J and A Wasser Blog
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
"I was walking down fifth avenue today and I found a wallet ,and I was gonna keep it, rather than return it, but I thought: well, if I lost a hundred and fifty dollars, how would I feel? And I realized I would want to be taught a lesson." -- Emo Philips
"Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, American philosopher, poet and essayist
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
- Peter Drucker
This was one of the quote of the day on my Google home page. It cleverly uses words to speak simple truth.
Monday, January 09, 2006
Google Pack
Here's a link to Google's new software pack. It includes most of their free software that works great as well as some other freeware products useful for us Windows users. If you already have antivirus installed don't install the Norton antivirus. I recommend using Avast antivirus. (Free for home users.)
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Google: "About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
- Herbert Hoover"
Here was the quote of the day from Google.com/ig (personalized home page). I thought that it was very clever. Though clever God is still the one who gives wealth and provides for our needs.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Mossberg: A New Gold Standard for PCs: "We've been testing this new iMac, and our verdict is that it's the gold standard of desktop PCs. To put it simply: No desktop offered by Dell or Hewlett-Packard or Sony or Gateway can match the new iMac G5's combination of power, elegance, simplicity, ease of use, built-in software, stability and security."
Not that I needed anyone else to tell me how great Macintosh computers are...now if only I could afford one.
MP3tunes Debuts Online Music Storage: "MP3.com founder Michael Robertson is reviving an old service with a new twist as part of his new venture called MP3tunes. The company on Wednesday launched Oboe, an online music storage locker that offers syncing and streaming capabilities. But is Robertson setting himself up for another attack by the RIAA?"
Michael Robertson was also the CEO of Linspire, a friendly Linux distribution.
Michael Robertson and Steve Jobs are probably the most influential and innovative CEO's in the technology industry at this time in my opinion.
Microsoft launches anti-virus public beta: "Microsoft has released a free beta of their upcoming anti-virus application. According to Microsoft, the new anti-virus application known as Windows Live Safety Center beta is 'like taking your PC in for a tune up at the service station.'"
After all these years Microsoft finally decided to make use of the antivirus companies they bought out and release their own antivirus. I believe this link is not for real-time protection, but it will be good for scanning computers via a web site. Panda Security, TrendMicro, etc. already offer services like this. I'm sure Microsoft will tout it as something brand new. It does have some other checks besides antivirus. They should combine this service with spyware checking as well.
Microsoft is releasing OneCare as well which is a whole suite that people can subscribe to that provides real-time antivirus and backup services.
Check out Microsoft's other latest ideas about "Live" software.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Windows OneCare Beta Goes Live: "Microsoft is waving goodbye to Symantec and McAfee it seems. On Tuesday, the company opened the doors to its Windows OneCare Live beta, a PC protection and maintenance service that offers and antivirus and firewall, along with tune-up and backup functionality."
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Only pay for the channels you want: "The Federal Communications Commission is expected to suggest that cable companies could best serve their customers by allowing them to subscribe to individual channels instead of packages of several stations"
How-To: Stream almost anything using VLC: "
The VLC media player is an amazing piece of software. In its most basic form it is a lightweight media player that can play almost any audio or video format you throw at it. VLC is also multiplatform in the most extreme sense of the word; it can run on Windows, OSX, Linux and PocketPC / WinCE handhelds along with other systems. VLC works great as a streaming server and video transcoder too.
We used VLC to move Tivo recordings to an iPod before, but today we are going to show you how to stream any type of media file from your computer to another device on your network. We will also demonstrate how to remotely control VLC using any web browser. Using these techniques you could stream video from your office computer to a laptop plugged into the living room TV and control the playlist with your PDA.
The first thing you need to do is grab a copy of VLC media player for your platform. We are going to be streaming from a Windows machine to a Linux machine, but the interface is almost identical no matter what you are using.
Once you install VLC and start the program you will be greeted by this lightweight frontend.
Click “File > Open File…” to bring up the “Open…” dialog box.
Click on the “Browse” button to bring up a standard Windows"
Firefox 1.5 Final Released: "Firefox hit its second major milestone Tuesday with the release of version 1.5, arriving just over a year after the alternative browser debuted at 1.0. The update sports Mozilla's new Gecko 1.8 rendering engine to speed up Web surfing, along with a myriad of other fixes and improvements."
