Home Computer Talk

So it’s late, I’m at home after a busy day and, after a phone call to Mr JM, he’s going to be late.

Why is it so?

Well, he’s busy with a computer Read the rest of this entry »

One of the pleasures in owning a computer is the variety of things you can do with it. Or rather the pleasures of owning a computer and the Internet. Or maybe it should be the pleasures of owning a computer and the Internet and high speed access.

You don’t really know how much pleasure high speed access is until it is suddenly not there. It isn’t so frustrating to use dial-up for internet access - until you have had the use of ADSL (Broadband) that runs at 10 or more times the speed of dial-up.

We have a Broadband plan that runs at ADSL2+ speeds. This means, particularly at the off peak times, speeds that allow downloads of 200MB’s in just a few minutes. It’s not unusual to start a download of sixty or seventy MB’s & have it finish so quickly you think something went wrong with the download.

So, what do you do with all that speed and bandwidth? Well, Mr JM regularly downloads TV shows that I haven’t seen. He downloaded a couple of seasons of Charmed for me – I hadn’t been able to watch them before I came to Australia – and we’ve caught up on all the new Doctor Who and Torchwood episodes.

But one of the most addictive things to do is Google Earth.
Google Earth lets you strap on a satellite Read the rest of this entry »

Have you looked, really looked at what is on your TV lately? I mean, leave behind the ideas about the shows you ‘can’t miss,’ the daydreams about the actor(s) you are never going to get into your bed but really wish you could, & take a good honest look at the content of your weekly viewing.

Take away the soap operas. They have no redeeming value at all – they’ve become so far removed from anything approaching normal life they can’t even be viewed as societal commentary.

Minus the ‘interview’ shows – programs like Oprah or Dr. Phil have Read the rest of this entry »

Or… He should have read my last post!!!
It hasn’t happened for a long time but Mr JM got his computer infected yesterday. Given we use Symantec Antivirus, Spybot – Search & Destroy and Adaware as protection, I was curious as to how it happened.

As explained in Save Money on Movies there are Torrent sites that provide access to software and movies. Given the prices of both as well as the Read the rest of this entry »

Spyware can be hard to spot and the effects are many and varied. Spyware sounds like all it does is spy on us, but it can do much more.

It doesn’t restrict itself to watching what we do, although that is a big part of why it gets installed. Spyware watches what is done and tracks website visits, but it goes further.
Spyware can install other software, can Read the rest of this entry »

In our ‘modern’ society, we’ve moved away from knowing the people around us.

Once, back in time, we lived in communities, close knit and small enough that we would know everybody we were likely to see. Depending on the circumstances, strangers were either welcome distractions or hostile presences needing to be removed soonest.

Now most of us Read the rest of this entry »

How many computers do you have?

How about printers?

What about scanners?

In the 1980’s personal computers became a reality. In the beginning Read the rest of this entry »

Windows comes with a built-in Time Machine function. It’s called System Restore and it offers a way to roll back changes and let Windows work as it did before the change messed it up.

Many people wind up with a computer that either stops working, does strange things or begins to run really slow for no apparent reason. Some of the strange things Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve seen some of this before in how to freshen your PC… see http://www.homecomputertalk.com/old-age-or-just-clogged-arteries-part-2/

From Mr JM
Way to fix Windows problems so you can get back in and Read the rest of this entry »

I write on a number of blogs sites, mostly for 451Press but also at Web TV Hub about YouTube videos. Recently I’ve noted a problem with the YouTube videos I write about. A number of times that videos I want to view or to reference in my posts aren’t playing.

I thought it was a problem with the YouTube site and mostly just looked for other versions of the videos to use.

There was one I wanted to show to Mr JM. We’ve been watching the Planet Earth series by David Attenborough and there’s a number of bird mating dances that are quite funny. It’s truly amazing what some creatures do when there’s a possibility of sex.

Yes, that’s a bird making that big mouth face.

But the video Read the rest of this entry »

One site that has become a major force in the Internetting world is YouTube. For the three people on the planet who haven’t heard of it, it’s a site (obviously backed by large storage capacity and lots of servers) that allows people to upload their videos.

Careers have been kick started by YouTube; musicians have posted their compositions online and found fame enough to give them a mainstream life. Others have become famous and boot-strapped their lives from that fame. Some have become rich by using their YouTube presence as a stepping stone.

Now to get to YouTube, you need a connection to the Internet and a browser. There are a number of browsers but by far the two most popular are Internet Explorer (IE) from Microsoft and Firefox from Mozilla.

IE is installed with Windows – it is VERY difficult to have Windows without it, in spite of a court case some time back about such practice from Microsoft. Firefox is a free download from Mozilla and made most of it’s gains by being firstly, small and secondly, more useful than IE.

Firefox introduced an in-built popup stopper, password saving, and most popular, tabbed browsing. In IE, if you wished to open a new site Read the rest of this entry »

Without fully developed AI (Artificial Intelligence) being perfected, which may be difficult because we don’t really even have a definition for real Intelligence yet, and the numbers of those displaying the characteristics of it seem to be decreasing daily, our computers aren’t going to be carrying on witty repartee any time soon.

So what can we do with our computers and Voice technology?

Another level of computers using Voice technology is being able to use spoken commands to operate the computer. Programs like Dragon Naturally Speaking come at a price but allow many kinds of voice interaction with your computer.

From Windows XP, Microsoft included support for Voice technology, meaning that we can actually use voice commands to control things like Microsoft Office programs as well as parts of Windows. It is possible, once Windows has started, to use words to Read the rest of this entry »

So, the Max Headroom style of talking computer isn’t really something that is available for now. The text version of AI (Artificial Intelligence) doesn’t really fill the slot either. What we want is for our personal Computer to talk to us and hopefully, understand what we mean when we talk to it.

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, we met the HAL 9000 computer, one which certainly fit the description of a computer that could talk to, and understand humans.

Text to Voice is one step along Read the rest of this entry »

There are a number of ways computers can respond to, and use, voice. I don’t know how many of you remember a TV show featuring a character called Max Headroom? I think many people think computer talk is like that show; the reality is somewhat different.

The storyline is about a video reporter, Edison Carter, in a world ’20 minutes into the future’ who runs afoul of the Corporations that run the rather seedy world of the future. In his zeal for getting at the truth, he finds out about a new form of advertising called ‘Blipverts,’ an ultra-effective way Read the rest of this entry »

surf - to float on the crest of a wave toward shore
surf - to search haphazardly, as for information on a computer network or an interesting program on television.

If you leave out ‘the shore’ in the first definition it could still apply to the Internet. The crest of the wave that has yet to recede. Millions surf the net every day, some seem addicted to it. It’s a trap that can grab us out of the blue as we track down an idea or follow links that show on an otherwise innocuous site.

We could be starting with an innocent question - someone mentioned the Baha’i religion in a conversation so you take a Google at it. That brings up a Wikipedia page so you click on it…
Then you see Read the rest of this entry »