Archive for November, 2012

Newer Entries »

Stolen Smartphones Get Blacklisted In Canada

Posted in Commentary with tags , on November 8, 2012 by itnerd

Something that has always bothered by having a smartphone is that they are “must steal” items for thieves due to the fact that they resell for such high dollar values. But those days may be coming to an end with the announcement that Canada’s wireless providers will have a database of lost and stolen smartphones online by 2013:

The move would also help protect personal data on such devices, the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association said Thursday.

Smartphones are worth $600 to $700 and can be resold on the black market, noted association president Bernard Lord.

“With this database, it makes that a lot less attractive because the buyer of the stolen phone will not be able to connect to any network in Canada,” Lord said from Ottawa.

“It eliminates the incentive for stealing a device.”

The idea is also to reduce the black market value of a smartphone in the eyes of criminals, Lord added.

Once consumers call their wireless carrier to report their smartphone lost or stolen, the device’s internal identification number goes on the electronic blacklist.

This is a good step that I think will reduce smartphone theft. But it’s a first step. I think other things have to be done varying from stiffer penalties for theft and the use of tracking technologies such as “Find My iPhone” by Apple. Those will also help as well.

What are your thoughts? Share your wisdom below.

2 Comments »

Digital Backpack Joins Samsung Enterprise Alliance Program

Posted in Commentary with tags on November 8, 2012 by itnerd

I got some big news about Digital Backpack today. As frequent readers know, I’ve covered their groundbreaking technology previously. Now they’ve joined the Samsung Enterprise Alliance Program as a silver member. Why is that big news? I’ll quote their press release that they sent me for the reason:

Samsung created the Enterprise Alliance Program to enable leading domestic and global ISV and SI partners to create new profit models through the enterprise mobile solution business. The program is designed to develop a mobile ecosystem where its partners can help each other grow their businesses and profits through differentiated benefits for sales, marketing and solution development.
 
“We’re delighted to be a partner in the Samsung Enterprise Alliance Program,” says Mike Sommer, CEO of Digital Backpack. “Samsung’s guidance and expertise will be invaluable in helping us further improve our Digital Backpack’s mobile application platform and content deployment system. By being a part of this program, we hope to have even more success in growing Digital Backpack into the market leader for enterprise mobile content delivery and app management.”

So this means that Digital Backpack will get the attention of any enterprise that is deploying Samsung phones and tablets. Not only that, but it is going to give Digital Backpack serious street cred even if an enterprise isn’t deploying Samsung product. If I were you, I’d add Digital Backpack to the must watch list. They’re another Canadian company that is going places.

Leave a comment »

Hey IT Nerd! What Do I Need To Do To Maintain My Mac?

Posted in Tips with tags , on November 8, 2012 by itnerd

About ten minutes after I posted this article, I got a pile of e-mails from Mac fanbois users demanding equal time. Okay then. Much like the PC, my suggestions make up a very short list as OS X really does a lot for you such as defragmentation of the hard disk. But there are two things that I do recommend that you do once a month:

  • Update OS X: Make sure that you’ve got the latest patches installed as they squash bugs and make your Mac safer.
  • Run Disk Utility: This alone will keep your Mac healthy. The steps to do vary depending on which version of OS X you are currently running. There’s an Apple Support document on this here, but here’s what you need to know from that document:
  1. Start from the Recovery System or Internet Recovery (OS X Lion or Mountain Lion).
    If your computer shipped with a Mac OS X Install disc, insert the installation disc, and restart the computer while holding the C key.
  2. If using a Recovery partition or Internet Recovery (OS X Lion and later): When your computer finishes starting up, choose Disk Utility from the Utilities window.
    If using an installation disc: Choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu.
    Important: If you started from an installation disc, do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must start from the disc again to access Disk Utility.
  3. Click the First Aid tab.
  4. Click the disclosure triangle to the left of the hard drive icon to display the names of your hard disk volumes and partitions.
  5. Select your OS X volume.
  6. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk.

If you feel that you need some other tool to do this, I recommend DiskWarrior which I’ve reviewed previously. I highly recommend it as it’s great at bringing data back from the dead and making sure you stay out of trouble. The truth is that the tools that come with OS X work just fine for most users. So don’t feel that you have to do get DiskWarrior to keep your Mac in tip top shape.

  • Run a tool like Onyx or Crap Cleaner to clean up crap: There are two tools that I recommend for cleaning up temp files and the like off of your hard drive. Onyx is the best known tool out there for this sort of thing and is frequently updated for a variety of versions of OS X. But recently Crap Cleaner has appeared on the Mac. PC users have used this for years and it’s worked quite well over there. The Mac version is equally as effective.
  • Back up your Mac: Bad things happen to good Macs. Thus it’s always good to make sure you have a current backup. You can get some suggestions from an article that I wrote on the subject.

That’s pretty much it. If you do those things, you Mac will always run at top speed.

