Category Archives ⇒ Computers

The Google Chromebook Netbook is Here

· Brandon Hann

When I was in New York back in February, the friend I was staying with received a mysterious package in the mail and decided to open it while we were all there. He pulled out a strange-looking black netbook that had no logos, brand names or stickers of any kind on it. It was small, sleek and didn’t have a rom drive. From the looks of it, it was your run of the mill netbook except with a 11.6″ screen.

Once he turned it on, the device booted into a strange, but refreshing operating system known as ChromeOS. He then told us that months before, he had signed up to become a beta tester for Google to test out the new OS they were building around Chrome. The arrival of this netbook was a surprise given that he had forgot all about signing up for it. At any rate, we played around with it and noticed that this wasn’t your average computer. It wasn’t a watered-down version of Windows and it wasn’t trying to do things it wasn’t meant to do…it was simply a cloud computer.

Samsung Chromebook

I’ve talked about cloud computing before and I have to tell you, ChromeOS nails it! The computer boots in 8 seconds and has nothing on it except the Internet. That sounds funny to say while you’re holding a laptop, but it really only has a web browser. Everything is managed over the Internet through integration with all of Google’s services like Google Docs, Gmail, Maps, etc. This video explains it all:

Amazon has already created the product pages for the new Chromebooks from Acer and Samsung. There doesn’t appear to be any price points at this time, but I can’t imagine this device costing much for than a few hundred dollars. More details to follow.

Unlimited Data*

· Brandon Hann

I’m really getting fed up with all of these services offering “Unlimited Data” with a little asterisk next to it. When you finally make your way down to the fine print, you end up learning that your unlimited data plan is anything but.

AT&T

It seems like AT&T is the ringleader in this mess—starting first by removing the unlimited data plans for iPhone and continuing now by adding a data cap to their Internet customers! You heard me right, as of May 2nd, AT&T now caps Internet usage on both DSL and Uverse accounts! For DSL customers, the cap is set at 150GB of data transfer per month. Uverse customers get 250GB of data transfer. It’s not clear whether the TV portion of Uverse is included in the 250GB. In either case, AT&T will send you two warnings if you exceed these caps. On the third time, you will be billed $10 for each 50GB you go over.

When asked why they did this, AT&T’s response was:

AT&T has experienced a dramatic increase in the amount of data that is sent and received over its wireline broadband networks. This dramatic increase is driven primarily by a small fraction of our customers. In fact, the top 2% of customers use about 20% of the total capacity on our network. A single high traffic user can utilize the same amount of data capacity as 19 typical households. Lopsided usage patterns can cause congestion at certain points in the network, which can slow Internet speeds and interfere with other customers’ access to and use of the network.

For complete details on AT&T’s new data caps, check out ATT.com.

Verizon

Fortunately, for those of you lucky enough to get FiOS, you don’t have to worry! When it comes to fiber optic Internet lines directly to your home, Verizon got it right. Each home is outfitted with a direct fiber line to Verizon which minimizes slowdowns and network congestion which has caused AT&T to limit their customers.

The same might not be said about Verizon Wireless when the iPhone 5 comes out. Rumors are abound that Verizon will cap their wireless data plans for smartphones soon. Of course we’ve heard this before, so maybe nothing will come out of it, but the thought is still daunting. It’s a fair statement to say that most people will never reach a data cap, but just the thought of having a limitation there is agonizing. Nobody wants to be surprised with a cell phone bill that has suddenly increased due to unknown overages.

According to Mobiledia, this rumor looks to be coming true.

Sprint

Sprint appears to have the best “Unlimited” service you can get. According to one of their commercials, “only Sprint gives you true unlimited” and it would seem so. Nowhere on their website do they say anything about data caps, speed throttling, etc.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlkT7gRM0xo

My two cents

If you’re going to cap your data plans, do it. But, don’t sell them as unlimited just because your definition is that your customers won’t reach the cap, thereby making it feel unlimited! To me, this is false advertising at its worst.

