Christmas 2009 Sales

Look at this site to find best sales for Christmas 2009 shopping and year round:
DealNews

Before ordering on any site, check this site for coupons to add additional discounts.
DealCoupon

Before going to the mall, check this site out for printable coupons.
Wow Printable Coupons

Some Black Friday 2009 notable sales:

Electronics
New Egg Black Friday

• 15.6" Laptop, Windows 7, 4GB Ram, 320GB HD, DVD drive, $399
• Samsung 52" LCD 120hz TV 1080P for $1489

Home Depot Sale

• up to 45% off appliances

Dell Sale

• Vizio 32" LCD 1080P TV for $399
• Laptop 10" Windows XP, 1 GB RAM, 160GB HD, no DVD, for $249
• Basic Desktop PC, Vista, 2GB RAM. 250GB HD, DVD, for $199
• 22" Monitor, 1080P, for $144
  

On Sale

• 26" LCD 720P TC for $209
  

HP DreamScreen

NEW picture frame that looks better than the previous frame I liked.
Watch the video of the frame:

10" $249, 13" - $299

Wolfram Search Engine

Stephen Wolfram, maker of Mathematica, has created a tool that is a milestone that harnesses vast amounts of data and makes it easily "computeable" from basic English questions.

I can see this as being like the launch day of Google, the next step in information harnessing. It has huge potential in science and general data research/analysis.


Below is a quick 13 minute walkthrough if this new tool. If you don't know about the Wolfram search engine, this is a MUST watch.

>> CLICK HERE for a walk through <<

I will guess Google will crush him in due time.

The search engine launches TODAY, May 15th, 2009
http://www.wolframalpha.com/index.html

Virus Protection and fixing

Assuming your system does NOT have a virus infection, but you are looking to protect your Windows PC, below are the three programs I recommend to ensure full protection.

Protect your system
1) AVG Virus Scanner - Free Edition , you can pay for the premium edition, but the basic should be fine. This program protects from Viruses, but not malware or trojan horses.
2) Spybot or Defender
Spybot Search and Destroy - Protects your Windows PC from malware or trojan horses. Has real-time protection. Unfortunately it is a bit chatty, and the end user may be confused by the pop-ups. Lesser protection, but easier for end users is:

MicroSoft Defender - Protects your Windows PC from malware or trojan horses. Seems less diligent than Spybot at protecting your system, but significantly less chatty. Good for people easily confused by tech.

Also I STRONGLY recommend not using MicroSoft internet explorer for web browsing, instead use FireFox. In addition, do NOT use Microsoft outlook, use Gmail. Gmail can get your "pop3" or normal email from your ISP provider.

NOTE: I am eager to switch from AVG to ClamWin, when Clamwin supports real-time virus protection.

Already Infected? Traditional Steps to fix
So your infected eh? Not sure what you got?
I recommend skipping to 5 and create a boot disk. I'll blog how to do this in greater detail on another post.

Otherwise, the traditional assault list.

1. Install Spybot and run.
   Other utilities you can try is:
   Ad Aware
   
2. Install virus scanner (AVG?) and run
   Other utilities you can try is:
   Trend MicroHousecall
   
3. Try to determine if infected. If unsure, go to web site and try to run online scanners. If you cannot run the online scanners, chances are your virus is blocking you.
   
   TrendMicro Online scanner for virus, spyware, and malware *Firefox Friendly!
   Kaspersky online scanner for virus & spyware
   F-Secure online scanner for viruses only
4. Still screwed up? If your a Techie download and run HiJackThis! A tool that helps you identify where your problems are. See tuturial here, and site to help analyze logs here.
5. Ready to throw in the towel? Time to get down and dirty. These are programs that create boot CD's to analyze your PC. This avoids booting an infected system, and thereby activating the virus/malware.
   
   Ultimate Boot Disk for Windows - Absolutely the best Windows utility disk. And its FREE!.
   F-Secure - Linux boot disk to find viruses
   Avira - Linux boot disk to viruses and malware
   Dr. Web Live CD - I haven't tried yet
6. The virus is gone, but windows was broken by step 5? Two programs to help. First it is important to have a windows Installation Disk that matches your Service Pack. To upgrade your older Windows XP Installation disk to Service Pack 3. Follow these directions on how to use a program called nLite to make your new Windows XP Installation CD.
   
