The New Yorker – now digital

     
  New Yorker digital  

Some things are best experienced in their analog, physical versions, rather than digitally: a hardcover book printed on good paper in a pleasing font, listening to music performed live without electronic amplification, and The New Yorker magazine.

So as an enhancement, rather than a replacement, you can now read The New Yorker online through their digital reader. A couple of things you might want to do with the digital version versus the print edition: email an article, print an article, search and read anything in the archive going back to 1925(!).

If you’re not a subscriber you can get a trial subscription which will give you the current plus 3 upcoming issues here.

If you’re a subscriber, the digital edition is included and you have full access to the archive. Have an issue with your address label ready and go here. Under “account status” look for the link for the digital edition.

     

PC software: Security

As I migrate to a new notebook computer, I’m going to be posting occasionally about my experiences with noteworthy and not-so-noteworthy software. While I’m no cheapskate, I prefer free software, preferably open-source. I’ve found a lot times it is more effective than the paid equivalents.

Security is big concern these days and your first-line defense should include a firewall, as well as antivirus and anti-malware software. Since these programs run all the time, you want them to be up-to-date, reliable, effective and light on system resources. These are my choices:

Firewall: Vista actually has an excellent firewall built into the system, but in order to fine tune it, you have to deal with a fairly technical interface. Why adjust it? Well, just from a convenience standpoint, it can be very annoying when software “calls home” to get updates, report on user experience, or something more sinister, When the software in question doesn’t have the option to turn off its internet use, you can use what are called outbound rules in a firewall to limit the program’s access. Also, if some malware sneaks its way onto your system, it will try to phone home as well.

There are many excellent free add-on firewalls out there. The best might be Comodo. That’s a great choice, particularly if you’re using XP, but it’s a challenge to set up. The most elegant solution I’ve found is Vista Firewall Control, which essentially adds an easy-to-use rules management system to the built-in firewall. There’s a free and a paid version. Honestly while I really like the paid (”plus”) version, the free version is plenty for a lot of people.

By the way, if you have a router in your house to split your internet connection among several computers, you might already be protected by the router’s built-in firewall. However, if you travel outside and use your local Starbucks for WiFi, you really need to have great firewall protection on your machine. Also note, while I wrote about outbound traffic, inbound traffic is always a concern, but from what I’ve seen, all firewalls handle that pretty well.

You should use an online firewall checker like Shields Up, or AuditMyPC occasionally to see how well-protected you are.

Antivirus: The most important thing to remember about antivirus programs is that you have to make sure you keep up-to-date with the virus definitions. Virus threats develop all the time and if you have a good antivirus program, it will update itself frequently. I also strongly recommend that you stay away from Norton or McAfee, because they are very resource-intensive. What that means is you have less computing power for the things you are actually doing. I’ve been using AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition for years. In my experience it’s very light on resources and reportedly very effective. It will get updates daily and you can schedule virus scans to happen automatically.

Malware/Spyware: While computer viruses generally cause damage to your computer other computers, malware and spyware tend to harm you by stealing passwords, monitor your activity and access other website to get more viruses. Like antivirus programs, you really should keep the program’s definitions database current to deal with the most recent threats.

Again, Vista has excellent anti-spyware built-in called Windows Defender. Microsoft usually issues definition updates twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. (You should have Windows Update set to automatically download or notify you of updates.)

If you want a third-party solution, Spybot Search & Destroy is a longtime favorite and it’s free. A new program I’m really interested in is an interface to download and manage different anyti-spyware programs: Anti-Malware Toolkit.

     

Random Knowledge

  Wikipedia  

 

A little learning each day is good thing, right? Bookmark this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

You’ll get a random article from Wikipedia.

Today, I was relieved of my ignorance of Drumcree, in County Westmeath, Ireland.  Also, the entertaining etymology of thagomizer, which describes the arrangement of spikes on a stegosaurus’ tail.

(p.s. - There’s also a “random article” link on the left side of every Wikipedia page.)

     

Firefox Download Day

  firefox  

In other developments today, the newest version of my favorite web browser, Firefox, is being set loose at 10am. Why do I like it? Pretty much all of the usual reasons, it’s faster, safer and a whole lot more fun. With all the extensions and themes out there, the most used piece of software on your computer can also be the most you.

     Firefox 3 download

     

Stargazing

  MS WorldWide Telescope  

Microsoft launched its WorldWide Telescope software late tonight.

Now this is something I never thought would happen: a piece of software so incredibly cool, it sent tingles down my spine. Clicking on a constellation and watching the sky unfurl on my screen and then being able to click in for some of the spectacular photography gleaned from every major telescope in the world is just downright cool.

I know nothing about astronomy, but it was heartening to read that one of the lead programmers on this project never even saw the Milky Way until his teens.

It’s a free download from Microsoft. Check the computer requirements. Even my fairly modest UMPC 800Mhz Intel processor can render the program pretty well, although the prefab tours are a little taxing.

 

Microsoft WorldWide Telescope (won’t work in Firefox for me … try Internet Explorer)

an interesting article at SF Gate

     

smackdown: Wire Hangers vs. Monster Cables

 

   

In one of my favorite tech stories of the month, someone set up a comparative listening test of the usually very expensive Monster Cables against…get ready for it…wire coat hangers. You can just imagine where this is headed: In a blindfolded test, audio “aficionados” were not able to tell the difference between a stereo set up with either set of wires.

Check out the entire story at Consumerist.

via Consumerist

     

Happy Birthday, LEGO!

   

Today is the 50th birthday of LEGO building bricks. The technology blog, Gizmodo, has somehow narrowed that down to 1.58pm today. They’ve got a great factoid-filled post and that timeline you see above. (Click to see the fullsize image, zoom out if your browser resizes it and pan across to see the whole thing.)

Most surprising factoid:

Google co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, used LEGO bricks to build the external low-cost and expandable casing for 10 4GB hard disks when they were busy developing the Google search engine

You can see the full blog post here.

[via G i z m o d o]