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by Tony Austin
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Sunday, 18 November 2007 |
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There are examples all around us of misleading and deceptive advertising,
inflicted upon us either deliberately or due to the lack of attention to detail
or even the incompetence of the advertisers. Where does Skype Pro stand in this
regard?
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by Tony Austin
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Tuesday, 23 October 2007 |
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A few days ago I found that my Firefox browser's add-ons (extensions) all stopped working after version 2.0.0.8 automatically installed itself, and wrote about it under the heading of
Beware: Major problems with add-ons caused by Firefox 2.0.0.8 update . A reader posted a sugested fix that worked for me, but unfortunately didn't for other ITWire readers. So, what to do?
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by Tony Austin
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Saturday, 20 October 2007 |
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For the past few years, I have found the Firefox browser update process to
work pretty much flawlessly. But not with today's automatic update to version
2.0.0.8 (20 October 2007). Not a single one of the installed extensions that I
have come to rely on are working, and I'm very annoyed. And it seems that I'm
not the only one affected.
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by Tony Austin
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Sunday, 14 October 2007 |
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IBM recently unveiled CoScripter, a free and easy-to-use online service
for recording step-by-step processes that Web users do on a regular basis, then
automatically runs those processes, eliminating repetitive or mundane tasks for
the user.
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by Tony Austin
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Sunday, 14 October 2007 |
So, you think that you're using a strong, secure password do you? Well think
again, and hope that you don't become the victim of Ophcrack and its use of
rainbow tables.
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by Tony Austin
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Sunday, 07 October 2007 |
Having been in the Information Technology field for forty-odd years -- some
of them very odd -- it's fair to say that I've seen a few things over the
decades. Apart from technology itself, I've always been interested in the
human-related aspects: training, giving effective presentations, interpersonal
communication, usability, accessibility and the like. And then there are more
dramatic aspects, such as ageism and gender issues.
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by Tony Austin
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Sunday, 30 September 2007 |
Sometimes software developers bring out a new product version with lots of
bells and whistles, while mystifyingly doing away with essential useful features
that were frequently used in the old version. One such gobstoppingly glaring
omission is wild-card file filtering in Windows Explorer. It's still not there
in Windows Vista, and oh, how I want to see it reintroduced.
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by Tony Austin
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Sunday, 30 September 2007 |
These days your everyday, commodity PC is in many ways more far more complex than the mainframes of the 1970s. It's a wonder that keeping them up and running is usually not all that difficult. Because today's desktop systems are quite inexpensive (even compared with just five years ago), they are in the hands of untold millions of consumers around the globe. Of course, things do go wrong with them sometimes, and it can be quite a challenge to unravel the complex underlying issues and get them operating again. All this is not helped when even an experienced player like Microsoft
occasionally gets it wrong.
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by Tony Austin
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Sunday, 23 September 2007 |
Okay, you're the proud new owner of a new desktop or laptop computer running
Windows XP or Windows Vista. Whether you realize it or not, it's more than
likely to sport a spritely multi-core processor, such as an Intel Core 2 Duo or Quad processor or AMD Opteron quad-core. But are you able to take best advantage of these CPUs under Windows?
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by Tony Austin
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Monday, 17 September 2007 |
For sheer inventiveness, you have to hand it to some of the "darker
elements" who use the Internet.
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by Tony Austin
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Wednesday, 12 September 2007 |
On September 10, 2007, the OpenOffice.org community welcomed IBM as a community member. As well as immediate code contributions, IBM has pledged ongoing software engineering support to the community and plans to further leverage the open source technology in its own products.
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by Tony Austin
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Saturday, 08 September 2007 |
IBM scientists in 1990 famously wrote the letters of the company name by very carefully arranging single atoms. Now an online gallery of such atomic images has been opened for our wonder and delight.
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by Tony Austin
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Monday, 03 September 2007 |
Skype PC-to-PC voice clarity has generally been regarded as pretty good,
often crystal clear. But it isn't always, and Version 3.2 saw important
improvements. However, the voice quality of SkypeOut calls remains contentious,
and seems especially dependent on where you're calling from as well as where
you're calling to. This first article on Skype's voice quality examines
several general considerations, with subsequent articles delving a bit deeper
into particular aspects of them.
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by Tony Austin
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Sunday, 19 August 2007 |
On Friday 17 August, 2007, IBM announced the release of Lotus Notes 8 and Lotus Domino 8. This comes after some two years in development, and includes a completely redesigned, flexible, modernized Eclipse-style client interface.
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