Nokia N900 (unlocked)

The Nokia N900 is the next evolution of the company's Internet Table, and don't let its smaller size fool you. It delivers more power, adds phone capabilities, and has one of most robust mobile Web browsers on the market today. It also runs on the Linux-based Maemo platform, which offers great customization options and multitasking abilities but has yet to live up to its full possibilities. The N900 feels incomplete with its limited Exchange support and an app store that has yet to go live. Also, the user interface is incredibly unintuitive, making it frustrating to use at times. Like we said, there's plenty of potential there, but for now, the N900 is probably best for tech enthusiasts or early adopters, while those after an everyday, more mainstream smartphone should stick with the current crop of favorites. The Nokia N900 is available unlocked for $569, though you may be able to find it for less online.
Design

Aside from the slider design, the Nokia N900 bears very little resemblance to its predecessors. Instead of a tablet form factor, the N900 looks more like one of the N series smartphones, such as the N96, but is on the bulkier side at 4.37 inches wide by 2.35 inches tall by 0.77 inch thick and 6.38 ounces. In hand, the N900 feels like a very solid phone but the extra weight is noticeable when you're on a phone call and it'll make for a bit of a tight fit in a pants pocket.


The Nokia N900 is a bit on the heavier and thicker side.

There are a couple of quirks about the smartphone. First, most apps only work in landscape Nokia N900 mode and there are very few that work in portrait mode. In fact, the only one we could find was the phone app. It's not a deal-breaker but we'd definitely like to have the option of using more apps in portrait mode. Also, there are no Talk and End keys (or any other of the standard navigation buttons), so a simple task of making a phone call requires a couple of extra steps. This wouldn't be such a huge deal if the user interface was a bit more intuitive (more on this later), but if you're using the device for the first time and trying to make a call or simply trying to Nokia N900 return to the previous menu, it can be slightly confusing.

Without physical navigation buttons, you'll mostly use the N900's 3.5-inch resistive touch screen to get around the phone, and it is quite a beauty. The WVGA display (800x480 pixels) is amazingly sharp and bright and has an ambient light sensor and brightness controls. Also, although it's a resistive touch screen, which requires that you use a little more Nokia N900 pressure than capacitive screens, we found it to be very responsive to our Nokia N900 touches, whether we were opening an app, scrolling through lists, or switching between home screens.


We found the N900's QWERTY keyboard fairly easy to use, though we didn't like the off-center placement of the space key.

For text entry, you get a full QWERTY keyboard, which you can access by pushing the screen upward. There isn't much space between the keys, but the buttons are a good size and have a nonslippery texture and a slight bump to them, so most users should have no problem with the N900's keyboard. Our only complaint is that Nokia has, once again, placed the space bar off center, which interrupts the flow of typing, particularly for left-handers since it's located on the right side. We don't really understand why the company Nokia N900 keeps doing this.

While you don't get the Nokia N900 standard navigation array, there are some physical controls on the Nokia N900 exterior of the smartphone. On top of the device, you'll find a volume rocker, a power button, and a camera activation/capture key. The right side holds a lock switch, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a stylus, while there's a Micro-USB port on the left. The camera and dual LED flash are located on back, both of which are protected by a sliding cover, and like the Nokia N86, there is a kickstand so you can prop up the device to watch movies or view a photo slideshow.

User interface
As we mentioned earlier, the Nokia N900's UI isn't very easy to use right out of the box, but with time and customization, it can offer a lot. Running on the Linux-based Maemo platform, the smartphone offers four home-screen panes that you can rotate through by swiping from left to right and vice versa. You can personalize each pane with various widgets and shortcuts. To do so, just press on a part of the home screen (outside of any Nokia N900widgets or shortcuts), and you'll see a little tab menu with a settings Nokia N900 wheel icon drop down from the top of the screen. Pressing that will Nokia N900 bring up another Desktop menu in which you can choose to add a shortcut, contact, bookmark, widget and also change your background or theme. There's also a Manage View option, and you can remove any of the home screens if you think four is too many. To remove any items from a pane, press the X on the right-hand corner of the widget or shortcut.

You may see one of two icons in the upper-left-hand corner on each of the home panes. When you don't Nokia N900 have any apps open, you'll see a grid icon, which when pressed, will take a main menu of apps. If you're running other programs, you will see an icon with multiple windows and this takes you to a page that shows all your running apps. From there you can switch to a different program or exit out of one, making multitasking on the N900 quite easy.

Figuring out how all the menus work and what each icon is takes time and in our experience, requires a lot of trial and error. For example, once you get deeper into a task, it's not always Nokia N900 clear how to return to the previous page (you just tap outside the Nokia N900 window, by the way), and a simple task like this shouldn't be so confusing. Nokia N900 However, you learn with more use and with more time; we customized the user interface to our liking and found it quite useful, especially the multitasking Nokia N900 window.

Accessories
The Nokia N900 comes Nokia N900 packaged Nokia N900 with an AC adapter, a stereo headset, video-out cables, a cleaning cloth, and reference material. For more add-ons, please check our cell phone accessories, ringtones, and help page.

Ubuntu Linux founder stepping down as CEO

Ubuntu Linux backer Canonical is changing top management in an effort to become more operationally disciplined, with founder Mark Shuttleworth passing the chief executive job to Chief Operations Officer Jane Silber by March 1.

Shuttleworth will continue working at the company, focusing on the company's desktop Linux product, its cloud-computing efforts, and meetings with partners central to the company's business. Silber, who has worked for the company for almost all its five-year history, will spend more of her time on Canonical's enterprise products for business customers.
Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth speaking at the Intel Developer Forum

Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth speaking at the Intel Developer Forum
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

"Within the company I can say very strongly everyone's expectations will be that Jane will bring a focus on financial performance as much as operational performance. It's something I want for the company," Shuttleworth said in a conference call with reporters Thursday.

Shuttleworth founded Ubuntu and Canonical in part as a reaction to Red Hat and Novell's Suse Linux, both of which are available as a free version that differs from the commercially supported product. With Ubuntu, the two versions are the same, meaning that those who want the better-tested and certified product need not necessarily pay for it. Canonical does offer support subscriptions and is working on gradually proving its server operating system's mettle beyond just test and development situations.

Canonical today has two other main lines of business besides its Linux server support: partnerships to help with operating-system technology for Netbook companies, including most recently Google for its Chrome OS; and selling support for Ubuntu's newer cloud-computing technology developed in partnership with Eucalyptus Systems. The Eucalyptus technology is compatible with Amazon Web Services options including the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3), but lets customers use the technology in their own data centers or in combination with Amazon.

Shuttleworth, who funds Canonical with wealth stemming from selling his Thawte Internet consulting business to Verisign in 1999, takes a long-term view of the company's finances.

"We are not profitable. But we continue to believe we're on the right trajectory," Shuttleworth said.

"Five years is a long time," he said, but Canonical wants to be a platform company on which others house or build their own technology. "Those take a substantial amount of time to get a foothold. We continue to invest in areas that make us a complete platform rather than focusing on the things that could achieve profitability fastest."

The company presently has more than 300 employees, he said.

Canonical releases new versions of Ubuntu every six months, the most recent being 9.10, called "Karmic Koala." Version 10.4, or "Lucid Lynx," is due in April. It will be one of the LTS versions that comes with long-term support for customers who don't enjoy upgrading their operating systems frequently. Canonical releases LTS versions every two years.

Apple update embraces Canon, Nikon raw files

Apple released one of its routine Mac OS X updates on Wednesday to let its computers handle raw images from a handful of new Nikon and Canon SLRs as well as from Canon's newer high-end PowerShot G11 compact camera.

The update lets Mac OS X 10.6 as well as Apple's iPhoto and Aperture software handle the raw image files taken directly from the camera's sensors without in-camera processing. Raw photo formats offer more quality and flexibility at the cost of convenience and file size.

The update supports Canon's new professional EOS-1D Mark IV and high-end EOS 7D SLRs. Among Nikons, the support ranges from the entry-level D3000, the higher-end D300S, and the professional D3S.

Windows relies on camera makers to supply software to decode the raw images. Adobe Systems and Apple write their own modules to decode the proprietary raw formats.

Study: iPhone beats Windows Mobile in market share

Apple's iPhone has topped Microsoft's Windows Mobile in U.S. market share of smartphone operating systems for the first time, putting it in the No. 2 spot, according to a report from ComScore released Thursday.

In February, 5.2 million respondents to ComScore's survey reported using Apple's iPhone, while 6.8 million reported using phones running Microsoft's Windows Mobile, according to a report on FierceDeveloper. ComScore, a market research firm, averages results in a three-month period.

In May, Apple's number rose to 5.7 million, then 6.6 million in July, and finally to a high of 8.9 million for October, the most recent period for which results are available. In comparison, Microsoft rose in May to 7 million, dropped in July to 6.6 million, and went back up in October to 7.1 million.

The highest market share numbers in the survey go to Research In Motion's BlackBerry. It registered 9.6 million in February, 12.2 million in May, 13 million in July, and 14.9 million in October.

It's interesting to note that Palm's number rose from 2.3 million to 2.8 million in 2009, and Google's Android operating system rose to a high of 1 million by October.

The survey asked U.S. mobile subscribers, who had to be over the age of 13, what type of phone they use. ComScore then figured out what operating system they were using and calculated the data for the report.

FTC may enter latest Facebook privacy debacle

Privacy advocates opposed to new privacy regulations at Facebook are attempting to get the attention of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, according to a complaint filed Thursday on behalf of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and several allied groups.