   Once you have a spanking new Installation CD, read up on how to run a repair installation.
   
   If you need to boot windows from a CD, to copy off critical files before reinstalling windows, check out Ultimate Boot CD, based on Bart PE. UBCD llows you to take a windows CD and create a bootable windows CD, and auto-install a wide variety of utilities. Of course you need a working windows machine with a CD burner to do so. :)
7. The final step, the big one. If you STILL can't get rid of the virus and/or your machine is toast. Back up all data you can using BartPE or UBCD above. Once backed up, use windows installation disk to format the entire drive and do a clean installation of Windows XP.
   

*NOTE* With some viruses this still may not get rid of it. Some viruses can hide on the hard drive after a format. To be 100% sure you are virus clean, toss the existing hard drive and install a new hard drive.

Internet TV

Internet TV is now here. All that is missing is a portal that unifies all the GREAT content available on TV. I already posted about Twit.TV, a channel I listen to daily through my iPhone. It's the best tech channel bar none.

I'll update this blog entry as I find more sites that have great Internet TV content available.
Truveo.com - Search engine to find video content on the web
Hulu.com, TV.com , Fancast.com, Veoh.com, TV, movies, you name it, all available with short commercials. The "buzz" in online TV. TV.com available on iphone
Crackle.com - Unique from the pack, has some good original web-only content.
CBS.com , NBC.com , ABC.com, Fox.com , you guessed it, major network content on the web.
SciFi.com, ComedyCentral.com, MTV.com, Some of the many cable networks with video available on the net
CNBC.com, CNN.com, Bloomberg.com, Live News Video
NetFlix.com , Amazon.com , itunes.com , MovieFlix.com - Pay services offering streaming video


Boxee.tv - A front end program to unify everything above. A must for a livingroom PC.
A funny series available on Crackle.com, linked episode one below.

From Crackle: Star-ving Ep 1 feat Ed O’Neill & David Faustino

The Best Digital Picture Frame

I have been watching digital picture frames for years, waiting for the "perfect" one to come along.
It has arrived, and it is called the Kodak EasyShare W820 (click for Kodak Site)

Let me highlight the features

• Has 8" Bright Vibrant LCD display, with frame border colors of White, deep red, or grey.
  
• Connect to your Wi-Fi network, allowing new photos to be streamed to the frame (Supports WPA2)
• Easy to configure and change the Picture settings frame by touching NEXT to the screen (around the edge)
• Picture Frame can connect to your Flickr, or ANY RSS picture feed
• SD Expansion slot for storing/displaying locally stored content
• Can play movies, music, wide variety of picture formats, RSS news feeds, weather, etc.
  
• Windows based software to assist in easy configuration

The Flickr combined with WiFi is the perfect combination. With a Flickr account, you can upload all your pictures, for friends, family, or the world to see. Flickr allows you to set the permissions of who is allowed to see the pictures, at 4 levels, just you, Friends, Family, or everyone.

Once you have Flickr setup, with pictures uploaded, you can create picture "sets" to allow you to organize the pictures. Using Flickr, you can create Flickr "contact list" of trusted friends and family, allowing each other to see pictures.

From your picture frame, using the touch screen border, you can choose which picture sets you have to display, or a friends/family picture set, or an RSS feed (such as from Picassa).

The display pictures can be set from 3 seconds up to 1 hour between picture changes. The frame can be scheduled what time to turn on and off, example from 7am to 11pm turn on.

I have had the frame operating for less than a day, and it has already surpassed my expectations. I purchased 4 frames for $129.00 each with free shipping on 12/1/08 from Kodak direct.

Be sure to get the EXACT same model, Kodak EasyShare W820 or W1020 (I assume it has the same features, but a 10" screen). Kodak has a wide variety of frames, the W820 is the one to get.

As of 1/1/09, the frame is available for $138 + shipping and tax at Beach Audio.
If you purchase this frame, email me, we can exchange Flickr info!