous, as you could end up creating registry errors or deleting important files yourself. It’s strongly recommended to have a professional do the trick, but a local professional you can trust.

Email requires several things. First, it requires a server to send and receive the emails. Second, it requires someone to host that server, and by host, I mean enable that server to find the other servers all over the internet. Server hosting is a whole ‘nother shebang, but for now we’re going to skim the topic by stating that the server needs to have the right instructions (called records, of which there are a few types: MX is used in email) to send the files to the right places. Essentially your email would be like a car on the highway, with specific instructions on where to go. The servers (yours and the other servers on the internet) are like the road signs. At each intersection or lane change, the road signs, our servers, tell the little email car which way to go. What does this all mean? It means that if someone doesn’t have the right records, or if the servers have the wrong domain names hosted, or even if only part of some of the records exist, then your email is going to have trouble getting where it’s going. In some cases, you may even be able to receive and send emails at your office, or at home on your desktop, but not on your cell phone or tablet. Each one of those devices has a specific way of packaging and sending emails, and your email host needs to have all those records available. If not, then your email is lost in translation, so to speak.

Kind of like this, only less pretty and more executive screaming

Email is far more complicated than this, but for the quick and dirty, essentially this is how it works. [office

-Stephen Rawlings

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