Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – January 24, 2011

The 21 Greatest PC Mysteries—Solved! – Find out why your documents won’t print, where your downloads disappear to, what a .dat file is, how those infernal toolbars invaded your browser, and much more. With the average machine, there’s enough mystery to keep Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple hopping for a month–and enough frustration to make the average user want to commit murder most foul.

The 25 Worst High-Tech Habits (and How to Fix Them) – Today we honor the louts, the Luddites, and the lazy. Everyone has a little techie vice–raise your hand if you have ever used “password” as a password–but with this outing we’re digging a little deeper, calling out the really bad habits that can cause permanent damage to your high-tech psyche. Without further ado, it’s time to get our hands dirty. We present to you our 25 worst high-tech habits.

4 Reasons the Nintendo 3DS Could Change Everything – Nintendo no-glasses 3D games handheld arrives in the U.S. on March 27 for $250, and it has the potential to completely change the way gamers interact on the go.

Security Expert Warns of Widget Malware – Widgets, a popular vehicle for advertising and Web content, can also be used to distribute malware, according to Dasient CTO Neil Daswani, who took his message to Black Hat this week.

Tablets, Smartphones to Eclipse PCs: Deloitte – Looking ahead to the coming year, consulting firm projects that sales of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets will move past traditional PCs. The company has made a habit of publishing reports offering predictions of the prevailing currents reshaping the technology and telecom sectors.

Lush hack due to numerous security vulnerabilities – The Web site of Lush, the natural ingredients cosmetic firm, has reportedly been cracked and subverted by attackers, with reports that customers’ bank details have already used by fraudsters.

What Is a DCIM Folder? – Ever wondered why cameras always seem to have a folder called DCIM, and what it stands for?

Tide turns for US employee privacy? – The issue of consumer privacy is getting more and more attention from media and people in general, as it rightly should. But what about employee privacy?

Company News:

 

WatchGuard XCS gains spam blocking and encryption capabilities – WatchGuard released a free update to its XCS (extensible content security) line of email and web content security appliances that includes new features to make stopping spam even easier along with new email encryption capabilities.

Google Answers Search Result Quality Complaints – During the past month, a number of bloggers and others have criticized Google for returning poor search results. At issue is what is known as Web spam, which Google defines as junk search results that pop up when Websites cheat their way to the top of search results via search engine optimization techniques.

Verizon Sues to Protect its Right to Pillage – A helpless telecom giant asks the court for protection from watered-down network neutrality rules. Really?

Off Topic (Sort of):

 

AT&T and Sprint, How Stupid Do You Think We Are? – Wireless carriers, if you want to tweak your service plans to make more money, don’t pretend it will be in a customer’s best interests.

Mini adventure: how far can an electric car go? – The BBC’s Brian Milligan has driven an electric Mini from London to Scotland, using only public charge points. Here is his diary of that journey. (submitted by Dar)

Stupid Photoshop Tricks – Adobe Photoshop is a tool for serious image-editing professionals. It’s also a tool for people who want to swap Brad and Angelina’s faces, give George Bush a Justin Bieber haircut, and make an Attack of the 50-Foot Baby movie poster.

Just The Same Old Dumb – I know Dumb, my friends, inside and out. But this “story” sent me into a death-spiral of total incomprehension and self-doubt for longer than I care to be honest about in the telling. I stared at the headline for an hour – “Michelle Obama’s ‘Get Moving’ Program Linked To Pedestrian Deaths” – like a proto-human trying to figure out the Moon. (submitted by Dar)

Today’s Quote:

 

“Some mornings it just doesn’t seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps.”

– Emo Phillips

Today’s Free Downloads:

 

VLC (VideoLAN) – For several years, the free, third-party media player of choice for many video connoisseurs was the open-source VLC media player. It worked on multiple operating systems, it worked on a bare install of Windows without any special codecs, and it was light and fast. All that is still true. Now, VLC finally hits an important milestone: version 1.0.0 (given the James Bond-referencing nickname of Goldeneye), and with this version comes a pile of useful new features.

10 Must-Have Chrome Extensions – With so many Chrome extensions available, which should you get? We’ve picked out ten of our favorites that will let you do everything from speeding up your Web browsing, to checking Gmail and Google Calendar, grabbing videos and graphics from across the Web, and more.

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