Tech Tips 2009 – The Year in Review

by Chris Herzog – January 10, 2010

The beginning of a new year presents us with the ideal opportunity to imagine where we might be going by examining where we've been.

A year is a long time in the tech world, and a lot of things happened in 2009. Our own little corner of it (Tech Tips) is no exception. In this issue of Tech Tips, we’ll take a look back at some of the great articles we brought you in 2009.

In January of 2009, in what was also our 200th installment of Tech Tips, we took a look at the “new” technology of Solid State Hard Drives. This technology has made great strides in the past year in terms of performance generic viagra usa and longevity, as well as becoming far more affordable; it seems that a re-visit might be in order for 2010. We also started off the year with a look at eBook readers and some great gear for geeks on the go.

February came with our customary review of what was hot at CES 2009, and Bryan Lambert began a two-part guide to making the most of Craigslist without getting ripped off.

In March, Scott Nesbitt gave us a handy video format guide, and we also took a refresher course on motherboard basics.

Also in the spring, we brought you an introduction to “cloud computing”, and a look at must-have Blackberry apps for you ’berry addicts out there. We also studied up on learning new languages online, as well as taking a big breath of Adobe Air.

2009 saw the launch of Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, and in June we examined five reasons why Bing outshines Google. The “dog days of summer” brought us several more great Tech Tips including dealing with identity theft, a look at some excellent (free!) open-source alternatives to popular Windows applications, and some advice on wrangling those pesky passwords.

In September, we explored how to watch your PC on a TV, and in October we checked out four free apps for editing photos online.

The last quarter of 2009 finally saw the long-awaited, much-anticipated release of Microsoft’s newest operating system, Windows 7, and in November we explored “7 Fantastic New Features of Windows 7”.

We rounded out a great year with a look at streaming movies using Netflix, and finished strong with a review of the top tech winners and losers of 2009.

With nearly 50 Tech Tips articles in a given year, these are only a few highlights from a very busy 2009; click here for the complete archive of Tech Tips articles all the way back to #1.

Or, become part of the conversation: join the Tech Tips community and visit our blog – we welcome your comments!

We sincerely hope that we have provided you with a wealth of useful, entertaining, and occasionally thought-provoking information throughout 2009, and we look forward to continuing to be your source for information that will help you survive and thrive in a digital world – have a Geeky New Year!

Part 2: Top 10 Tech Losers for 2009

by: Bryan Lambert – December 27, 2009

Everyone on the Tech Tips Team would like to wish you and yours a wonderful holiday season in the company of family and friends –

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from Geeks.com!

In last week's Tech Tip we looked at the Top Ten Tech Winners for 2009. Though some of the gizmos, gadgets or tech trends didn’t start in 2009 – some certainly culminated that year. This week we’ll look at the Bottom 10 in Tech, what we like to call the LOWLY LOSERS:

generic viagra review border=”0″ width=”180″ height=”133″ align=”left” />10) USB 3.0 – Where oh where has USB 3.0 gone?

Demoed in 2007, 2009 was “supposed” to be when we could get über speeds from the super fast USB 3.0. Well, 2009 saw USB 3.0 delayed yet again. Plans for a controller in June, motherboards and external hard drives in September have been delayed…yet again. Now the latest news is that we’ll start (maybe) seeing it in 2010, but that it won’t be relevant until 2011. We’ll hold our breath on that one.

9) Intel gets called on the carpet – over and over again

In a bid to freeze out the main competition (who really only owned a very small percentage of the overall processor business) Intel employed some “questionable business practices". At least that is how it came out when Intel settled the AMD lawsuit against them to a tune of $1.25 BILLION (yes, Billion – with a "B"!) dollars. When you add that to the fine that the European Union already hit Intel with ($1.45 billion) for the same “questionable practices" and that the US Federal Trade Commission just recently slapped a lawsuit on Intel for these same “questionable practices”, then you see that, though they make some of the world's best processors, Intel earns a spot on the Loser List for Tech in 2009.

8) U.S. wireless phone carriers – enough already! Just improve your service!

Do I need to say more? Wouldn’t it be better for Verizon and AT&T (and their little brothers T-Mobile and Sprint) to just improve their networks and customer service rather than snipe at each other in commercials? HEY GUYS! Where’s our LTE?!

