Geekdom rejoice - Firefox continues to chip away at Internet Explorer, and has gone to six percent penetration - not bad. For those who haven’t made the switch yet - why haven’t you? It’s more secure (but not bulletproof as some would have you believe, I’ve seen systems infected using Firefox), offers tabbed browsing, and doesn’t consume as much system resources in my informal testing. Go to our site, scroll to the bottom and click on the Get Firefox button to join the revolution.

/Chase //Check out our new Podcast!

Firefox gaining on IE | News.blog | CNET News.com

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PcMag gives the new Play Station Portable a very good review - anybody try one out yet?

Chase//Check out my son’s one year old birthday party pics!

Sony PSP review by PC Magazine

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Coming soon to a phone near you: iTunes.

Well, kinda. Apple has long been in talks with Motorola over a new phone compatible with Apple’s iTunes. Presumably, it will synchronize using iTunes easy iPod sync. method, and probably be allowed to play music purchased from the iTunes Music Store (which is currently limited to iPods).

However, there’s a number of “buts” in this story. First, and most frustrating is that the wireless carriers - ever thinking of their bottom line and not their customers - are fighting over who gets what features.

Just like Verizon crippled another Motorola phone’s bluetooth capabilities so they could force their users to pay the 25¢/picture fee (which they recently added their own advertising to, on top of the fee), now wireless carriers are fighting over which provider gets which features, so they can force customers to choose between providers based on which features are offered and who has the better rates.

In other words, the wireless carriers are chopping up the functionality that Motorola and Apple are trying to offer, instead of sharing it all. That’s why I’m growing more and more frustrated at the business models of wireless carries, and that’s why this phone is delayed.

The other “but” to this story is it doesn’t actually look like that concept design. It looks rather like most Motorola phones do, although only this one picture has surfaced.

While I wouldn’t want this phone, I do believe as soon as battery-life and heat issues catches up to the smaller circuitry being delivered today, we’ll see cell phone + PDA + Music + Camera devices emerge that truly do it right, with sizes and comfort that are far better than today’s “all in one” devices.

- tollie
 

Here’s a good listing of the top five internet scams that are currently bilking people out of money. I particularly like the questions to ask yourself at the end of each scam listing. On Another note, you guys may remember that my Uncle Fuad was the treasurer of Nabudi until the recent violent coup that deposed King Well, it turns out that my uncle was the only one who escaped, and he has 30 million dollars that was in the vault at the time. He’s looking for an American who’s willing to allow their bank account to be used to hold the 30 million in return for a 30 percent cut of the action. He can’t use my account, because it has a 3 million dollar limit on it, and I’m pretty close to that right now. To give him your information, simply click here! WARNING: THIS IS A SCAM!

/Chase //Check out our new Tech Talk podcasts at ChaseandSam.com!

This Friday, the FTC took down the makers of SpywareAssassin, a
fraudulent and worthless anti-spyware company. That’s great news,
and I hope the other shady anti-spyware companies are shaking in
collective boots! We’ve been saying over and over again on our radio show, Tech Talk that there are really only a few anti-spyware apps worth messing with, and it’s good to start with the free ones that are available. With a couple of possible exceptions (Spy Sweeper and Pest Patrol, perhaps) Ad-Aware, Spybot Search and Destroy 1.3 and CWShredder are as good as any product that you’d have to pay for.

Today @ PC World - FTC Takes Down Fraudulent Anti-Spyware Company
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My Way News

Well, I guess techies have to style and profile too right? Call me crazy but a twelve diamond mp3 player seems a bit much.

Of course, that’s not all CeBit, the world’s largest gizmo expo, is about. All the major tech players show off their latest, greatest items. One very useful product is a GPS for motorcycles with a touch screen that works with leather gloves (of course).
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Hey, is this the new iPod Shuffle from Apple?

Nope, it’s not. It’s a Taiwon-based company’s rip-off of the Shuffle, called (get this) The Super Shuffle.

On the plus side: it has more features, including a voice-recorder and an FM radio, and it’s cheaper.

On the negative side: there’s still no screen, so at the least the radio feature would be ackward, and it’s obviously a rip-off of the Apple (US-based) product, and no one knows yet about the quality of the manufacturing.

They’re even marketting it with the Apple-style silhouette ads.

- tollie

Wired News: Revised Spyware Bill Moves Ahead

Bono has done it again. No, not the lead singer of U2… Republican Senator Mary Bono, has sponsored a SPY ACT…. (catchy acronym that means Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass) that is believed to pass with flying colors this year. But not without lobbiest getting their hands on it to protect “legitimate” spyware like programs used by major software companies.

Well, the bill mainly focuses on stopping homepage hijackers, keystroke loggers, and requiring spyware to be easily identified and removed. Failure of these specs brings a heavy fine, up to $3 million dollars (I spelled so you’d know I didn’t accidentally add zeros per violation.

Well, say what you say about gov’t intervention, but I really see this as our best option for the time being. The fact that this spying happens in cyber land doesn’t make it any less dangerous or annoying than if people were looking in your windows and looking over your shoulder.

Sam Knowles

The Bane of Hollywood and RIAA, Bit Torrent, has upgraded to version 4.0 with the following new updates:

2005-03-07: 4.0.0 is now available.

Changes since the last stable release:

All new queue-based user interface

Many options are now modifiable from the interface, including upload rate

Lots of other interface improvements

Extra stats are visible, for those who like it

Remembers what it was doing across restarts

New .torrent maker “btmaketorrentgui” replaces “btcompletedir”

Better performance, as always

License has changed to the BitTorrent Open Source License

Torrent fields are correctly created and interpreted as utf8

Too many little things to list

A few technical notes, for those interested:

Single port: launchmany can seed and client can download many files from a single port and thread

Interface now uses GTK instead of wxWidgets

BitTorrent packets are marked as bulk data to make traffic shaping easier

/Chase //Tech Talk Radio homepage: Check out our new online e-filing Guide!

The Official BitTorrent Home Page

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Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux has switched to an Apple Macintosh (running Linux) as his principle desktop. Click the link for an interesting read on why….

Chase/Tech Talk Radio - 3 gigabytes of free videos and downloads!

Torvalds switches to a Mac

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