Apple MacBook Air vs Samsung Series 9

· Brandon Hann

In my never-ending search for the perfect mini-laptop, the Series 9 is looking like a mighty contender to the MacBook Air. Originally, I compared the MacBook Air to the MacBook Pro and iPad 2 to find out which device held up as a better “portable” computer, but it looks like a new competitor has stepped into the ring: Samsung.

From the looks of it, Samsung has a great product and by all accounts it appears to have the Air licked, but after looking closer, it might seem like you get more for your dollar with Apple. When have you ever heard anyone say that before?!

Design

Both of these lightweight computers are designed to be as thin as possible. While I still love the design features of practically all Apple hardware, the Samsung Series 9 is very close in style and material to the Air. In fact, it’s even .04 inches thinner than the MacBook at its thickest point. I know .04 inches is nothing, but I’m sure there are some people out there that might raise a fuss about it!

Apple MacBook AirSamsung Series 9

One major complaint I have about the MacBook Air is that unlike its Pro counterpart, it does not have an edge-to-edge glass screen. The silver border around the screen is actually a separate piece above the screen and this allows dust and grime to accumulate at the edges. Ironically, Apple has veered away from designs like this on every other one of their product partly for this reason.

Features

Take a look at the comparison between the two. While the Samsung has more than the Air on many points below, I still can’t see how they justify their pricing.

Comparison: (Series 9 is compared to base 13-in MacBook Air)

MacBook Air Samsung Series 9
Base Price $1299 $1649
Colors Silver Aluminum Black Duralumin
Dimensions (HxWxD) 0.11-0.68in x 11.8in x 7.56in 0.64in x 12.9in x 8.9in
Weight 2.3 pounds 2.88 pounds
Storage 128GB SSD 128GB SSD
Memory 2GB DDR3 (4GB Max) 4GB DDR3 (8GB Max)
Connections Wi-Fi (A,B,G,N), Bluetooth 2.1 Wi-Fi (B,G,N), Bluetooth 3.0
Screen 13.3in HD LED glossy 13.3in SuperBright LED HD anti-glare
Processor 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 1.4 GHz Intel Core i5 Processor 2537M
Battery Up to 7 hours Up to 7 hours
Camera Standard VGA 1.3MP HD
I/O Ports Mini Display port (supports HDMI, DVI and VGA via adapters), RJ45 LAN (with adapter), Mic-in, Headphone Jack, 1 SD card Slot, 2 USB ports Micro HDMI Input, Headphone Jack, Mic-in, 1 MicroSD Slot, RJ45 LAN, 2 USB Ports (1 Chargeable)

Apple gets beat out in almost every category except for size and weight (although these two factors are not likely to be dealbreakers for most consumers). Not only does Samsung have Apple beat on everything listed above, there are also two other major differences. The first one is that the Series 9 has a backlit keyboard and the second being a 3-year warranty. On the Air, you can’t get the backlit keyboard and the only way to get 3 years of warranty service is to buy AppleCare for another $249.

My two cents

If we’re comparing the lowest priced 13 inch MacBook Air to the Series 9, the Series 9 has Apple beat, however you’ll be paying $350 more for it. If you bring up the MacBook Air to the same 3-yr warranty coverage, you would have only a $100 price difference with Samsung still be the more expensive device.

Another thing to remember is that Apple also has two 11 inch models to consider with prices going as low as $999. My opinion is that the huge difference in price doesn’t seem to justify the small differences in features except maybe the processor and more memory. I’d say if you’re thinking about the Series 9, maybe it’s more of a comparison to the 13 inch MacBook Pro except in thickness and you might want to take a look at where you money is being spent.

The last major difference is obviously the operating system. Although I love Windows 7 and how much better it is than previous versions of Windows, I still love my OSX much better! Plus, if you get the MacBook Air, you can still install Windows on it so you can have the best of both worlds.

