MaSSSoftech

For as long as I can remember, I have been a fan of Macintosh computers and Apple products. From its sleek design to its user-friendly setup, the Mac is here to stay.

The debate over whether to use a personal computer or a Mac is all about preference.

The advantage of owning a PC is the use of basic programs such as Microsoft Office. However, Macs have all that plus more. Unlike a PC, a Mac is less vulnerable to viruses that will cause the computer to crash or breakdown.

According to edubook.com, Macs focus on the artistic and creative industry, making the use of Adobe software and Photoshop easy. It also increases the competition against your everyday PC.

Even though Macs are considerably more expensive than PCs, you pay for what you get.

If you prefer a PC, then look into what you’re getting into. Every PC catches a virus at one point or another, usually more than one. If you’re ready to face that sort of doom, then get a PC.

But Macs are a good investment. There are little to no virus problems. Even the least expensive Mac is more expensive than a PC, but the way I see it, one should choose quality over quantity any day.

Whether you use your computer for music, work or entertainment, you cannot put a price on something that has such practical value.

Are you familiar with those Apple commercials? Though they’re sometimes exaggerated, they carry some truth.

Apple support and customer care are number one. Apple is right there for you if you are have a problem.

In every Apple retail store, there are “geniuses” that have all of the answers to your questions as well as, provide hands-on technical support for not only Macs, but also for items such as the iPod, Apple TV, and the iPhone. No automated recordings!

The “geniuses” even take care of troubleshooting and actual repairs. I can’t speak much for PCs, but I’ve yet to see a Dell or HP Store.

My first year in college, I was cursed with a PC. If it wasn’t the battery, then it was a virus. If it was not a virus then, it was something else.

If it weren’t for my mother buying me a Mac the next year, than that PC would have been the death of me. My freshman year was so much more stressful as a result of owning a PC.

According to the Apple Web site, the Mac has the world’s most advanced operating system, Mac OS X, and with the recent release of Snow Leopard, it is “finely tuned.” Take THAT, Windows 7!

The better choice for a computer is obviously a Mac. For the Mac users, with all of your wisdom and responsibility, I salute you. PC users, I will continue to pray for you.

Apple’s weathered the economic downturn like almost no other company, pulling in massive profits without having to resort to deep price cuts. But what’s its secret?

Over the past few weeks I’ve been asking a group of Mac/Apple fans why they thought Apple was doing so well. Here are four possible reasons for Apple’s success:

* Constantly improving, innovative product line
Apple doesn’t have a huge product line, but the company is constantly tweaking it. Most of the product updates are well thought out and offer the end user extra value. This is attractive to both new and existing customers.
* Advertising
Apple has a massive ad budget and this allows it to spread the word to a huge audience. When this comes to Macs, this is allowing Apple to aggressively go after those disillusioned PC users. Those funny Mac vs. PC ads are serious business.
* Customer satisfaction
Apple consistently scores very high in customer satisfaction surveys (the company usually tops the list). Happy customers not only re-buy, but tell others that they are happy, therefore generating further sales.
* Vista sucked
Given how Vista was widely considered by many consumers to be a failure, this has handed users over to Apple on a plate. After all, for users who were sick of Vista, or just wanted to give the OS a wide berth, Apple is an obvious choice.

Google now gives users of a subset of Google Voice features if they want to simply use their service without getting a brand new “Google Number”. Mobile phone users can now forward incoming calls to their “Google Voice” mailbox rather than the one hosted by their carrier.

The features available to these users basically includes voicemail, and the ability to make low-priced long distance phone calls, according to the official Google Voice blog.

* Online, searchable voicemail
* Free automated voicemail transcription
* Custom voicemail greetings for different callers
* Email and SMS notifications
* Low-priced international calling

For those of you who want to use Google Voice to its full potential — you’re going to have to take the plunge and get a brand new number. The features, if you choose to go this route, are much more interesting and useful:

* One number that reaches you on all your phones
* SMS via email
* Call screening
* Listen In
* Call recording
* Conference calling
* Call blocking

Once Google fully supports number portability, perhaps they will be able to allow users to simply use one of their existing phone numbers with the full service — but I’m not going to hold my breath for that just yet.

Will you be using the new voicemail service from Google Voice?

There is a common saying that only lawyers or solicitors should get acquainted with different aspects of law, they must be well informed or else the profession may come to an end. Can this be accepted as true? Shouldn’t common people get familiar with the same?

