October 13th, 2011
While the internet is a vital tool for research or social media outreach in many industries, thousands and thousands of company hours and company electricity is sapped away by personal email correspondence, tweeting, designing family Christmas cards, shopping, stocking your eBay store, forwarding jokes and watching television shows. Although you may be sharp enough to not use your “work email” for dating site registration, you may still be busted if your company uses employee internet monitoring.
Essentially, your boss can’t see a snapshot of your computer screen or keystrokes, but can find out what sites you visited and for how long. While a sympathetic boss might not mind the occasional check of email, or even some entertainment on the lunch hour, if your job performance is slacking, they have hard proof on where your real focus was if the sites weren’t company or industry related.
Is this fair? In some ways, it could be construed as an invasion of privacy. However, if you are indeed using a company’s work station or a company-provided computer, you are essentially borrowing someone else’s equipment and need to act accordingly. Such software really mainly is used to detect trends.
With smartphones and even iPads, employees can discreetly conduct personal business. In that regard, monitoring software falls short if you are truly looking to keep track of all of an employee’s time. For the most part, if an employee is abusing company time on personal business, it will spill over into their use of the company copier and computers as well.
Do you tend to spend your work day sucked in by the internet, or have you managed to maintain the barrier of “personal” and “company” time?
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June 17th, 2011
Recently, I spring-cleaned my Mac. It wasn’t starting to slog along, but I have so many photo files and half-started articles that I might as well start at the bottom of the mountain before it becomes a problem six years from now and I have .000005 MB of room left. That’s not even enough to house a flea motel. It’s an excuse, anyways, to buy a new mouse or keyboard also. I was looking around in the store and online at the new iMacs, and they basically look the same as what I have, except that they are television sized. I’m not quite ready for that, as Macs for me tend to be at least ten years old before I replace them. The old blueberry G3 was at least 10 years old when I bought it, but that’s cheating.
While surfing, I was really surprised to see that the prices were at or less than what I paid. In some ways, I expected the equivalent of my model to cost slightly less, and the brand spanking new styles to cost slightly more. Is Apple discontinuing something? Even though the price wasn’t dramatically lower, still, the list price diving $20-150 is something I have my radar finely tuned to. Shopping spree? Then, I realized I was surfing a CANADIAN price-comparison site for Macs. While the exchange rate isn’t what it used to be, where the dollar saved you 30% or more if you shopped over the Blue Water bridge or through the Tunnel. It’s not worth it to drive and pay duty by the time I get back, but sites such as www.canadapost.ca/shopper/apple/brand/30 certainly are a boon for all of you Canadian readers– you might have a hard time wading through American sites wondering if prices and even shipping area actually apply to you. Sure beats visiting 100 tech sites individually.
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June 10th, 2011
I
t’s not exactly the Wild West anymore when it comes to social networking. Sure, maybe the social networking site that will be huge in three years isn’t even a pitch meeting yet, but things are just so dominated by a handful of sites its really hard for new ones to make it big. The common complaint among users is ambiguous privacy policies. A little info about MyCube passed across my desk. It seems that they are not trying to pretend they’ll be as all-dominating as Facebook but looks like they are starting the old-fashioned way: identify the needs of the customers not being met and capitalize on it. Apparently, sharing is niche-based and privacy settings are high. Content, such as photos, is only shared with those with a true common interest. Points are awarded for activity and can be ’spent.’
Right now you can sign up for the MyCube private beta to be in the first wave of early adopters. (Enter in the code “blog” to join.) I am not quite clear if you need to have a lot of personal friends using it to make it worthwhile or there are enough connections with common interests for someone to jump in without their posse. There are so many sites languishing with too few users, but if a core group can get excited about it, time will tell.
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March 2nd, 2011
Life magazine recently featured a gallery on the Life and Times of Steve Jobs. Take a peak at some photos that you’ve forgotten or never seen to relive the early days of Apple computers. If you really don’t care, then just sit back and chuckle at the 70s and 80s fashions.
Jobs has gone from co-founder, to out of the Apple family entirely, to being re-embraced as CEO. In some way’s Life’s title “His Life and Times” sounds more like a memorial than a retrospective, but let’s think positive. The future remains uncertain for Jobs as far as his health struggles, though Jobs seems to be working to ensure that the idea man in the black mock-turtleneck behind Apple will never be too far. You are in our prayers, Steve. At least mine and Zarvox the iMac’s. I can’t speak for Hal9000.
Posted in Retro Mac | 1 Comment »
August 21st, 2010
My brother copied some old home movies on to a CD thinking that we could all play them. Well, we could, but on on the tv or any other device aside from the PC. If it had been a DVD format it would have been no problem. The movies were actually on a DVD, but the format just didn’t transfer. Imtoo now has a DVD Ripper which would have been helpful if he had it last year. You can easily take a DVD like that one and adapt it to about 14 different video formats, or a few different audio formats. Then, you can watch it on your iPod or share it with family members who may not have the same viewing software as you do. What’s more is that you can add captions and different effects, which is really helpful when the people who know who the periphery characters in old home movies are pass away…and the info along with them.
This is all fine and good, but is there a DVD Ripper Mac version? Yup. Rip those DVDs right iPod, iPhone and iPad as well as Android formats. Want to do more than just rip and add a few effects? Video Converter for Mac allows you to take your videos and add soundtracks, and clip and merge, and recognizes over 150 video formats. I had no idea there were even that many, but I suppose with different generations of technology, there are probably more formats out there than the household names.
Have you tried a ripping program before? If so, what did you think? Can’t live without it?
Posted in Product Reviews and Mentions | No Comments »
August 13th, 2010
I cleaned out nearly 1,200 spam comments from the blog this week. Some were incomprehensible and some were about enhancement products, casinos and slot game guides. A relative of mine likes to putter around at casinos all day and parks herself in front of the slot machine. When I mentioned the spam, she got excited and wanted to look at everything I had on computer gambling, particularly the rating guides. Somehow, she thinks that because something has user ratings, it means that Consumer Reports backs it.
That’s just what I need. At least at a casino, there are the pleasant distractions of food and shows, but at the computer, Aunt Edith can sit down all day and all night clicking buttons. That’s exactly what I need. Of course, that alleviates the need to drive her to the far side of the world a weekend each month. Fine by me, as long as she doesn’t miss her Impersonator show fix.
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