If you’re considering spending $1649 on the Series 9, you may want to consider a MacBook Pro. If you’re just looking for a mini-laptop and don’t have the heart to go all the way down to a netbook, check out the MacBook Airs.

Tonido – Run your own personal cloud

· Brandon Hann

Sometimes I might be away from my home, perhaps at a friend’s out or maybe even out of town. While I generally have my MacBook to keep me connected, there are many times when I go to do something and I can’t because I realize everything is stored on my desktop computer. Of course there are services out there that allow you to upload data to the “cloud”, but I don’t like them because they are either too limited or too costly.

For anyone who doesn’t already know, cloud computing is the new terminology used to describe how we interact with our computers and data on the Internet. In the simplest of terms, creating a cloud allows you to make all of your files available online so you can access them wherever you are.

Tonido

Tonido is free software that allows you to turn your home computer into your own personal cloud! Now, you can run your own cloud services similar to that of Apple’s MobileMe and Google Docs with two major differences: it’s free and you don’t have to upload your files to any 3rd parties.

The top 10 reasons to run Tonido:

  1. Secure and private – Use an external DNS name such as cloud.domain.com to access your Tonidio-enabled computer from anywhere in the world.
  2. File management – You can have full access to all of your files.
  3. Tonido WebShare – Create specific file shares for specific users, allowing them to have access to only what you want them to while using easy-to-remember URLs. There is a $29.99 charge to purchase the Pro version of this which enables quite a few new features. See Tonido Webshare for more information.
  4. Stream videos – Ever wanted to take your movies and videos with you on vacation, but could never decided on which ones to bring because you didn’t want to fill up your hard drive? You can now stream any video file directly from your home computer through Tonido Explorer.
  5. Stream music – Just as you would imagine, you can also stream all of your music. No need to bring your entire music collection with you anymore!
  6. Manage torrents – I used to have to wait until I got home to start any torrent downloads I wanted to get, but Tonido allows you to create and manage all of your downloads remotely.
  7. Manage money – There’s an add-on feature that allows you to manage all your finances remotely too.
  8. Backups – Use Tonido to remotely backup your whole computer to another computer on the network or to any other computer on the Internet.
  9. Personal blog – If you’ve always wanted to run a personal blog, but didn’t want to deal with all of the hassle of webhosting, you can use Tonido’s “Thots” to do just that. Make it only available to you or the whole world; you decide.
  10. Cross platform – Tonido is available on Windows, Mac and Linux. Remote software is available for those as well as the latest smartphones.

My two cents

From the looks of things, everything is free except the WebShare Pro. Ironically, this is probably the piece of software that you’d use most, so all in all, setting up your own cloud would cost about $30. Of course, you also have to provide your own hardware and be willing to leave a computer on 24/7. After all is considered, you really can’t beat this configuration. Even if you went with MobileMe, you’d have to pay about $99 per year plus deal with storage limitations.

If you’re anything like me, then you probably prefer to do everything yourself because at least you’d have full control of your cloud plus you can un-limit yourself by providing as much hard drive space as needed. My weekend project is going to be setting up such a system. I’ll be posting my final reviews on Tonido once I’ve played around with it a bit.

Being Forgotten By Google

· Brandon Hann

This is not the kind of talk that any successful webmaster (or aspiring one) would ever want to entertain! Imagine one day, everything you’ve put into creating your place in the Internet world was simply forgotten by Google—ceased to exist, gone, goodbye, no more. However, it would seem that the desire to be forgotten is not that uncommon for regular people out there.

In Spain, there’s a court case against Google that is requesting they remove information on 90 people found within its indexes. Spain’s Data Privacy Agency is ordering that this information be removed after it received complaints about the content being old and now considered to be embarrassing if not libelous to the individuals involved. I’m not here to report the news, so if you want to read the full article go check out Yahoo’s ‘Right to be Forgotten’ article.

