Every time I setup a new machine I have to make sure to remind myself to install adobe reader or some other kind of pdf reader like it or else my clients will invariably call me as soon as I’m out their door wondering why some (pdf) files they have does not load up. If you have a MAC, Preview will take care of all your pdf needs and more. Until Windows include one too, please read on.
For years that meant going to adobe.com and searching for that ever elusive ‘get adobe reader’ button. And for a while that has worked pretty well…until a few years ago. They started bundling google toolbar which made me have to read and uncheck this F#$%en ‘feature’ before I download. Not only was it annoying to be asked to install something you didn’t want but also to add insult to injury, it meant the file will be bigger and take you longer to download it. What finally made me give up completely on adobe reader was some time last year they started installing adobe.com and adobe air with every installation of adobe reader. Sure you can uninstall them AFTER you are done installing but they should have given you an option to not install it in the first place. Better yet they should have done what they did with the google toolbar and given you an opt-out option BEFORE you download reader. I’m sure these two forced-down-your-throat ‘features’ added over 10mb to the already bloated 90mb-ish download.
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It’s no big secret I’m a big fan of wikipedia. Not only is it free which in my book is the number one reason, but also it is truly an example of a great equalizer that the founders of the ‘new’ internet had hope to foster. Where else on earth or at any time in our civilization is the near sum total of our knowledge this freely available for the most humble of souls to leaders of superpowers. Each passing year sees this collection of knowledge grow in leaps and bounds. It is also a very democratic way of presenting the information. What becomes commonly excepted memes become embedded in the article as genuine facts. This is sometimes its’ downfall as anyone but specifically enough people with the wrong knowledge can pass that information to wikipedia as facts.
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Increasingly more people are ditching their landlines for mobile phones and voip. A friend of mine who use to work for a telephone company said phone company’s reliability and their infrastructures are the result of the cold war. There are lots of redundancies in phone lines to keep those system running in case of an emergency. When was the last time the power AND phone went out at your residence during a storm? As times have changed, even my friend has now switched from his fail proof landline to VOIP. This brings up an interesting question. What do you do when you want to send a fax and you have no phone line?
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My wife has an iPod Touch and she’s always behind in updates and new features because she feels she’s like a red headed step child when it comes to update from Apple. She is not alone. I don’t understand why Apple treats the iPod Touch so much different from their more hyped iPhone. Sure it makes them more money and gets all the media attention. Add a built in mic and bluetooth and the iPod Touch can be a phone too, via Skype.
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I am a person who uses two operating systems every day. My desktop is a Mac and my laptop is PC. Unlike your typical fanboys I appreciate both and am not partial to either one. I see them as tools to get a job done. There are things on each OS that I wish the other one had. One such item is a desktop background rotators for Windows. OSX has one built in while only Windows 7 will start having one. For everyone using Vista or below, one solution is WallPapa. While there are many to choose from, you should only use one that takes little system resources and easy to configure.
http://www.phoeniixz.net/software.html
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