7) Apple Snow Leopard

Brought in a couple of months before the release of Microsoft’s Windows 7, Apple's newest Operating System upgrade (version 10.6 – dubbed “Snow Leopard”) had quite a different reception than 7. Amid complaints that it contained an unsecure version of Adobe’s Flash; that under certain circumstances it could erase user data; that it felt like a rushed effort and that it no longer supported any PowerPC based Apples – Snow Leopard hit the ground crawling. Not until November did Apple finally release a service pack, er, update to the OS that fixed the majority of the major issues associated with Snow Leopard – but not until Apple's "it just works” image was tarnished just a tad. BAD KITTY! BAD!

6) Intel Larrabee

Larrabee is the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) project that was started with so much fanfare. It was actually planned to be a hybrid marriage between a CPU (Central Processing Unit – the main chip in the computer) and the GPU to make what was dubbed a GPGPU (General-purpose computing on graphics processing units) it was set to revolutionize the graphics industry. Instead it was quietly put to sleep in 2009.

5) IEEE 802.11n standard

This is actually a pretty good Wi-Fi standard – but makes it to the loser list for the year just for the sheer fact that it took so long to actually get the standard ratified. Mind you, this is a standard that they started talking about in 2002 – and whose ‘draft” version has been out since 2007. Molasses flows faster than the IEEE group.

4) Patent Trolls

It seemed like 2009 was the year of the Patent Trolls. Patent Trolls are companies whose sole purpose in life seems to be buying up patents, seeing how it can be applied (usually in some arcane way) to already existing things and then ask for licensing fees. Now we see some companies fighting back – but with companies still losing in court, will it be enough to stem the tide?

3) Time Warner/AT&T (and anyone else) who is upset that people think that “Unlimited” plans are, um, unlimited.

Roh Wroh, looks like Time Warner and AT&T don’t like people actually “using” their unlimited plans unlimitedly. With lots of talk already from Time Warner cable wanting to implement tiers countrywide (now in test cities), it looks like AT&T is joining the fray as well. Give us back our bandwidth!

2) iPhone App. Developer – Molinker

Question – how do you get 1,011 of your programs removed from Apple's iPhone application store? Answer – by offering shill reviews for poorly written software.  Maybe application developer Molinker can team up with Psystar (see below) for a joint endeavor?

1) Psystar

Really? Really? Did Psystar REALLY think that they could build generic PCs and then stick a hacked version of Apple's Operating System on it and then offer it for sale in the U.S.? Not only did this violate all sorts of “that’s just wrong,” it’s crazy that the Pedraza brothers thought that they could do this and not get it slapped down in court like they did.  What will be their next adventure – selling boot-leg DVDs on a street corner outside Paramount Studios? The two words that best seem to describe Psystar at this point? EPIC FAIL!

Unhonorable mention

– Apple Polizei – Sometimes, companies forget that people “work to live”; they don’t “live for work”

– Foxconn – Really, sometimes work related inquiries go a bit too far – see the comment above.

In this week’s Tech Tip we looked at the race to the bottom. We hope you have enjoyed the look at the 2009 year with these two Tech Tips. Please feel free to comment on the list or even nominate some new entries that could be clumped into the Lowly Losers for 2009.

Part 1: Top 10 Tech Winners for 2009

by: Byan Lambert – December 20, 2009

Over the next two weeks, Tech Tips is going to take a trip down memory lane. We are going to wax nostalgic over the year 2009 and take a look at some of the top and bottom Tech for the year. Some will be product specific while others will be things that really caught fire or kind of fizzed out like a wet sparkler during the year. Of course we filter them through our special Geek “thick as a Coke bottle” glasses.

In this week's installment,we present the Top 10 Tech Winners for 2009, so without further ado we give you the WINNERS' CIRCLE!

10) HDTV is king… officially!… finally!

Adios analog TV, we hardly knew thee. Or did we? 60+ years of the same old NTSC (in the States anyway) standard and it was time to pull the plug. In June of 2009 analog TV was pulled off life-support and HDTV officially now rules the roost! The King is dead, long live the King!

9) Video Streaming is here to stay

Remember when just seeing video on a Desktop PC was a novelty? Or when video that was streamed over the internet kind of looked really bad? Or when watching your favorite episode of “CSI:Miami” meant checking the TV Guide? How about fuzzy YouTube videos of WKRP cut into three segments? Now with sites such as Hulu, ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX (and a TON of others) all offer free, ad paid content just a click away – or Netflix offering commercial-free video streaming as part of their Unlimited Plans (even without a PC) video streaming quickly showed us in 2009 that it is a technology that is here to stay.

8) All Android! All The Time!

It seems like only yesterday that the first Android phone was released (ok, it was late 2008 – so that was practically yesterday) and now in 2009, especially towards the latter-half it seems like it’s All Android! All The Time! Android, the Google Operating System developed for smartphones has had a sharp rise in users and phones in 2009 and all predictions are that it will soon be one of the dominant operating systems offered (pushing rivals Apple and BlackBerry out of the way).