What I do want to talk about is just how much information there is out there in regards to your personal information. As for myself, I’ve always been very careful about what I put online and when I’m on Facebook, I’m very vigilant about staying on top of who’s posting comments and pictures involving me and removing items I don’t “approve” of.

Google yourself

As a test, I Googled my full name and I’m happy to report that where most people might find the top links to be some type of people-finding service and reverse phone-number lookups, I’ve managed to secure the top 10 results with various profile pages of mine and web projects I’ve created or worked on. The reason I’m happy about this is because I control every single one of those links. If one day, I don’t like that I posted my email address online, I can remove it and it will cease to exist from that link forever.

How do you fare when Googling your name? None of this may matter right now, but think about your future. Maybe one day you become famous or run for office and because of this wonderful Internet we have, practically all of your personal information is left to the world forever! We’ve all heard stories about people getting fired from their jobs because of unscrupulous Facebook posts and raunchy pictures. In fact, one of my favorite examples of this is the following:

Employee gets fired on Facebook

Becoming forgotten

According to the aforementioned case, one of the individuals involved is running a plastic surgery business and when his practice is searched, the top link shows you his site and relevant information, but the next one shows off a lawsuit that the surgeon was involved in back in 1991. His argument is that this information is detrimental to his business. I should say so! In fact, I’m kind of thinking that maybe people should know this information before getting involved in plastic surgery. On the other hand, is it right (or fair) to judge someone based on extremely old data?

It goes without saying that Google receives tons of removal requests like this from all over the world, but Google doesn’t remove a single one because they don’t want to jeopardize the integrity of their indexes.

So how does one become forgotten online? There is no complete solution to this dilemma because the Internet just keeps collecting data, day after day, after day. The only true way to control information on yourself is to control the source. If you can’t do that, then always remember this one simple rule: if you put it on the Internet, assume everyone in the world has seen it. And if they haven’t, it’s only a matter of time.

iPad Poised to Take Out Radio and Other Media

· Brandon Hann

A new survey from Google shows that more and more people are opting to use their tablet devices, with most of them being iPads, over traditional media streams like listening to the radio or watching broadcast tv. This is happening just now?! I can’t remember the last time I listened to the radio!

The survey points out that more than half of the people questioned said they use their iPad more than listening to the radio and just about 25% of them use an iPad more than a computer. Finally, a third of these individuals stated they use iPad more than they watch tv. Because the iPad is so versatile, people can now use one device to access the Internet, watch videos, stream movies and tv shows, read newspapers and magazines, listen to music and play games. Of course cable and satellite providers have made honest attempts at keeping you on your television by offering on-demand content, DVR services, music channels, downloadable content, HD content, 3D content, free movies, etc., but without a tv capable of handling some of these things, you’re kind of up a creek.

Apple TV

Apple TV
Since the iPad is an Apple product, I doubt Steve Jobs cares that one of his own products is cannibalizing another market, but I know he figures he might as well have a piece of that pie too. Before he retires, Steve Jobs plans to “revolutionize” the living room. The Apple TV has been an interesting, yet vastly overlooked product since its inception. Originally called iTV (how original), the Apple TV began shipping in 2007 and has seen one major upgrade in 2010. However, nobody is really talking about it.

Is it possible that not everything Apple touches turns to gold? In light of this new survey, one could wonder what the future of Apple TV will be. If you actually take the time to look at the device, it really is pretty cool. You can stream purchases of videos, movies and music right from your iTunes account, access Netflix, NBA tv, YouTube and display slideshows from Flickr photo albums.