What is Information Technology Act 2000 (ITA-2000)?

Well, if you are living in India and are almost a PC freak, you must remain aware of Information Technology Act 2000 (ITA-2000). It, by and large, is an Act of the Indian Parliament (No 21 of 2000) notified on October 17, 2000. It is worthwhile to mention that the United Nations General Assembly by means of resolution A/RES/51/162, dated the 30 January 1997 did accept the Model Law on Electronic Commerce adopted by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law. This is referred to as the UNCITRAL Model Law on E-Commerce. What is more the Information technology Act 2000 amendment Bill 2006 has since been passed by the Indian Parliament on December 23, 2008.

Is there any new proposal?

It has to be stated that the Government of India, by now, has proposed major amendments to ITA-2000 in form of the Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2006, passed by the Cabinet Committee of the Government of India and are prepared for being placed before the Indian Parliament for discussion.

Nevertheless some substantial developments have taken place in all these years and the bill is known as, at the moment, Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2008. Even though some persons try to discern any similarity with the 2006 Bill, it is a totally different Bill and has been approved by the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha. Is there any more problem? The Bill is awaiting approval of the President along with the formal notification.

There has been the inclusion of many changes, as already said, and at the same time it does incorporate the recommendations made by the Parliamentary Standing Committee. However there is another problem. In the Indian scenario till the moment a Bill gets finally notified by the Executive it remains a mere Bill. For this reason, till the government of India notifies it, the old Information Technology Act, 2000 would continue to preside over the Indian cyber law.

Has there been any criticism?

What surprises many persons is the dearth of media recognition afforded to the amendment. Apart from this the amendment was passed in 26 minutes the 22nd of December 2008 along with 4 other bills, and another 8 in just 17 minutes the next day. This indicates that there was hardly any debate on what should have been very contentious laws. Even Karnika Seth, renowned cyberlawyer & chairperson of the Cyberlaws Consulting Centre in India, through making a detailed analysis of the recent amendments in the IT Act, 2000 has failed to be optimistic.

And I don’t just mean for geeks. I mean a real, viable alternative to Windows for many users despite the apparent quality of both Windows 7 and Server 2008.


About a year and a half ago, ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes asked, “Is Ubuntu becoming the generic Linux distro?” and concluded that “the evolution of Ubuntu into the generic Linux distro isn’t a bad thing”. Fair enough, but Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth took this idea a bit farther during a press conference call yesterday:

“We’ve already done a lot of work in developer ecosystem and we’re now increasingly interested in the non-developer consumer ecosystem, so that’s what all the OEM work is about,” Shuttleworth said, declaring that his focus was on “making sure that Ubuntu gets pre-installed and Ubuntu is available from Dell.com and others and making sure that Ubuntu is the default alternative to Windows.”


He didn’t mention Apple, which, to many consumers, is the only alternative to Windows. For all its buzz in the tech world, Linux (or Ubuntu) is hardly a household word. Competing with Apple, though, which already has an impressive ecosystem of hardware and is the reigning king of usability, doesn’t make sense anyway and this ad from Novell would never fly outside of the tech community:

So how can I be so confident that Shuttleworth’s vision of becoming the “default alternative”, and not just the default Linux for those geeky enough to try it, will become a reality? Because he very clearly tied it to a vision of platform. If Ubuntu can work well on every device users encounter (including non-Intel smartbooks and other new classes of portable devices that will be emerging in the next couple of years, displacing notebooks for many consumers), then name recognition will follow.

Obviously, the PC space is dominated by Windows. Yet no matter how spiffy Windows 7 is (and even Shuttleworth acknowledged that it was a good OS, worthy of competing with Ubuntu), Vista taught us all a lesson (consumers and techies alike). There are alternatives to the latest and greatest from Microsoft, even if that’s Windows XP. We don’t have to upgrade.

This “PC space” is changing, though. Windows Mobile stinks. Microsoft has no plans to develop Windows on ARM platforms. The cloud is here, not because of the economy, but because of the value businesses perceive in it. Ubuntu is actively developing in all of these spaces and their latest, highly polished OS (available Thursday) shows off many of the technologies.

What forced Microsoft to crank out it’s best OS in years (some might say it’s best ever and certainly the most stable prior to a service pack or two)? Competition. Competition from Apple, certainly, but also a growing awareness of open source concepts in general. Many artists are releasing DRM-free music (and still making money). Books are widely and freely available. Content is everywhere, much of it for free. Something that you pay for, then, like Windows, better be a heck of a lot better than its free alternatives. Competition is our friend, whether we’re consumers, pro users, or CIOs.

