Duck Duck Go voted best search engine of 2011

According to a reader poll, Duck Duck Go beat Google for best search engine of 2011.    ‘With 48% of the vote, relative search newcomer DuckDuckGo beat out search behemoth Google, who came in with 45% of the total vote,’ said About.com.    Bing trailled at 3 per cent and Yahoo! at 2.    There’s […]

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Not all American hosting companies get it right

While there was a British company that took months to respond to the equivalent of a DMCA complaint (under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act), generally American firms are very on the ball.    There are exceptions. I won’t name this outfit but the weekend’s responses were laughable. March 21: Pirate puts up a copy […]

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Someone’s doing something right inside Google

The troubles with Google that I’ve faced—privacy breaches, Ads Preferences Manager not honouring its claims, fighting for six months on behalf of a friend over a deleted Blogger blog, Chrome being buggy (but not nearly as badly as IE9), phantom entries in my Google dashboard, unanswered messages—would suggest, to anyone studying business or a graduate […]

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Cellphone emails are gibberish

Speaking of technological issues, for the last two months, people using those newfangled cellphones to write emails to me have been sending me gibberish.    I haven’t changed my set-up, principally because Qualcomm hasn’t made a new version of Eudora for a while. So what has changed about cellphones (I don’t know what brand—they are […]

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On networking, all the experts were right

I wonder if peripherals are getting better.    Although I spent 26 hours getting a wireless network up here, it was thanks to Jethro Carr on Twitter, one Facebook friend, two real-world friends, two of their friends, and one forum that got it up and running.    There are a few things that don’t work […]

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Apple’s brand evangelism can have a negative effect, providing an opportunity for rivals

What a great post today from Eric Karjaluoto on his blog about Macs v. PCs.    He outlines his gripes on a number of fields and doesn’t believe Apple holds a great advantage any more.    I have to say I agree with him.    On his Facebook, I wrote the following. Well said, Eric.  […]

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Internet Explorer 9 can’t even display Microsoft’s own page

After this issue with Microsoft Internet Explorer 9, I went to the McAfee forums to record it so others knew.    The McAfee volunteers and tech support guys have, in the last while, been fantastic. There’s one volunteer there, Peter, who’s always been right. So I would be foolish to ignore their advice.    You […]

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LOL, Wag, flat white added to Oxford English Dictionary

A few new words and meanings—45,437 to be exact—have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary, report the mainstream media.    LOL is one, which I have always taken to mean little old lady, and have almost always used it in that context.    Turns out that that was what the acronym originally stood for, […]

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The epic fail called IE9 has consequences for other programs

I was prepared to put up with the epic fail of IE9, since I hardly use the program. In the years I’ve had IE8, I’ve only opened it accidentally (e.g. when certain programs are removed, they load IE for the ‘Why did you remove it?’ customer screen).    But I forgot one thing: some programs […]

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And now, Ben Heck makes an ‘Atari’ Xbox 360 ‘1977 edition’

A while back, I came across Benjamin J. Heckendorn (a.k.a. Ben Heck) and his Commodore 64 laptop. This is a quite a fascinating machine, considering the actual “portable” 64 Executive was a heavy beast that could kill if hurled at you. While Ben took the 64’s odd colour, keyboard and 64C’s motherboard, his is structured […]

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