Clever new attacks simulate emails with moderate level of important information but no alarming key phrases

Phishing illustrations PC1 News

People started getting phony emails this week that attempt to establish contact through benign messages. The older scams promise millions of dollars in lost money, sex, dates, or jobs.

This new round of phishing is different: the messages are low key and don’t contain anything that would raise alarm bells. Replying to get more detail can open up your system to phishing or trojan attacks.

Here are a few received in in the past 4 hours. None of them are from people I know but they do raise one’s curiosity which is the point: to hook you innocently into replying.

Email Change

Steve Rich has changed his email address due to excessive spam after having the same address for 15 years. Please, go to the website and contact the office via the contact directory on the top header, , (you will get general email address where you can request Steve’s new email)   or, call the office at 973-458-1188 or Steve’s cell phone to get his new email address.

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Semi-automatic prioritizing of email may clear out the clutter

The video says it better. The free service started being rolled out on Tuesday and will take a week to hit all Gmail accounts in North America. For more information, click.

Considering Gmail is free and getting easier to use, the heat is on Microsoft to make Outlook more useful or watch their customers switch in droves. Some companies have already switched from Microsoft Office to Google Docs. The biggest complaint with Google has been the mail client. They are working on it.

Customers benefit from choice, price discounts and widespread availability

Amazon.com discounts Samsung Captivate to $0.01

Buy a new Samsung Captivate Android Phone (AT&T) with a new AT&T service plan and the phone is just one cent.

Get the T Mobile version Samsung Vibrant Android Phone (T-Mobile) of the phone for $50.

The same discounting strategy worked for T Mobile when it offered two HTC Android phones for the price of one. Double up – buy one get one free

Android phones are everywhere and Samsung is working hard with deals, product variety, retail display space, internet marketing, and the whole array of Facebook Twitter presence. It’s working: they have shipped 1 million phones since releasing the Android Galaxy series of smart phones a month ago.

‘”No question there is an anti-Apple, pro-Android movement afoot,” said Jack Gold, principal analyst at J.Gold Associates. “It’s not just about price. It’s also about having an open alternative with much less dictatorial control of what the user can do with the device.” Gold said he expects that sales of Android devices from all manufacturers will surpass Apple iPhone sales by 2011. Gartner analysts have said the same thing.’ ComputerWorld

The closed shop at Apple puts people off. They get blocked from doing what they want. While tens millions of people agree with Apple, a closed strategy has never won the marketing battle to dominate.  Read the rest of this entry »

The PEI Health Information System is out of control with a spiraling budget likely to exceed $150 million and no end in site.

A Begin Consulting Services mystery company

Updated – With thousands of families needing a primary physician and ER in crisis, what is the government doing with scarce health dollars? It’s like a family facing bankruptcy but buying one of those fancy plasma TV’s – why not, they’re on sale.

The computer system is supposed to compensate for doctor’s bad handwriting according to press reports. I don’t think doctors’ handwriting is going to be cured by a computer, if that is even a problem.

Announced to cost $10 million, the current budget is $50 million with no end in site. Is this another Gun Control project?

As a former software developer and computer executive, I can assure you from hard experience these projects are usually out of control and no amount of money will fix them.

Anyone with a shred of common sense does not buy the first of anything. The Province is the guinea pig for the software developer with taxi meter running overtime at tens of millions per year.  Read the rest of this entry »

In 2004 alone, U.S. companies tossed $1 billion with lackadaisical computer-energy consumption

Turn things off and save the planet (image paulnoll.com)

By Phil Lindeman, Freeshipping.org – Computer energy use is the secret culprit behind outrageous electric bills at almost any modern home or business office.

Most computers waste nearly half the power they draw, putting a strain on cooling fans and your wallet without doing diddly for applications. In 2004 alone, U.S. companies tossed $1 billion with lackadaisical computer-energy consumption.

Take heed of these 11 simple tricks to save without killing your computer’s capabilities.   Read the rest of this entry »

Proving again that last week’s statistics are old

Atom N550 netbooks on the way

August 18th we wrote that there were 50 million netbooks shipped. What do you get for $300 in a netbook ?

Today Intel reported it has shipped 70 million of the small processors inside the popular small computers. That should give Apple’s iPad a target to hit.

Apple hopes to ship 10 million iPads this year but aren’t worrying about netbooks. Apple worries about profit and the iPad is reported to have a gross margin above 60%.

Along with the impressive numbers, Intel said new faster dual core netbooks based on the new Atom N550 are shipping from Asus, Acer, Lenovo, Samsung and Toshiba. Running at about the same 1.5 Ghz speed, the dual core processors will make these popular and diminutive more popular than ever.