7) Apple iPhone 3GS

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Apple keeps rolling with it's iPhone line. They may not be the best phone or be paired with the best carrier – but it has a lot of marketing clout and users behind it. A smartphone for the masses that not only looks good, but is fun and cool generic viagra price at the same time.

6) Bing

Part of the Microsoft double entry into the top spot for this year, Microsoft’s Bing is the Anti-Google – not only does it give you hits that work but it gives you hits that are relevant. Oh, and it’s fun to use!

5) Social Networking Hits High Volume

OK, you know that Social Networking just had to be in the top ten for 2009, especially when your grandmother tweets you to check out how she’s doing on FarmVille. Really, now social networking sites are hitting our phones as well as our laptops – when will the madness stop?!

4) Oh My Goodness! Cheap Netbooks are EVERYWHERE!

What started out as a cheap looking laptop “wannabe” using a processor that was designed for the 3rd world (and MIDs) has quickly become a phenomenon. In 2009 we’ve seen Netbooks absolutely explode (figuratively) and their popularity has seen no signs of waning. Pretty good for a product whose segment didn’t even exist a few short years ago.

3) Blu-ray players having a break-out year

Remember the olden days of the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray “battle”? Did you blink? It was over before it really began – no protracted Beta vs. VHS battle here – Blu-Ray won and people stayed away from it in droves. Expensive players + expensive movies + expensive TVs + firmware updates every other day just to watch movies (maybe I exaggerate… a little) = peoples staying with DVDs. That was 2006, now fast-forward to 2009. Cheap Blu-Ray Players (new players advertised as little as $78 – yikes!) + cheap(er) movies + much cheaper and better HDTVs (really, why bother with 720p anymore when 1080p are so inexpensive compared to when they first came out) + BD-Live + Netflix streaming = a HUGE surge in popularity. OK, BD-Live units cost more, and those with Netflix streaming even more – but no where near the price tags seen when they came out a scant 3 years ago.

2) eBook readers coming of age

eBook readers are not really that new of a technology, they have been the social wallflowers of tech for a long, long time – and some years they miss the party all together. They just seemed to never get off the ground (kind of like Tablet PCs) but what the lowly Kindle started in 2007 has become an eBook tsuami in 2009. Not only are they easy to use, but with book giants Amazon and Barnes & Noble (eventually) strongly backing them, it seems that the eBook reader is an idea that has finally come of age in 2009.

1) Windows 7

Who would have thought that something good could come out of Microsoft not once but TWICE in the same year. Windows 7 seemed to do everything that Vista didn’t. It works, it’s stable, it has drivers for the stuff that’s out there and the UAC (User Account Control) is scaled back. Way to go Microsoft – this earns you our coveted number ONE SPOT in this year's list of Tech Winners.

Honorable mentions

– Green Tech – Starting as a swell now, but it may take a couple of years to really catch on
– Palm Pre – ok, more for those weird ads – and it can truly multitask
– The Tech of Minority Report – face recognition digital signage from NEC; gestural computing from MIT ; what’s next? Precogs sitting in a Jacuzzi and people being iced for pre-crime?

Opera: The Forgotten Browser

by: Scott Nesbitt – December 13, 2009

In June, 2009 the folks at Google conducted an interesting experiment. They asked a bunch of people in Times Square the question What is a Web browser? Only 8% of the people asked knew what a browser was. Luckily, most (if not all) of the people reading the TechTips in this space know what a browser is …

In fact, I'm willing to bet that you know names like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and maybe even Chrome. But one browser that's often forgotten or ignored is Opera. Which is unfortunate. Why? Opera has lot to offer as a browser. It packs features and functions that can compete with those of the better-known browsers on the Web.

Let's get acquainted (or, in some cases, reacquainted) with this nifty browser.

A little history

Opera started life in the mid-1990s not as a full-blown product, but as an internal project at Telenor (the largest telecommunications firm in Norway). The main developers tweaked the browser, then got permission from Telenor to release Opera as a commercial product. Which they did with Opera 2.0 in 1996. The browser was shareware, which let you try it before you bought it.

At that time, the browser was very simple. It lacked the features of the then-dominant Web browser: Netscape and Internet Explorer. But what Opera lacked in features, it more than made up for in speed. The feature gap, too, narrowed with each release of Opera. Even though the number of features it supported grew, the size of the browser didn't grow out of control. In fact, the download for the latest release of Opera (version 10 at the time this TechTip was written) is only about 10 MB.

As mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago, Opera started life as shareware. Eventually, it became a free ad-supported browser. The ads were finally dropped in 2005; the browser is now supported through revenue earned from Google.

If you're interested, the folks at Opera Software have put together a time line of the browser's development, which you can view here.

What makes Opera special?

Opera isn't just another browser. If it was, it would have faded into the annals of abandonware a long time ago. A number of factors make the browser special.

First up, it's fast. Overall, it's always been faster than Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Firefox. As far as speed goes, Opera is only surpassed by Google Chrome. And while Firefox and Safari have caught up to Opera in some aspects of speed, Opera still has a bit of an edge.

Next, Opera has always been innovative. It's often on the cutting edge, with many features that other browsers later adopted. Opera was one of the first browsers to support Cascading Style Sheets (used to add formatting to Web pages). And it helped introduce the tabbed interface and popup blocking, which are standard features of most modern Web browsers.

It also complies with Web standards better than most browsers. Overall, it passes the Acid2 test of compliance with those standards with better marks than its competitors.

Finally, Opera is one of the few browsers that takes accessibility seriously. You can access just about every function of the browser using the keyboard – no mouse required.

Features, features

This is what it's all about: the nifty features that Opera packs. And there are more than a couple that are worth a look.

Let's start off with Opera's built-in email client. Instead of having to jump out to another email client or log into a Web-based account, you can set Opera up to access one or more email accounts. The client has good spam filters, searching, and mail management functions. It also lets you read and write emails while you're offline and will automatically synchronize them with your accounts once you're connected to the Internet.

Firefox is famous for its extensions. Opera's no slouch in that area either, with its widgets. Widgets are small programs that add features and functions to the browser. There are 16 categories of widgets, and hundreds of individual ones. They range from unit converts to news readers to tools for Web developers and widgets for accessing social media sites. And a whole lot more. I have to admit that I have no use for most Opera widgets, but some are quite useful.

When you think presentation slides, you think PowerPoint. But who needs PowerPoint when you have a Web browser? Opera has a neat function called Opera Show that lets you create slides in HTML and use the browser to view them. Depending on your ability to code using HTML and CSS, your slides don't need to be barebones, quick and dirty. They can be quite visually rich. And what if you don't know HTML and CSS? Opera Software has an online slide generator that's easy to use.

Bookmarks are OK, but sometimes you want to get to your favorite Web sites a bit faster. You can do that with Speed Dial. Speed Dial allows you to put up to 25 links to Web sites on a new tab. The links appear as thumbnail images. You can add those sites from your bookmarks, your browsing history, or by typing a URL. And Speed Dial is there whenever you open a new tab. If you don't find it useful, the you can choose to
hide the Speed Dial.

No matter how good your Internet connection is, sometimes things just bog down. Maybe not to dial-up speeds, but slow enough to be annoying. Instead of making a cup of coffee while you wait for a page to load, you can turn on Turbo instead. Turbo detects a slow connection and does a bit of magic that reduces the amount of information that's flowing to the browser – for example, only loading enough of an image to view it. While images may be fuzzy and other multimedia might be slow, the page will load. Turbo is turned on by default. You can change the settings by clicking the Turbo icon in the bottom left of the Opera window.

Finally, there's Opera Unite. This is a new feature that turns Opera into a Web server. You can use Opera Unite to share files and photos, as well as stream music and host Web pages. Opera Unite can do a lot more, too – you can view a list of Opera Unite applications here.

Note: An upcoming TechTip will look at Opera Unite in more detail.

Going mobile

While Opera hasn't made a huge dent in terms of market share on desktop computers or laptop computers, it's made some great in-roads on smartphones. Opera Mini is arguably one of the top two mobile browsers out there. It's definitely one of the most capable.

Opera Mini 5, which is the latest release, is light and fast. But it's not one of those mobile apps that tries to shoehorn a desktop interface into a small space. The interface is compact, but not cluttered. And it's easy to use.

Opera Mobile on the other hand, is a more beefed up version of Opera Mini designed for Nokia and Windows Mobile phones. It packs some of the main features of the desktop version of Opera – like generic viagra pills multimedia support, a tabbed interface and speed dial. The interface is similar to that of Opera Mini 5. And like Opera Mini 5, Opera Mobile is easy to use.

Summing up

Too often, the Opera Web browser is overlooked. Unfairly, in my opinion. It's a solid browser that can do most of what its competitors can and which comes in a tight package. If you haven't tried Opera out, give it a look. If you've used it in the past and moved on, give it another try. Chances are you'll find more than one thing to like about it.