"These changes violate user expectations, diminish user privacy, and contradict Facebook's own representations," the complaint says of Facebook's new regulations, which push more content public, and make even more data available to third-party applications and advertisers. EPIC's goal is to force Facebook to restore the old settings and add additional controls for members.

"We've had productive discussions with dozens of organizations around the world about the recent changes, and we're disappointed that EPIC has chosen to share their concerns with the FTC while refusing to talk to us about them," a retaliatory statement from Facebook read. "We're pleased that so many users have already gone through the process of reviewing and updating their privacy settings, and are impressed that so many have chosen to customize their settings, demonstrating the effectiveness of Facebook's user empowerment and transparency efforts. Of course, the new tools offer users the opportunity to decide on privacy with every photo, link, or status update they wish to post, so the process of personalizing privacy on Facebook will continue."

It's one thing when Facebook users start complaining about new features that they deem excessively creepy--just look at the outrage that surrounded the News Feed, now a mainstay of the site, when it launched in 2006.

It's a bigger fish entirely when government regulatory bodies get involved, particularly the FTC, which has major sway over the advertising and marketing industries. It was only when privacy groups flagged concerns about Facebook's Beacon advertising program two years ago that participating advertisers started to pull out amid bad publicity. A class action settlement over the Beacon program was resolved recently.

Since then, Facebook hasn't had a privacy-related debacle on the same scale. Much of the philosophy behind Beacon was baked into its Facebook Connect universal log-in tool, which shares information from third-party sites on Facebook profiles and lets users log into other sites with their Facebook credentials. But with the public-relations pitch geared toward making the entire online experience easier for users (fewer passwords to remember, no more registration headaches) rather than helping advertisers exploit social-networking channels, the debut of Facebook Connect wasn't subject to the same scrutiny.

The controversial new privacy standards at Facebook have been a long time coming, considering the fact that the social network started to publicly set the groundwork nearly six months ago with a series of announcements about modified privacy controls. It's clear that the company was trying to avoid the sort of press bloodbath that came after the debut of Beacon.

That didn't happen. Facebook has already backtracked on one component of its new privacy regulations, one which made users' friends lists publicly available. It's unclear as to how much EPIC's coalition, not to mention the FTC, will prioritize this most recent controversy.

Behind Facebook's traditional willingness to make tweaks and modifications to new features and products, if they spark some kind of concern among government regulatory bodies or marketers, is a fight that the company will not give up easily. What it all comes down to is that Facebook's once-watertight log-in wall--remember the time that representatives mulled banning a blogger who'd posted Facebook-hosted photos publicly?--is getting in the way of the social network's potentially central role in one of the digital world's crazes du jour, searchable real-time information.

Search companies have been announcing big deals to pull Facebook status messages and Twitter tweets into results, and the media business has gone nuts over the potential to harness the "real-time Web."

Facebook, dependent on advertising revenues and still looking to expand its base of more than 350 million users, obviously wants in on this. But if it doesn't have enough status messages, shared links, and other information pulled into search results, it stands a chance at losing ground to the much-smaller Twitter--already the top name, in terms of a massive, searchable clearinghouse for up-to-the-minute information.

Plus, there are marketers and advertisers for Facebook to consider: more search results equals more page views and more ad revenue, and more public information on users' profiles means more ways for the advertising industry to reach them. But if those same marketers and advertisers are the ones pressuring Facebook to change course, in terms of user privacy, it could cause some friction between the social network and the businesses that have finally begun to accept it as a choice destination for their ad dollars.

Now EPIC is alleging to the FTC that Facebook's new regulations can be outright dangerous: "Dozens of American Facebook users, who posted political messages critical of Iran, have reported that Iranian authorities subsequently questioned and detained their relatives," an item in the complaint reads. "Under the revised privacy settings, Facebook makes such users' friends lists publicly available."

That's not good PR for Facebook, which has repeatedly pitched itself as a destination for open dialogue and grassroots organization across zones of political and ethnic conflict.

Microsoft to fix Zune HD censoring issue

It has only been available for a day, but already the Zune HD's Twitter app is being updated after it was criticized by users for automatically abbreviating explicit words in users' tweets. It doesn't even give them the option of determining when or which words should be censored.

As you might expect, the Web is overflowing with unhappy users. Commenters on the Slashdot entry discussing the censors were up in arms over the feature. Quite a few of those folks echoed "rocket97's" comments, who said that the "[censors] should be an option, not a requirement." Others took the opportunity to (you guessed it) censor curse words within the comments to voice their protest.

They might have a point. Twitter itself doesn't censor any tweets that contain curse words. Even Twitter clients like TweetDeck don't censor tweets or direct messages from Twitter users.

It didn't take long for Microsoft to respond. After seeing that users were having issues with the application, Microsoft admitted that the app does indeed censor explicit tweets. It also said in an e-mailed statement to CNET News that it plans to rectify the situation soon.

"The recently released Twitter for Zune HD application has been abbreviating some explicit words in tweets when viewed on the device," a Microsoft spokesperson admitted to CNET News. "However, these explicit words do appear in their full text on the Twitter site or on any other Twitter client. We have identified the issue and are taking steps to update the application as soon as possible to ensure Twitter for Zune HD users are able to view tweets in their original state."

RIM beats expectations on strong BlackBerry sales

On the day that Research In Motion suffered another nationwide mobile e-mail outage, it announced it beat analyst expectations in the fiscal third quarter of 2009 with strong sales of its BlackBerry smartphones.

BlackBerry Bold
(Credit: Research In Motion)

The company's earnings were up 59 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago. For the period that ended November 30, the company reported earnings of $628.4 million, or $1.10 per share, compared to $396.3 million, or 69 cents a share, for the fiscal third quarter last year.

Analysts had expected the company to report earnings of $1.04 per share on revenue around $3.78 billion.

The company said it shipped 10.1 million smartphones during the quarter. And it added about 4.4 million new subscribers. Analysts were expecting shipments of 9.5 million with 4.1 million new subscribers.

Some industry watchers have wondered if the new Motorola Droid that uses Google's Android operating system would hurt BlackBerry sales. The Droid is one of two Android devices being sold for Verizon Wireless, and it is the closest competitor offered on Verizon's network to the Apple iPhone, which is sold exclusively in the U.S. for AT&T's wireless network.

Strong sales on RIM's part indicate that the Droid and other Android devices introduced during RIM's fiscal third quarter did not present a major threat to the smartphone maker.

Still, Verizon is spending more money marketing the Droid than it has on any other phone that it has sold on its network. But RIM's co-CEO Jim Balsillie said that Verizon continues to be an important strategic partner. And he said that the market is growing so fast that there is enough business to go around.

"The proportion of smartphones to the total market is crossing 50 percent," he said. "And we see that going to 100 percent. It's just a question of when. The overall market is growing for smartphones and we have a very important place to play in that."

But he admitted that RIM can't afford to rest on its laurels. The company's devices are favorites among corporate customers.

"At the end of the day, you can't force love," he said. "You have to earn it every day. There is no free ride in this. But we have a good sense of what we are doing in this quarter and we feel we create value everyday."

RIM's strong earnings report comes on the same day the company experienced a nationwide e-mail outage for consumers using its BlackBerry devices. Earlier Thursday before the company reported results, RIM confirmed that some BlackBerry customers were unable to get Web-based e-mail. Users getting e-mail through corporate servers were not affected, though, and phone service and text messaging were also not affected by the outage.

The problem seemed to affect customers across all major carrier networks, including Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA, and Sprint Nextel. AT&T would not comment and referred questions to RIM, but several AT&T customers in California and in other parts of the country said they had problems as well.

RIM said it has resolved the e-mail service problems, though e-mail may be slow to come back to some customers. The company is still looking into what caused the outage.

"RIM has isolated and resolved the issue that was impacting some BlackBerry customers earlier this morning," a company spokeswoman said in an e-mail. "Some customers may still experience delays as e-mail queues are processed. RIM is continuing to investigate the cause of the issue and apologizes for any inconvenience."
Marguerite Reardon has been a CNET News reporter since 2004, covering cell phone services, broadband, citywide Wi-Fi, the Net neutrality debate, as well as the ongoing consolidation of the phone companies. E-mail Maggie.

Topics:
Corporate and legal

Tags:
RIM,
Research In Motion,
BlackBerry,
earnings,
smartphone

Share:
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Yahoo! Buzz
Facebook
Twitter

Recent posts from Signal Strength
RIM beats expectations on strong BlackBerry sales
Biden to unveil $2 billion in broadband grants
FCC digs into broadband controversies
Wireless and broadcast industries begin spectrum debate
AT&T 3G service disruption hits San Francsico
GAO to FCC: Wireless users need more protection
Nokia to close its two U.S. flagship stores
AT&T considers incentives to curb heavy data usage

Related
BlackBerry goes with the flow for developers
BlackBerry Media Sync adds photo-syncing for Windows
Big marketing budget drives Moto Droid sales
Yelp live in BlackBerry App World
Nokia sees 10 percent sales increase for 2010
RIM, Monocle team for $1,500 BlackBerry
eBay opens auction app for BlackBerry
Download BlackBerry themes in App World

Add a Comment (Log in or register) (7 Comments)

