It’s interesting. I kvetched that why should one trust an unknown third party to handle my data in route. I’m not sure that they solved my concern. It very nicely looks to windoze as a printer. It fools windoze into thinking its a printer. That seems to work correctly. On the other end, it does allow a printer to be defined. And, it works nicely. Encryption does require the entry of a key value (password?) at the printing end. Man-in-the-middle is still possible. I’m not sure how you overcome that. Thinking about symmetric and asymmetric methods, I can’t think of how they over come it. But, they did do something.
TECH: Not visually impaired but feel like I am
Wednesday, September 27, 2006Vol. 6, #39 – Sep 26, 2006 – Issue #246
WXPnews
Sunbelt Software
Clearwater, Florida USA 33755
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Do you use accessibility programs, or know someone who does? What additional accessibility options would you like to see built into Windows, or made available as freeware/shareware? Do you have favorite accessibility programs you’d like to recommend? Let us know at feedback@wxpnews.com.
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Arghhh. I’m not visually impaired … yet. But, I, and all the optometrists I’ve ever spoken to about the topic have agreed, the visual geometry and and capabilities of the personal computer stink.
Web browsers and email clients and most software don’t allow one to adjust the display as needed.
Don’t give me a machine capable of lots of resolutions from 800×600, to my current 1280×800, and up to a 1900×1200, that either requires the use a of a magnifying glass or won’t fit a normal group of icons.
It stinks!
Tuning all this is an art form. Change one setting or run certain programs and you’re either blind or down in the weeds.
Every program has it’s own settings and does displays differently.
For example, LookOut does it’s own things (sometimes) and shares some settings with Windoze. It’s very frustrating; has been; and I expect will be in the future.
Arghhh!
TECH: WORDPRESS appears to have lost my morning’s posts
Wednesday, September 27, 2006TECH: WORDPRESS appears to have lost my morning’s posts
Argh!
I wrote a few pearls this morning. As is my usual practice, I looked to see then in the routine display. Once I saw them in the main page, I moved along to other things.
When I looked at the site this evening, they were AWOL. I don’t know what happened, but I have to move on. I thought they were pretty good, but there’s no copy I can find.
Argh!
I’ll be kvetching, and looking, and trying to recover. But I’m moving on. I’ll have to figure out a better process to avoid it on my side of the glass!
Argh!
TECH: Sharewood Picnic 71 delivers three maybes
Tuesday, September 26, 2006September 24, 2006
New Media Tools Of The Week: Sharewood Picnic 71
1. Voxlib http://www.voxlib.com/ enables you to use Skype from your mobile phone
>>>> Nah, I don’t “do” skype.
2. Flixn http://www.flixn.com you can record from your webcam and post on blogs
>>>> Maybe, but I’m one ugly dude. For the “beautiful people”?
3. CrazyEgg http://crazyegg.com/ enhance your site performances
>>>> Nah, my site’s a monologue.
4. Zoho Projects http://www.zohoprojects.com/ web-based service; teams organize
>>>> Nah! Put my delays and overruns on display?
5. Crickee http://www.crickee.com/ send free SMS from your mobile
>>>> Nah! Don’t “do” sms.
6. FeedShow http://www.feedshow.com/ remunerate publishers
>>>> Nah! Don’t publisher anything much.
7. Tinypic http://tinypic.com/ video and image hosting service
>>>> Maybe, I do create pictures from time to time.
8. ResizR http://resizr.lord-lance.com/ resize your pictures
>>>> Maybe, if I remember it, for the next time I need something like that.
9. Photoblog http://www.photoblog.com/ photo sharing service
>>>> Nah, nothing to be gained by another one.
10. TrendyFriendy http://www.trendyfriendy.com/ publishers sharing Google AdSense
>>>> Nah, see #6, no one cares what I write!
Thanks, Luigi Canali De Rossi, for challenging me to think about what I can use.
TECH: OutLook, aka LookOut, maybe creating lots of hidden files
Monday, September 25, 2006http://langa.com/newsletters/2006/2006-09-25.htm
The LangaList
Standard Edition
Another Expanded Issue!
