Friendly Technology.........

Two Views on Firefox....

I like Rick Walker. A very knowledgeable guy on all things technology. supporting hundreds of faculty and staff at our local University. Last week, Rick sent out an email to the people he supports not recommending Firefox as a web browser. I disagree with him - respectfully and with anticipation of possibly a good healthy debate.

Here is a mp3 audio clip of me and Mike Maddison talking about why I think Firefox is a great web browser and why I use it everyday. Download firefox_vs_ie_clip.mp3

CBC Tech Columns in MP3 format - 'Podcasts'

How Tod Maffin cleared this with the Mother Corp, it is hard to know. I wonder if I can cut and paste his stuff into my little community radio show. Very cool that 6 of his tech audio columns are now availalble here (just click on the little green writing). Might at least quote his firefox stuff on the radio on Friday.

Kamloops Internet Radio indeed salvaged by a Dell Axim...

I felt like I met MacGyver yesterday, or at least one of his close relatives. Maybe I was a little MacGyverish too, but I think that gives me too much credit. Mike Maddison was my guest on Kamloops Internet Radio yesterday and he beat me in blogging our very interesting experience. Just as we are about to assault the airwaves around our local University, the power went out at CFBX. I felt a huge void. Every Friday, from 12pm to 1pm, I talk technology on the airwaves - that's just my thing at Friday noon, even though I still have a thing to learn about speaking clearly on air. And I was feeling a rising panic that I might not be able to do that yesterday.

Fast to the draw, Mike started reaching around and into his pockets. He brought out his newly won in a contest 40 gig iPod. That wasn't really going to help. Even if we were able to record on the thing, staring at it for an hour would have only made me more jealous. Then, Mike pulled out his trusty Dell Axim. Very nice, and less contentious for me because he actually had to pay for it. And that wonderful device recorded great audio for its size and with no external microphone. Very snazzy. Mike has posted all the clips over on his blog. I am not sure if I want to do that here. I garbled a lot of words in our hour together .

I am going to post, likely tomorrow, our conversation about the relative merits of Internet Explorer versus Mozilla Firefox. We were prompted to do this by an email from University tech Rick Walker that panned Firefox as not ready for prime time. More on that soon...

My new obsession with digital audio...

There is something decidedly different about me these days. My new MP3 player has plunged me into an obsession with digital audio. I don't know how long this obsession will last - might be a few more days and it might be the rest of my life.

The purchase of my MP3 player coincided with a huge buzz in online tech circles about a phenomenon called podcasting. Podcasting refers to a new way of subscribing to online audio clips or even full on online radio shows from different web sites. What podcasting enables is to have the clips / shows to which you subscribe automatically download into your computer once any new clip or show is available.

Its still way to geeky for non techies to really have an easy time figuring out but to give you an idea of some of the really interesting new audio stuff available online, check out these links. Here is a very interesting audio show from Geek News Central, here is one from the good folks at Engadget.

The guy who is really promoting this new wave of grassroots, do it yourself radio is a fellow named Adam Curry. I really like his daily show - he combines amazing production quality with a human, endearing touch. Check out his site. I have been downloading his show and listening every day since I first visited a few days ago. He is slightly raunchy sometimes so maybe wear headphones while listening his stuff.

And as for my new MP3 player from a brand I have never heard off and that I bought off Ebay, it rocks. It's small, comes with a well designed neck cord with integrated headphones, and it also offers a voice recorder whose files I can convert to something I can use online or on my real space radio show.

5 friggin hours of audio that I want to listen to hanging easily and lightly around my neck. Thats too cool.

Windows XP Upgrade / Anti Virus Glitch

Not sure how the people at Microsoft and Symantec (makes of Norton Anti Virus) weren't able to get it together on this one. I have had more than one person tell me that, upon upgrading to Windows XP Service Pack 2 (latest and greatest windows update which overall you should install, after backing up all your files), they keep getting this little yellow bubble message at the bottom left of their computer screens. The message tells them that they may not be protected from viruses when they know full well that their anti virus is running. The anti virus all these people run is Norton.

