Periodically, I look for new accessories for my Mac. It is easy to find software and extras for my IMac, but I often have to hunt a little harder for items for my G3. A lot of new components are compatible, but they may not be age appropriate. The whole look might be a little off. I have a few trusted sites, but the new sites that I stumble across don’t have a way to simply order. You have to register for a profile and give up all sorts of other information. I find that my inbox is loaded with all sorts of junk mail after a purchase. Most of it is legal junk, as they are communications from the site I actually used, and not third parties.
What I most worry about is credit card theft. Not all sites take Paypal, and Paypal sometimes comes with its own headaches. I found that ShopShield.net is a new Secure Payment Agent that really is the answer to all of my concerns.
Shop Shield anonymizes your email address and the payment is processed without the places you shop having your actual credit card number. Shop Shield creates a temporary credit card number for the transaction that expires when the transaction is complete. The temporary credit card number can only be used for the amount of the transaction, so if the number is stolen, it cannot be charged on. The original funds are still debited from your credit card balance, but the temporary number is not traceable and does not recharge your card.
To protect against spam, Shop Shield creates a proxy email address. Pertinent communication is forwarded to your actual email address, but a company never has your real one. There is a Shop Shield companion that you can download for your web browser. Right now, it works with Firefox on both Mac and Windows.
Have you tried Shop Shield? Let me know what you think!
I was at a party last year, and someone happened to mention Geocities. Everyone seemed to have a personal page parked there. I didn’t, but it was “the thing.” By today’s standard, the sites are very simplistic in design, but it was your way to put yourself out there. Oh, and another thing. Do you remember sites becoming unavailable if you had too much traffic?
Everyone had a “neighborhood.” Depending on the theme, you could have your site on “RodeoDrive,” in “Hollywood,” or in the Colosseum. Honestly, I think it was on the honor system and no one really checked. It was later scrapped, but sometimes you could still stumble across sites with a “city” in their url.
Oddly enough, Geocities is still around. Well, they were until today. Geocities is going offline, and joining the big Angelweb in the sky. Registrations ceased in April, and today was the end. Farewell, Geocities, and Godspeed. May the flash animated websites of sparkly dancing aliens and Gilligan’s Island Fan Sites give thee rest.
I was reminiscing about the old Apple IIe’s and IIc’s that I used in my much younger years. In fact, I recall being in second grade and we were the first class to have a computer class. I liked it so much, that over the summer, I took a course at school to play around even more. It was hard to attract second through fourth graders to word processing. What we were more interested in is graphics, playing Oregon Trail and making little video games.
I don’t know if one could have really called them “games” because there was no object to them. You just pressed any button to move a dot across the screen, which could not deviate from its path. The “payoff” (I use the term very LOOSELY) was to get to the end of the screen where we X and Y plotted our little brains out to have the word “Crash” show up in all its blocky, large pixel glory when you hit the other side of the screen with the dot that was really a little square.
Here are variations on the theme. These are Apple IIe’s and c’s being awakened from their slumber after being in someone’s basement or attic all these years. Justinaurelius on YouTube explains limitations of the hard drive, and is seeking to get an old one.
Kevin Gordon gives an unnarrated approach, firing up the Apple IIe with an up close and personal camera perspective. Darnit that it is hard to read what is on the screen. It appears to be a tutorial. I don’t remember that one, but then again, we were much more enthralled by the “cool stuff.”
When I was six years old, I didn’t know what a website was. In fact, as far as most of the citizens of Earth, I was not alone at that time. If there were such a thing aside from governmental, classified existence, I would have probably wanted mine to be red. I went through a red phase before I hit my blue phase. In addition, I probably would have chosen a “sparkly unicorn theme.” With my Lisa Frank mylar stickers in tow, I probably would be able to beautify it beyond belief.
I hated to break it to my five or six year old self, but you can’t put stickers on a website. Now, you sort of can. You can cheesify your website with My Little Pony looking unicorns and Lisa Frank looking sparkly doodads. Yes, the technical term is to cheesify. Click here to learn more about it.