* prev
* 1
* next

by The_happy_switcher December 17, 2009 2:13 PM PST
People still buy that 20th century blackberry technology? How quaint. I guess they haven't heard of the bigger and better new dog on the block, yet: The iPhone. Enjoy that tiny screen with the oversized corona typewriter keyboard from 1950, folks.
Like this Reply to this comment

by sharmajunior December 17, 2009 2:52 PM PST
Well let's see how long the iPhone can go.
Like this

by Random_Walk December 17, 2009 3:11 PM PST
RIM has been able to hold itself up nicely in teh enterprise realm, where they have some very strong momentum (trust me - I'm carrying around a Blackberry and an iPhone during trials because of this...)
Like this

by jandler December 17, 2009 3:13 PM PST
"the bigger and better new dog on the block"

maybe it's because for the blackberry, that bigger and better new dog is all bark no bite?
Like this

by TEHKI December 17, 2009 2:23 PM PST
if i didnt have my iphone i would own a blackberry. i love the whole business feel about the phones.
Like this Reply to this comment

by bonesbautista December 17, 2009 3:35 PM PST
I own an iPhone and a VZW Storm. With the third BIS outage in the last 5 weeks, I'm done with RIM's products. If they can't keep their servers working and bring down segments of an entire continent and keep buggy firmware off their devices, I just don't have any faith in RIM anymore.
Like this Reply to this comment 1 person likes this comment

by sciontcya December 17, 2009 5:44 PM PST
These numbers are comical.
Why? Our company (1000's of employees using iPhones and BBs) replace about 5 broken BBs a day.
They're garbage and obviously now (sans Bolds/Storms) made to be disposable.
So, if they sell tons of these new crappy plastic models to replace broken ones, that's great sales?
Wow. That's sad.
If you have not picked up a BB 8520 - do. It's crap.
Like this Reply to this comment

(7 Comments)

* prev
* 1
* next

Add a comment

Log in or create an account to post a comment.ORConnect with Facebook
Comment SUBMIT
Click here to add another comment.

Popular discussions on CNET:

1. Crave giveaway of the day: Canon PowerShot SD940 IS

December 16, 2009 4:00 AM PST
(5565 recent comments)
2. Crave giveaway of the day: Energizer grab bag

December 15, 2009 4:00 AM PST
(3991 recent comments)
3. Crave giveaway of the day: Belkin Gigabit Powerline HD Starter Kit

December 17, 2009 4:00 AM PST
(3714 recent comments)
4. Microsoft: We did copy Plurk's code

December 15, 2009 11:39 AM PST
(107 recent comments)
5. Apple wins permanent injunction against Psystar

December 16, 2009 7:17 AM PST
(85 recent comments)

The posting of advertisements, profanity, or personal attacks is prohibited. Click here to review our Terms of Use.

Comment reply

Submit Cancel
The posting of advertisements, profanity, or personal attacks is prohibited. Click here to review our Terms of Use.
Report offensive content:

If you believe this comment is offensive or violates the CNET's Site Terms of Use, you can report it below (this will not automatically remove the comment). Once reported, our staff will be notified and the comment will be reviewed.

Select type of offense:

Offensive: Sexually explicit or offensive language

Spam: Advertisements or commercial links

Disruptive posting: Flaming or offending other users

Illegal activities: Promote cracked software, or other illegal content

Comments (optional):
Report Cancel
E-mail this comment to a friend.

E-mail this to: (Separate multiple e-mail addresses with commas. Limited to 10 addresses.)

Your e-mail address:
Send me a copy of this message

Note: Your e-mail address is used only to let the recipient know who sent the e-mail and in case of transmission error. Neither your address nor the recipients's address will be used for any other purpose.

Add your own personal message: (Optional)
Hi, I found this user's comment on CNET and thought you might be interested in reading it. Send e-mail Cancel
Warning! You will be deleting this comment and all its replies (if applicable).
Click to delete FOREVER Cancel
advertisement
Most Popular

1. iPhone users are delusional, consultants say
2. 787 Dreamliner takes to the sky
3. Employees rank best places to work
4. Inside the Google phone: A 'snappy' chip
5. Inside the Boeing 787 Dreamliner Gallery (photos)

Browser makers hope WebGL will remake 3D

Don't believe WebGL is real? Here's how to try the 3D browser technology yourself. It works, but plenty of development is needed for this graphics foundation to mature.
Redmond's help desk less busy on Windows 7

Microsoft says it has gotten about half as many calls with Windows 7 as it had anticipated. In part, though, that's due to the fact that more people are going online for PC help.
About Signal Strength

Marguerite Reardon has been covering the telecom beat for more than a decade and knows more about wireless and IP networking than she cares to admit. She has been a senior writer for CNET News since 2003, covering all things wireless and broadband related from iPhone launches to major telephone company mergers to IPTV developments. She often appears as an expert on news networks, including CNBC, MSNBC, NPR, and the BBC. Maggie loves visiting CNET's headquarters in San Francisco, but she's an East Coaster at heart, living and working in Manhattan.
Subscribe to this feed Subscribe via RSS

What's next for social gaming on the iPhone?

Until now, Apple has held an odd place in the gaming industry. Many of the hottest games for the PC have never sold as well on the Mac, due not only to a smaller market share, but also Apple offering only a handful of hardware configurations that can run the latest, graphics card-melting titles.

But on the iPhone and iPod Touch things have been different.

Apple now markets the iPod Touch as a gaming device. Both it and the iPhone 3GS contain updated hardware that can run 3D (and 2D) games quite well. On top of that platform, developers have built thousands of games that cost a fraction of the price of titles found on handhelds from gaming heavyweights like Sony and Nintendo; most can be had for just a dollar, compared to the $20 to $40 that portable titles on physical media fetch.

Something that has been more interesting to watch though than the steady release of cheap games, is the rise of free, third-party social networks that come built into these titles. These provide developers with a simple way to incorporate social feature into their games, while letting players use the same profile from title to title.

Recognize these services? They're the ones that are being integrated into most of today's hottest iPhone games.
(Credit: CNET)

In 2009 six of these networks popped up (not counting Facebook or Gameloft live), and are now vying for the top spot, both from gamers and developers alike. But which one will end up being the most widely used service as the platform matures--the one everyone starts using? After all, users will eventually tire of having to deal with different networks from game to game. Right?

We looked at six of the biggest, compared features, user growth, and development cycles, and came to the conclusion that developers have already picked a winner. However, fierce competition, and refreshed hardware and software from Apple could quite easily bring us a new front-runner by this time next year.

Firefox, Adobe top buggiest software list

Firefox was the application that had the most reported vulnerabilities this year, while holes in Adobe software more than tripled from a year ago, according to statistics compiled by Qualys, a vulnerability management provider.

Qualys tallied 102 vulnerabilities that were found in Firefox this year, up from 90 last year. The numbers are based on running totals in the National Vulnerability Database.

However, the high number of Firefox vulnerabilities doesn't necessarily mean the Web browser actually has the most bugs; it just means it has the most reported holes. Because the software is open source, all holes are publicly disclosed, whereas proprietary software makers, like Adobe and Microsoft, typically only publicly disclose holes that were found by researchers outside the company, and not ones discovered internally, Qualys Chief Technology Officer Wolfgang Kandek said late on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Adobe took the second-place spot from Microsoft this year. The number of vulnerabilities in Adobe programs rose from 14 last year to 45 this year, while those in Microsoft software dropped from 44 to 41, according to Qualys. Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player and Microsoft Office together had 30 vulnerabilities.

A shift in focus
The numbers illustrate the trend of attackers turning their focus away from operating systems and toward applications, Kandek said.

"Operating systems have become more stable and harder to attack and that's why attackers are migrating to applications, he said. "Adobe is a huge focus for attacks now, around 10 times more than Microsoft Office. However, other widely used targets like Internet Explorer and Firefox are still far from secure."

Research from F-Secure earlier this year provides further evidence that holes in Adobe applications are being targeted more than Microsoft apps. During the first three months of 2009, F-Secure discovered 663 targeted attack files, the most popular type being PDFs at nearly 50 percent, followed by Microsoft Word at nearly 40 percent, Excel at 7 percent, and PowerPoint at 4.5 percent.

That compared with Word representing nearly 35 percent of all 1,968 targeted attacks in 2008, followed by Reader at more than 28 percent, Excel at nearly 20 percent, and PowerPoint at nearly 17 percent.

As a result, Adobe needs to respond the way Microsoft did in 2002 when it launched its Trustworthy Computing initiative, and make securing its software a company-wide priority, researchers say. F-Secure even recommended that people stop using Reader and use an alternative PDF reader.

Adobe has taken some action, announcing in May that it would release its security updates on a regular schedule, quarterly and coinciding with every third Microsoft Patch Tuesday.

Another study released this week focuses on which applications are the riskiest to users. Based on the most severe vulnerabilities in popular applications that run on Windows and which are not updated automatically, Firefox again tops the list, followed by Adobe Reader and Apple QuickTime, according to Bit9, a provider of application whitelisting technology.

The list of risky software compiled by Bit9 based on the National Vulnerability Database also includes Java, Flash Player, Safari, Shockwave, Acrobat, Opera, Real Player, and Trillian. Last year, the Bit9 list of the most risky apps included Skype, Yahoo IM, and AOL IM, but those three were not on this year's list.

Not included on the list are programs from Microsoft and Google because of the ability for users of their software to have patches installed automatically. Microsoft software can be automatically and centrally updated via the Microsoft Systems Management Server and Windows Server Update Services, and Google Chrome is automatically updated when users are on the Internet, Bit9 said.

The lists do not take into account the amount of time it takes for companies to release patches, particularly when there is an exploit in the wild. Bit9 noted that Microsoft Internet Explorer was given an "honorable mention" because of a zero-day vulnerability related to ActiveX that went unpatched for three weeks in July.

Microsoft isn't alone in taking longer than customers would like to fix holes. In March, Adobe released a patch for a zero-day vulnerability in Reader and Acrobat--about two weeks after it was disclosed to users and nearly two months after exploits had been discovered in the wild.

