Norton, we trusted you. The friendly techs at Staples advised me to take advantage of a special deal on Norton 360 Antivirus with a recent PC purchase. Okay, swell. Saturday night a desktop popup urged me to upgrade to Norton 360 V3. If you’re going to upgrade your antivirus software, what better time than a Saturday night, right? Twenty minutes and two reboots later I was upgraded to Symantec’s latest collective achievement. So I plug in my Zune. “Unable to load driver...” I plug in my iPhone. “iTunes does not recognize this device.” Thank you, Symantec! I reloaded the Zune driver and somehow got my iPhone to be recognized, wondering once again how non-Geeks survive in this nasty digital world of ours. I learned my lesson, no more Norton for me. Uninstalled and goodbye. The happy ending is that thanks to Twitter buds I discovered Avast and could not be happier.
What’s with Technorati? or…Up with Icerocket. The disintegration of Technorati’s core features is described in this Sixty Second View post. The post is only 3 years after the fact, but the useful news is the suggestion of Icerocket being a Technorati alternative. I always liked Icerocket, but haven’t had a reason to stop by for a while. I added a few of my blogs to Icerocket’s tracking service and plan to see what else Icerocket has been up to.
Zune vs. iPhone. Week 3. It’s been 3 weeks since I began folding an iPhone into the space-time continuum previously occupied by my Zune. I still prefer the Zune for interacting with media on the go. It’s more rugged than the iPhone and simply more efficient. I also prefer how the Zune software manages my podcast subscriptions. That said, I haven’t left the house with my Zune in five days. I still Zune on the [NordicTrack] each day, but iPhone is ascending.
It all gets back to the Windows System Registry. Speaking of the Zune, my eleven-year-old little girl loves how she can fire up Zune on my laptop and play any song she wants to hear thanks to my Zune Pass. I love The Pass, too. She asked if I could load the Zune software on her bedroom PC. Sure! Then something strange happened. When we brought up albums in the Zune Marketplace only two or three songs from the album were listed. Some artist searches resulted in a “Zune Marketplace not available presently. Please try again later.” Not helpful and not accurate. It dawned on me that the problem was Vista Parental Control on her PC. A quick Bing retrieved a helpful blogs.msdn.com post by Dan Jones. The post addressed Zune performance problems with Vista Parental Controls, but I knew the key/value addition to the registry would fix my issue as well, and it did. That crazy System Registry. Is there anything it CAN’T do?
Just enjoy the pic. I’ve been hearing about the positive impact of Ford’s Social Networking guy Scott Monty. I’m not much of a Ford Guy, but I happened upon his review of a survey on women and social media. It’s not a subject I’m too interested in, but I read it in its entirety mostly because of the clever title and lead-in photo Scott used. Too cute!
Seth says there’s room for Hi Def. Another of those unique Seth Godin perspectives, here on high definition alternatives to existing products, not just TV.
Geneticists are geeks, too. I don’t understand anything on this summary of Edge Master Class 2009, but simply scrolling through the page images and topics confirms that the world of genetics is spinning up as fast as the IT world.
What the Internet SHOULD be. Rockergirrl from Burlington tweets with the Burlington, Vermont #BTV tag asking if anyone else has yellow water coming out of their taps. I envision an Internet where you ask a question of immediate need and you receive an immediate and fully human response. Probably not while the keyboard and web browser dominate the scene, but we’ll get there.
Not your typical browncoat Tweeter. The only celeb I follow in Twitter is Nathan Fillion, Reynolds from every geek’s beloved Firefly. Fillion serves up the Tweet of the Week, responding to someone on the topic of forgivable affairs. “Gf: We shd hav ‘forgivable affairs’ lists. Mine r Jude Law & Viggo Mortenson. Me: Mine r your sister Margaret & your best friend Elaine.” Browncoats know funny.