If you want to see Back to a Mac all glittery and unicorny, just click the widget:
Each time you click, more and more cheese will be added. I think I may permanently add this to my sidebar for your entertainment, and mine. Until I get sick of it of course. If you are deeply disturbed by this, blame for this should be fully shared by Roller Katy, who introduced me to this tooth rotting mayhem quite awhile ago in the first place.
Quite a while back, I bought and reviewed the Targus 32 in 1 card reader. What initially attracted me to it was the plug and play capability that it had for Mac. It has been quite some time since I used the reader, so thought I would add a sequel to my initial review.
The card reader only last about a month or two. It intermittently was not recognizing a standard Memory Stick, though it was picking up the vibes of an SD card right away. I tried wiggling the card, I tried taking it out and putting it back in quickly. The old method of unplugging it from the USB and plugging it back in had failed as well.
Then, I did something that perhaps was not too smart. I figured since it was working with the SD card, perhaps it was in the space of time when nothing was in the reader that it was failing. I put the Memory Stick in another slot while the SD card was in, and then proceeded to remove the SD card.
What happened next was not what I suspected. I fried both cards and the Targus reader never worked again under any circumstances. The cards survived after a reformatting, but not the reader. Of course, this was my fault, but nothing in the literature ever said anything about this on the “DO NOT DO” list. In fact, I don’t think there was such a list.
I do have a new card reader, I paid several more dollars for, and I will review that one in the near future.
I thought that different filters used to detect porn were something reserved for public computers. At home, if you didn’t partake in looking at websites related to adult material, you were pretty safe. I thought programs and filters available for a home computer were for either detecting a spouse with wandering eyes, or were a way for people who viewed the website regularly to just be able to point out that it can be accidental. A similar logic to people who “didn’t know how that magazine got under the bed.”
However, I have discovered over time that it is simply not true. There are situations where an unassuming individual who does not deliberately view such sites may still need a filter. There are individuals or bots that sign up for accounts on social networking sites, such as Myspace and Twitter, and send you a message. It us typically about something related to a keyword in your profile, or they ask you to check out a photo of a pet, for example. They may include a signature link, or a direct request to check out a website that is related to what you do.
Unfortunately, they mask the website url by using one of the websites that shorten long links. Instead of sending you a link to something of interest to you, they send you to a site that contains adult material. In other words, you are the unassuming person who falls into their trap. Often, it is good enough to click off of the site. Other times, such sites use secondary attacks such as spyware. It is not unheard of for such sites to imbed images on your computer or to trick you into downloading them. Some such sites manage to create a pop up that looks like a windows “My Computer” or “Windows Explorer” interface and makes it appear that the material is already in your picture file! Naturally, you click it to see if it is true.
These days, you really need both a filter and a detection tool. SurfRecon has such a package, and has tools for MacIntosh and Linux based computers, as well as for Windows based operating systems. It will filter data that is streaming to your computer, as well as detect files that are already there. Sometimes savvy coworkers or housemates can disable a filter, so the detection software is a great backup. Also, if you happen to purchase a second hand computer, like I recently did, it will eliminate any surprises.
Shop Shield anonymizes your email address and the payment is processed without the places you shop having your actual credit card number. Shop Shield creates a temporary credit card number for the transaction that expires when the transaction is complete. The temporary credit card number can only be used for the amount of the transaction, so if the number is stolen, it cannot be charged on. The original funds are still debited from your credit card balance, but the temporary number is not traceable and does not recharge your card.
I was at a party last year, and someone happened to mention Geocities. Everyone seemed to have a personal page parked there. I didn’t, but it was “the thing.” By today’s standard, the sites are very simplistic in design, but it was your way to put yourself out there. Oh, and another thing. Do you remember sites becoming unavailable if you had too much traffic?
I thought that different filters used to