Adobe customers will have to wait about a month for a fix to the latest critical zero-day hole in Reader and Acrobat. The company announced on Wednesday it would not patch the vulnerability until its next scheduled quarterly security update release on January 12.

Blippy launches the Twitter of personal finance

Blippy is one of those ideas that at first sounds so hilariously misguided that you'd be forgiven to think it a joke: It's a service that hooks into your credit card so everything you buy gets broadcast to your friends. Eventually you'll even be able to Twitter your spending. Ack!

Fortunately, the real story is more nuanced, more interesting, and more intelligent than you might think if all you read is the knee-jerk Twitter posts from people like me.

Blippy co-founder Philip Kaplan shows how his Amazon purchases make conversation starters.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)

I talked today to Blippy co-founder Philip Kaplan about the service. He admits, "When we launched it, we thought we were kind of crazy." But I do believe he is on to something, and it it has more to do with collecting your financial data than sharing it.

Blippy lets you hook credit and debit cards into the service, as well as accounts at online stores like Amazon, Zappos, and Apple's iTunes store. Eventually it may even connect to physical retail, like Safeway. Blippy's very useful trick, which the company is still working on refining, will be collecting your financial transaction data at a very granular level. It will tell you not just where you're spending money, but what products you're spending it on and--if you set up the privacy settings appropriately--who else is buying the same stuff as you. It will combine all your spending data into one big stream and let you compare your purchase data to that of other people, again at a granular level. Eventually you'll be able to see if you're paying more than other people for Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey, I gather, and find deals on items you like or purchase regularly. Mint, by contrast, shows you comparative data by category and vendor, but not by item.

That's the vision, at any rate. Currently, in Blippy's very closed alpha test, it's a system for sharing transaction data. You give it a credit card account and other account info, and it will tell your Blippy friends what you're buying, and vice versa. For example, you can see what music and apps your friends are buying on iTunes, and then you can have a conversation about those purchases. There are privacy controls, of course, and you can "pause" Blippy's data collection if you want to buy a secret gift on Amazon. Or, as Kaplan says, if you want to buy something private on a credit card, don't use a card connected to Blippy.

It sounds like the last thing anyone with a sense of personal space would use, but Kaplan maintains that much of our commerce is not only not private, it's not even "important enough to tweet." Judging from the activity on Blippy, it can still be a decent conversation starter. And indeed, in a future release Blippy will be able to (optionally) update Twitter and Facebook when its users transact.

Twitter co-founder Evan Williams broadcasts his iTunes store activity to Blippy users.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)

Future privacy features in Blippy may include the capability to lock out certain vendors from credit card data collection, and possibly an approval step for transactions before they're made public. Already you can set up your account as either open or protected, meaning, as on Twitter, you can let anyone follow you or lock it down to just those you approve.

I'm intrigued by one of the tenets of Blippy: Kaplan is interested in what he calls "passive sharing" of information. With this service, you can "check in" with your friends when you buy something--like a coffee at your corner Starbucks. Your transaction is a location beacon (I'm not sure the credit card data is updated quickly enough, but that is the vision). "Nobody is taking advantage of the fact that I'm swiping my credit card everywhere," Kaplan told me. Twitter, Facebook, Fourquare, and Gowalla require a more active check-in. (Another location check-in service, Stalqer, has a neat trick for passive check-in.)

It's not likely that old-fashioned relics like me will use this service to share financial data, mind you, but I do find the concept of using a financial system as a Foursquare-like input tracker interesting. And I would like a system that does an even better job than Mint of tracking my spending and comparing it to others.

Kaplan says he's not working on the revenue strategy yet. The company was incubated at and funded by Charles River Ventures, where he was Entrepreneur-in-Residence until last week. Potential revenues may include an affiliate model that kicks some referral money back to users when their connected friends buy what they've bought, but Kaplan doesn't want to "pay people to use Blippy," so the idea would need refinement. Blippy may also get its own credit card deal; right now you have to connect an existing card to the system to use it.

Blippy is in a closed alpha test right now. You can sign up for an invitation on the site, and it will open up in stages over the next few months.

MySpace eyes Flixster for acquisition

Now that the digital equivalent of a super-vac, MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta, has sucked up some decent music start-ups--Imeem and iLike--for a song, to bolster the social-networking site's efforts to expand into an entertainment portal, what's next?

According to several sources, the News Corp. unit has turned its omnivorous attentions on Flixster, the popular social-networking site for movies.

Sources said such a deal is not immediately imminent, but that MySpace has been conducting extensive due diligence on the San Francisco-based Flixster, part of a plan to combine it with Rotten Tomatoes, another News Corp.-owned site run by its IGN Entertainment division.

Rotten Tomatoes features mostly premium content, including professional reviews, trailer videos, and news. It has community feature that is just in beta, so it would be a nice fit with Flixster.

How much MySpace would be willing to pay for Flixster is unclear. A MySpace spokeswoman declined to comment at the moment.

In 2007, the start-up was close to being acquired by IAC/InteractiveCorp for $100 million, several sources said. But the deal went south when CEO Barry Diller changed his mind at the last minute.

Founded in 2006 by CEO Joe Greenstein and CTO Saran Chari, Flixster has raised $7 million in funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Pinnacle Ventures, as well as garnering an angel investment from Silicon Valley entrepreneur and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.

It has garnered a huge audience--upwards of 50 million--who trade all kinds of recommendations, ratings, news, and even post user-generated movie reviews on its Web site and via widgets on social-networking sites, most of all on Facebook.

While Amazon unit IMDb is still larger in terms of traffic, the more innovative Flixster has been growing much faster and is more social, which makes it attractive to MySpace, sources said.

More important is the mobile growth. Flixster is the No. 1 movie app on Apple's iPhone and leads on other smartphones too.

Story Copyright (c) 2009 AllThingsD. All rights reserved.

Adobe investigating Reader, Acrobat exploit reports

Adobe warned of reports of an attack exploiting a hole in Reader and Acrobat on Monday.

"This afternoon, Adobe received reports of a vulnerability in Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.2 and earlier versions being exploited in the wild," the company said in an advisory on its Security Incident Response Team blog. "We are currently investigating this issue and assessing the risk to our customers. We will provide an update as soon as we have more information."

Three different security vendor partners reported the alleged exploit to the company on Monday afternoon, said Adobe spokeswoman Wiebke Lips. She said she could not provide more details.

Last week, Adobe released a critical update affecting Flash Player and Adobe AIR.

Meanwhile, some Macintosh users were reporting on the Adobe Forums site that they were having problems installing an update from October that resolved a critical vulnerability in Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.1.3 that had reportedly been exploited in the wild.

As a company that has built a business model atop trust, Google is in a sticky position as it prepares to formally introduce the Nexus One phone. Goog

Microsoft said late Monday that is suspending access to an MSN China microblogging site amid allegations the service is based on code swiped from a rival.

Canadian start-up Plurk lashed out at Microsoft earlier on Monday, saying that 80 percent of the code for Juku appeared to be lifted directly from its service.

Microsoft reiterated late Monday that it is investigating the matter but issued a statement saying it was pulling down the Juku feature while it looks into things.

"Earlier today, questions arose over a feature developed by a third-party vendor for our MSN China joint venture," Microsoft said in a statement. "Because questions have been raised about the code base comprising the service, MSN China will be suspending access to the Juku beta feature temporarily while we investigate the matter fully."

Microsoft added that the investigation was slowed by the fact that when questions were first raised it was the middle of the night in China.

"Now that the day has begun in China, our teams are working hard to track down the information," Microsoft said.

The company also confirmed what a source previously told CNET, namely that Microsoft's MSN China joint venture "contracted with an independent vendor" to create the MSN Juku feature, which debuted last month and is still in beta.

Earlier on Monday, Microsoft said it was investigating the issue.

For its part, Plurk said it is still trying to decide how to handle things.

"We're not entirely sure but we are exploring our options," Plurk said in its blog posting. "We have been seeking advice from respected colleagues, responding to press inquiries and gathering facts on the timeline of events and parties involved here to understand why and how this took place."

It's the second time in recent weeks that Microsoft has been accused of lifting other's work in its products. Last month, the company was forced to pull down a tool for loading Windows 7 onto Netbooks after allegations that the product improperly included open-source code. Microsoft later apologized and last week re-released the tool under the GPL open-source license. Microsoft also blamed a third-party vendor in that case.

Google ponders risky Android solo act

As a company that has built a business model atop trust, Google is in a sticky position as it prepares to formally introduce the Nexus One phone.
Google Android Nexus One phone

Google's Nexus One phone could be a sea change in how Google works with Android partners who might turn into competitors.
(Credit: Cory O'Brien via Twitter)

Google employees were given free Nexus One phones at a company party Friday night, and the Internet went into a tizzy. Reports surfaced later in the weekend that this device was the long-awaited Google phone, the company's answer to Apple's strategy of controlling the hardware, software, and distribution model with the iPhone, rather than the partner-oriented strategy of developing the guts of the operating system and letting partners each put their own stamp on the finished product.

Just two months ago, Google's Andy Rubin rolled his eyes when asked about an analyst report picked up by TheStreet.com that said Google planned to pursue this exact strategy. He said Google had no plans to make its own hardware--which is one thing since smartphones are almost exclusively manufactured by contractors in China and Taiwan--but he took a further step in spending about 10 minutes arguing why it would be a bad idea for Google to design its own phone and sell it outside of carrier channels.

That line of thinking resonated with many who follow Google and the mobile industry. After all, Google's stated goal for Android ever since the project was revealed in November 2007 was to create an "ecosystem" of multiple phones that would help improve access to the mobile Internet. And Google seemed to finally reach that goal this year, with over a dozen phones in the wild and more promised from some of the world's leading phone makers and wireless carriers.

