PC Mechanic, New Article |
- 7 Things We Learned From 2010′s Tech Failures
- Word + Digit + URL Password How-To
- Listen To Over 40,000 Radio Stations On Your iDevice
| 7 Things We Learned From 2010′s Tech Failures Posted: 29 Dec 2010 03:30 AM PST CNN just released their 10 biggest tech ‘fails’ of 2010. I do agree with everything on the list as being legitimate failures, but it doesn’t follow up what would obviously be the next question – what did we learn from those failures? Here’s what I think we all learned – with a few more added in of my own.
It’s the last one I’m going to speak on more specifically. What’s the one thing you do on the internet more than anything else? Read. Every time you go online, you read something, be it from here, email, Wikipedia, social networks or otherwise. Reading is the thing you do the most online. Reading has everything to do with text. With this text there are also many opportunities to participate with your own text, such as with blog comments, email, social networking, forums/message boards, chat rooms and so on. I don’t predict things very often, but I’m betting you’ll see a lot less photos and videos online in 2011. It’s not that people are sick of it, it’s that the cost from the service provider’s side is too high and doesn’t result in any decent profit. YouTube to date has not netted dollar one; that’s a fact. Photo sites like Flickr also haven’t exactly gone gangbusters in the profit department. Blogs and social networks on the other hand continue to rise, and the vast majority of that content is – you guessed it – text. From an internet money-making perspective, which a lot of you are interested in, stick to text-based mediums. It costs the least to produce and has the highest chance of turning a profit. Email newsletters work. Blogs work. Social networking to promote products and services work. Photo and video? They serve nicely as a value-add, but the core content should be text first and always. Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.       |
| Word + Digit + URL Password How-To Posted: 29 Dec 2010 03:00 AM PST Recently I wrote "bad" password advice that specifically concentrates on using 10-character passwords and utilizing a password manager to manage them. This tutorial is even simpler. It requires no password manager and all you have to remember is one word and one number, passwords are only 8 characters long and at the same time stay unique per each web site you use that requires user credentials. Step 1. Choose a four-letter word or four-character phrase Use a four-letter word like care, look, tree, bull, pine, rest, blob, east, bike – OR – use a four-character phrase that’s easy to type with one hand such as qwea, wers, ertd, rtyf, tyug and so on. Step 2. Choose a single-digit number You have the choices of 0 through 9. Pick one. Step 3. Use the first three characters of the web site’s domain (URL) the password belongs to This is best shown by example: Yahoo Mail: yah Step 4. Choose the pattern of the password The patterns you have to choose from are any that DO NOT start with the digit, because there are several web sites that do not permit that. That being the case, you have four patterns to choose from: 1. Word+Digit+URL Let’s say the four-letter word you chose was tree, the digit 8, and the pattern you chose was Word+Digit+URL. Here’s how the password would look: Hotmail: tree8hot Benefits of generating passwords with the Word + Digit + URL methodEasy to remember for you, difficult for others to guess You’ve been told over and over again that you should always pick passwords you can remember easily but others could not guess – but were never told how to do this. W+D+U passwords are exactly the way to do it. No need for a password manager Many people do not want to be bothered with a password manager because they consider it too much of a hassle. For those that hop between OSes this is especially true because many password managers only work on one OS and nothing else. Has "good enough" security for most people You’ve also been told over and over again never to use the same password for multiple web sites. The 3 characters from the URL keeps passwords unique and satisfies this requirement. Drawbacks of the W+D+U methodSome sites will have the same password Example: Meebo and Meetup. Both start with mee, so the password would be the same for both sites. You can get around this by counting the number of characters in the domain name and adding an extra digit. Meebo is 5 characters, Meetup is 6. If the password is tree8mee, Meebo’s would be tree8mee5 and Meetup tree8mee6. If both sites have the same amount of characters in the domain name however, you’re out of luck. Same-service accounts will have the same password This is the biggest drawback of the W+D+U method of password generation, and the only way around it is to add an extra digit based on priority. Example: You have two Hotmail accounts. Both accounts have tree8hot as the password. Whatever account you use the most should be changed to tree8hot1, the second tree8hot2, and so on. If someone guesses your 5-character passphrase and recognizes the pattern, the password is useless The likelihood of this occurring is slim, but it’s a possibility. If your 5-character passphrase is tree8 and someone realizes that you use that passphrase plus the first three characters of a domain name for all your passwords, you’re basically screwed – but only if you use the same username everywhere. W+D+U is weak, but better than 12345678I’m not saying using W+D+U for passwords is strong or secure, but "good enough" as said above. These passwords are easy to remember, difficult for others to guess, you don’t need a password manager and the best part is that they work everywhere. Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.     |
| Listen To Over 40,000 Radio Stations On Your iDevice Posted: 28 Dec 2010 01:30 PM PST If you own an iDevice and like listening to talk radio or music (other than what you have in your MP3 collection), then an app you should definitely check out is TuneIn Radio.
You can easily search for your local stations or find and listen to stations all over the world. There is a pretty extensive feature list on their page but one that caught my eye is the ability to pause stations for up to 30 minutes. This is a great feature for talk radio as you can pause the stream when needed and then start it right back when you are done. Radio fans should definitely consider this one. Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.     |
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