However, it would seem that this device is doomed. With the realization that iPads are here to stay, along with other competing products, Steve Jobs is likely to bring the cloud experience to your living room. By connecting all of your devices together, you’ll be able to do anything and everything on just about anything and everything in your home. I can see the commercial now:

  • Man is at work with 2 minutes left to go, watching a Netflix movie on his Macbook.
  • Man leaves work and continues same movie on iPhone while riding the subway home (I know there’s no cell service on subways, but work with me here!)
  • Man walks in the door, turns on tv and continues streaming same movie.
  • Man grabs iPad because he has to go to the bathroom and doesn’t want to pause the movie.
  • Man’s iPad battery dies, he gets upset and breaks iPad.
  • Man gets even more upset, breaks Macbook and tv.
  • Wife says she’s leaving because husband is to “connected” to technology.
  • Man is sad and lonely because Apple Care won’t cover physical damage.

On a serious note, if anyone makes that script into a YouTube video, I want credit!

My two cents

Of course the above example is a huge exaggeration, but the questions are pretty clear. Do we really need all this stuff? Do we really want everything to be so connected that we become so dependent on them? What I would like to see is a way for consumers to pay much smaller fees for tv service. If Apple plans to cloud up the living room with more on-demand tv choices like those you can get from Hulu, then I hope the cable companies respond by allowing customers to only pay for channels they wish to receive. At the rate all this is going, I’m sure it won’t be much longer before network television simply allows you to subscribe to your favorite shows rather than paying to have the whole channel.

Mac OS X Lion – Coming Summer 2011

· Brandon Hann

Apple may have done it again! From the looks of the list below, we might have the best version of OS X yet. If you enjoy the functionality of your iPhone and/or iPad, you’re going to love some of the new features of OS X Lion. Take a look below and I promise you you’ll be as excited as I am.

This time around, Apple has taken what people love about iOS and put them into OS X. I’m still hoping that one day, OS X will make its way to the iPad and who knows, maybe this is the first step toward that dream! OS X features things like the Mac App Store, Launchpad, Mission Control and AirDrop. If you’re starting to feel like you’re about to take off into space, welcome to the club! So without further ado, let’s launch this thing! (I couldn’t resist the lame pun.)

Mac OS X Lion Features

At its core, the new OS will look very similar to previous incarnations; it’s what’s under the hood that may or may not get you excited. Today, computers seem to be all about the apps and the experience partly because of the huge success of today’s smartphones. People just want things fast and readily available at all times. OS X Lion delivers the convenience and ease-of-use that will rival that of any computer system you can buy today.

Mac App Store

Apple Mac App Store
Although you can already download this app, the new App Store for Mac works just like the one for iPhone and iPad. You can now buy full software programs without having to head to the store. No more fiddling with discs or worrying that a store my be out of stock. Simply buy the app, download it and get to work.

Launchpad

Mac OS X Lion Launchpad
This is the one that makes your Mac look like an iPad. With one click of this app in the dock, your screen is transformed into the desktop equivalent of iPad showcasing all of your apps in one (or more) screens. I dare you to open it up and not be tempted to start swiping your screen!

Full-screen apps

Mac OS X Lion Fullscreen apps
Take your apps to the max! No longer will you be forced to stare at the top menu bar or the dock at the bottom. You can now open your apps to the full width of your monitor. I’m not sure if having a full screen app will make you more functional, but it’s nice to know you have the option. Personally, I like having the clock in front of me so I can see how much time I’m wasting online.

Mission Control

Mac OS X Lion Mission Control
Mission Control is like Dashboard, but on crack. It allows you to pull down all of your running apps right on the screen so you can see everything that’s running on your computer. From there, you can click anything you want to re-open and you’re instantly there. What’s cool about this is that all of the windows you have open are sorted by group, so if you had 4 Safari windows and two Word documents open, you’d see two groups and each of the windows showing up inside.

Auto Save

This might be a God-send for some of you out there! I know for me, it’s going to take the headache out of creating documents. Imaging you’re pushing the battery limits on your Macbook and you’ve already completed 10 pages of your school report when all of a sudden, your battery dies! Damn. Well with Auto Save, all of your troubles are over. What’s really cool is it actually saves the current document which means it doesn’t create any copies, thus saving disk space. And if you accidentally save the wrong changes, you can always revert back to a previous version; see next feature.

