Under: The Influence

by Brian Underdahl

For many years we enjoyed C-band satellite TV. You know, the “big ugly dish” as some people called it. The picture was great, the choices were endless, and the programming was relatively inexpensive at around $25 a month. Then something happened. C-band pretty much went away in 2010 because an ever smaller audience meant that the uplink provider “wasn’t making enough money to justify continuing to provide service.”

The company that was providing our C-band service gave us a pretty good deal on Dish Network service and we did try it for almost two years. But eventually we were no longer “new” customers for Dish and the costs started going up. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not picking on Dish Network, Direct TV is pretty much the same (as is cable TV, if it’s available in your area). Still, the old “they won’t notice if we charge just a bit more now and then” mentality was at work and pretty soon we were paying well over $1200 a year for TV. And the irony was, the greed of the big players like the movie studios, HBO, Showtime, and so on meant that there really wasn’t much worth watching.

Several years back I wrote a book that told people how to build their own HTPC. At the time, only a few early adopters were listening and, quite frankly, a PC couldn’t do an awful lot about bringing you content that wasn’t available. Fast forward to today and the entire landscape has changed.

Media streaming over the Internet makes it possible for you to see almost anything you want, when you want. Services like Netflix deliver movies, old TV shows, and tons of other content for a fraction of what satellite or cable TV companies want–in the case of Netflix it’s $7.99 a month. And there’s an abundance of free programming, too. For example, my neighbor watches German soccer matches on his big screen TV via his HTPC (which I built for him). Do the math and it’s pretty clear that saving $1000 a year or more on satellite or cable service is pretty easy.

Sure, you need a broadband Internet connection, but these days most people have that anyway. And Netflix even allows you to queue programs for later viewing if your connection isn’t quite fast enough for real-time viewing.

So is it time to drop your satellite or cable TV provider? Could you find better ways to use $1000 a year? Seems like an easy decision to me.

It didn’t take very long for the first computer virus to appear, but in the early days at least the bad stuff didn’t have an easy way to spread. Boy, how things have changed! Malware creators have figured out how to infect your computer with no action on your part except simply visiting the wrong website. And unfortunately, they’ve also figured out how to spread their junk to even some of the best sites out there.

I’ve heard too many otherwise knowledgeable people tell me they use an alternative browser like Firefox or Chrome “because it’s safer.” And these same people often neglect to update their anti-virus subscription.

Well, a recent independent study found something awfully interesting: Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 Web browser is the most secure and safe browser you can use. Simply put, if you aren’t using IE 9, you’re not as safe as you should be.

But even if you are using IE 9, it is vital that you also have effective, real-time anti-virus and anti-spyware software that is up-to-date. Sure, this seems like a no-brainer, but too many people feel they’ll never get caught. They are, to put it bluntly, wrong!

By the way, I’ve relied upon Zonealarm Internet Security Suite to protect our systems for many years. They’re not the only option, of course, but they’re very good, have made continual improvements, and I trust them. What more is there to say?

by Brian Underdahl

We’ve all seen bubbles. Certainly a lot of people have been affected by what many called the “housing bubble.” Bubbles happen when people become irrational about something and can’t see that things have gotten unreasonable. And that’s why the iBubble is getting ready to pop.

What’s the iBubble, you ask? Well, just look around on the Web. You see people doing irrational things like standing in line for the iPad–a device that’s too large to fit in a pocket, too small to be a notebook replacement, can’t make phone calls, can’t use Flash content, and is far more expensive than it’s worth. But those were the same people who stood in line to be the first to get the latest version of the iPhone, weren’t they?

Let’s see, the iPhone is tied to the carrier that most people hate, it does far less than the competition, it has a flawed antenna design, and it’s far more expensive than it’s worth. (See a pattern here yet?)

This also reminds me about the current price of Apple stock. Here you have a company run by an egomaniac, it has only a very minor share of the personal computer market, sells only proprietary over-priced products, and its shares are far more expensive than they’re worth.

A lot of companies are gunning for a big share of the tablet and mobile phone markets. While some of them don’t have much of a chance, a number of them are big, successful companies with deep pockets and a determination to come out on top. You can bet they’re planning for the day when the iBubble pops!

Recently we’ve heard that the Android phones are far outselling the iPhone. Of course you’d never hear the “istuff” fanboys mention that–they’re too wrapped up in their iBubble. But that news can’t be good for Apple because it does foreshadow the bursting of the iBubble. When the pop comes, don’t say it was a surprise! I told you it was coming.

Well, I guess it’s official. Several years of tech reviews and posts are gone. Oh, they’re out there somewhere, I guess, but thanks to GoDaddy you can’t see them. For all intents and purposes, everything we’ve done here in the past might as well never have existed.

It’s not that we didn’t try to get them back. For the past few months I’ve been trying to backup, upgrade, and restore our online work. On the other side were the brilliant people at GoDaddy who decided that they were going to change the password rules in mid-stream, making it impossible to actually succeed with restoring our files. And, because they gave no warning about this change, it was also impossible to change the existing passwords so that they’d comply with the new rules.

This is a classic case of “we know best and the customers be damned.” Wouldn’t it have been better to send out an e-mail saying something like “we’re changing the rules and unless you change your passwords within the next 30 days you’re screwed?”

By the way, GoDaddy’s response was that even though they provide the WordPress application, they don’t support it. Sure, they provide a tool so you can backup your files, but that tool lacks one pretty simple feature-it can’t do a restore from that backup.

Darlene sometimes says “if you’re having problems, imagine how ordinary computer users must feel.” She’s right, you know, but you don’t really want to know how I feel about losing all that work over such a stupid move on GoDaddy’s part!

Brian