For the show broadcast between July 12th and July 18th, 2008
One of the things that Benjamin talked about this week is a laptop that is very visually stunning yet sadly impractical. It is designed for you to be able to watch movies while on an airplane while the person in front of you reclines. Unfortunately, you pay $3,000 for that simple innovation…
Additionally Benjamin touched on the topic of Yahoo’s Free Stuff Exchange. It is a list of alternatives to Freecycle (www.freecycle.org) if freecycle is not in your area and can be found at green.yahoo.com.
Benjamin also talked about online pharmacies and a few people who have died from their products. There are many online pharmacies that claim to sell pharmaceutical drugs easily and conveniently so that you don’t have to go to the nearest drug store. Unfortunately, these pharmacies don’t sell real medication. They are selling lethal imitations. Some others are selling the real drugs but without requiring prescriptions. Long story short, stay away from online pharmacies.
There are many search engines out there like Google, Yahoo, and Ask.com but many of them will lead you to bad sites, whether intentionally or unintentionally. However, Benjamin talked about a new product from Trendmicro called Trendprotect. It’s a simple add-on to your search engine that will help you find safe result choices. Websites it deems safe will be highlighted in green while un-safe sites will be highlighted in red. This program can be downloaded simply at www.trendsecure.com
Many people want to be able to transfer pictures from their old PC to their new Mac as more and more of the population makes the switch over to Macintosh. So, Benjamin was there to guide the way this week. One of the easiest ways to do this is via a program called Move2Mac. Another program by the same company, Detto, is Intellimover, which does the same thing. Their homepage is www.detto.com. Or you can use an external hard drive by copying the files from your PC onto the hard drive and then copying them from your external hard drive onto your Mac. You can do the same thing with CDs and DVDs, thought it will take longer. Additionally, you can use a USB drive. (Also called a “jump” drive or a “flash” drive.) Another way to transfer your files if by e-mail. Sites such as www.pando.com and www.dropsend.com will allow you to do this quickly and easily.
Of course, Benjamin never runs out of the simple things that still make such a difference. For example, he talked about some creative ways to cut down on spam this week. You can actually put periods inside of your email address and make multiple addresses with different amounts and locations of periods. From there you can use each address for a different purpose. Additionally, many companies, like www.mintemail.com and www.fakemailgenrator.com and www.fakenamegenerator.com allow you to create temporary fake e-mail addresses to avoid spam.
Another helpful thing that Benjamin talked about is Malware Scanners. There are many free virus and malware scanners on the web. Some sites for you to check out are housecall.antivirus.com, www.eset.com/onlinescane/, virusscan.jotti.org/, www.bitdefender.com/, ca.com, and www.ewido.net/en/onlinescan/. Another great thing you can do is to download the trial version of a scanner and use it until the trial expires, then buy the program.
Of course Benjamin also touched on some green topics like getting rid of old computers without harming the environment. You can gift it, freecycle it, sell it on eBay, Craigslist it, use secondrotation.com, or recycle it.
Benjamin also covered some helpful e-mail etiquette rules.
- Make your subject line direct and clear
- Don’t “shout.” Make sure you don’t use ALL CAPS.
- Be very clear in your message, especially if there is no thread (Previous messages below)
- Don’t Ramble. Get to the point.
- Understand that your tone will probably be misunderstood if it is at all capable of being miss-understood. Use smileys when being sarcastic. (i.e. colon and right parentheses or semi-colon and right parentheses)
- Don’t attach lots of files or enormous files.
- Use a signature. Keep it mostly basic but you can get decently creative. Include your name, phone number, etc.
- Make sure you’re sending to the right address
- Don’t mix e-mail accounts by sending work e-mail from home and vice versa.
- Don’t rely on E-mail as your only form of communication. Call and meet in person too.
Another fun thing that Benjamin talked about was www.urbandictionary.com. This website contains an endless list of words and phrases that have yet to make it into Webster’s and probably will never get in due to their slang originations. Here are some examples:
Cash Pedal: The accelerator pedal in a car during times when gas prices are high
iBrick: an iPhone before activation. It can do nothing at this point and closely resembles a brick.
Be sure to check out www.urbandictionary.com for more!
Another Green item that Benjamin talked about is “erasable” paper from Xerox. This paper will cause the ink to fade away after time, allowing you to reuse the paper without even recycling it. Just run it back through the printer. You will be able to do this hundreds of times. It may sound impossible but Xerox says it’s not too far away.
Benjamin covered it all this
week, from green tech to
even legal fiascos! The
This week was full of green items and one of them actually had to do with the iPhone! Starting with the new 3GB iPhone released on July 11th, the iPhone now ships in a potato starch paper tray from a Dutch company called PaperFoam. (www.paperfoam.com) This company makes green shipping products for all sorts of things, from Motorola phones to CDs.
Another legal matter that Benjamin covered had to do with Text messages and E-mails. A federal appeals court has decided that you employer and the police cannot access your e-mail without your permission or a warrant. This is the first time that a case has expanded the 4th amendment into the digital world.
So, considering the large amount of “green” items today, our Captain Planet of Computer Talk Radio (and Computer Talk Radio.com) has delivered yet another exciting show.
Remember that you can listen to the show via the links below and please feel free to explore the rest of the site to learn more about Benjamin and Computer Talk Radio.
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