About Chris Pollette
Chris Pollette's interest in technology goes back some time, and he has the hardware to prove it; he's the proud owner of an Atari 2600, a Commodore Amiga 1000 and a Coleco Telstar. He's even got a slide rule around here somewhere. Chris is a former newspaper reporter and editor, and has a bachelor's degree in English from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn. He currently edits HowStuffWorks.com’s Computer and Electronics channels and co-hosts the “TechStuff” podcast with senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Most Recent: Chris Pollette Postings
OK, so as Jonathan and I were streaming live this afternoon on TechStuff Live, Google executives were rolling out the company’s new social networking project, Google Buzz. Rumors were circulating this morning that Google wanted to do something new with social networking with status updates akin to Twitter, probably something related to Gmail.
One of the things that really gets on my nerves is when tech journalists ask aloud if the gadget that has just been released is the previous hot gadget’s killer. For example: Is the Droid or Nexus One an iPhone killer? And now people are suggesting that the iPad may be a Kindle killer.
Monday night I was driving home and listening to All Things Considered on National Public Radio. The All Tech Considered segment runs on Monday evenings, and yesterday Robert Siegel interviewed Richard Littlehale and Bob Casey of YouRenew, a company that will pay you to take your old electronics off your hands.
There are lots of different kinds of malware out there, most of which are interested in hiding behind the scenes. After all, the point is to avoid being discovered and removed. The longer they stay on your computer, the more information these programs can send back to their creators. Or the malware can continue sending out spam or creating denial-of-service attacks.
Bob Sullivan wrote a post in MSNBC’s The Red Tape Chronicles that discusses a particular type of malware that fully intends to get your attention.
OK, this is pretty neat. Leslie Katz at CNET posted this a couple of days ago and I was saving it for today. It’s a board game that has organic LED (OLED) game pieces. Michael Rooke and Roel Vertegaal of the Human Media Lab of Queens University in Ontario have been working on the idea and published a paper about it.
It’s official, there is an Apple tablet, and it’s named the iPad. Note the similarity in name to the iPod. And actually, it looks like a bit of an overgrown iPod Touch, the hottest seller in the iPod line. I’ve been following Erica Ogg’s live blog of Steve Jobs’ announcement from the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Calif.
On Tuesday the United Kingdom publicly launched Data.gov.uk, the country’s version of the Data.gov Web site set up in the United States last year. The idea behind both of them is to make government data (and there’s a whole lot of it) available to the masses for the purposes of transparency and accountability. U.S. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra praised the move in a blog post yesterday on the Open Government Initiative Web site.
The U.K. data site is beautiful and enables you to get your hands on quite a bit of information.
As often as hacked online accounts are in the news right now, you’d think people would learn, but apparently they haven’t. According to an article written by Ashlee Vance for The New York Times, people are still using insecure passwords to their online accounts. Not just insecure, really insecure.
Everyone knows that they’re supposed to use incredibly difficult passwords, and let’s face it, random strings of 12 or 14 upper- and lower-case characters mixed with numbers and symbols aren’t the easiest things to remember.
Trading Virtual Money is Legal in South Korea
by Chris Pollette | January 20, 2010
Thanks to High Speed Stuff’s Ben Bowlin for cluing me in to this news — Si-soo Park wrote an article for The Korea Times about how the South Korean Supreme Court has ruled that virtual currency is as good as the real thing. On Jan. 9, the court decided that it’s legal to exchange virtual money for hard currency.
Some interesting news came from Google last night, and many news sites have already touched on it. Here’s the story in a nutshell: the company’s servers came under attack in China. Whoever instigated the attack was after information, and reports yesterday said that the accounts of dissidents were targeted. We know from Google’s blog post written by company Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond that the attack was successful and the hackers accessed intellectual property.
Recent Postings by Category
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- Interesting Reading #414 – The tiniest computer, hearts really can break, family pays $5,000 per year for connections, New font saves ink and much more…
- Public Service Announcement – Soft drinks nearly double your chances of pancreatic cancer
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FanStuff
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- Ursula K. Le Guin vs. Google Books: Round Two
- “Lost,” “Fringe” and That Whole Alternate Universe Thing
How-to Stuff
- How to Take a Road Trip, Abraham Lincoln-Style
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ScienceStuff
- Space Music Vol. 8: Sun Ra and Afrofuturism
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- Why does time fly as you get older?
Stuff You Should Know
The Coolest Stuff on the Planet
High Speed Stuff
- The Toyota Recall: Where can you get the latest information?
- What is Toyota doing to fix its gas pedal problem?
- High Speed Stuff Wrap-up: Automotive Pet Peeves and Polar Vehicles
Keep Asking
- How does an airbrush work?
- Is the Internet free? If you want to make a website, will it cost you to put it online?
- If you look at a piece of glass from an angle, why does it have a bluish or green tint?
Stuff You Missed in History Class
- Last Week in History Podcasts: Battle Horses and Black Moses
- The Wonderful Adventures of the Nurse We Forgot
- Black History Month on HowStuffWorks