But if the reports are correct, Google is about to make a radical departure from that strategy. And Google's new course would take it down a path that could sow distrust among the company's Open Handset Alliance partners, who must now be wondering if they're about to get into a marketing war with one of the tech industry's richest companies.

Katie Watson, a Google representative, said on Sunday that the company has confirmed nothing about its plans for the Nexus One, described as a "dogfooding" experiment for internal testing by the company in a blog post Saturday.

In the rush to anoint the Nexus One as the Google Phone, it's quite possible that the tech industry glossed over the fact that Google already sells Android phones, albeit on a limited basis. For quite some time, registered Android developers have been able to buy completely unlocked versions of the G1 and the T-Mobile MyTouch3G (also known as the Google Ion) for $399.
Google Android Ion phone

Google does sell some phones, such as the Google Ion, but only to developers for Android testing purposes.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

So there is a solid chance that the Nexus One is merely the Android Dev Phone 3, following the Dev Phone 1 (G1) and Dev Phone 2 (MyTouch or Ion). Just this year, Google handed out Dev Phone 2 models branded as the Google Ion to attendees at Google I/O 2009, but if regular people want to buy that particular phone they have to get the MyTouch3G from T-Mobile with a two-year contract.

It does seem clear that Google has played the premier role in designing the software for the Nexus One. In the company's blog post over the weekend, it said "we recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities, and we shared this device with Google employees across the globe."

But the key unconfirmed detail is how Google plans to sell this phone. According to The Wall Street Journal, Google plans to sell this phone unsubsidized on its own, with consumers able to choose a wireless service provider after the fact. However, according to corporate sibling Peter Kafka at All Things D's MediaMemo and Reuters, Google has plans to hook up with longtime mobile partner T-Mobile to help sell the Nexus One through Google's Web site for $199.

How will Google market this phone? Anyone with a television set has likely seen an ad over the last month for the Motorola Droid, an Android phone sold for Verizon's network that has been billed as one of the best Android phones to date. It was also the launch pad for a long-term pact between Google and Verizon that will supposedly produce a family of devices based on Android.

If Google plans to sell the Nexus One directly to consumers, will it insist upon using its brand as the lead brand, rather than the "With Google" branding found on the back of many Android phones? Will it blast the airwaves during the NFL playoffs in January to trumpet the arrival of the Nexus One, perhaps just in time for the Super Bowl? And how will that affect partners such as Motorola and Verizon that have sunk so much money into promoting the Droid, only to see rumors of a Google Phone leak out at the worst possible time: the height of the holiday shopping season?

This could be a very telling moment in Google's history. At the moment, Google's mobile division does not seem to be completely in control of the message it wants to send consumers, partners, and competitors.

If Google really does plan to sell the Nexus One directly to consumers and compete with its customers, it has chosen an interesting way to announce it to the world, keeping the Google Phone rumor mill alive for months while publicly denying such plans. Apple has employed such a marketing strategy for years, insisting on near-silence regarding future product plans but benefiting enormously from the frenzy of interest in every little morsel that mysteriously pops up regarding those plans.

However, Google is not Apple. Google public-relations representatives will sheepishly admit that they have little control over how Google rolls out its products: Google is a company run by engineers, and engineers push the button when the product is ready to ship.

But when you're working in an environment with multiple partners that have competing interests, any confusion over your future plans--especially plans that would appear to yank the floor away--can breed distrust among those partners. One of Google's largest problems right now is that it has built a business model geared around the notion that it can be trusted with almost unprecedented control over the flow of information across the globe, and any cracks in that wall of trust will be exploited by its enemies.

With the way details have trickled out about the Nexus One, Google has either alienated current and future Android partners by muscling in on their turf, or set up thousands of eager smartphone consumers looking for an open alternative to the iPhone for disappointment when they realize Google merely plans to sell an expensive unlocked phone to a limited audience, if at all.

After all, Google essentially declared in its blog post that employees are testing a product with "new mobile features and capabilities" that presumably can't be found on the current crop of phones. It's almost the same language Google used to introduce Chrome OS ("our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be") while insisting that it had no competitive reasons for introducing that Netbook operating system.

Few believed that line with Chrome OS, and fewer still will believe that Google is creating Android for the betterment of humanity if it really plans to sell its own phone.

Futuristic tech for daily living outshines outer space

Many of the leading breakthroughs in science and cutting edge technology in 2009 were focused on improving everyday living. But the year also saw some significant otherworldly discoveries--and even offered the promise of personal exploration of outer space.

Here on Earth, academics turned heads with bright white LEDs, more efficient cooling systems for computers and car electronics, and sonic lasers. Several existing technologies got significant improvements. Bridges and airplanes stand to become safer due to a new polymer material that changes color when under physical stress. Bus stops in San Francisco and Italy got makeovers from drab rain shelters to places that offer solar power, multilingual services, real-time information, and touch-screen computers.

Funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency facilitated the development of putty that can used in lieu of pins and screws for broken bones. The wow factor? The putty acts as chemical scaffolding to induce regeneration of a person's own bones, and then disintegrates as it's replaced with real bone.

DARPA and defense contractors showed their visions for the future of defensive technology. This year saw the introduction of self-replicating robots, unmanned aerial vehicles running on solar power and batteries, and robots made from morphing material.

Looking toward more lofty goals, the 40th anniversary year of Neil Armstrong's moon walk passed with both awe and frustration. NASA confirmed the existence of water in the form of ice on the moon, as well as buried ice on Mars, and gave the world a view of a significant impact on Jupiter.

But the agency also spent the year waiting for politicians to make funding decisions on America's participation in the International Space Station, and a manned space flight program. There was even talk of NASA possibly being rolled into U.S. Department of Defense. As 2009 comes to a close, a final decision still has not been reached, and the direction the U.S. space program will take remains vague.

But things did become easier for average people to explore the realm beyond. Google released Google Earth maps and historic maps of Mars, as well as roaming "street" views allowing virtual exploration of the Red Planet's terrain. Microsoft updated its WorldWide Telescope, a Web-based virtual telescope, to include over 100 terabytes of high-resolution image data, putting extensive views from NASA telescopes into the hands of anyone with an Internet connection.

We also came that much closer to commercial space travel becoming a reality. Virgin Galactic unveiled the Virgin Space Ship Enterprise, a rocket/plane for suborbital flights designed by legendary aircraft designer and X Prize winner Burt Rutan. If testing goes well, expect the first flights to begin toward the end of 2010.

Finally, the Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator that was meant to begin work last year, finally fired up in November. And so far, it's been humming along, performing its first collisions, its first beam acceleration, and setting a new record for beam intensity.

Buying New Computers Before Windows 7 Ships

Windows 7 will begin shipping in late October 2009. Prior to the arrival of Windows 7 on new computers some people will make computer buying decisions and may face a choice between Windows Vista and Windows XP on their new computer. Anyone buying new computers before Windows 7 ships should consider the potential for upgrading to Windows 7 in the future when choosing between Windows Vista and Windows XP.
Choose Windows Vista Not XP on New Computers

The vast majority of testing and analysis from numerous sources indicates that Windows 7 will be a very solid, highly functional operating system that most PC users will want to migrate to over time. Based on the level of quality and on the upgrade process requirements for XP and Vista my recommendation is that anyone buying a new computer before Windows 7 ships on October 22, should have Windows Vista pre-installed on that computer not Windows XP.

While Windows XP has been a viable, and many times preferable, option since Vista’s release things have changed. The impending arrival of Windows 7 in October and the significantly different upgrade paths to Windows 7 for XP and Vista now make Vista the best choice on a new computer. A key reason is that Windows Vista has a clear, relatively straightforward upgrade path to Windows 7, while the upgrade path for Windows XP to Windows 7 is a more labor intensive, time consuming process requiring what is known as a clean install.
Windows XP’s Continued Availability

Currently, retail stores only sell PCs with Microsoft’s Windows Vista installed. However a number of manufacturers still sell computers with the older Windows XP installed when the computers are purchased direct through the manufacturer. This was detailed in an earlier post, “Windows XP Availability on New Computers”
Plan for Windows 7 Over Current Windows Versions

In summary, if you will be buying a new computer after the October 22, 2009 release date of Windows 7 you should purchase that system with Windows 7 pre-installed. If you purchase a new computer before Windows 7 ships on October 22, you should have Windows Vista pre-installed on the new computer.

Why a Five Year Old Computer Is Slower Than a New Computer

Unlike your refrigerator, washer, dryer, microwave oven or old tube television your computer doesn’t work effectively for 10 or 15 years. Some people wonder why a 5 year old computer is slow and can’t be tuned up to deliver performance rivaling a more current system. Beyond the tune up process some components can also be upgraded to improve performance. In the end though, there are a number of factors that limit computer performance and together determine why a five year old computer is slower than a new computer.

Some of the declining performance in a five year old computer may be maintenance related. Over time “junk” (a technical term) builds up on a computer and is not easy to remove. As programs are installed and uninstalled, files are added, modified and deleted, and email data is added, modified and deleted, pieces of programs and data can be left behind. Old, unused programs and numerous Windows “temp” files can also be scattered around the computer. After five years the amount of the most difficult to remove junk can become significant.

One option is to perform what is known as a “clean install” of Windows. In this process you back up all your data and hardware drivers, reformat your hard disk drive, completely re-installed Windows, install all necessary Windows updates and Service Packs, re-install all your software and then transfer your data back on to the computer. This normally requires from 3 to 5 hours and can take potentially longer if you don’t have all the drivers and software. This will wipe out any built up “junk” on the system. But you will still have the same old hardware (CPU, RAM, memory bus, graphics processor, etc).