Leave a comment »

BlackBerry 10 Could Be “Dead On Arrival” Says Analyst

Posted in Commentary with tags , on November 7, 2012 by itnerd

RIM didn’t need any more negative news, but they got some today. Pacific Crest Securities analyst James Faucette said the company’s new BlackBerry 10 operating system may be “dead on arrival” via a research note obtained by Bloomberg:

“We believe BB10 is likely to be DOA,” James Faucette, a Pacific Crest analyst in Portland, Oregon, said in a report. He has the equivalent of a sell rating on the shares. “We expect the new OS to be met with a lukewarm response at best and ultimately likely to fail.”

The bad news doesn’t end there:

Pacific Crest’s Faucette remains bearish. Phones with the software, due in the first quarter of 2013, will struggle to attract buyers because of an unfamiliar user interface, a lack of compatible technology and few software applications, he said. Any opportunity for a sale of all or part of the company may have passed, he said.

You can guess what happened next. Share of RIM went into free fall shortly thereafter. As I type this, the stock is down 9%.

Perhaps I’m wrong, but seeing how Apple and Google have such a lead in the smartphone market, I do not see a scenario where RIM can recover from this sort of bad news.

1 Comment »

Other Canadian Cell Carriers Join The Unlimited Party [UPDATED]

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on November 7, 2012 by itnerd

It looks like Rogers isn’t the only one to have an announcement involving unlimited cell phone plans. Other providers quickly joined the party:

  • Bell is joining the party by offering new plans that seem real familiar. If you take a look at their press release, they’ve pretty much matched Rogers.
  • Telus is next on the list with eerily similar plans as well according to MobileSyrup.
  • Fido which is owned by Rogers has a $57 plan that offers unlimited text and talk and 1GB of data. That doesn’t sound half bad to me. The only catch is that it is a limited time offer until November 25th.

So, is this good for Canadian cell phone users? Or shall I be cynical and chalk this up to this up to the oligopoly that exists in the Canadian cell phone marketplace? Post a comment and share your thoughts.

UPDATE: Telus has now issued a press release on their plans.

1 Comment »

Rogers Brings Their Cell Phone Plans Into The 21st Century

Posted in Uncategorized with tags on November 7, 2012 by itnerd

I guess that Rogers is feeling the heat from all the new entrants in the Canadian cell phone space who have offered either unlimited voice and text or unlimited voice, text, and data for some time now. I say that because Rogers has pretty much overhauled their cell phone plans so that they are much simpler and encompass unlimited voice and text. Here’s how the new plans shape up:

Now there is one plan at the low end that has 1000 voice minutes a month but a measly 200MB of data, but other than that the plan look decent on the surface. Your only challenge will be to pick the data package that is right for you. These plans are available starting today and existing customers can update their plan at any time with no cost to migrate.

Now if Rogers would do something about that activation fee like Telus has.

Leave a comment »

Hey IT Nerd! What Do I Need To Do To Maintain My PC?

Posted in Tips with tags , on November 7, 2012 by itnerd

Contrary to popular belief, not a whole lot actually. Here’s a list of things that I recommend that you do once a month in the following order:

  • Update Windows: If your copy of Windows is up to date with all of the latest patches, then it’s going to be reasonably secure. Not to mention that any bugs that are out there are going to be fixed.
  • Use Crap Cleaner: There’s a great freeware tool out there called Crap Cleaner. I use it to clean all the crap that Windows seems to want to create, such as temp files and the like. Plus it will also clean up your registry. I highly recommend it.
  • Run Windows Disk Error Checking: You want to make sure that you find out about any problems that may be lurking on your hard disk early enough so that you can fix them or take more evasive action. Fortunately, Windows has built in tools for that. Simply right click your hard drive in My Computer and click Properties and then Tools. You’ll see the option for error checking your hard disk and it’s pretty straightforward to use. You will need to restart your computer to make it happen though.
  • If you have Windows XP, defrag your hard disk: Unlike Windows Vista and Windows 7, XP users need to defrag their hard disk from time to time to make sure that everything on it is accessed in an optimal manner. You don’t need to buy any extra tools to do this. Simply right click your hard drive in My Computer and click Properties and then Tools. You’ll see the option for defragmenting your hard disk and it’s pretty straightforward to use.
  • Uninstall any programs that you don’t need: If there are programs on your hard disk and you don’t use them, at the very least they’re taking up space. At worst, they’re stealing CPU cycles that can be better used elsewhere. So if you don’t use it, remove it. After you uninstall, it might be handy to run Crap Cleaner again to make sure that everything is gone.
  • Back up your PC: You should always have your data safely backed up in case the worst happens. I’ve got tips on that here.

That’s pretty much it. It doesn’t require anything more than that and you’ll find that your PC will run as good as it possibly can.

