home and office computer support for D.C., Virginia & Maryland
SUPERAntiSpyware is very good antispyware that is free for personal use. While Antivirus software is very important, Antispyware can help too in making sure that you aren’t getting hijacked by Spyware, Adware, Malware, Trojans, Dialers, Worms, and Key Loggers.
You can run it whenever you want, not needing to take up resources when you aren’t using it.
Gmail is Offline
Google’s Mail, Gmail, is best free service, more reliable than Hotmail or Yahoo. But it can have outages. It was out for a few hours this morning starting at 4:30AM EST, causing some people to call it “Gfail”.
According to the Google blog:
If you’ve tried to access your Gmail account today, you are probably aware by now that we’re having some problems. Shortly after
109:30am GMT our monitoring systems alerted us that Gmail consumer and businesses accounts worldwide could not get access to their email.We’re working very hard to solve the problem and we’re really sorry for the inconvenience. Those users in the US and UK who have enabled Gmail offline through Gmail Labs should be able to access their inbox, although they won’t be able to send or receive emails.
“Offline Gmail” can help
This should encourage people to either set up a mail client (i.e. Outlook, Thunderbird, Mac Mail), or begin using Offline Gmail though Gmail Labs’ Google Gears. This creates a local copy of all mail all within your browser so that you at least can see your old mail and draft new messages. Because it has your messages locally on your computer, it can make working with email faster too.
Offline Gmail Video from Google:
Galaxy Zoo is a site that has over a quarter million galaxies collected through the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) from the robotic telescope at Apache Point Observatory, New Mexico. The astronomers need people’s help classifying the galaxies. It turns out that people are much better at this than computers.
You sign up on the site and are asked to classify a galaxy as simply smooth and rounded or having signs of a disk. You then classify how rounded it looks. There are other questions that you might be asked, listed on the How To Take Part page.
Don’t worry if you are unsure. Sometimes it is a judgment call. Galaxy Zoo presents the same image to lots of people and takes a vote on the best answer.
So far, they’ve learned that more spiral galaxies and blue elliptical galaxies exist than previously thought. There are an equal number of clockwise and anti-clockwise spirals. And there are some unusual objects (blue image below galaxy to the right) that have been noted for astronomers to investigate further.
It’s easy to classify stars on the site and you will be among the first people to look at these galaxies in detail.
As I help people with home theaters and TVs across the Washington D.C. area, I run into many misconceptions about over-the-air digital TV.
1. Digital TV? What is that?
Most people still don’t seem to realize that they can receive high definition television over the air.
Not only is it high definition, but over-the-air (OTA) broadcasts also generally provide better quality video than cable or satellite. This is because the bitrate (amount of data transmitted) of OTA broadcasts is typically higher.
While not all the channels are available (no CNN, Comedy Central, Discovery, Home & Garden, etc), you do get in Washington D.C. and generally: ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, Fox, CW (formerly WB), Univision (Spanish language), and an independent channel or two.
2. The digital transition, whenever it occurs, will be a switch from analog to digital.
Not exactly. The digital channels are all available now. The “digital transition” date is actually just switching off the analog channels. The analog spectrum was sold a year ago by the US government sold to a consortium of bidders including AT&T and Verizon.
3. The analog shut-off date is when?
It was originally today, February 17, 2009. But Congress and Obama passed legislation to delay it until June 12, 2009, because many people are still unprepared for the transition and the government ran out of coupons for people to buy converter boxes.
The complicated bit is that because of costs associated with running the analog systems, hundreds of local stations will still try to shut down their analog signals today, if they can get the FCC to go along with that. In Washington D.C., all stations will continue to offer analog channels until June 12th.
According to the Associated Press:
A patchwork of 641 stations across the country, mainly in thinly populated areas, are still turning off their analog broadcasts this week or have already done so. The most populous markets where many or all major-network stations are cutting analog include San Diego and Santa Barbara, Calif.; Providence, R.I.; La Crosse and Madison, Wis.; Rockford, Ill.; Sioux City, Iowa; Waco, Texas; Macon, Ga.; Scranton, Pa.; and Burlington, Vt.
4. I need a coupon and converter box.
TVs sold over the past few years typically have a built-in digital tuner. Also, the $40 coupon is only good for the converter boxes that output their signal in analog.
This means that if you have a shiny new HDTV, you are probably fine because it has a tuner already. And if you have a slightly older HDTV that does not have a tuner, you will be better served with a converter box that has an HDMI or component video out so that you get a digital signal to the TV itself instead of analog. And those better converter boxes do not qualify for the $40 coupon.
5. I just need to plug my antenna into a converter box to get a signal.
You will need an antenna and just plugging in your existing one might work. But the antenna is probably best not placed where you used to have it.
Digital signals tend to be more sensitive to placement and interference from walls and obstructions. Therefore you want the antenna to be as close to possible to line-of-site to the tower as you can get it. This means placing the antenna in a window, on a roof, or high up in your attic. People who live close to the transmitting towers (within 5 miles) should not have problems. People farther away will need to spend more time and money to get the right equipment.
