Wal_Mart and Dell?

In about 2 weeks, you may see something new in the electronics section of your local Wal-Mart store. Computer manufacturer Dell has entered into an agreement with Wal-Mart that will put its desktops in 3,400 of the chain's stores beginning June 10. They will retail for under $700.

Although exact details of the PCs have not been released, but both companies say the desktops will be built exclusively for sale at the world's largest retailers. The deal marks the first time in 15 years that Dell has not been involved directly in the sale of its machines. While the company recently began selling its PCs in retail, they were through company-owned outlets. It also once sold clearance machines through Costco.

Dell, it appears, may be changing its ways. A Dell spokesperson described the deal as "our first step" into global retail, possibly indicating that the company may be working on other deals, although it declined to talk about any possible deals. Wal-Mart will initially carry two different Dimension desktop models in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. No details were given as to whether the company planned to eventually sell Dell laptops.

As for Wal-Mart, partnering with Dell is part of their strategy to remodel and expand the electronics section of its stores. The company is increasingly looking to top-name brands as a way to entice more affluent customers into its stores to help sustain its growth.

The Final Solution for Junk Mail May be at Hand

Yes...a new technology is emerging that just might put an end to most spam forever, especially the fraudulent ones that try to steal your identity. The Internet Engineering Task Force, a key Internet standards body gave preliminary approval this week to a powerful technology designed to detect and block fake e-mail messages. It's called DomainKeys Identified Mail, and it promises to give Internet users the best chance so far of stanching the seemingly endless flow of fraudulent junk e-mail.

Yahoo, Cisco Systems, Sendmail and PGP Corporation are behind the push for DomainKeys, which the companies said in a joint statement will provide "businesses with heightened brand protection by providing message authentication, verification and traceability to help determine whether a message is legitimate." Insiders say the technology is more promising than most other anti-spam and antiphishing technologies because it harnesses the power of cryptographically secure digital signatures to thwart online miscreants.

The way it works is straightforward: if, for instance, PayPal sends an e-mail notice to customers about their accounts, the company's outgoing mail server will quietly insert a digital signature into the legitimate message. (Because the signature is embedded in the message headers, it's generally not visible to human readers.)

Let's say the recipient has a Yahoo Mail address. Yahoo's mail servers can automatically check PayPal's Internet domain name listing to verify that the digital signature is valid and the message truly originated at Paypal.com. Signatures by authorized third parties are permitted as well, which is useful for outsourced e-mail.

If the signature doesn't check out, the message is probably spam, or a phishing attack designed to try to fool someone into divulging their details about their PayPal account. While the DomainKeys standard doesn't actually specify that messages with invalid signatures should be flagged as junk, Internet service providers are likely to do just that.

In the long run, DomainKeys is more promising than existing antispam and antiphishing technologies, which rely on techniques like assembling a "blacklist" of known fraudsters or detecting such messages by trying to identify common characteristics. But spammers have invented increasingly creative counterattacks, such as inserting image advertisements in the text of messages and appending excerpts from news articles and fiction works in an attempt to defeat the popular antispam method of Bayseian filtering. That kind of counterattack is called Bayesian poisoning.

DomainKeys represents a radical shift in the arms race between phishers, in particular, and Internet users: it's effectively a tactical nuclear attack that can't be countered. The digital signatures, which use public key cryptography, are viewed as unforgeable. But the DomainKeys approach does suffer from one serious, short-term problem: it's only effective if both the sender and recipient's mail systems are upgraded to support the standard.

We shall endeavor to keep you informed of the progress of this product.

Over 400 People Clicked on an Ad Promising to Infect Their Computer

Sorry that I haven't written for a few days, but it is the start of the art show season for me and I am busy getting ready. I also have been doing some photographic jobs for clients, so that is keeping me doubly busy. This is the time of year that my blogging is drastically reduced because I am on the road so often, with sometimes only 3 days between shows. I shall endeavor to write a blog here and there when time permits just to let you know that I am alive.

If you would like to see a current list of where I will be this summer, click over to my Web site for the most current list of my upcoming shows. Keep in mind that it is not yet completed yet as there are still more shows that will be added. By the way, if you would like to see some of my new works for this year, click here and you can see some of them. More will be added very soon.