Microsoft may very well continue to dominate the desktop PC space. However, a quick look around at the variety of ways people access online content and cloud-based resources suggests that the importance of the desktop PC as we know it is diminishing. Ubuntu is ready to capitalize on that in ways that the average consumer won’t recognize until he or she finds him or herself using Ubuntu on a MID, a netbook, a kiosk, a phone, a virtualized OS, or a smartbook. Can Apple, Microsoft, or any other Linux distributor say that? Competition might be our friend, but an ubiquitous platform is the friend of developers who can start creating the next generation of killer apps, easily ported to whatever screen we might be using.

It’s no secret that there are millions of digital photos that never see the light of day. They languish on hard drives, flash memory cards, photo CDs, and other digital media, never to be printed or shared. And though some lucky shots get distributed via photo sharing and social networking sites, the days of snapshot prints that you can pass around to your friends and family are dwindling. Sony Electronics is trying to stem the tide with its new S-Frame DPP-F700 digital photo frame.

The DPP-F700 is an all-in-one digital photo frame that not only displays photos on a 7-inch widescreen LCD, but also prints out 4×6-inch snapshots, using a built-in dye-sublimation technology printer. And when Sony says all-in-one, it means all-in-one: you can use the device to do some basic photo editing, such as enlarging, reducing, cropping, and adjusting sharpness, brightness, contrast and hue, as well as print out calendars and other predefiined image templates.

An automatic sensor rotates portrait- or landscape-format images appropriately and offers multiple playback options, such as single images, thumbnails, or slideshows with 10 built-in transitions.



The frame accepts most flash memory formats — including SD, SDHC, MMC, CompactFlash, xD-Picture Card, and of course Memory Stick Pro and Memory Stick Pro DUO cards — as well as USB input from your PC.

And if you actually just want your digital snaps to languish, there’s a gigabyte of internal storage that automatically downsizes your photos to store up to 2,000 images.

The frame/printer will sell for about $200 when it ships in January and is compatible with SVM-F series photo paper packs for Sony Picture Station printers. The cost of consumables per print varies from about 50 cents a print with the SVM-F40P pack (which includes 40 sheets of 4×6 paper and a printer ribbon for $19.99) to about 30 cents per print with the SVM-F120P (which includes 120 sheets of 4×6 paper and two printer ribbons for $34.99).

The White House announced the move in an Associated Press story that somewhat clumsily tried explaining, "the programming language is written in public view, available for public use, and able for people to edit." Debugging and upgrading the site's code "now...can be done in the matter of days and free to taxpayers."

Well, sort of. First of all, Drupal is a program, not a programming language, and second, just because software is available for free doesn't mean that using it is free. It takes time and expertise to install, configure, and maintain software. Indeed, Drupal and Acquia founder Dries Buytaert said in a blog posting announcing the White House's use of Drupal that companies involved in the Web site switch included not just his but also General Dynamics Information Technology, Phase2 Technology, Akamai, and Terremark Federal Group.

And although open-source software in general can offer a tight feedback loop between the programmers creating the software and the people using it, there's no guarantee that debugging and security patches automatically arrive faster or that software is easier to maintain than with proprietary software.

This move is just the sort of thing that can lead to a lot of misunderstandings about the idea of openness, a term that's up there with motherhood and apple pie these days when it comes to values everybody wants to embrace. Don't confuse the fact that Drupal is cooperatively created and debugged in public with the openness of the present administration's government.

This line in the AP story in particular raised my hackles: "Aides joked that it doesn't get more transparent than showing the world (the) code that their Web site is based on."

That's just silly. Drupal-powered blogs and forums can enable online information sharing and public participation in discussions, but that sort of thing can be accomplished with proprietary software as well. Likewise, it's perfectly possible to use open-source software in a system that's locked-down and closed.

That's not to pluck the feather out of Drupal's cap--or indeed out of the caps of Red Hat's Linux operating system, Apache software for hosting Web site and powering its search, and the MySQL database, all of which also are used in the White House project, according to publisher, tech pundit, and open-source fan Tim O'Reilly.

It's not without reason that open-source software is very popular to power Web properties, including plenty of high-powered ones such as Google and Facebook. The White House's move is an endorsement that could help others--notably the many customers in the federal government itself--feel more comfortable with open-source software.