Another way of addressing the performance challenges of a five year old computer is to upgrade some of the components with newer, faster ones. This could cost $100 – $300 or more. However, many of the basic system components such as the CPU speed, RAM speed and memory bus speed cannot be modified. While partial solutions such as increasing RAM from 512MB to 2 GB can make a performance difference, the upgrade will have limited impact in a five year old computer. Hardware upgrades on a system this old may be a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Some of these items were addressed in my earlier tech tip Ten Downsides of An Aging Computer.
Computer Components That Impact Performance

There are a number of different hardware components in a computer that impact the overall perceived “speed” of the system. Here is a more detailed look at some of these components.

1. Slower CPU – let’s start with the brains of the computer. Current mid-range CPUs such as an Intel Core2 Duo will have roughly 20 times the processing power as the Pentium 4 that was common five years ago.
2. Too little memory (RAM) – five years ago it was not uncommon to have computers with only 256MB or 512MB of RAM installed. Today most computers are sold with at least 2GB of RAM and some have as much as 6GB or even 8GB.
3. Slower Memory Speed – like so many other components RAM has a rated speed for how fast data can be written to and read from the RAM modules. This speed has more than doubled in the last five years.
4. Slower memory bus – the memory bus is the communications channel that the computer CPU uses to talk to RAM (memory) and other system components. Current mid-range computers use a memory bus speed that is at least twice as fast as what was common in computers made five years ago.
5. Slower hard disk drive – Both the speed and capacity of hard disk drives has increased since that five year old computer was built. Using higher rotational speeds, data caching and newer technologies for higher data density, current hard disk drives offer significant performance benefits over most drives that were installed in computers five years ago.
6. Older USB v.1.0 ports – USB or Universal Serial Bus ports are used to connect most peripheral devices such as printers, scanners, external backup drives, keyboards and mice to computers. Some computers made five years ago used the older USB 1.1 standard for these ports instead of the current USB 2.0 standard. The current USB 2.0 ports transfer data over 30 times faster than the older USB 1.1 ports.
7. Slower graphics and video processor – Computers use a separate processor for handling most graphical data including photos, web pages, and video. Older computers have graphics processors that were significantly less powerful than current technologies.

In the end there are limits to improving the performance of that slow five year old computer. At the same time many components beyond just the CPU have significantly accelerated the performance of new computers.

From your experience how old is “too old” for a computer? What is the most effective computer performance boosting upgrade you have ever done? Leave a comment to share your experiences.

Netbook Computer Primer

In a computer world driven by smaller, lighter, stronger, faster, and easier, Netbook computers have made quite a splash. Netbooks are the latest version of the portable computer. Similar to laptop computers in many ways except that Netbook computers are smaller, lighter, less expensive and less powerful. They are great for portability but less functional for computing intensive tasks. This Netbook Computer Primer examines just what a Netbook computer is and explores the potential benefits and drawbacks of this new breed of portable computer.
What is a Netbook Computer?

Let’s start at the beginning. Based on current technology a Netbook computer is an ultraportable computer:

* typically weighing 2.5 pounds
* having a screen size between 7” and 10”
* including a wireless networking adapter (g/n)
* having no internal optical (CD or DVD) drive
* typically running Windows XP Home
* utilizing a lower powered CPU such as the Intel Atom CPU.

Netbook computers are designed for less computing intensive tasks such as receiving and sending email and accessing the Internet. Netbooks are basic computing devices that are suited for basic computing tasks. Leading manufacturers include Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, MSI and Toshiba.

The Net book computer has captured many people’s interest for two main reasons – size and price. Based on size and weight a Netbook fits somewhere in between the smartphone and the laptop computer. Key factors that differentiate a Netbook computer from other portable computers are:

Size — Most Netbook computers have a screen size between 7” and 10” measured diagonally. They are larger than a smartphone, which have screens not much bigger than 3” diagonally, and smaller than a laptop computer which range between 12” and 17”.

Price – Netbook computer prices range from $250 to $800 with an average price in the $350 range. This price can increase if you add an external CD/DVD drive or a larger, extend life battery. Most Netbooks come with 1GB of RAM. Upgrading to 2GB if needed will also add to the cost.

Weight – The other aspect of a Netbook computer being “smaller” is weight. Most Netbooks weigh in at around 2.5 pounds. A smaller screen means a lighter screen and a smaller and lighter battery to power the smaller screen. The weight of most Netbooks falls in the 2 – 3 pounds range however adding a larger, extended life battery can add as much as half a pound to the overall weight.

CPU or Computing Power – Most Netbook computers use a CPU from the Intel Atom CPU line. These “brains” are less powerful than the Intel P4, Core, or Core 2 CPUs or the AMD CPUs that are in most laptop computers. While these CPUs provide less computing power they also require much less electrical power resulting in smaller, lighter weight batteries and cooler running Netbooks.

Optical Storage (CD/DVD) – Internal CD or DVD drives are not included in a netbook computer. External drives can be connected through USB ports for loading software or transferring data to another computer. External optical drives are not included in the base cost of most Netbook computers.

Mass Storage (hard disk drive) – Netbooks offer either a traditional hard disk drive (HDD) that have a capacity between 60 GB and 160 GB, or lower capacity solid state drives (SSD) with capacities ranging from 16 GB to 64 GB of flash memory.

netbook-computer-primer-dell
Potential Drawbacks with A Netbook Computer

Size, weight and price provide some real benefits with Netbook computers. There are also a number of trade-offs with the reduced size and weight.

1. Keyboard size — A Netbook computer’s keyboard is usually about 85 to 95 percent of a full-size QWERTY keyboard. The layout and arrangement of the keys can also vary. Netbooks that have 10-inch screens tend to offer the larger keyboards. Well worth a test drive to determine if the smaller keyboard is a good fit for you.
2. Computing power – As explained earlier a Netbook computer is not designed for computing intensive tasks such as editing videos or large photos or playing modern video games. Loading programs and saving documents may also be a bit slower than a laptop.
3. Expandability and Ports – Some netbook computer models may have only two USB ports and may lack a PC-Card slot.
4. Limited hard disk storage – Some models offer only a 16GB or 32GB solid state drive. After the space required for Windows and your program files these smaller capacity drives may not leave sufficient space for all your other files in the long term. Especially if you are considering copying your 30GB music and photo library onto the computer.
5. No internal optical drive – as noted above Netbook computers do not have internal CD or DVD drives by definition. It is relatively easy to connect an external drive via USB but it will cost extra.
6. Battery life – These rating can vary significantly, ranging from 2.5 hours to over 8 hours depending on the model. Many netbook computer manufacturers also offer an extended life battery as an extra cost option.
7. RAM – Most Netbooks come with 1GB of RAM and can accept a maximum of 2GB. The higher amount will provide better performance but is an added cost.
8. Mouse buttons and touchpad – The smaller amount of keyboard real estate can also impact the mouse buttons and the touchpad. As with laptops the configuration of these important elements can vary. Another area where a test drive will be beneficial.

Netbook computers provide some very interesting options. As the technology continues to evolve in this hot product area the capabilities are only going to get better and some of the trade offs, such as performance, may decrease significantly. The popularity of Netbooks is also putting additional pressure the price and performance of conventional, fully sized ultralight laptops. The distinctions between these two categories will probably continue to blur. For students and parents looking for a portable computer for school be sure to see the post on 7 Reasons Netbook Computers are Great for Students

For many people the main decision point between a Netbook computer and a laptop will be size and weight. If you are looking for a very small footprint, very lightweight basic computing device you should seriously consider one these. If you will need more computing power (bigger applications or having many applications open at once), an internal CD/DVD drive, a big, fast hard disk drive, or lots of ports, the laptop will probably be the better option.
Examples of Several Netbook Computers

Below are several links to a representative sample of current netbook computers that will provide you with a good starting point for comparing costs and features:

HP Mini 110-1030NR 10.1-Inch Netbook – 6 Cell Battery

Toshiba Mini NB205-N210 10.1-Inch Black Netbook – 9 Hour Battery Life

ASUS Eee PC 1005HA-PU1X-BK 10.1-Inch Black Netbook – 10.5 Hour Battery Life

Acer Aspire One AOD250-1580 10.1-Inch Blue Netbook – 7.5 Hour Battery Life

Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Blue Netbook – 6 Cell Battery
Hard to Beat the Price of a Net book Computer

Netbook computers are a relatively new market and in a significant state of flux. In an era of high performance quad-core CPUs and terabyte hard disk drives many people have been surprised by the popularity of these relatively low horsepower devices. A key factor that makes a Netbook computer so interesting is their low price. At $350 they almost become a throw away device – keep it for 18 to 24 months and dispose of it. At a time where you can spend $500 on a Smartphone not including the significant costs of the monthly service contract, a Netbook computer looks like quite a bargain.

7 Reasons Netbook Computers are great for students

Is a new portable computer on the back-to-school shopping list for you or your kids? If you are looking for a lightweight and relatively inexpensive portable computer for school or home be sure to take a look at netbook computers as a potential option. Netbook computers are great for students because they are small, lightweight, cost effective, connected, easy to use, and focused on essential tasks. This post examines the benefits of netbook computers for students and parents. For additional in-depth information on netbook computers be sure to see our previous post, Netbook Computer Primer.
What is a Netbook Computer?

