Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
It’s been a long time coming, but Microsoft has announced that they will no longer support or release security updates for Windows XP after April 8, 2014, a move that will effectively kill off what has been arguably the most popular version of Windows ever released.
The company had originally planned to end support for XP years ago, but for various reasons they pushed back the “kill” date several times. It appears that the April 2014 date is set in stone however. [Read more…]
T-Mobile has effectively put an end to wireless contracts, opting instead to allow all customers to sign up for “pay-as-you-go” service similar to the plans offered by Straight Talk, TracFone, Virgin Mobile and others. Could this be a trend sweeping the industry? I happen to think it is.
Pay-as-you-go cell phone service has been offered for years by TracFone and their no-contract brethren, but the concept really hit its stride when Wal-Mart jumped into the game with their Strait Talk service. The thought of being able to switch carriers at a moment’s notice without having to pay a penalty is causing customers to jump ship in large numbers when their contracts expire, switching instead to companies that don’t require a contract. [Read more…]
Former Republican Congressman and Presidential candidate Ron Paul has learned the hard way why it is so important to register your own domain name.
The domain name RonPaul.com has pointed to a website promoting Congressman Paul’s political causes and career for years, but the domain is not owned by Mr. Paul himself. Instead, it is owned by a friend of one of his political supporters, and that man is refusing to hand over control of the domain to Mr. Paul now that his political career has apparently come to an end.
The RonPaul.com debacle is only the latest in a long line of high profile domain disputes, and it illustrates with crystal clarity why it’s so important for website owners to control their own domain names. [Read more…]
Android devices the world over are becoming infected at an ever-increasing rate with a strain of malware known as “NotCompatible”. Although NotCompatible has been around since May 2012 it has only recently started spreading quickly in the wild.
Once a device has been infected with NotCompatible it can be used as a web proxy which allows the miscreants responsible for creating and spreading the malware to do all kinds of illicit things on the web without the dirty deeds being traced back to them. [Read more…]
Are you a Mac user who shops online? If so, you probably end up paying more than Windows users when shopping for the same products and services.
Want proof? The travel site Orbitz recently disclosed to the Wall Street Journal that Mac users tend to spend 30% more when booking hotel rooms than Windows users.
What’s more, in order to help them spend that extra cash, the site checks to see which web browser the customer is using and adjusts the prices of the rooms that he/she is offered accordingly. If Orbitz detects Apple’s Safari browser, they’ll offer rooms with prices that are approximately 30% higher than would be offered to Internet Explorer users.
And Orbitz isn’t alone in their use of selective pricing. Some of the largest commercial websites on the Internet do the very same thing. Personally, I don’t use a Mac. But if I did I’d keep a windows PC handy just for shopping on the web! If you’d like to read the Journal article for yourself you’ll find it right here.