Now for today's blog:

Would you believe that 409 people have clicked on an on-line advertisement that promised to infect their computer with a virus? The ad offers infection for those with virus-free PCs. The ad was placed by a person who identifies himself as security professional Didier Stevens. It reads like this:

Drive-By Download
Is your PC virus-free?
Get it infected here!
drive-by-download.info

Stevens, who says he works for Contraste Europe, a branch of the IT consultancy The Contraste Group, has been running his Google Adwords campaign for six months now and has received 409 hits. Stevens has done similar research in the past, such as finding out how easy it is to land on a drive-by download site when doing a Google search.

First, Stevens bought the drive-by-download.info domain. .info domains are notorious for hosting malware, he points out. Then he set up a server to display the innocuous message "Thank you for your visit" and to log the requests. No PCs were harmed in this experiment, he emphasizes. The site is benign and has never hosted malware or other scripts or code.

Of the 409 people who clicked, 98 percent were running Windows machines, according to the user agent string, which is a text string that identifies a Web site visitor to a server. Stevens says that he designed his ad to make it look fishy, but he had no problem getting Google to accept it and has had no complaints to date. And, although a healthy amount of people clicked on it, he said there's "no way to know what motivated them to click on my ad. I did not submit them to an IQ-test."

I shall contain myself from any further comments and just let you be the judge.

Lightroom - A Must for Serious Photographers

I am in love...with a new software from Adobe (the makers of Photoshop). It is called Lightroom and is described by Adobe as "an efficient way to import, select, develop, and showcase large volumes of digital images." It is designed for professional photographers or amateurs who take a lot of photos.

It is not an easy products to describe and I really didn't understand it until I watched a couple of Adobe's on-line videos and downloaded a 30 day trial description. Within two days, I was in love and plunked out my money. It is so good that a recent article in Popular Photography said its biggest competitor was Photoshop and people might not need buy Lightroom's expensive big brother. Personally, I need both products, but Lightroom does some neat things that Photoshop does not...and Lightroom does some things better than Photoshop!

Another description from Adobe: Lightroom software is the professional photographer's essential toolbox, providing one easy application for managing, adjusting, and presenting large volumes of digital photographs so you can spend less time in front of the computer and more time behind the lens. It is especially designed for photographers who shoot in RAW mode, although it will easily handle just about every known image format on the market today.

Its main purpose is to improve your work flow when you take lots of pictures. Here is how I use the product: I first transfer my images from the camera to a special folder in my computer. After that, I open up Lightroom and "import" the pictures into into the program. When you "import," the program let's you add additional meta data information such as copyright info, and also lets you add keywords to help you organize your photos.

After bringing the photos into the program, you can easily add additional keywords. For instance the first thing I did when I acquired the program was import four days worth of shooting that I did in Yosemite last year. I first added keywords such as Yosemite and California to help organize them. Then I easily clicked on all the photos I had of Bridalveil Falls over those four days and added the keyword Bridalveil and Waterfalls to them. I then did the same thing for the other famous landmarks in Yosemite Valley.

As you add keywords, the program creates a category on the left side of the screen so that you can easily click on a keyword, and only those photos come on line, making it easier to compare and find your best photos. You then can quite easily rate your photos by stars or by color coding them.

After organization, you then can go to work on the images to improve their quality, either individually or on a group basis. You can create your own presets so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel. There are plenty of controls to improve your images, far to numerous to describe here. I especially like the Luminance control which is a more subtle way to add saturation to your images without changing people's skin color.

Its ability to turn color images to black and white is amazing and is far better than Photoshop, (with the possible exception of their brand new version CS3)...but it also adds split toning for b&w images which no version of Photoshop has. There are many more controls for improving your images than those I have briefly mentioned here, but you can go to the Adobe Web site to learn more about them.

As I mentioned above, Lightroom is designed to improve a photographer's work flow. So far we have taken the pictures, organized them, then processed them. The next logical step in the work flow that Lightroom follows is to output the final images...either to prints, the Web, or a slide show. Again, Lightroom has made these steps easy with several different built-in templates for all three. Printing different size prints as well as proof sheets is easy...just pull up a template, add your pictures and print. For the Web, there are several templates, either regular HTML or using FLASH. Again just choose your images, push a button and your Web pages are created for you.

