TechStuff
Navigate today’s cutting-edge technology with the gurus from HowStuffWorks.
by Jonathan Strickland
November 20th, 2009
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We just keep on trucking over here at TechStuff. This week, Chris and I hauled our butts into the studio to tow the line and address some listener mail. We’re not the type to brush aside our loyal listeners. Because of your submissions, we have had some really interesting conversations in the studio. Some of them were even recorded! This week, we looked at two very different topics and got a little metaphysical in the process.
On Monday, we examine what happens to our online presence after we shuffle off the mortal coil. Unless Kurzweil’s singularity proves me wrong, I think it’s safe to say none of us will be around forever. But after I join the choir invisible and push up the daisies, what happens to my Facebook page? How can my loved ones turn what used to be my platform for sharing photos of myself up to no good into a fitting memorial where friends can share their memories of me? We get to the bottom of the issue and give you some tips on what you can do if you want to make it easier for your friends and family to handle your online information after you’ve passed away. Click to read more.
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by Chris Pollette
November 20, 2009
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One of the stories that gets lots of press this time of the year is what word the dictionary publishers have chosen to be the Word of the Year. This year, the New Oxford American Dictionary featured “unfriend” as the word of the year. Jon Gordon of American Public Media’s Future Tense interviewed Ammon Shea, consulting editor with the Oxford University Press, on why his company made the decision to include “unfriend.”
The word is a verb, and means to remove a person from your list of contacts on social media networks. In a lot of cases, these folks have been referred to as “friends,” though depending on the network, you may or may not have a deep enough relationship with them to be actual friends with them.
Actually, just a couple of days later in Future Tense, some people said they use “defriend” instead. Shea said the publisher chose “unfriend” because the editors found it to be more common.
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by Chris Pollette
November 18, 2009
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T-Mobile is the fourth-biggest wireless phone provider in the United States and in the United Kingdom. Recently, however, the company is suffering a string of public relations fiascoes. In the United States, there was the situation in which Sidekick phone users found that their information went missing — it didn’t matter to a lot of people that the hardware on which the data was stored wasn’t owned by T-Mobile, it just mattered that their Sidekicks were T-Mobile phones.
Then the wireless carrier’s network went out. Earlier this month, as Ina Fried wrote, lots of people (myself included) found themselves unable to make calls on their T-Mobile phones on November 3 because of a network outage.
Now from the United Kingdom comes news that a T-Mobile employee allegedly sold personal information on thousands of customers to third parties, according to the BBC and the Guardian. Richard Wray of the Guardian said the data breach was the biggest of its kind to date…
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by Jonathan Strickland
November 18, 2009
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It’s that time of the year again! Lazy radio stations are already playing Christmas music even though there should be a federal law prohibiting such behavior until after Thanksgiving. Web sites are releasing details of crazy Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals designed to get your butt in the store (online or otherwise) to buy your loved ones some happiness. And each and every one of you out there are faced with the daunting question: what sort of gifts should I buy the awesome guys at TechStuff? Click to find out!
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by Chris Pollette
November 17, 2009
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There’s been a lot of business talk going on this past week. HP acquired 3Com. Intel paid a massive settlement to AMD. Google bought VoIP company Gizmo5. And it’s apparently not over. MySpace is in the process of acquiring Imeem. Peter Kafka at AllThingsD wrote that he’s confirmed the story, which was originally reported by Michael Arrington at TechCrunch.
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by Jonathan Strickland
November 16, 2009
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U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup ruled on Friday that Psystar was guilty of copyright infringement against Apple, according to Natalie Weinstein of CNET. The whole case revolves around Apple’s Mac operating system. Unlike Windows or Linux, which you can install on whatever hardware you like, Apple only wants the Mac OS to belong to Apple computers.
That hasn’t stopped hundreds of enterprising hackers from building their own machines and installing Mac OS X. But because Apple designed the operating system with a particular hardware and BIOS configuration in mind, the OS doesn’t always work properly on an unauthorized machine. And the process of installing a non-native operating system is complicated and can require a lot of troubleshooting — it’s not something the computer novice should attempt.
That’s where Psystar stepped in. The fact that hackintoshes (the common name for a PC running the Mac OS) exist shows that people want computers running the Mac OS but they don’t want an actual Apple computer. Maybe they don’t like Apple’s product design, or perhaps they feel that the Mac line of computers is too expensive. In 2008, Psystar began to sell PCs running the Mac operating system. The company took care of the tricky process of installing the OS on non-Apple hardware (though Psystar also explained that the computer might not always behave as it should).
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by Chris Pollette
November 13, 2009
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Yet again, Facebook appears to be at the heart of a scandal. Except, this time the scandal isn’t so — well, scandalous. My friend Sarah shared this story with me this morning. It appears that Principal Thomas Murray at Danvers High School in Massachusetts objects to students saying “meep” in school. According to the Associated Press, students were using Facebook to coordinate a major disruption.
So the school sent out an automated call that told parents about the ban on meeping. Theoretically, that should be it. But GeekDad’s Matt Blum thinks that with other technological means, the kids will still find a way to meep. They’ll text message one another and coordinate that way.
Sarah Netter at ABC also wrote about the meeping. The word can mean whatever the speaker wants, according to her research at the Urban Dictionary. She also quoted Syracuse University professor Bob Thompson, who said he’d heard students meeping a year ago as they watched a TV show in class.
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by Jonathan Strickland
November 13, 2009
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Welcome to the week They Don’t Want You To Know About. Chris and I risked almost certain doom (or at least an iPod failure) by bringing you this week’s episodes of TechStuff. We addressed two of the most-requested topics we receive from listener mail: hackintoshes and technology conspiracy theories.
I can hear some of you out there asking for the definition of hackintosh. A hackintosh is a non-Apple computer that runs the Macintosh operating system. Apple is very particular about the computers that can run Mac OS X. That’s because Apple works in a closed system — it produces the hardware and software for Mac computers.
Apple designed the Mac OS to work with a particular set of hardware and BIOS settings. To get the Mac OS to run smoothly on a PC, you’ll need a compatible set of components. You’ll also need to tweak your computer’s BIOS settings if you want the OS to operate as if it were on a Mac.
The main reason people try to get the Mac OS to run on other computers comes down to price. Mac computers are fairly expensive. If you want Mac functionality but don’t want to pay Apple’s asking price, your only other option is to try and force the OS onto a PC. Chris and I talk about how this is done in general and some of the challenges hackers face, particularly now that Apple has tweaked Snow Leopard so that it won’t work on PCs with Atom processors.
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by Chris Pollette
November 11, 2009
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Earlier this week, we released the TechStuff podcast Jonathan and I recorded about the hackintosh. As you already know, Apple’s Macintosh is a closed system — they produce the hardware and the software both. It makes for an elegant solution, because in general the machines and operating system are tailored to each other and work well together.
One downside of this is that Apple charges a premium for its computers. So if you like OS X and want to run it on your desktop, you have to buy a Macintosh computer. If you don’t mind, it works out; Apple hasn’t released a lot of underpowered machines lately. But if you’re on a budget, you just might be buying a PC. Also, if you prefer netbooks, you’re also out of luck, since Apple’s stance on the issue is that the company can’t make a netbook of the quality that Apple can get behind.
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by Chris Pollette
November 10, 2009
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Now that eBay has reached a settlement with Joltid over the Global Index Software peer-to-peer technology that powers Skype, Skype won’t need VoIP provider Gizmo5 to fall back on. And that’s lucky, since according to the rumor mill, Gizmo5 now belongs to Google, for the tidy sum of $30 million. Michael Arrington at TechCrunch broke the story yesterday.
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