Netbook computers continue to evolve at a rapid rate. As a starting point, a netbook currently is an ultraportable computer that:

* Typically weighs 2.5 pounds.
* Has a screen size between 7” and 10”.
* Includes a built-in wireless networking adapter (g/n).
* Has no internal optical (CD or DVD) drive.
* Typically runs Windows XP Home operating system.
* Utilizes a lower powered processor such as the Intel Atom CPU.

Netbook Computers are a great option for Students

As computers become more and more essential for students from grade school through college parents and students need to weigh a range of factors when purchasing a system. One of the last things a parent wants to hear from their child is that they left their $1,500 laptop “on the bus.” Here are seven reasons why a netbook computer may be a good fit:

Lightweight – With a weight between 2 – 3 pounds, a netbook computer is a very manageable load for kids and is easy to transport. The netbook’s weight is a fraction of a bulky 15” or 17” laptop computer.

Small size – Netbooks have a screen size of between 7” and 11” and are less than 1” thick. This makes for a good fit when carrying in a backpack, yet even with a small footprint netbook computers are still quite usable and functional.

Low cost – Most netbook computers cost between $300 and $400. Accessories such as an external CD/DVD drive or an extended life battery can add to the cost and some top of the line netbooks can range up to $700. This is still quite a bit less expensive than the $1,000 – $1,500 price point of some laptop computers. At $300 a netbook computer costs only a bit more than some smartphones.

Wireless networking included as standard – All netbook computers include a built-in wireless network adapter for speedy connections to wireless networks at school and home. Many netbooks also include a built-in wired Ethernet connector.

Smaller keyboard – Due to the smaller overall size of a netbook computer the keyboards are also slightly smaller than a standard laptop keyboard. While this may be a drawback for some adults with large hands, this smaller keyboard may actually fit a child’s hands better than a full sized keyboard. The relative size of netbook computer keyboards range from 85% to 92% of the size of a standard laptop computer keyboard.

Focused on essential tasks – Netbook computers utilize lower power CPUs that also have less computing power than those found on most laptop computers. Some people will consider this a negative since it limits the processing power of the netbook and more complex tasks such a photo editing or video viewing/editing will be slow or not feasible on a netbook. However, this also means that a netbook is not particularly good for computer gaming, thus making the system’s use much more focused on schoolwork.

Increased battery life – Most net book computers have a battery life of 3 – 4 hours per charge under normal usage. Many manufacturers offer an extended life battery that may increase the battery life to a range of 5 – 9 hours per charge. These larger batteries also add about half-a-pound to the computer weight as well as increase the system cost.
Netbooks and Laptops

Given their low price netbook computers have put significant downward pressure on the price of traditional laptop computers. Netbook computer sales have jumped dramatically since Asus introduced the first netbook (the ASUS Eee PC) in 2007 and netbook sales are projected to continue to climb rapidly. As newer technologies come to market and manufacturers evolve their product lines the differences between laptops and netbooks sometimes begin to blur. On occasion when some laptops are on sale they can be priced very close to the cost of some netbook computers. However even when a laptop computer is on sale a netbook computer will still retain an advantage in terms of size, weight battery life and cost over a laptop.

Specific Net book Computer Models and Recommendations

Given the rapid changes and evolution with netbook computers I refrain from citing specific models. The product lines change too quickly and fluctuating price discounts can vary significantly. Most of the traditional laptop manufacturers now produce netbooks, with Toshiba recently introducing its first netbook computer to a very positive response. One manufacturer that you may not be as familiar with is ASUS or ASUSTek Computers, the developer of the first successful netbook computer. ASUS makes quality systems and is well worth considering.

For direct unvarnished reviews, comments and feedback on specific netbook computers, I find Amazon.com to be an excellent source. Below are several links to a representative sample of current netbook computers that will provide you with a good starting point for comparing costs and features:

HP Mini 110-1030NR 10.1-Inch Netbook – 6 Cell Battery

Toshiba Mini NB205-N210 10.1-Inch Black Netbook – 9 Hour Battery Life

ASUS Eee PC 1005HA-PU1X-BK 10.1-Inch Black Netbook – 10.5 Hour Battery Life

Acer Aspire One AOD250-1580 10.1-Inch Blue Netbook – 7.5 Hour Battery Life

Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Blue Netbook – 6 Cell Battery
Netbook Computers – Try before you Buy

Buying New Computers – A Better Computer for 8 Cents an Hour

Is it time to buy new a computer? Unsure how much to spend on your new computer so that it meets your needs today as well as in the future? A common question in buying new computers is when does spending a little extra money actually get you a noticeably better computer. An important factor in answering that question is how long you expect to use the computer or what the effective lifespan of the computer will be.
Lifespan of Your New Computer

The planned lifespan of your new computer is a key factor because 1) it determines what the payback period will be for investing a bit extra cash up front, and 2) it provides an idea of how your new computer will stack up to the performance of new computers 3, 4 or 5 years from now. While you don’t want to throw money away unnecessarily, having a computer that has sufficient performance and features will be important as your computer ages. Having a two year old underpowered computer that feels outdated is not a good position to be in.
A Better Computer for 8 Cents an Hour.

Here is an example that may help you visualize the benefits of spending a bit more on your new computer than initially planned. Let’s say you are considering an $800 laptop computer. But for an additional expenditure of $200 you can get an extra level of performance (CPU, RAM, HDD) and features (screen size, battery life, ports) that would really provide additional value when you use your computer.

For this example let’s also assume you plan on using your laptop computer for 4 years and that you spend two hours a day on your computer six days a week. An extra $200 over 4 years is actually $50 per year for whatever enhancements you decide to include with the expanded budget. In terms of the time you use the computer this example would calculate out to:

2 hours of computer use/day

X 6 days/week

X 50 weeks per year

= 600 hrs. of computer use per year

Which means that you will spend:

$50 extra per year for 600 hrs. of computer use

which equals: $.083/hr. or 8 cents per hour of computer use

On a monthly basis this would be $4 per month

The Question: Is it worth $4 per month to buy a “better” computer?
What Do You Get By Spending a Bit More?

Is the example a worthwhile investment? It will likely depend on your needs and budget. Your extra expenditure may allow you to buy a computer with more RAM, a faster CPU, a better graphics adapter, a larger hard disk drive, a battery with a longer life, more ports, a larger screen, a smaller screen, or a lighter weight computer.

More Is Not Always More
Sometimes spending more may not get you more of the features you want. For instance if you want a netbook computer because you really want a portable computer that has a 10 hour battery life then spending more money may still not get you that type of battery life on a laptop or notebook computer. Prioritize which features are most important to you and focus on enhancing those features.

When deciding on your budget focus on whether spending a bit more than you initially planned will get you components that will actually enhance the performance, capacity, battery life, size or weight of your system. Spending a bit more today may just make for a more functional and enjoyable time when using your computer now, as well as in 3 or 4 years.

Windows 7 family pack starting to sell out

When Microsoft announced the Windows 7 Family Pack option, it said that the three-user bundle of Windows 7 Home Premium would be available only for a limited time.

That time, it appears, is drawing to a close. As noted by WindowsITPro, supplies are drying up fast.


"The Windows 7 Family Pack was introduced as a limited time offer while supplies last in select geographies," Microsoft said in a statement. "Response has been very positive and in some cases, the offer has sold out. "

The company wouldn't say how many copies have sold or how many it allocated for the family pack option. It also said it has no current plans to extend the offer.

Microsoft's own online store appears to be sold out, though those in Orange County, Calif. or Scottsdale, Ariz. could check out the retail spots.

Amazon itself is sold out, although some other sellers are offering it on Amazon's site, but at prices well above its suggested price.

Computer users had been asking Microsoft since the days of Vista and longer to offer a discount to those trying to outfit more than one PC with the latest version of Windows. Microsoft finally confirmed in July that it would have a family pack option.

When it announced full details later that month, though, Microsoft said that the $149 package would be available "while supplies last." At the time I pressed them for more details and the company would not say how many copies it planned to sell nor how long the offer would last.

Apple, by contrast, has offered its Mac OS X family pack since 2002. That version covers up to five computers in a household.

Intel: Initial Larrabee graphics chip canceled

Intel said Friday that its Larrabee graphics processor will initially appear as a software development platform only.

This is a blow to the world's largest chipmaker, which was looking to launch its first discrete (standalone) graphics chip in more than a decade.

"Larrabee silicon and software development are behind where we hoped to be at this point in the project," Intel spokesman Nick Knupffer said Friday. "As a result, our first Larrabee product will not be launched as a standalone discrete graphics product," he said.

"Rather, it will be used as a software development platform for internal and external use," he added. Intel is not discussing what other versions may appear after the initial software development platform product, or "kit," is launched next year.

Graphics chip analyst Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research, said Intel is not hitting performance targets and this became apparent at the SC09 supercomputing conference last month.

"Justin Rattner (Intel Senior Fellow) demonstrated Larrabee hitting one teraflop, which is great but you could walk across the street and buy an ATI graphics board for a few hundred dollars that would do five teraflops." A teraflop is 1 trillion floating point operations per second, a key indicator of graphics chip performance.

Larrabee, a chronically delayed chip, was originally expected to appear in 2008. It was slated to compete with discrete graphics chips from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices' ATI graphics unit.

Intel would not give a projected date for the Larrabee software development platform and is only saying "next year."

Intel says its plans are unchanged to deliver this month the first chip with graphics integrated onto the CPU. This new Atom processor is referred to as "Pineview" (the platform is called "Pine Trail") and will be targeted at Netbooks.

Updated at 4 p.m. PST throughout.

22 Most Popular Google Chrome Extensions

Google Chrome celebrated its first birthday last week! And by looking at the comments for that article, it was clear many people preferred Firefox over Chrome basically due to the option of choosing innumerable add-ons and extensions available on Firefox. However there are some extensions on Chrome as well, that make your experience with using it easier and loving.