Versions

Mac OS X Lion Versions
For those that use TimeMachine, you’ll be very familiar with this feature. It basically keeps track of every change you’ve made to a document allowing you to revert back to a previous version whenever you need to. When you open a document, OS X Lion will save a version of it and then continue to save versions every hour automatically.

Resume

Mac OS X Lion Resume
This is one of my favorites. Let’s say you have a bunch of windows open and you are prompted with some new updates. You’re just itching to get them installed, but then you’re greeted with a message stating that you’ll have to restart your computer. Now you have to go in and save all your documents and close everything while losing all your places online, etc, etc. Not anymore! Resume allows to restart your Mac and it comes right back on to exactly where you left off. The resume feature also works when closing and opening apps.

Mail 5

Apple Mail 5 Conversations
If there’s mail program that could get me to switch from Outlook, Mail 5 just might be the one! I’ve used Outlook for many years because of its vast amount of features and I was never really a fan of Mail, but the new Mail 5 offers the a conversations feature that brings up emails similar in fashion to how iPhone deals with text messages.

AirDrop

For those of us who get our Mac friends together on the weekend so we can talk about how cool our Macs are…(silence)…we can now send and receive files just by opening an app! AirDrop will automatically locate and connect with other Mac users (locally) that also have AirDrop running so you can send files without having to pull out USB drives or burned discs.

My two cents

I’m super excited about this release! Given the above features and I’m sure a whole lot more that we haven’t seen yet, I know this will be the perfect mix between the functionality of a full Mac with the ease and simplicity of an iPad. I was never a big fan of the iOS software being used on anything bigger than a phone mainly because it lacks any type of file system and it makes doing some advanced work near impossible, but Apple seems to have gotten this one right.

Of course, only time will tell if they did.

Should I buy Apple stock over product?

· Brandon Hann

I read an article over on John Chow’s blog that lead me to an interesting bit of information from Kyle Conroy’s blog about buying Apple stock over buying Apple product. At first, I expected it to be a rant about how great the stock market is and how we should all invest in our favorite corporations, but after looking at it, it proved to be much more of a “why didn’t I think of that” type of story.

Although I loved the article, I now hate myself for not being “smarter” in my younger years. I guess I can chalk it up to just not being sure about the future, but then again when it comes to Apple, did anybody really think this company would fail? Google maybe, but Apple? Likely not.

The Breakdown

Essentially what Kyle did was compare the selling prices of almost all of Apple’s products to the stock price on the day these products came out and then again to today’s stock price. Here are the products I own for example:

  • Original iPhone – Price paid on January 9th, 2010: $499 – If I had bought Apple stock on the same day instead of the iPhone, I would now have $1,460 in my portfolio.
  • iPhone 3GS – Price paid on June 8th, 2009: $199 – I would now have $375 in my portfolio.
  • 2.4G MacBook (13″ unibody, late-2008) – Price paid on October 14th, 2008: $1599 – I would now have $4,161 in my portfolio.

That would have given me a grand total of $5,996 in my portfolio today! Instead, I have negative $2597. Granted, the products have served me well and I don’t regret owning (or buying) them, but the point is still made.

Could I have forgone these items to have a few extra thousand in a volatile environment such is the stock market? Probably no more than any of us could forgo our new cars and expensive clothes. However, one item that took the cake on this list is one that I could have forgone if only I had that much money at the time.

Apple PowerBook G3 250 (Original/Kanga/3500) – Price on November 10th, 1997: $5700 – If you used that money to buy stock on the same day, you’d now have $330,563 in your portfolio! On the other hand, maybe you used that PowerBook to start your business and now you make more than $300,000 a year being your own boss! You never know how the tides may turn.

