A plane over the Atlantic suddenly needs to reboot its computer to stay in the air, and the pilots barely avert disaster. A hospital network mixes up patient information, resulting in the death of several people. A law firm, which has lost all of its clients’ data and can’t get its system running again, turns …
I was still a traveling consultant in September of 2001 and my assignment at the time was a PeopleSoft upgrade in the Chicago suburbs. We were in our daily morning meeting when we first heard the news about the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Like everywhere else that morning, the atmosphere was one of …
Last month I spotted a Fatwallet deal for the Buffalo WZR-HR-G300N gigabit wireless N router ($60 from Amazon with free Prime shipping) that I couldn’t pass up. I didn’t have any wireless N clients and wasn’t having any real problems with my four year-old Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 wireless router (running DD-WRT), but hey, cheap new tech, …
Last summer, my mini-tech project was installing some wireless internet cameras inside and outside the house so I could keep tabs on things while I was away. For the past year I’d just been using the built-in features of each of the cameras (motion detection, e-mail alerts, etc.) which was hit-or-miss since each manufacturer offered …
The original MacBook Air confused the TSA when it was introduced two years ago. Now, CNN is reporting that the TSA has cleared the new MacBook Air so you don’t have to take it out of your bag for screening: Apple may wish to avoid comparisons of the MacBook Air to similarly compact but underpowered …
I’ve been pleased so far with my in-house internet cameras and decided I’d like to be able to keep tabs on the outside of the house as well. TRENDnet sells weatherproof enclosures for their cameras but they won’t work with the night-vision models because the IR just reflects off of the glass. I started looking …
Another piece of tech I implemented before we went on our vacation roadtrip was a series of TRENDnet wireless internet cameras so we could keep an eye on the house while we were away.
Microsoft is getting into the anti-malware market. Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is a replacement for Windows Live OneCare and, I think, Defender. Did I mention it’s free? Paul Thurrott has a good write-up on MSE on his SuperSite for Windows. Since I’m already running the Windows 7 release candidate, I figured why not give this …
Today I had to clean another one of those fake anti-virus programs off of a machine at work. This one was called Personal Antivirus and bore a striking resemblance to AVG Free (which I use myself and usually recommend to others). Here’s the AVG console: And here’s Personal Antivirus: Look familiar? In this particular case, …
This past Saturday afternoon I received an automated call from my credit card company saying that there were some suspicious charges that they wanted me to verify. The computerized voice dutifully read off the past three transactions and asked to confirm that I recognized all of them. Unfortunately, there was one I didn’t: a $1 …