2006-09-25
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Outlook is designed to open attachments only after copying the file to disk (for security, stability and recovery). Opening attachments prompts Outlook to create a “super hidden” folder (which Microsoft calls an “Outlook Secure Temporary File folder”) with a filename that begins with OLK (apparently an abbreviation for “Outlook”) and ends with a randomly generated string of characters. This is where the copy will be made and stored temporarily. At least that’s the design— these files are not deleted by Outlook right away if the attachment file is still open when you close Outlook.***End Quote***
Argh. A directory structure hidden away and unfindable. Wonder how muck space this crud is occupying?
TECH: RSS and EMail and Outlook
Saturday, September 23, 2006It’s no secret that I think LookOut, my pet name for Microsoft Outlook, … sucks … it really does. Sorry but I couldn’t think of a polite way to say it. Not only does it lock up from time to time, it’s a hog, does unpredictable things, and puts a obstacles in the way of getting things done. Not only that, BUT, it tends to make one THINK in terms of what it can do; NOT in terms of the things that should be done; or the way things ought to be done; or even the way things should be organized to get things done.
FEEDBLITZ has opened up my thinking to perhaps the best way to “do” rss is not with an aggregator or a reader, but with our old friend email. Hmmm?
Now if we just had a good email client!!!
TECH: Thinking about plogging
Saturday, September 23, 2006As we enter the “final turn” of the year, the last quarter of the year, I am creating an inventory form my end of year review. (Hey, you have to have something to do during the week between Christmas and New Years!)
Topics:
- Does my plog (personal web log) “reinke faces life” is this any value?
- Does vista pretend to offer me any benefit?
- If we’re going to Linux, what’s the path?
- How is technology, and my use of it, delivering on its promise of “better”? Better what?
- Hardware and software rationalization
TECH: Playing Google Videos In Windows Media Player
Friday, September 22, 2006» Playing Google Videos In Windows Media Player » InsideGoogle » part of the Blog News Channel
Playing Google Videos In Windows Media Player
By Nathan Weinberg
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Turns out that Google Video’s downloads, called .gvi files, are just standard .avi files that have been altered to be unplayable in Windows Media Player. When you click in Google Video to download a video to Windows/Mac, you download a .gvp bookmark, which loads Google Video Player and downloads the appropriate .gvi file (opening the .gvp in a text editor will reveal the URL of the .gvi, if you don’t want to install the Video Player).
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Hopefully, this isn’t the beginning of a new format wat?
TECH: Zimbabwe Fails To Pay Bills, Cut Off From Web
Thursday, September 21, 2006Zimbabwe Fails To Pay Bills, Cut Off From Web – Networking Technology News by TechWeb
http://www.techweb.com/wire/networking/193003968
September 20, 2006 (12:52 PM EDT)
techweb
Zimbabwe Fails To Pay Bills, Cut Off From Web
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Zimbabwe, struggling with rampant inflation and shortages of food and gasoline, has been virtually cut off from the Internet for not paying its bills, news wire services reported Wednesday.
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Maybe that’s a failure that the internet wasn’t designed to recover form?
TECH: Tim Anderson’s ITWriting
Wednesday, September 20, 2006http://www.itwriting.com/blog/?postid=531
September 20, 2006
Securing Windows: why Microsoft is fighting its third-party partners
Posted 17 hours ago on September 20, 2006
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The bottom line is that the mass-market, consumer-oriented PC security industry is bloated out of all proportion. Users should be able to do reasonably secure computing out-of-the-box, and with non-Windows systems – OS X, Linux – they already can. I am right behind Microsoft in its efforts to extend that to Windows systems as well.
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MY COMMENT:
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Like it or not, if you accept Microsoft, then you get insecurity. Anyone thinking about Vista has to make the devil’s bargain. When you factor in the cost of an upgrade, I’m going to linux. Boot from a live cd and what can be infected? Until we get computing appliances or we have true web-based computing, it should be good enough, safe enough, and smart enough to be on Linux.
***End Quote***
Going back to the old days of a disk oriented operating system. Boot off a Linue Live CD. And, be immune to virus infection.
Posted by reinkefj 








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