6. My “rabbit ear” antenna will work fine.
It might if you live within a couple of miles of the antenna. But most people will be better served with a new antenna and spending some time placing it correctly in the best location.
My favorite resource for determining antenna needs is antennaweb.org, which has a Choose an antenna area. This will allow you to see how far your towers are from you and the direction of the towers. Direction is important because most HDTV antennas are directional.
For my installations, I generally start with antennaweb.org’s data and then paste it into a spreadsheet like this. Then I can write down the signal strength for each channel using different antennas and locations. It usually takes a while to get the optimum setup.
Also note that in the D.C. area, most digital channels are on the UHF spectrum, but after the analog shut-off both ABC and CBS will be changing to transmit over VHF. The implication for customers is that several antennas only work well for UHF or VHF. Keep that in mind when looking for an antenna. Many stations across the US plan on changing their transmissions after they shut down their analog stations. Antennaweb.org lists these planned changes.
AVS Forum has a vibrant discussion of what antennas are best. I agree with their list and have had great luck both with the Winegard SS-3000
7. I can’t watch over-the-air television. I’d miss my TiVo or Cable DVR too much.
The TiVo Series 3 and TiVo HD do actually tune and record OTA broadcasts. Not only that, but they can record both OTA and cable signals at the same time. So you could get basic cable for a few channels that you are missing, and get pristine high definition content over the air. TiVo does have a monthly service fee (also available as a lifetime purchase for the life of the box).
For those who want to get rid of all monthly bills and just have an OTA DVR, the satellite folks at Dish network came out with the DTVPal DVR currently for $249. You don’t use the Dish network at all. They simply took the software in their good (not as good as TiVo) DVR and repurposed it. There is a discussion of the DTVPal DVR at AVS Forum, which they jokingly refer to as the reboot/upgrade club because of the problems that the early adopters are facing. Currently the DTVPal DVR is out of stock. I would expect Dish to iron out the issues and make this a solid box, as their satellite DVR is pretty good.
Cut the Cable or Satellite Bill
While the hurdles may seem daunting, the ability to get great content in high definition over the air is great. With some time and research, you might even be able to ditch your cable or satellite.
Internet TV
Another option that complements OTA programs is Internet based TV. Projects like Boxee are promising. They connect to CNN, Comedy Central, and tonnes of other streaming media. While the quality is not HD, this provides another way to cut the cable or satellite bill.
There are many flavors of wireless networking. Most common are 802.11B, 802.11G, and now 802.11N (Draft). 802.11N is “draft” because the standard has not yet been formalized, despite the sale of draft-N devices for over a year. For most people, this won’t cause a problem. But hitches do come up.
Draft N Works, Usually
When I was recently setting up a D-Link draft-N router with a MacBook Pro, I noticed that the wireless connection would drop regularly or show a connection but be unable to receive/transmit. This was due to the incompatable N implementations. The solution is to go into the router settings and switch it to only using B/G. In most cases, I have found draft N devices to work without any issues.
Future of WiFi Standards
The 802.11N standard is expected to be finalized by the IEEE LAN/MAN Standards Committee (IEEE 802) in November 2009. Then all the current draft-N manufacturers promise a firmware upgrade that will make them interoperable. Of course by November 2009, we might be looking at buying new draft wireless standards, as described by PC Magazine:
802.11s, a mesh networking specification that’s been on the drawing board since September 2003. (It probably won’t be final until September 2010.) Laptops and other devices with 11s support will function as mesh points (or MPs) and form links with each other, allowing packets of data to skip from device to device across the network as needed. Mesh has been around for a while in many proprietary forms, and is important not only because it can extend a network’s range but also because it has self-configuring abilities: Mesh devices can move about without impacting overall performance. In such a network, data will hop around from mesh point to mesh point along the shortest path to where it needs to go. Actual 11s is already in use in at least one product: the One Laptop per Child project’s XO laptop uses it to communicate with XS school servers, in some tests over distances as great as 2km with 802.11s data hops from device to device.
802.11u, called “InterWorking with External Networks,” will provide a Wi-Fi device with methods of connecting securely to a network, based on the external network’s type. For example, if you have access to the cellular connection that provides Internet access to the Wi-Fi router on a bus, 11u will keep that connection secure. It will also allow a Wi-Fi device to discover more information about that external network, such as whether it’s free of charge or not. 11u could be published by March of 2010.
802.11z “Direct Link Setup” is the 802.11 Working Group’s take on improving ad hoc connections, at least for business users. It’s entirely unrelated to what the Wi-Fi Alliance is doing for device-to-device communication. 11n allows two laptops that would normally communicate on a secure network to form a P2P connection to talk to one another exclusively. This happens only after they’ve authenticated security credentials through an AP. It’s a super-secure ad hoc that requires the right security setup.
See a full list of 802.11 standards and approval timelines from IEEE.