Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock
Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock

Last Sunday Wall Street Journal columnist Walter Mossberg wrote a piece entitled Wait a while to buy a new Windows computer. While some of his recommendations are sound, there are a couple that I took issue with. Mossberg advised consumers to wait to buy a new computer until after Windows Vista is released on January […]

The United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing software that could be able to translate, and summarize spoken or written conversation or printed material automatically. The software is nicknames GALE, and acronym for Global Autonomous Language Exploitation. The main interest in this software stems from a severe shortage of Arabic translators. When […]

Companies that plan on developing software for the upcoming Windows Vista Operating System may find they need a few more PCs (and a few more licenses for Vista) to make sure their software works properly. Most software development companies use virtual machines for software testing – a single computer that can simultaneously run multiple operating […]

This month’s patch Tuesday will include six different Microsoft security updates. One of the patches is very critical, as it plugs a security hole that is currently being used to take control of unsuspecting computers that are not equipped with firewalls on high speed connections. As always, I recommend that all Windows users turn on […]

Belly up to the table and help yourself to a nice helping of SPAM. NO I don’t mean the dinner table or the wonderful canned delecasy. Online security firms are reporting a 30% increase in the amount of SPAM email floating around the Internet over the past 2 months, and your computer may be guilty […]

Mozilla released a new version of Firefox yesterday hoping to steal the spotlight away from IE7 with their Firefox 2. Firefox 2 has new security features that include anti-phishing technology and a completely redesigned interface made up from user feedback and input from organizations like NASA.

This afternoon I had a conversation with one of our web development customers about the placement of her website in Google. She was concerned that she was not close enough to the top of the results in Google, which puzzled her given that she ranked well in Yahoo and MSN.

I explained to her that saying she does well in Yahoo and MSN but not in Google is like saying the Huskers can beat any Texas high school team out there, just not the college ones.

Computer hackers based in East-Europe, Asia, and Thailand have successfully hacked into thousands of TD-Ameritrade, E-Trade, Fidelity, and Charles Schwab user accounts in what is being called the biggest single identity theft crime in history.

The heist is currently being investigated by the FBI, the SEC, and the National Association of Securities Dealers, and with good reason. New York-based E-Trade spent over $18 Million to compensate its users for losses and Nebraska-based TD-Ameritrade (formerly run by Pete Rickets) also lost an undisclosed amount of money as a result of the intrusion.

Microsoft has officially released its newest member of the Internet Explorer family, IE 7. While the reviews from many industry leaders are mixed, as usual you can count on me to give you an unbiased evaluation of the new web browser.

As a preface, a few months ago I started recommending that all Windows users who currently use Internet Explorer should also install Mozilla’s FireFox browser. While there are FireFox proponents who claim the open-source browser is safer than IE, we do not recommend it for that reason. I feel it is important to have alternatives should either browser malfunction. Since IE is built into Windows already, installing FireFox as an alternative makes good preventative maintenance sense.

With that said, Microsoft has introduced some features that are new to IE users. These features have been present in browsers like FireFox for some time, but they are a definite improvement to IE 6. The new version of IE includes the following new features:

* A redesigned interface
* Tabbed browsing
* A built-in RSS feed reader
* A new Favorites Center
* Anti-Phishing Technology
* Other Minor Improvements

In the past I have not been a big fan of Symantec’s online renewal system. Over the past two years however, they seem to have made great strides in improving the system. My main beef was that renewals were too complicated to install and were often fraught with technical glitches.

I had the opportunity to renew my Norton Antivirus this week and I noticed that the online renewal was much easier, but there was also a LOT more fine print. As usual, I tend to read the fine print so my readers do not have to. Before you click I agree to that online payment for renewal, there is something you should know…