Thursday, July 10, 2003
PC Magazine - July 2003
In Extreme Tech, Bill Machrone explains why LEDs will be replacing all (?) other light sources in the future. Interesting prediction/observation. [p. 59]
In the same column Bill Machrone writes about GuruNet,
which, once installed, gives you the ability to "search any word
in any application and it will bring up a bunch of contextually relevant encyclopedia
references." Rather than getting links to pages, you actually get the information.
So if you are looking for informaiton on 802.11g, the new high-speed wireless
networking protocol, this is a great service to use. www.gurunet.com
[p.59]
When you get GuruNet you also get Copernic Agent, www.copernic.com,
a metasearch engine that he likes. [p. 59]
This next note is for technical people that want to try to figure out where
an e-mail really came from. There was an article in the April 8 PC Mag called
"Heading Off Spam" that describes how to take apart the headers of
an e-mail message and see when an IP address is being spoofed.
www.pcmag.com/headingoffspam
[p. 70]
I tend to run applications by locating their icons or else by rightclicking
somewhere to access them from a menu. But lots of people use the "Run"
option from the Start menu a lot. I just can't seem to remember all the command
names. Two that are mentioned in one article are rsrcmtr (for
Windows ME), which brings up the resource meter so you can see whether free
system resources (FSR) are being allocated and deallocated properly when programs
start and stop, and msconfig, which allows you to turn on and
off the programs that load at startup. [p. 75]
I admit that I have never understood the concept of pivot tables in
Excell. There is a step-by-step
solution to a problem that uses PivotTable to count the number of occurances
of each value in a column. This sounds like it would be useful for me when counting
how many courses from each department are active on Blackboard or for a faculty
member when trying to figure out how many As, Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs were given
as grades. [p. 76] [I should walk through this
so that I can better learn this concept.]
Advertisement: Crucial Technology is the BEST and LOWEST COST place to purchase
additional memory. Their web site, www.crucial.com,
has a wonderful tool to determine what memory your particular computer can take.
Adding memory is one of the least expensive ways to increase performance on
a PC, if you are experiencing disk swapping. I have 512 MB in my current machine.
(If you aren't experiencing disk swapping, very large memory cards can actually
slow down your computer.) Crucial also sells compact flash, secure digital,
and similar memory cards at good prices. [ad p. 101]
Microsoft is creating a watch/pager type of system that should be out this
Fall. Called the SPOT technology, it stands for Smart Personal
Objects Technology. SPOT uses FM radio to distribute localized information such
as weather, and traffic, as well as national information such as stock prices,
and such. It can also deliver your personal calendar, contact info, and messages.
The radio network is called DirectBand and transmits at around 12 Kbps. It is
one-way only, sending information to you but not allowing you to send information
back. Bill Gates, in a recent interview, said that his SPOT watch is one of
the few technologies that he doesn't think he could live without. (I assume
they are testing it on the Microsoft campus, since it isn't available to us
yet.) For an advanced preview go to www.microsoft.com/spot.
[p. 102]
I am looking for a Web hosting site for a couple of sites
I maintain. Ads in the back of PC Magazine show one for $7.95 per month (www.olm.net/pcmag)
and one for $4.95 per month (www.AIT.com/pcmag).
I should take a look at these and compare features. [p. 161]
Because the IAC is located in recovered space that is really a long hallway,
we try to monitor the main entrance from our desks. We were using a wireless
video monitoring system. Since Merrick is now connected to
the CaneNet wireless network, the current video system will interfere with it,
since they both use the 2.4Ghz bandwidth. The Veo Wireless Observer might work
for us. It is a stand alone camera that can be connected directly to the Internet.
It costs about $300, and there is $40 motion detector that can be added. www.veo.com
[p. 164]