These extensions, whilst useful, aren’t quite to the standard of Firefox’s offerings yet, be it in quality or quantity, but the early development is showing that Chrome users can now enjoy super-fast loading times and minimal footprints along with the option of using third party add-ons.
22 Most Popular & Most useful Google Chrome Extensions

1. Google Chrome Backup Extension

google-chrome-backup

Google Chrome backup add-on creates, backups, restores and manages Chrome profiles. All history, bookmarks and related stuff are maintained very easily with this add-on. So in case there is a system crash or accidental deletion, you can easily restore or get back the lost settings in Google Chrome.

Download Google Chrome Backup add-on

2. Google Chrome Dual View

google-chrome-dual-view

This Google Chrome extension enables you to view two different web pages in a single tab. A single tab will split into from the middle such that in each half you can see two different sites side by side. Particularly useful if multitasking or undertaking some research.

Download Dual View plugin for Google Chrome

3. XChrome

Download XChrome add-on for Google Chrome

xchrome-extension

This is a theme manager for Google Chrome browser. Now you can change the theme to suit your mood just with a click of a button. A must add-on if you are a fan of customization!

4. Adsweep (Adblock)

This is a popular Google Chrome extension that will clean all the ads present in web page such that you can view web pages ad free. It even helps to remove all the ads from Youtube videos or webpages and present you clean ad free page.

Download Adsweep ad-blocker for Google Chrome

5. Gmail This

It is basically a bookmarklet which lets you to mail the content of a web page through Gmail. Just select the content that you want to mail and press this bookmarklet Gmail composer window will open with the selected content now you can directly type in the email address to whom you want to send it and click send just like you do to send mails using Gmail.

Download GMail This extension

6. GMail Checker

gmail-checker

This tiny extension embeds a little notification icon in your toolstripwhich will alert you when you receive a new email! A click on the alert take you directly to the GMail window.

Download Gmail Checker extension

7. Google Talk From Your Browser

This little script allows you to add a GTalk icon to your launcher which, when run, opens up a window that simply requires your login and password to get you chatting.

Download GTalk plugin for Google Chrome

8. Session Saver – Session Management tool

session-saver-chrome

Session Saver is a session manager that lets you save and manage multiple sessions. It will help you to you save, manage and reload multiple sessions.

Download Session Saver extension for Google Chrome

9. Google Page Rank/ Alexa Rank Checker

page-rank-alexa-rank-checker

This clean and simple extension will display the current page rank of the opened website in the Google Chrome Status Bar.

Download Google Page rank / Alexa Rank checker

10. Cleeki

cleeki-addon-chrome

Cleeki is a perfect pal if you need to launch search/share/publish tasks based on any content in your browser. Just select some text, and Cleeki can search/share/publish the content and preview the results immediately. Cleeki can also preview a hyperlink without open a new window/tab.

Download Cleeki for Google Chrome

11. ChromeMailer

chrome-mailer

ChormeMailer is an application to send emails via Gmail, either directly or when you click on the links mailto: instead of opening another mail client.

Download Chrome Mailer Extension for Google Chrome

12. ChromePass

chromepass-extension

ChromePass add-on recovers usernames and passwords that are stored on Google Chrome browser. Simply install this add-on plugin and retrieve all the details.

Download ChromePass extension for Google Chrome

13. TPGoogleReader

tpgooglereader-chrome

This extension reside in the toolstrip and alerts you as to how many feeds you have unread inside your Google Reader account. Besides doing this, it also adds an RSS icon to your address bar allowing you to subscribe to a sites RSS feed with your Google account.

Download TPGoogleReader extension for Chrome

14. Chrome Gestures

Chrome Gestures addon adds a number of mouse gestures to Chrome browser.

Download Chrome Gestures addon

15. Sticky Notes

Chrome Sticky Notes adds an inbuilt notepad to Chrome which can be launched by clicking on the little notepad icon on the toolstrip. You get the option to save your sticky note for future reference, and you can view it even if you restart your browser.

Download Sticky notes extension for Chrome

16. Chritter

Chritter is a Chrome Twitter notifier which shows recent tweets in the toolstrip, fetches new tweets every 5 minutes and linkifies http://links, @usernames and #hashtags

Download Chritter for Google Chrome

17. Chrome.fm

chrome-fm

Download Chrome.fm add-on

18. Greasemetal

Greasemetal Extension can be said as the Firefox Greasemonkey addon for Google Chrome. Greasemonkey addon is for firefox which let you to run userscripts (user defined javascripts to modify the webpages being displayed).

Download Greasemetal extension for Google Chrome

19. Drag n Go Plugin

With Drag n Go Plugin you dont need to right-click and then select “Open in New Tab“ to open new links in background tab or foreground. All you need to do is to just drag the links to very small distance and drop it.

Download Drag-n-go plugin for Google Chrome

20. Facebook Notifications

It retrieves the number of notifications from your Facebook account. You have to be logged in to Facebook for this extension to work.

Download Facebook Notifications plugin for Google Chrome

21. Aniweather

aniweather-addon

Detailed weather report in the browser’s toolstrip. Also available as a Firefox addon.

Download Aniweather plugin for Google Chrome

22. Google Chrome Extension Manager

Now with all those amazing extensions installed onto your browser, you can enable, disable or delete the extensions from the application itself by installing this add-on!

Download Google Chrome Extension Manager

So, which add-on you found as the most useful? Do you know of any other useful Google chrome extension? Feel free to share them in the comments below.

Kristanix Button Shop v4.14

Windows Sofware | Kristanix Button Shop V4.14 | RAR | 8.9 MB
Within five minutes, you will be making stunning, memorable buttons for you web site! That’s how easy it is to use Button Shop. Why suffer from lost sales or site visitors, when you can invest in a program that will pay for itself within days! This powerful tool includes everything you need to perfect your home page. It comes jam-packed with more than 200 professionally designed button templates and textures, that you can play with, tweak and modify to suit your own needs. Button Shop will even create web menus for your web site, and create the HTML code you need to have mouse-over and mouse-pressed states for your buttons. No javascript and complex HTML-knowledge required.

Features Highlight
Vista and XP themed buttons!
Making stylish web buttons is a snap!
Mac-style Aqua buttons!
Easily build shining buttons like those the Mac!
Create web menus!
Just create your buttons and the menu is automatically made out of them.
Over 150 beautiful templates included!
Use templates to get an elegant button in seconds!
Over 50 textures included!
Create unique and stylish buttons from images! More are available exclusively to registered customers.
Mirror reflection buttons!
As seen on the Mac Leopard OS and product presentations!
Lots of cool button effects!
Glow, light, stroke, grayscale, pulse, shadow and more!
Animated pulse effect!
Make your buttons stand out with the pulsing style.
Mouse-over and mouse-clicked states!
Have your button light up as the user clicks it!
Automatic generation of HTML and Javascript
Let the program build the required HTML and Javascript for you!
Multiple image format support!
Save as BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, EXIF, WMF, EMF, ICON and even Animated GIF and Animated TIFF!

Additional Features
Make both rounded, rectangular and tab shaped buttons.
You can change the color of every part of the button.
Set the transparency level of the effects.
Put icons and images on your buttons!
Customize the pixel width and height of the button.
Adjust text outline, shadow, color, font, size and more.
Customizable gradient color effects.
Adjust the position of the text, rotation, icon, shadow and more.

System Requirements
System: Windows (2000/XP/2003/Vista/7)
Harddrive Space: 15 MB
Screen Resolution: 800×600 minimum, 1024×768 recommended
Processor: Pentium 100 MHz minimum, 500 MHz or higher recommended
Memory: 64 MB or more recommended

Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework is required to be able to run the program. The installation file will automatically check if you have the framework installed and will prompt you to update it if it does not exist. If you want to download it seperately, you can use this link:

Homepage
http://www.kristanixsoftware.com/buttonshop/

Archives contain the repairing data. You don’t have to worry about CRC errors.

Download (RapidShare)
http://rapidshare.com/files/315516510/SPVN.BS.V4.14.rar
Mirror (Hotfile):
http://hotfile.com/dl/19362175/86c7609/SPVN.BS.V4.14.rar.html

20 Search Engine Optimization Tips

This is 20 tips to help you optimization your blog and website with Search Enginee to get more traffic and backlink , help you turn up your rank and pagerank . So, you just ask what you should do with 20 tips bellow ? Just do it step by step from one to twenty .

1. Write and submit articles to the article directories.

2. Leave comments on other peoples blogs with a backlink to your site.

3. Answer peoples questions on Yahoo! Answers – Home.

4. Post in forums and have a link to your site in your signature.

5. Write a press release and submit it to PRWeb – The Online Visibility Company

6. Advertise your website in the appropriate category websites Free Ads. Website

7. Give an unbiased testimonial on a product/service that you have used in exchange for a backlink to your site.

8. Start a blog and submit it to the 100s of free blog directories.

9. Manually submit your website to the major search engines.

10. Optimize each page of your website for a particular keyword or search phrase.

11. Add a link in your email signature to your website. Its a free and easy way to get a little more traffic.

12. Make a custom 404 error page for your website redirecting people to your home page.

13. Use PPC search engine advertising.

14. Add a bookmark this site link to your webpages.

15. Have a tell-a-friend form on your site.

16. Send articles to ezine publishers that includes a link to your website.

17. Hold a crazy content and make it go viral.

18. Give away a freebie (ebook, report, e-course) to keep people coming back to your site you can get some Free book here.

19. Add an RSS feed to your blog.

20. Submit your site to any related niche directories on the internet