If you think that Lightroom might be for you, head over to the Adobe Web site and watch the videos and see for yourself. You can then download a 30 day trial version and try it out. By the way, the trial version is NOT a crippled version. It is the full version. Lightroom now sells for $299, but Adobe originally put it on sale for the first few months as a special buy for $199. There are still a few places on the Web where you can still get it at the $199 price, so if you think Lightroom might be for you, I would think about looking at it right away.

Technologies That Flopped

Happy Mother's Day from beautiful downtown Ephrata!!

I recently came across and interesting and fun article (actually its a slide show) on the Web that I thought I would share with you. It is a list of the top ten technologies of the past that failed, as evaluated by tech author Jim Rapoza. It took me down memory lane and actually made me laugh as I began to remember some of these disastrous tech innovations. A few of them made me scratch my head at the time thinking that they would probably bomb...and they did. I love to be right.

Remember Microsoft BOB, or DIVX? How about CueCat or Network PC's. If you would like to check out these colossal failures and maybe have a few chuckles, check out Jim Rapoza's article.

Explaining HD Radio

For the last couple of years, we have heard a lot about High Definition TV. Walk into any store that sells TV sets, and about 90% of every demo set they have on the floor is HD. But, did you know there also HD radio? What is that, you say?

HD radio is the radio equivalent of HDTV...high quality sound over the airwaves. We are not talking about satellite radio now such as Sirius or XM. This is the same type of broadcast radio you hear now all over the world...only in high definition. Believe it or not, more than 1,200 radio stations currently broadcast in HD, with over 600 offering HD2 multicasts, giving consumers crystal clear digital sound and more choices, with no subscription fee. But of course, you need a special HD radio set to enjoy HD radio.

Right now, there are over 1,000 standard analog radio products on the market, but you'll find no more than a smattering of consumer-level HD digital models. But that is about to change. Best Buy Stores has made a solid commitment to carry HD radio sets. According to their press release, "Best Buy is the first national retailer to make HD Radio technology available to customers throughout its national chain. Customers will find a premium HD Radio experience in their cars with the JVC KD-HDR1 Mobile HD Radio receiver and the Visteon Zoom. Throughout 2007, the HD Radio line-up will expand to home products and more mobile offerings."

A very short history of radio is needed here. AM Radio was invented long before any of you or me were born. FM radio came upon us in 1961...and neither has changed much since. Both AM and FM added stereo, but that is about it. Satellite radio came along a few years ago and drastically improved the sound quality, but at not only the cost of a new receiver, but also a monthly subscription.

HD radio gives you the same or even better sound quality, equal to CD quality and, unlike satellite radio, you only have to buy a receiver. There is no monthly fee; once you have the radio, you're good to go forever and roam the world at will at have radio to listen to.

Interestingly, in the United Kingdom, digital radio has found a firm foothold because the technology is standardized and open, in much the same way that high-definition television was rolled out. In the U.K. 4.7 million digital receivers have been sold since 1999. In fact, these actually outsold traditional radios last year. U.K. enthusiasts of digital audio broadcasting, liken the phenomenon to that of the digital camera overtaking the traditional film camera in popularity. Many of the digital radios sold in the U.K. have TiVo-like functionality, letting you time-shift programs, save interesting broadcasts, and bookmark your favorite stations.

My only qualm about this new technology is not with the technology...it is with what is being broadcast over the airwaves. Out here in the hinterlands, 99% the radio stations are not worth listening to, except maybe for NPR. As most broadcast stations are owned now by larger corporate companies that operate many stations at once, the quality of the music has deteriorated to the point that it is not worth listening to, no matter what the genre. It has been homogenized to the point of being something that won't offend anyone (like a McDonald's hamburger) and offers very little variety and only a select number of artists. And AM radio is mostly talk shows, so who needs HD for that?

Maybe in large metropolitan areas where there are a large variety of music being played over the many stations, it might be worth doing...but even there you run into the same issues. But, occasionally there are the interesting small stations that haven't followed their bigger brothers and sisters into programming boredom.

The bottom line is garbage in...garbage out. Garbage being broadcast in HD is still garbage. I wrote this blog while listening to classical music coming in over my satellite system. There is never anyone talking, no ads, no public service announcements...just pure unadulterated music. Can you guess where I stand?