1 Comment »

Goodbye Microsoft Outlook 2011, It Was Nice Knowing You – Part 2

Posted in Tips with tags , on November 7, 2012 by itnerd

So after transferring my mail from Outlook 2011 to Apple Mail, the next task was to move my contacts, appointments, notes, and to-dos. I wanted to make this as painless as possible, so I leveraged something from a failed experiment to connect Outlook 2011 to iCloud. Outlook 2011 has a feature called Sync Services that was designed to sync your contacts, appointments, notes and to-dos with the Apple supplied apps. It doesn’t work with Mountain Lion which means it won’t sync with iCloud because Apple have abandoned support for Sync Services. But what it did allow me to do is to push contacts and appointment items to the Contacts and Calendar apps. I have to admit that it took a couple of tries to make it work, but I did follow the instructions in the link above to make it work.

When it comes to notes and to-dos, I had to re-enter them into Notes and Tasks. Not a bit deal as I had a few of them and I could copy and paste them easily enough.

After all of this, I have my stuff moved out of Outlook. Only one last thing to do. After a sanity check to make sure everything worked, I deleted the outlook data to get back the space that it occupied. I deleted the folder ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2011 Identities/Main Identity and its subfolders. Of course, I have a backup just in case.

For bonus points, I turned on iCloud and everything popped up into it almost instantly. Cool.

Outlook 2011 is now a distant memory.

Leave a comment »

Got MSN Messenger? Microsoft Wants You To Dump It For Skype

Posted in Commentary with tags , on November 6, 2012 by itnerd

The days of MSN Messenger appear to be over. An announcement posted on the Skype blog announced the death of MSN Messenger:

We’ve got good news to share! Skype and Messenger are coming together. Millions of Messenger users will be able to reach their Messenger friends on Skype. By updating to Skype, Messenger users can instant message and video call their Messenger friends.

This effort started with the release of Skype 6.0 for Mac and Windows a few weeks ago, which allows you to sign into Skype using a Microsoft account. Now Messenger users just need to update to the latest version of Skype, sign in using a Microsoft account, and their Messenger contacts will be there.

Our goal remains to deliver the best communications experience for everyone, everywhere. We want to focus our efforts on making things simpler for our users while continuously improving the overall experience. We will retire Messenger in all countries worldwide in the first quarter of 2013 (with the exception of mainland China where Messenger will continue to be available).

At one point, MSN Messenger was the number one Instant Messaging platform. So it’s sad to see it go. But it’s not a surprise as Microsoft spend the GDP of a small country go buy Skype from eBay. So they had to make it work for them somehow.

In the meantime, I’d be upgrading to the latest version of Skype sooner rather than later.

1 Comment »

Goodbye Microsoft Outlook 2011, It Was Nice Knowing You – Part 1

Posted in Tips with tags , on November 6, 2012 by itnerd

Ever since Microsoft Office 2011 came out for the Mac, I’ve been using Outlook 2011 as my main e-mail client. I have had challenges with Apple Mail in the past and Outlook 2011 promised to be a lot better than Microsoft Entourage, which was a second rate e-mail client for Mac users. But two things have made me switch back to Apple Mail. The first is the fact that Outlook is not compatible with iCloud and there is no timetable as to when it might be. I figured it would be nice to have my contacts and the like accessible from anywhere. That ties into my second reason. With the troubles of RIM, I figured that my next smartphone is likely to be an iPhone. Thus moving back to Apple Mail would be the way to go.

Now when you make this switch, you’re actually doing more than moving to Apple Mail:

  • Your contacts go into the Address Book application.
  • Your appointments go into the Calendar application.
  • Your notes go into the Notes application.
  • Your to-do’s go into the Reminders application.

So as you can see, it’s not a minor undertaking. The big issue was going to be exporting my mail from Outlook 2011 to Apple Mail. Now Microsoft doesn’t make this easy as their import and export function doesn’t export into anything that Apple Mail can deal with. However, it does have a hidden “feature” that allows you to export your mail in MBOX format which Apple Mail does understand. Here’s how you do it:

  1. Open Outlook
  2. Click and drag each folder onto the desktop. Please note that you must drag each individual folder (such as the Inbox, Sent Items, etc.) separately. Each drag will take a while to complete if you have a lot of Mail so be patient.
  3. Open Mail.
  4. Go to File, Import Mailboxes and select the last option “Files in MBOX format.” Click Continue.
  5. Pick the first MBOX file on the desktop and click continue.
  6. Mail will import the MBOX file and place it in a folder on the left hand side called “Import.”
  7. Repeat step 6 for the other MBOX files.
  8. Once you’ve done the above for each MBOX file you will then need to drag and drop inside Mail to rearrange the imported folders into their proper places.
  9. Click on the inbox and click Rebuild. That way you know that your import is healthy. Do the same for the sent items and other folders.

Because I have a lot of mail (over 27,000 things in my inbox and sent items), this process took me about two hours. But I was able to get all my mail across to Apple Mail.

Finally, you have to make Apple Mail your default e-mail client. Simply go to Mail, Preferences, General to set your default e-mail client to Apple Mail.

So, step one was done. Now what about the rest of it? I’ll cover that in part 2 tomorrow.

Leave a comment »

Newer Entries »