“Users will be able to run applications faster and play back 720p video in netbooks that are as thin and light as existing models. Netbooks with the new chip will offer similar battery life as its single-core predecessors, the company said.” PC World

We weren’t that far off after all. Our sales numbers were for Asus shipped netbooks only. Intel includes all manufacturers in their 70 million units shipped.

Asus Eee PC 1005HA surprisingly a lot of computer for a small price

Asus Netbook $269

In the $300 price range you get a surprising amount of computer in a netbook running Windows 7.  You don’t get the large hard drives, DVD player or fast video processing of a notebook. You don’t get a touch screen like the Apple iPad.  We asked a student just entering high school to put the Asus Eee PC through its paces and give us her opinion.

The ASUS Eee PC 1005 HA has a 10.1″ screen, 1.6 GHz Atom processor, 10.5 hour battery, 320 GB hard drive, WiFi 802.11n and 1 GB of RAM for $269 at Tiger Direct. We picked this one because it was popular and cost less than $300.

The Eee PC netbook is very compact and easy to carry, roughly the size of an iPad. It doesn’t have touchscreen but does have a decent keyboard and built in video cam. The screen is easy to read.

Asus gives you another 500 GB of storage in the cloud which is handy when the hard drive gets full. The Atom processor seems fast enough for word processing, downloading pictures from a digital camera, watching movies or TV and browsing the internet.  Read the rest of this entry »

Lessons from IT outsourcing disasters

By Stephanie Overby, ComputerWorld

CIO – Two weeks ago, the CIO of Texas penned a seven-page letter outlining the “chronic failures” of the state’s nearly four-year outsourcing relationship–a deal the Texas governor had briefly suspended in 2008 citing service delivery problems that he said put the state’s agencies in danger.

In May, Indiana sued its former IT services provider for $1.3 billion for breach of contract, following the 2009 gubernatorial cancellation of a deal to streamline the state’s welfare system.

Last summer, the CIO of Virginia was fired after criticism by state officials that the 10-year, $2.3 billion outsourcing deal he signed to transform the state’s IT systems was costly and inefficient and he withheld payments to the vendor.  Read the rest of this entry »

Consumers benefit from $398 HP laptops at Walmart, Apple is throwing in an iPod Touch

Consumers are shopping for bargains in back-to-school supplies and only stopping at the best bargains.

Apple is offering students a free iPod Touch (worth $219) with any back-to-school laptop. However, their lowest priced laptop is $999.

Walmart is offering a laptop from HP for only $398 which means you could get your own iPod Touch and pocket $400 in change.

Both HP and Apple offer more powerful computers at higher prices. We wanted to see how the entry level models that most parents will consider stack up against each other.

The MacBook has a 13.3″ screen, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB DDR3 memory, 250GB hard drive, and NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics card at $999.    Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft is creating a camera that will take the blurry out of our bad pics

Blurry photo cleaned up (before and after)

Someone had to invent it – a computer gizmo that takes the blur out of all those pictures. Microsoft labs has done it.

The camera uses a “combination of inexpensive gyroscopes and accelerometers in an energy optimization framework to estimate a blur function from the camera’s acceleration and angular velocity during an exposure.” Got that?
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Windows 7 is the most popular operating system Android and Apple’s iOS don’t even register 1% of total computer users each

Both Apple and Microsoft lost a tiny amount of their computer market share to portable devices over the last 6 months.

However, nothing can even compare with Microsoft’s dominance as the most popular computer system with Windows 7 leading the pack.

Apple’s desktop OS dropped slightly while mobile uses doubled from .35% to .7%

Source – Netmarketshare. Data is acquired from 40,000 web sites and 160 million users. ComputerWorld.

Competition for the Apple iPad is on the way

Apple has sold over 3 million iPad or tablet computers since launching this spring. While they are the only game in town that will change quickly as other manufacturers bring out competing products that will be at least cheaper and perhaps better.
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Belkin Bluetooth Music Receiver adds wireless connection for iPad music listening

Belkin Bluetooth Music Receiver (shown larger than actual) connecting Apple iPad and Bose Sounddock

This Bluetooth receiver broadcasts your your iPad / iPhone or iPod Touch music wireless through your home theatre or other music system.The results are just as good as wired speakers within the same room. There is limited multi-tasking on the iPad even without iOS4. The setup is a low cost way to keep the music flowing without connecting a cable to the iPad.

The transmitter on the iPad is rated about 15-20 feet assuming no walls and obstructions. You can move around in the same room but if your body blocks the path between the iPad and Belkin receiver, there might be momentary dropouts. I could move to another room but the reception deteriorated quickly.

I was amazed that I could listen to music and run Twitterific on the iPad including replies, re-tweets and opening up Safari links. If the web page had too many objects like interactive ads, the music would sputter or change songs. Opening Facebook stopped the music. Videos would not play when I attempted anything else. Not bad considering the iPad is not multi-tasking yet.    Read the rest of this entry »