Category: Analysis

I spend a lot of time during the work week removing malware from customers' computers. So whenever I happen upon a new malware cleanup app, I make it a point to put it through the paces. Better tools make my job easier, after all. Today I'm checking out Norton Power Eraser -- a free, portable malware cleanup tool from the folks at Symantec. I had tried to test earlier beta versions of NPE, but ...

The European Commission responded earlier today to the petition submitted by the 'Gang of Six' web browsers seeking "any of a myriad of small changes" to alert users of the 7 browser choices not initially displayed on Microsoft's new European Browser Choice update dialog. In an email to CNet writer Stephen Shankland, EC spokeswoman Amelia Torres writes: "The elements of the Choice Screen were ...

Six of the twelve browsers chosen to be a part of the EU "Browser Choice Screen" petitioned the European Commission on Thursday, asking politely -- very politely -- that the Commissioners "consider any of the following suggestions which could be easily and quickly implemented and would allow users to exercise choice." "Ok, seriously? Already? WTF!", was my immediate reaction. Browserchoice.eu ...

I'm not a fan of software patents, and I'm particularly not a fan of companies who use them as a business model. While the concept of patenting software makes sense, in practice it is a complete mess. I was therefore saddened to learn that Quintura, an otherwise interesting search startup, has devolved into using a patent for their visual search technology as a revenue stream by going after other ...

I almost (not quite, but almost) feel bad for Adobe right now. Apple has been unceremoniously dumping on Flash in a big way since the iPad announcement, and all Adobe can do is claim they don't ship known-buggy Flash releases and announce how much better Flash will perform on Macs when Flash 10.1 is released. Flash still has critical mass adoption among traditional computing devices (desktops and ...

A new mobile metrics company called GroundTruth has just posted a statistic on their blog showing that well over half (61%) of mobile online page views are to social networking sites. While anecdotally I've noticed that most of the people I see pecking away at their phone's keyboard are doing so on Facebook or Twitter, GroundTruth is including a number of lesser-known social networking sites in ...

You're probably aware of the insurance company Geico due to their ubiquitous quirky TV commercials featuring the Geico gecko. Some of their commercials are actually pretty funny, which I think is a good way to go about advertising. Now the company has added a page to their website where you can download audio clips from their commercials as ringtones. This seems like a blatant attempt to "go ...

The story of how NewsGator attempted to corner the market on consumer RSS has taken another strange turn. In an interview with Steven Hodson published on Hodson's Shooting at Bubbles site, Bradbury admits that he is no longer employed by NewsGator, but has retained the full rights to his popular FeedDemon RSS reader. NewsGator continues to offer FeedDemon, and the application is still ...

URL shorteners, while convenient, are bad for the web. They hide the true destination that they are pointing to, giving bad guys yet another tool in their arsenal, while conditioning web users to blindly trust the links they are clicking on. Further, as the debacle with tr.im showed us, URL shortening services aren't necessarily permanent. It's no coincidence that the rise in popularity of URL ...

What do you get when you take a gaggle of enthusiastic, early-adopting online marketers and introduce them to one of the world's largest directories of job-seeking college students? We're about to find out, now that Facebook is acquiring FriendFeed. The move should mean improved versions of the real-time status and conversation features that Facebook was already moving toward, but that's not all ...

Twitter, when used correctly, is the ultimate meritocracy. You can freely follow anyone you want, and just as freely unfollow them. For most users this means following people whose tweets they perceive they are gaining value from, and not following people who waste their time. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, particularly when it comes to so many of the self-professed "Social Media ...

Something feels a little wrong about having to rely on a company that defines itself as a social media analyst to discover fully 15% of the Twitter users that follow more than 2,000 accounts on the social network identify themselves as "social media marketers." that of the people who identify themselves as marketers, 15% follow more than 2,000 people compared to 0.3% of total Twitter users ...

I keep seeing a sensational story from Mashable flash across my radars today: "Bing Now Bigger Than Digg, Twitter and CNN." Golly, I guess millions in TV advertising really can make you win in this crazy marketplace, huh? Not so fast, bucko. Google isn't going anywhere, and digg, Twitter and CNN folks are likely not sweating this any more than I am. Why? First of all, let's consider the source. ...

Open-source software is everywhere, and developers use it to speed up their development on a regular basis. This is as it should be, for the most part, assuming the developers follow the licensing for whatever open-source software (OSS) they use. Along with licensing, the open-source community is, probably rightly so, very focused on attributing credit correctly. Considering that most OSS ...

The latest version of Amazon's ebook reader, the Kindle 2, has been attracting plenty of positive attention for its slimline form, style and functionality but has also drawn criticism from an unexpected quarter - from Authors Guild President and humorist, Roy Blount Jr, who isn't amused about the Kindle's new text to speech functionality. The Kindle 2 has a function that allows published works ...