Computer Maintenance – Defrag

I will be outlining how to do computer maintenance on your Windows Machine. First thing to know is that, while computer maintenance helps keep your system running, it also helps speed it up. Your machine should not be infected in order to do a regular maintenance. I will be splitting this up in multiple pieces [...]

ComputerMaintenance

Your Smart Phone Is Secretly Recording Everything You Do!

You are casually listening to some music, when all of a sudden, flying ninja’s are at your doorstep demanding you to pay them for the stolen music you pirated! While that may seem farfetched(which it is), what you do on your phone is no secret. Gizmodo has posted that Carrier IQ, which can be found [...]

iPhoneSPY

Mac Virus, Like I Already Didn’t Know

Yesterday, IBTimes reported of a really bad Mac virus. Here is what they said: “A virus attacking Mac computers known as Tsunami Trojan has been discovered and early speculation suggests that it may be a DDoS attack tool, used to bring down websites. The Trojan is thought to have been created by modifying an earlier [...]

Mac-viruses

Fastest Time To Solve Rubik’s Cube

The fastest time a human can solve a Rubik’s Cube is held by Australian World Record Breaker Feliks Zemdegs, who did it in 5.66 seconds. That is amazingly fast! You can watch him on YouTube here. However, computers have humans beat by 0.31 seconds. CubeStormer II solved it in only 5.35 seconds! Check out this video: [...]

Capturerubiks

Samsung’s New Android Phone Featuring Ice Cream Sandwich

Coming October 19th we will finally see the release of Ice Cream Sandwich, as well as the new Nexus Prime. According to Engadget, their sources tell them this: “This week’s CTIA festivities aren’t the same since Samsung and Google decided to postpone their new product announcement that was originally scheduled for today, but now we’re [...]

galaxy-nexus-1318388901

Computer Maintenance – Defrag

Posted by Joshua on December 27th, 2011
ComputerMaintenance

I will be outlining how to do computer maintenance on your Windows Machine. First thing to know is that, while computer maintenance helps keep your system running, it also helps speed it up. Your machine should not be infected in order to do a regular maintenance.

I will be splitting this up in multiple pieces than breaking it down in one post at the end.

First thing I want to share with you is defragmentation of your hard drive! While this is NOT the first thing you want to do, it is a good thing to get done on a monthly basis.

The best program that I know of out there is Defraggler. It is a great tool in taking fragmented files in putting them back together again :)

Make sure you have 15% of free space or more before attempting to defrag your computer.

 

PS. This is a very sloppy intro to computer maintenance, so hang in there for next weeks addition to computer maintenance.

~Joshua

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Your Smart Phone Is Secretly Recording Everything You Do!

Posted by Joshua on December 1st, 2011
iPhoneSPY

You are casually listening to some music, when all of a sudden, flying ninja’s are at your doorstep demanding you to pay them for the stolen music you pirated! While that may seem farfetched(which it is), what you do on your phone is no secret. Gizmodo has posted that Carrier IQ, which can be found on the leading iPhone and Android phones, is recording your information! If you don’t believe me watch below. See proof around 9 minutes in.

 

 

So how does this SPYWARE work?

Gizmodo posted this:

“Carrier IQ’s software is installed in your phone at the deepest level. You don’t know it’s there. You are never warned this is happening. You can’t opt-in and you certainly can’t opt-out.

The commercial spyware sits between the user and the applications in the phone so, no matter how secure and private your apps are, the spyware intercepts anything you do. From your location to your web browsing addresses and passwords to the content of your text messages.

This even happens using a private Wi-Fi connection instead of the carrier 3G or 4G connection.

The company denied all this in a public statement (PDF):

While we look at many aspects of a device’s performance, we are counting and summarizing performance, not recording keystrokes or providing tracking tools

But the video clearly demonstrates that this is not true: Keystrokes submit unique key codes to Carrier IQ. Even secure connections are intercepted by the spyware, allowing it to record your moves in the open. These connections to the web are encrypted but, since Carrier IQ’s spyware sits between the browser and the user, it grabs it and sends it in plain text.

The spyware can even log your location, even if the user declines to allow an app to know where it is. The hidden Carrier IQ app ignores your desires, intercepts the data and gets your location anyway.”

I don’t know about any of you, but I want this gone!

~Joshua

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Mac Virus, Like I Already Didn’t Know

Posted by Joshua on October 27th, 2011
Mac-viruses

Yesterday, IBTimes reported of a really bad Mac virus. Here is what they said:

“A virus attacking Mac computers known as Tsunami Trojan has been discovered and early speculation suggests that it may be a DDoS attack tool, used to bring down websites.

The Trojan is thought to have been created by modifying an earlier virus known as Kaiten, which could ‘phone home’ from infected machines for further instructions.

Security firm Sophos has suggested that Tsunami Trojan could be used to rally computers together and force them to perform a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack, which can have the power to make websites crash under heavy load.

DDoS attacks work by commanding many computers to all access the same website at once; the website’s servers cannot cope with the extra load and the site goes down.

Sophos has said: “[the Trojan] can be given a variety of different instructions and can be used to remotely access n affected computer.

“The big question, of course, is how would this code find itself on your Mac in the first place? It could be that a malicious hacker plants it there, to access your computer remotely and launch DDoS attacks, or it may even be that you have volunteered your Mac to participate in an organised attack on a website.”

Sophos warns that participating in a DDoS attack is illegal and that by letting the Trojan into a Mac, the owner has “effectively put control of your Mac into someone else’s hands.”