If you would like to learn more about HD radio, as well as information about receiver availability, a station guide and more can be found at http://www.hdradio.com/.

Microsoft Updates

The boys and girls from Redmond are keeping pretty busy these days. Here is a quick update of some of the things going on over on the other side of the Cascades.

Vista:
Microsoft is making a major public relations push to counter the perception by many in the industry that Windows Vista is floundering, 100 days after launch. According to them, the biggest problems people are having have to do with updating hardware drivers that will work with the new operating system, and they claim that problem is rapidly disappearing. However, given the number of complaints floating around on the Net, the problems may be more than that.

Still, Microsoft has yet to announce when they are going to launch Windows Vista Service Pack (SP) 1. The internal wisdom at Microsoft seems to be that by not talking about SP1, they will convince users to change their long-established planning ways and not wait for SP1 to hit before taking the upgrade plunge.

Microsoft to Buy Yahoo?
Two newspapers reported last week that Microsoft has stepped up its pursuit of a deal to buy Yahoo as the two companies reenter talks to strike a deal amid huge growth from rival Google. The two companies have held informal deal talks over the years. But the latest approach comes as Microsoft seeks to ink a deal in the wake of Google's expansion. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, put the price tag at around $50 billion, although the Journal said it is more in line of a merger. Reports today indicate that the deal still has a long way to go.

Vista and Laptop Batteries
Many people, especially those in companies where there are many laptop users, are reporting that Vista is sucking up battery power much more than Windows XP. The main culprit appears to be the Aero Glass interface, a spiffy new user interface that makes Vista more pleasing to the eye with transparent windows and animated transitions when moving from one application to another. When Aero is turned off, battery life is equal to or better than Windows XP systems. But with it turned on, battery life suffers compared with Windows XP.

But, laptop users who spent extra money on powerful laptops to handle the graphics requirements of Vista and the Aero interface are forced to run the aesthetic equivalent of Vista Basic, the low-cost version of Vista, if they care about battery life. Reports that Vista was an energy hog started to surface during beta testing last year. At the time, Microsoft said many of the problems would be cleared up by the time the operating system launched. Uh huh!

Redesigned Hotmail
Some of you who use Hotmail know that Microsoft has been beta testing a new version of their venerable old e-mail program. But, users who are testing the new beta are not reporting great results. In fact, Microsoft is being told by most of the testers that they prefer things just the way they are. However, the Redmond folks want to stay up with Google's GMail and the new Yahoo Mail (see previous blogs).

The new version of Hotmail is now called Windows Live Hotmail, although it retains much of the classic design of the original Hotmail, much to Microsoft programmer's chagrin. Microsoft also is holding back from quickly forcing its users onto the new version. Although those who sign up for Hotmail will automatically be taken to Windows Live Hotmail, existing users will still have to opt in, though Microsoft does hope to move all users over in a period of months. In a couple of weeks, Microsoft plans to make available a new test version of its Outlook connector software that will enable anyone with a copy of Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007 to use the software to access Windows Live Hotmail messages and contacts.

Walter Mossberg's New Web Site

For about a year (mostly in 2006), I had a free subscription to "Wall Street Journal." If you don't read it on a daily basis, you probably aren't aware that this publication goes way beyond just being a financial reporting publication. There are any number of in-depth articles about very interesting subjects that have nothing to do with stocks or financial matters.

One of the columnists I looked forward to reading was Walter Mossberg, who focuses on today's high tech issues. From computers to software to cell phones to MP3 players, Mossberg always gives us the "straight dope," praising when it is deserved and being strongly critical, also where deserved. I like that, and it is sometimes hard to find these days where publications fear to criticize products made by their biggest advertisers (case in point being the Editor-in-Chief of PC World magazine who resigned a few days ago for that very reason).

Walter Mossberg did not live under that kind of edict and it was always good to read his articles and know that you were getting his honest opinions. Anyway, he now, after many many years, has put up his own Web site, aptly named, "All Things Digital." And, it is a good one. The site delivers a combination of commentary, news analysis, product reviews, and video. Instead of following the model of a traditional blog or the multistory approach of other content sites like CNN and The Wall Street Journal, the site plays up its editors' reputation and personality. It delivers a mix of new and old features that should appeal to Mossberg fans.

