Say you’re a student, you need all that money for books, supplies, transportation and beer among other things. You’re on a budget and you need to get savings where you can. My “best friends at Rogers” dropped me a note to let me know that they can help. Students can save up to $120 over 12 months and, for a limited time, get three months free Internet. That includes their fast LTE phones. Sounds like a deal? Check out www.rogers.com/superphones for more info.
Archive for August, 2012
Rogers Offers Students A Deal On Wireless For Students
Posted in Commentary with tags Rogers on August 29, 2012 by itnerdHey IT Nerd! Should I Buy A New BlackBerry Now Or Wait For BlackBerry 10 Devices To Ship?
Posted in Tips with tags BlackBerry, RIM on August 29, 2012 by itnerdIn my opinion, I would wait until the new BlackBerry 10 devices ship. That of course assumes that they ship at all and you actually want one. I say that because of what is on the horizon over the next few months. The new iPhone is due to be announced, Microsoft is going to have their latest Windows Phone on the market shortly, and the latest Google Android OS is rumored to be hitting the streets about that time as well. That means that you will have lots of choices. I would also consider the fact that BlackBerry 10 devices may not stack up to those options if and when they are released, which means you’ll be looking elsewhere for your next smartphone. Thus you’re better off waiting for the time being.
New Java Exploit Is A Threat To You…. Regardless Of What OS You Run [UPDATED]
Posted in Commentary with tags Java, Security on August 28, 2012 by itnerdThere’s a new Java vulnerability that has been discovered which poses a significant threat to systems running Java 7 update 6. In other words, the most recent version. It doesn’t matter if you run Windows, OS X, or LINUX. It affects them all. Details can be found on this blog post. I should note that Oracle is moving to a quarterly update cycle for Java, meaning that the next regularly-scheduled update to Java SE 7 is not planned until October. That’s a problem as there is no fix for this. So how do you protect yourself? Turn off Java until Oracle comes out with a fix.
UPDATE: Unsure if you’re affected? Check out this website which will see if you, your version of Java and your browser is exploitable. Then check out this site to see how to protect yourself.
Hey IT Nerd! What Do You Think Of The Apple/Samsung Patent Lawsuit?
Posted in Commentary with tags Apple, Lawsuit, Patents, Samsung on August 27, 2012 by itnerdI have to admit that the decision by a US court that Samsung infringed on Apple’s patents and the Korean tech giant has to pay up to the tune of $1 Billion was a bit stunning. Honestly, I was expecting the court to say that both sides had infringed on each others patents. Though Apple did have the jury in this case rule against some of Apple’s claims involving the two dozen Samsung devices at issue. So from that perspective it could have been worse for Samsung. Now Samsung is going to appeal (shock), and this could go on for years (as these sorts of things usually do), but one thing did cross my mind. Apple, is Samsung’s biggest customer as they get displays among other things from Samsung. How will that work long term? Will they remain frenemies? Another thing to consider. Apple and Samsung are suing each other all over the world. Now that this shoe has dropped, what’s going to happen to those lawsuits? Another thought. Will this start to push people towards iOS products and away from Android products? Finally, will other companies that make phones based on the Google Android OS feel the wrath of Apple in court? My thinking is yes as the late Steve Jobs said that he’d resort to “thermonuclear war” to destroy Android.
The bottom line is this. This war is far from over. In fact, it’s about to escalate and other parties are going to be drawn in. Count on it.
Java For Mac Installer Appears On Java Website….. Mac Users Should Care
Posted in Commentary with tags Java, Mac on August 26, 2012 by itnerdUp until this past week, the only way you could get Java on your Mac was to get it through Apple. Not the worst thing in the world except for the fact that it wasn’t updated as frequently as Java versions on other platforms. That opened half a million Macs up to being infected by the Flashback Trojan. Not good. After that episode, Java support moved to being supported and updated by Oracle. That means that something like the Flashback Trojan is much less likely to happen because any vulnerabilities would be closed quickly which means that exploits like the Flashback Trojan would have a very short shelf life.
So, if you want Java for Mac and you’re running OS X Lion or Mountain Lion, you can get it here. You might want to read this before installing it though. All of that of course assumes you need Java. Most users don’t. But if you do, you should really update now.
Human Demand Launches Self Serve Mobile Ad Platform
Posted in Products with tags Human Demand on August 25, 2012 by itnerdLet’s say you’re an app developer and you have a really amazing app. The question is, how do you get the word out? After all, you’re competing in a huge marketplace made up of app stores and word of mouth. A company called Human Demand has your answer. Their self serve platform allows app developers to begin acquiring and optimizing high lifetime value users the same day.
Okay. That sounds interesting, But here’s why I’m writing about this. Where traditional mobile ad players run blind, meaning advertisers do not know where their ads are running, Human Demand lets them see the actual name of every single app /publisher they are advertising on. Even more importantly within traditional ad companies, it is usually difficult if not impossible for advertisers to know what is actually performing, such as meeting their ROI objectives, because knowledge is typically hoarded in a “black box” vs. the Human Demand platform which is “open” and fully transparent.That to me is a game changer.