Go check out the rest of the list here and see what your Apple products could have amounted to.

Yet another URL shortening website!

· Brandon Hann

UPDATE (Oct 26, 2010) :: I disbanded my original URL shortening service and have created a new one with an even shorter URL! I’m leaving this page up for posterity, but I’ve changed the links where applicable. Also, I wrote about my new URL shortening service, so you may want to head on over there first!

This time, it’s mine!! After I got onto Twitter and Facebook, I starting noticing all these little weird looking links and came to realize they were just pointers to much longer links. URL shortening services have sprung up just about everywhere. The issue of really long links is more of a problem to Twitter users because you only have 140 characters to type your message, but they’re starting to gain traction for just about every use. Use my new URL shortener to shrink you long urls today!

You would want to/need to shorten a url when you don’t have much space to post one or you want to make it easier for someone to remember. Now, there are tons of sites out there that can shorten long links into something tiny, but I didn’t want to trust my links in the hands of some fly-by-night service. Instead, I opened my own service and now I’m offering the service to everyone.

xi.io URL shortener

What is it?

Take this link for example: http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FKindle-Wireless-Reading-Display-Generation%2Fdp%2FB0015T963C%3Fpf_rd%5Fm%3DATVPDKIKX0DER%26pf%5Frd%5Fs%3Dcenter-1%26pf%5Frd%5Fr%3D0Y2V14K8W4X1MTQ9XB9B%26pf%5Frd%5Ft%3D101%26pf%5Frd%5Fp%3D1253201642%26pf%5Frd%5Fi%3D507846&tag=ledfrog-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325. It’s a direct link to Amazon.com’s Kindle page. Now, imagine you’re on Twitter and you want to send that to your followers. It’s not going to happen.

Instead, you drop on by my new site and create a link that looks like this: http://xi.io/8m. Much nicer, wouldn’t you agree? In fact, this URL went from being 358 characters long down to only 15! That’s a difference of 343 characters!! You can use these links for any purpose and the best part is, you can also search for keyword text, so instead of getting a randomly generated number, you can get a text phrase (if available).

How is this site different?

It’s not so much different in features as it is in name. Other services such as goo.gl, bit.ly and u.nu all offer the same services, but as you can see, they all use International domain names.

Personally, I find two things wrong with this. The first reason is that the links are not universally recognized by a lot of Internet users. If fact, I’ve talked to some people that say they never click on links like that at all! This can provide low click-through ratios for your links.

The second reason is that these domain names are controlled by the countries who own the extension. This can, although probably not likely, lead to the domains becoming obsolete or even being taken back by the local government.

What can you do with a shortened URL?

The uses for this service are only limited to your creativity! Here are some ideas:

  • Use shorter links for Twitter posts
  • Cloak affiliate links
  • Mask a long URL for marketing materials
  • Use a shorter URL for your site to make it easier to tell your friends how to get there

This service is free and allows you to make an unlimited amount of links. Check it out by going to xi.io now!

Firefox 3.6.2 Fixes Critical Security Hole

· Brandon Hann

This one is for all you Firefox users out there. It looks like no browser is safe from the threat of viruses and other threats. And yet another reason why I love my MacBook and Google Chrome browser. Together, they’re a strong team. If you’re using Internet Explorer or Safari, you too should consider Chrome.

Anyway, if you do use Firefox you should consider updating because this bit of information just came out:

Mozilla addressed a critical security vulnerability with a minor Firefox update, bringing the browser to version 3.6.2. The vulnerability could potentially allow an attacker to “crash a victim’s browser and execute arbitrary code on his/her system.”

Users of Firefox 3.6 will have this update automatically downloaded and installed, but you can also manually apply it by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.

The release notes for Firefox 3.6.2 can be found here.

-Originally posted here at Mashable.com

For those of you who switched to Firefox because you didn’t like Internet Explorer, now you can switch to Chrome, a far better browser (at least until someone hacks it too).