07/26/2010

Cool Stuff - Wolfram Alpha

Category Cool Stuff


Check out a demo of this cool new search engine here . When most of us want something from the internet we simply type into Google a search phrase. It then returns thousands, often millions of results. Even Google doesn't think you'll want to sift through all of their results, they only give you access to the first 1000 or so results. The sheer volume of information Google spits at you can make it tough to get exactly what you want.

Wolfram Alpha, a new search engine from Wolfram, tries to simplify the searching experience by giving you only information. Say you are trying to open a new branch of your business. You can search demographics of a particular area, such as population in an area. For Anaheim you would search anaheim population 2000, anaheim population 1980 . Or say if you wanted to compare sales taxes in different markets where your product was sold, simply type in: sales tax Pasadena, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles. What you get back are condensed, easy to read charts and graphs which tell you exactly what you want to know, without having to search through several different websites.

Besides creating easily readable results, the website can also do most of the functions of Wolfram's Mathematica program, allowing you to use statistical and other interpretations of data. Say you have a commodity that you buy regularly, paper let's say, and you want a rough estimate of the trend of its price. Type in the data points and it will give you an equation, which you can then use to see ballpark future costs. Although the website doesn't know everything it has a wide array of everyday functions that you can easily use, try it out here.

07/19/2010

Tips and Tricks: Drastic Steps to Improve Laptop Battery Life

Category Tips and Tricks


You're sitting at an airport and you don't have your charger. Your boss called and he needs you to finish that report by the end of the day. Your battery is already half drained, how are you going to get it done in time? For just these racing against the clock scenarios we've tested several ways to get the most our of your laptop's battery.

#1: Turn the Brightness Completely Down The first thing you probably thought of too, turning down your brightness is an everyday way to get more juice out of your laptop; it probably already does it automatically when your computer isn't plugged into an outlet. Our method is far more extreme and it will make it pretty difficult to read, although not impossible. From this you can save about 6% of your battery life.

#2 Turn Windows 7 Special Effects off Windows 7 is a thing of beauty, transition effects make it a lot more appealing than its predecessors. These effects come at a cost though, requiring a lot of processor use. Turning them off will lower your power consumption by about 10%, a significant savings

#3 Use a High Contrast Theme Like the logic behind the Blackle search engine, switching to theme that is white or some other color on black, can save you power. Text is more difficult to read, but it can save you a lot of power, 13% of your battery life.

Combining them all Combining them all doesn't just linearly increase your battery life, since using a high contrast them automatically turns off Windows' effects. Trying everything gives you about the same as using a high contrast them, about 10 percent.

Verdict: Next time you are racing against the clock we recommend using a high contrast theme, since that will do the most to increase your battery life while maximizing your productivity.

07/13/2010

Security Corner - One Time Use Credit Card Numbers

Category Security Corner


Credit cards are what make online shopping a breeze. Enter the numbers on your card and within minutes you're done. The ease of credit card transactions has also attracted thieves and even if you are extremely careful (deleting your browsing history, only using secure sites etc.) you can still be a victim of theft. In august a hacker in Florida broke into a credit card processing center and stole millions of credit card numbers. The charges made were sometimes for as little as 2 dollars.

Several card issuers and PayPal have designed secure ways to avoid this problem completely with one time use credit card numbers. How it works: you go to the website of the card provider or PayPal and it will generate a one time use credit card, specific to that transaction. On Bank of America's version you can set an expiration date and spending limit. If a thief tries to use the card again it won't work. Citibank and Discover also offer this service as well for their credit cards. None of these services support debit cards.

PayPal has made it very easy by creating a browser plug-in for Firefox and for Internet Explorer. It will allow you to automatically generate credit card numbers while browsing. Once it is made you can simply plug them in and make a purchase.

07/07/2010

IT Talk: New Solid State Hard Drives

Category IT Talk


Tired of your slow moving notebook, but don't want to drop thousands on a shiny new notebook? Kingston has the answer with their new line of solid state drives. Booting from one of these will drastically increase the speed of your computer. With solid state drives there aren't any moving parts either, so their rate of failure is much lower. What's more they take a lot less power, extending your battery life.

Historically flash drives have been pretty expensive, at first being reserved for portable devices that needed their low power consumption and durability. SSDs are still pretty expensive, with a 480 Gigabyte model setting you back 1500 dollars. However, buying a smaller hard dive and using it only for OS and for the files and programs that you use frequently, can give you significant performance gains for much less than the cost of a brand new notebook. Kingston's V series includes everything you need, making upgrading a breeze. Get more information here.