The platform is available for iOS and Android app developers and is live as I type this. If you’re an app developer, you should take a look. Perhaps it will make your app the next Angry Birds.
Rogers Latest Innovation Report Shows That There Is No Generation Gap
Posted in Commentary with tags Rogers on August 25, 2012 by itnerdFor years, I’ve always had the perception that young people knew more about technology than people who are my age (a number starting with 4 if you really must know) or older. The latest Rogers Innovation report dispels that to some degree. Take a look at this infographic to see what I am talking about:
Surprising isn’t it? If you want to see what else Rogers has to report, check out the report here. It’s bound to open your eyes a bit.
Hey IT Nerd! Should I Use Time Machine Or Some Other Backup Program To Backup My Mac?
Posted in Tips with tags Apple on August 25, 2012 by itnerdGood question. To answer this properly, I have to explain what the options that Mac users have to back up their Mac starting with Time Machine.
Recent versions of OS X come with a built in backup program called Time Machine which is unique in the following ways:
- It will automatically backs up your entire Mac as long as you point it towards an external drive via USB or across your network to a drive connected to an Apple Airport Extreme or to an Apple Time Capsule. Beyond setting it up, no user intervention is required.
- It remembers how your system looked on any given day. This allows you go back days, weeks ,or months to find a file that you’re looking for.
Sounds perfect right? To some degree it is. But there is a couple of downsides. Your backup isn’t bootable. That means to restore your backup in the event of a disaster, you have to boot from the Mac OS X DVD and choose the option to restore from a Time Machine backup. While not the worst thing in the world, that’s not exactly ideal in my mind. The other downside is that Time Machine will only back up to USB attached drives or Apple Time Capsule or drives attached to Apple Airport Extremes. If you have a third party Network Attached Storage box, then you’re out of luck unless you’re willing to hack OS X to make it work.
Contrast that to backup applications like SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner. Both of those allow you to create a bootable disk image. That means that in the event of a disaster, you could in theory boot from the image and restore it. However, the downside is that you need to do a bit more work with SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner to allow it to back up your Mac. But that complexity does give you the option to back up to any USB or Network Attached Storage drive which is a huge plus. Another plus is the ability to back up to multiple disk images in multiple locations. Great if you’re really paranoid. While the process to set this up isn’t overly complicated, it might be a bit too daunting for novice users.
So, which should you go for? It depends on your needs. If you simply need to back up your Mac with the least amount of fuss, go for Time Machine. If you want a few more options and you’re not afraid to get your hands dirty, then choose something like SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. But you should choose to back up your Mac or you might live to regret not doing so.
Review: SuperDuper 2.7
Posted in Products with tags Mac, SuperDuper on August 24, 2012 by itnerdBacking up your computer is something that you should do to protect your data. After all, once you lose it it’s gone forever. On my Mac I use SuperDuper by a small company named Shirt Pocket Software to backup my Mac. The software is very simple to use and creates Apple disk images that are bootable. Why is that important? That means it’s an exact copy of your Mac that makes recovery from a disaster a snap. That’s something that you don’t appreciate until you actually need to recover from a disaster. It’s also one thing that SuperDuper has over Apple’s Time Machine backup software which won’t create a bootable image and require you to hop through a ton of hoops to get back to where you need to be in the event of a disaster.
Another handy feature is Smart Update. In short, SuperDuper is smart enough to only update the things that it needs to update which means that it doesn’t take all that long to back up your Mac. Nice!. Plus you can automate all of this so that you don’t even have to think about it. In my case, I have it set to back up my Mac two separate disk images rotating between them every week using Smart Update starting at 2AM every morning. That way I can go back a week to find something if I have to. That only took minutes to set up.
Gripes? Only one. Every since I updated to Lion (and Mountain Lion since), I’ve had this intermittent problem where I look at my Mac in the morning and there’s a request for a username and password for my D-Link DNS-323 NAS box. I can’t type in either the username or password box and I have to click cancel. The dialog box with the username and password box pops up again. I can then enter the username and password that my NAS box expects and then SuperDuper works as designed. I think that this relates to a bug that was mentioned on the Shirt Pocket blog that apparently is being worked on. But I’m not sure. Some aspects of this bug doesn’t quite fit. We’ll see when Shirt Pocket releases an update.
Ignoring that, if you want a backup program that is simple to use and gives you an bootable back up that is easy to restore. Take a good look at SuperDuper. I’m pretty sure it will be exactly what you’re looking for in a backup program. It’s free to download and use, but if you want to use the more advanced features such as scheduling backups, it’s $27.95 USD. That’s a small price to pay for data security.
Sony Announces A Pile Of News Today
Posted in Commentary with tags Sony on August 29, 2012 by itnerdThe end of August brings us IFA 2012 which is one of the world’s largest electronics expo. Sony clearly wants to make a splash as they had no less than six announcements via press release. Here’s the highlights:
Clearly Sony is trying to make a splash at IFA with this amount of news in one day. That should get them a lot of positive attention. Not to mention that there’s a lot of product here that should interest everyone.
Leave a comment »