Your own cloud and 1/2 off until midnight!

The great thing about netflix is the ability to stream media content to your devices, home or away.  But what about all of us who have all the media content we need already on our computers?  Wouldn't be nice to be able to stream it to our phones/iPad, etc?  Now you can, or more accurately, now you can for half the normal price.  Pogoplug Premium is holding a 24 hour sale that ends at 11:59PM tonight.  What is Pogoplug?  It's a program that you install on your computers and portable devices.  Once installed, you can access any file on those computers on your phone/iPad/ other computers.  You essentially turn your home computer(s) into a cloud storage device.  Until midnight you can get it for $14.99.  That'a a lifetime license that you can install on as many of your computers/devices that you own.

Repost: Buy a PC Now, and get a free XBox 360

Last month I posted an article about an offer for students from Microsoft.  If you are a student (verified with a school email account ending in .edu), you can get a free xBox 360 with the purchase of a qualifying computer over $699 from various participating dealers.  Deal is good until September 3, 2011.  Follow this link for more information on the offer.  Happy Gaming

Search engines change how we think...Good or Bad?

A recent study from Columbia University has found that Internet search engines actually change how our brains remember information.  Betsy Sparrow, assistant professor of psychology at Columbia University and lead author of the study explains,"Our brains rely on the Internet for memory in much the same way they rely on the memory of a friend, family member, or co-worker.  We remember less through knowing information itself than by knowing where the information can be found."  In short, if we think the information cannot be found on the Internet, we remember it.  If we think that it can be found easily on the Internet, we tend to remember how to find it on the Internet, rather than remember the information itself.

Reviews to come...Google+ and Spotify

Joined Google + and just got my invite to Spotify this week.  Now I join these services out of a sense of obligation.  Hard to be in this line of work and NOT know about how these services work, so I join.  Reviews of both will be coming in the upcoming weeks as I see how they work.  For those who may not know, Google+ is Google's alternative to Facebook.  Spotify is the music service that has been a hit throughout Europe.  It has hit the American shores and many expect it to be a primary player in the online music scene.  Reviews to come...

Google to notify search users of malware infection

Google has started warning some search users of malware on their computers, after it found unusual search traffic coming through a small number of intermediary servers called proxies.  If you are one of those infected, a large yellow banner will appear across the top of your search results.  This banner will inform you of the possible infection and what to do about it.  It will not identify all possible infections on your system, just a particular strain that Google has identified through their system.

The science of password selection

Much has been made recently of hacking and passwords in the news recently.  Seems like password hacks and security breaches have become the norm.  Two customer and a relative have contacted me recently over email spam that they have been victims of.  It all comes down to your password.  They need to be complicated, but very few of us have the time and inclination to create them properly.  Here is a long, but very interesting piece from Troy Hunt about how we choose passwords.  It is a very detailed review into the psychological factors that figure into how we pick passwords for online sites.  Once you read this, you will have a great understanding as to why our passwords are so easily hacked.  Check out this second article for an eye-opening look at why poor passwords can bite you in the backside