There has historically been very little for Mac users to worry about with regard to viruses and malware, but Tsunami Trojan has the potential to cause harm not only to the user, but also whatever company whose website falls victim to the possible DDoS attack.” – Click Here For Full Article

Mac viruses have been around for a long time, but because of the recent increase of Mac’s we should now see even more viruses come for the mac.

Next you’ll tell me my iPhone can get a virus….. Oh wait, it already can?

~Joshua

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Fastest Time To Solve Rubik’s Cube

Posted by Joshua on October 14th, 2011
Capturerubiks

The fastest time a human can solve a Rubik’s Cube is held by Australian World Record Breaker Feliks Zemdegs, who did it in 5.66 seconds. That is amazingly fast! You can watch him on YouTube here. However, computers have humans beat by 0.31 seconds. CubeStormer II solved it in only 5.35 seconds!

Check out this video:


Wow, actually it was able to do it even faster than that! Human speedcubers’ solve times only include the physical manipulation of the cube and don’t include some time which is allowed to “inspect” the cube beforehand. Times recorded by CubeStormer II are for the total solve including: image capture, software solution calculation and physical solve.

This is how the program works:

“The mechanics are constructed entirely from LEGO, including four MINDSTORMS NXT kits, with the addition of a Samsung Galaxy S II smartphone running a custom Android app as the robot’s brain. Both the MINDSTORMS NXT kits and the Samsung Galaxy SII use a variety of ARM –based processors.”

“The app uses the phone’s camera to capture images of each face of the Rubik’s Cube which it processes to determine the scrambled colours. The solution is found using an advanced two-phase algorithm, originally developed for Speedcuber, enhanced to be multi-threaded to make effective use of the smartphone’s dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 1.2GHz processor. The software finds an efficient solution to the puzzle which is optimised specifically for the capabilities of the four-grip mechanism. The app communicates via Bluetooth with software running on the ARM microprocessors in the LEGO NXT Intelligent Bricks which controls the motors driving the robot. During the physical solve, the app uses OpenGL ES on the phone’s ARM Mali-400 MP GPU to display a graphical version of the cube being solved in real time.”

This makes me want the Samsung Galaxy S II even more!

~Joshua

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Samsung’s New Android Phone Featuring Ice Cream Sandwich

Posted by Joshua on October 13th, 2011
galaxy-nexus-1318388901

Coming October 19th we will finally see the release of Ice Cream Sandwich, as well as the new Nexus Prime. According to Engadget, their sources tell them this:

“This week’s CTIA festivities aren’t the same since Samsung and Google decided to postpone their new product announcement that was originally scheduled for today, but now we’re hearing the Ice Cream Sandwich / Nexus party has already been rescheduled. An inside source tells us the two have moved their plans for the Unpacked event to October 19th in Hong Kong (interested US residents should clear out the evening of Tuesday the 18th, time zones), timed to coincide with the AsiaD: All Things Digital event there next week. Naturally, we’ll be in the house, but with not long to go before the potential date, we’d expect to hear something concrete soon.”

I certainly will not be there as I am a little guy in a world of huge bloggers. However, I sure can not wait for the new about it. When January comes and my contract is up, the two phones I am considering is the new Nexus Prime and the Samsung Galaxy S II.

Do you have the new Samsung Galaxy S II? If so, leave a comment telling me your review on it.

~Joshua

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Blackberry Down – Will It Go Back Up?

Posted by Joshua on October 12th, 2011
blackberry_down

Truthfully, I do not own a Blackberry, and do not want to ever own one. Recently, this has made my feeling stronger on Blackberry. Yesterday I heard of outages in Europe, now it is just about global.

“BlackBerry subscribers in the Americas may be experiencing intermittent service delays this morning,” Research in Motion, maker of BlackBerry smartphones, said in a statement. “We are working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and we apologize to our customers for any inconvenience. We will provide a further update as soon as more information is available.”

According to a report from Engadget, there is a backlog that is created of everything that goes through their systems, and that backlog has gotten so big that it is now locking everyone out. You may ask, why don’t they just delete the backlog. Well, it may end up deleting unsent messages and emails. This would not be good either. However, if this lasts any longer I am sure many will be switching to the bigger smartphones. Here is a video of a report from CNN:



My recommendation to you if you own a blackberry, Switch to Android or iPhone. You will find that this switch will not only provide you with a wide range of applications to install to become more productive, but also you may not need to worry about this happening again as your data will be going through your own servers.

~Joshua

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Charge Your Car Up In Only 10 Minutes! Nissan

Posted by Joshua on October 11th, 2011
nissan

New technology in cars to come out that will charge a car fully taking only 10 minutes. Now it doesn’t take 10 minutes to fill up a car with gas, but this would be really nice for battery powered vehicles. Here is Engadgets Report on this:

“Nissan has now announced that it’s working on new technology that would make EV charging… well, quicker. A lot quicker. Developed alongside researchers from Japan’s Kansai University, the manufacturer’s approach would allow drivers to fully charge their plug-ins in just ten minutes, without taking any toll on a lithium-ion battery’s storage or voltage. Nissan says it could achieve this by tinkering with a charger’s capacitor — more specifically, by replacing its carbon electrode with one based on a composite of tungsten oxide and vanadium oxide. Industry insiders, however, say this technology may not reach the commercial level for another ten years — substantially longer than ten minutes.”

I know this is not the best news in the word, as this won’t come out for another 10 years. But this will make the need for gasoline fuel less if more vehicles become battery powered. They need to make it convenient for the consumer, and this is just one step closer.

~Joshua

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