I woke up Sunday morning and noticed that my PC’s clock was an hour behind. This is due to the law that passed a couple of years ago which extended daylight savings time by several weeks. Prior to 2007, this past weekend would have been the week that clocks were changed back by one hour. With the law change, they moved Daylight Savings from the last Sunday in October to the first Sunday in November (I really don’t see what difference one week makes, but that’s another story…). I had installed a patch a couple of years ago on my PC to handle this event, but it didn’t seem to take effect this year.
Turns out this issue affects some, but not all, PCs (go figure). Even if you use Windows Update regularly to install patches, you may experience this problem. If you do, you need to install a patch to “fix” daylight savings time on your PC. The patch can be downloaded for XP, Vista, and Windows Server 2003 and 2008 here (Windows 7 has the fix pre-installed). Be sure you select your correct version of windows to download, and simply run the executable to update your PC. If you are using Microsoft Outlook to manage your calendar, you should also install the Outlook patch if you have not already.
In part 1 of this series, we looked at the major social networking sites and their uses. In this part II of the series “An Introduction to Social Networking” we will try to answer the question “What is Twitter.” Created in 2006, Twitter has become an international phenomenon especially within the last year. It was used heavily in the last Presidential election, it has become a favorite communications medium for many celebrities, and in its most prominent role, it played a key part in getting news out from the Iranian elections by allowing protesters to get their story out without the filter of the Iranian government. Millions of users from around the world assisted the protesters by setting up proxy servers to get around government blocks, and protesters gave constant updates, uploaded pictures and video, and produced a groundswell of support from the worldwide community. The most surreal moment for me came that Saturday when I was flipping through the cable news channels, and they were all reading off of Twitter live on the air to report what was happening. So what is Twitter, and how does one use it effectively?
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Have you ever thought about setting up a home server? Especially if there are more than a couple of computers on your home, it can make a lot of sense to have one machine where everyone’s data is stored. This also makes backups a whole lot easier for the local administrator, i.e., you. A NAS might be just the thing.
‘NAS’ is short for Network Attached Storage. Basically, it’s a machine on your network that serves as a big hard drive for the users of that network. They’re very common at large- and medium-sized businesses, and they’re popping up in small businesses and homes more and more. On a home network, you can give each of your users a chunk of disk space on the NAS for their documents and media. It’s not recommended to actually install programs to the NAS, but this stuff, especially photos, music and video, can quickly take up a very substantial amount of hard drive space. Having it all in one place reduces duplication, and allows to set up a workable backup regiment.
A consumer-level NAS works more like a little network device, rather than a computer, even though, deep down, it is basically just a PC. You usually don’t actually interact with the operating system on the device, but instead a web interface or a piece of software that you install on some other machine on your network. There are even some routers to which you can connect storage (via USB, usually) that can then act like a NAS themselves. Ars Technica recently had a quick write-up on NAS devices; it’s worth reading.
If you’re a little more technically savvy, you might consider just buying a smaller desktop whose sole purpose would be to store your users’ files. Then you could dispense with the web interfaces and whatnot, but you would have to be comfortable with configuring those file services yourself. Microsoft sells Home Server to help with that, as well. Any number of Linux distributions would be ideal for this purpose too. You could also be sure that it includes a DVD burner to make those backups even easier. A home server, though, is a bit more than a NAS. And it’s enough of a topic for a whole other article..
The next major version of Microsoft’s desktop operating system is being released into the wild soon, October 22nd to be precise. This will be a very important release for Microsoft, who have experienced increasing pressure recently from Apple on the high-end and Linux netbooks and nettops on the low-end.
So, whether you’re upgrading from Vista, you’ve been holding out since XP, or you’re thinking about jumping (back?) to Windows from Mac or elsewhere, there’s a lot to take in about this latest OS from Microsoft.
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With the announcements this week that Verizon will be launching Android phones with Google Voice capability and AT&T will also be allowing VoIP services on its iPhone after pressure from the FCC, it appears that we are at the beginning of a revolution of how traditional phone calls are made and placed. Today, you can make cheap or even free phone calls using Voice over IP technology (VoIP).
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Despite popular perceptions, Social Networking has been around for as long as networked computers have existed. Early computer enthusiasts would connect their computers over phone lines through the use of modems and communicate through message boards or forums. Online services such as Compuserv, AOL, and Prodigy gave ways for more people to interact via message boards, chat, and email. When the Internet first came on the scene, sites such as GeoCities and Tripod gave users the ability to interact, as well as set up their own web pages.
In the last few years, social networking has exploded with sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and LinkedIn. Social Networking also includes blogs and social bookmarking sites such as Digg, del.icio.us, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. Social Media sites such as YouTube and Flickr round out the social networking platform. This series will look briefly at all of these types of sites. Further information and tutorials will be provided in future posts beyond the scope of this series. Part I of this series will focus on Social Networking Sites in particular.
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