Mossberg is not alone on this site. He is joined by Kara Swisher, reviewing partner Katherine Boehert, ex-San Jose Mercury senior editor John Paczkowski and others...and has financial backing from The Wall Street Journal. His partners are all seasoned veterans of high tech journalism and worth reading. For years, I read Paczkowsi's satirical daily newsletter "Good Morning Silicon Valley" and missed him when he left. I am glad to see him back on line with Mossberg.

I think this is a good Web site worth bookmarking in your browser and I encourage you to head on over and take a look. Who knows, maybe you will stop reading this blog after you visit "All Things Digital."

Making Firefox Work Better

Here are a couple of quick tips, via video, to help your Firefox Web browser work a little faster, courtesy of CNET TV. I tried some of them and they do work.

The first video is entitled "Speed Up Firefox." The second video, which I found even more helpful is called "Another Way to Speed Up Firefox." Both of these videos show you how to change some of the configuration values to make things better. If Firefox is your browser of choice (which it should be) these videos are worth watching...and they are only a couple of minutes long.

Another good video I found on CNET was about better ways to view a PDF file in Firefox. You can watch that video by clicking on this link. Occasionally, I have had some difficulty with a PDF file on the Net. The add-on recommended in this video really helped.

And speaking of Firefox, here are some links to other Web sites that talk about some of the best Firefox add-ons (aka extensions)

http://websearch.about.com/od/dailywebsearchtips/qt/dnt0528.htm
http://best-firefox-extensions.blogspot.com/
http://db.rambleschmack.net/pc_tips/best_firefox_extensions
http://www.listible.com/list/best-firefox-extensions-for-power-users

Extensions are great as many of them really make Firefox perform better or allow you to customize your Web browser to the way you do things. In one of the above mentioned videos, they recommend that you don't overload your Firefox with too many extensions and I agree with that. You should download as many extensions as sound interesting to you then try them out. If you find yourself not using them very much, get rid of them.

Here is a list of the add-ons that I use, which, of course, makes them my personal favorites (at least for this moment in time):

1. AdBlock Plus - the name says it all and it works really well.
2. Foxmarks - a bookmarking add-on that synchronizes your bookmarks on all the computers you use. A fantastic tool!
3. Google Notebook - I wrote about this one in my last blog and I am using more and more everyday.
4. Google Preview - Lets you look at a page in Google and Yahoo searches before you open it.
5. McAfee Site Advisor - Lets you know if a Web site is safe or not when you do a Google search. This one is a must.
6. PDF Download - see above.
7. Tabbrowser Preferences - Allows you more control over your tabs.

You can find these and many, many other extension at the Mozilla Web site.

Google Notebook for Firefox and IE

Sorry you have not heard from me for a few days. I just haven't had the time to write or do any research. The art season is beginning soon and I am busy getting ready for that plus throw in a wedding shoot last Saturday and a few other things and the result is not much time for doing fun things like writing this blog.

Recently, I came across a browser add-on that you may find useful. It is from Google and is called "Google Notebook." In fact, Google Notebook is more than just an add-on...it is also a Web tool you can use without an add-on. But the add-on makes it more useful to use to add notes and bookmarks in a small, closeable, separate window while you are browsing or doing your research on the Internet.

First, you must have a free Google account to use the extension. Once you sign up, you can download the free add-on. It puts a small icon down at the bottom of your web browser. By clicking on it, you can expand it to add notes or bookmark a page that you want to come back to. Notebook is a Web-based product so that you can access your notes on any computer at any time by just logging into your Google account.

And, Notebook does not limit you to just one notebook. You can create several notebooks, each with a specific subject. For instance, I can have one notebook just for research for my blog, and another notebook for information about photography. And since I use three different computers for almost all my work, having access to all my notes no matter which computer I use is a real bonus.

Recently, a fellow by the name of Mitch Keeler made his own version of the Google Notebook that opens in a sidebar of Firefox. To me, this made the program even better (especially on my wide screen monitor at home) as it expands the viewable area of my notebook...and it is always on the screen, if you desire. To use it, you need to visit his Web page and follow the simple instructions.

To learn more, visit the Google Notebook home page...then take a quick tour of the product to get ideas how to best use it to your advantage.