This is supposed to be fixed, maybe already is, but Windows XP service pack 2 was saying that it didn't recognize one of the most popular anti virus programs on the market today.

I am still getting a message on my computer about having no firewall when I know I have got Sygate personal firewall running.

Hope they sort this out soon. In the meantime, here are instructions on how to disable the little yellow bubble messages if you know they are giving you the wrong information/

Start Scanning Old Photos...

Got quite a bit of postive reader response from my newspaper column from 10 days ago:

Over the years, my immediate family has probably created over 150 photo albums – packed full with a lifetime of good memories.

A lot of these albums lie on 2 long shelves in my parent's house. I love passing by those shelves. I don't even have to crack any of those albums open although I quite often do.

The fact such a record of my family history exists is just so amazing. And I know many of you feel the same way.

In a “digital imaging and scanning” seminar I ran this week, one of an intelligent group of participants asked me how easy it would be to scan all of his family photos into the computer.

Copying the visual record of your family history into digital format is not just useful for back up purposes.

Yes, once your photos have been copied into your computer, you can back them up onto a CD.

But, another thing you might find happen when you put photos on your computer is that you, your family and your friends might look at them more.

I know that, for me, cracking open an album requires effort. I have to find the exact album I am looking for – it's often the one in the most out of the way place.

On my computer, I just go to the “my pictures” folder and look through an alphabetical list of folders I have created with photos of different events.

And have you ever tried to show more than one other person an album? It gets a little crowded.

I have had a lot more success getting a group around my computer monitor.

Here is my answer to the question the gentleman in the seminar asked me.

There are photo scanners available that will scan multiple photos or negatives all at once. These work well if all your photos are mostly in one size format. For “odd” size formats, you still would have to scan manually.

This scanning project will likely span many evenings and weekends. How about making it a family project? A larger social event? Might be a perfect opportunity to relive old memories, make them more accessible, and preserve them long into the future.

Google founders in India...

Last week. Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page travelled to India. If you are a programmer in India who is looking to do very interesting work, you might want to apply for a job. From the AP report:

Krishna Bharat, who created Google's news service, is now busy hiring in Bangalore. "We don't have a cap (on how many to hire). We will take in as many people as we can, if they meet our global standards," he said.

Tod Maffin finally embraces the Blog...

Canada's uber geek Tod Maffin is finally properly blogging. I am a little surprised but also kind of relieved. I saw Todd speak in Vancouver back in the spring and I felt he really didn't do a lot of justice to the great things about blogging - the ability to access more personal voices on a variety of subjects, the creation of effective online communities (leading sometimes to people with common interests getting together offline).

Back in May, CBC's Sounds like Canada broadcast a panel discussion on blogging My friend Jim Elve, creator of BlogsCanada took part. So did Tod, as the CBC's resident expert. Jim wrote on his blog,

"Tod said that he thought the blog craze was starting to fade. The Perseus Blog Survey was what he was basing that assertion upon, though, and I took issue with much of its findings. I blogged on the flaws I saw in that survey back in October."

It's great that Tod has started to see something in blogging. He's a pretty influential person among educated non techies in Canada and around the world. What seems to have sparked Tod's interest in the blog is a new audio blog phenomenon called Podcasting. It's basically on demand do it yourself radio.

Check out Tod's blogs... i love radio and Future File.

New Back up service launched in Kamloops

Backing up your computer data can be a real pain, even for techies. I think Craig Scott may just be on to something really useful with his newly minted company and it's services. If it offers reliable and personal service, Abracadabra Backup Service might be a very successful venture as it solves a problem many people and organizations have.

Very best of luck, Craig. Welcome to the wonderful world of entrepreneurship in technology!

A Gmail Invite....

I have got one Gmail invite left right now. Anybody out there want to try it out. 1 Gb of free email storage, lightning fast email search. Send me an email or leave a comment below.