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Recycle your computer.


It may be a little later than our Greenpeace friends may have liked, but Apple has mostly gotten its act together on recycling. When you buy a new Mac, you can send or bring them your old one for proper disposal… at no cost to you. That’s a huge step and as this Macworld article details, a very welcome one in a growing number of options for high-tech disposal.

So please, DO NOT simply throw away that old Macintosh or monitor or even cell phone. (That’s actually illegal in California) Pass it down to a less-discerning friend or relative if it still works… and if it’s broken, find a place to recycle it.

There is a great facility for Los Angelinos to use in Glendale. Just drive up there on a Saturday or Sunday morning and drop off pretty much any and all of your old electronics with peace of mind. I did it, and it’s very very easy. But if you don’t want to do it, next time you see me I’ll take it for you and bring it on my next run!

justin

How wrong our tech heads can be….

I just got a huge kick out of two John C Dvorak columns.

First, I read a great treatise about how the iPhone is not only changing the cell phone industry, but actually creating a new one in an amazing, game changing way:

Understanding the impact of the iPhone: The eventual market for these devices as envisioned by Steve Jobs and Apple will eventually be bigger than anything we’ve ever seen and should surpass the massive PC and desktop computing market before the dust settles.

And I had renewed faith in the old Cranky Geek who I love to laugh at when I listen to him whine about stuff on This Week in Tech… until, in an effort to find the source link for the article that I originally found on my Etrade site, I did a google search and found another article by Dvorak, but with a slightly different take on the iPhone:

Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone: What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it’s smart it will call the iPhone a “reference design” and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else’s marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures.

Did I say slightly? HA! Perhaps Dvorak should think twice before jumping to conclusions about a product that hasn’t even been released yet. He was definitely wrong about this one…

justin

Passwords. ah passwords. don’t we love ’em…

How many people have only one password? How about those who have one password and then a bunch of variations with “2” or “69” at the end? Well guess what… don’t get used to them. Because one day soon the whole password thing will slowly become obsolete. You may rejoice or moan about having to learn something new… but if you have a strong reaction either way, you should read this NY Times article about the present and future of passwords… or at least the first non-techy first half that has some great nuggets like this:

Surveys show that we’ve remained stubbornly fond of perennial favorites like “password,” “123456” and “LetMeIn.” The underlying problem, however, isn’t their simplicity. It’s the log-on procedure itself, in which we land on a Web page, which may or may not be what it says it is, and type in a string of characters to authenticate our identity…

not sure whether to be comforted or scared? read on… and then call us with questions if you have them…

Why you don’t want to surf for porn even on your mac

At a recent hacker conference, they were able to break into a MacBook Air when it went to a particular website (using Safari) that the hackers had prepped for mischeif.
The lesson: sketchy websites could mean sketchy results, even on a Mac. Sure, there will be a software update by Apple to fix this particular problem (and hopefully soon) but if you’re searching the web on a public wi-fi… don’t go to sketchy websites because they could do damage to you and/or your data.
MacBook Air first to fall in hacking competition | The Apple Core | ZDNet.com

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=1479


If you have questions about this or other Mac security issues, call us at 818-230-0030 or email us at [email protected]
thanks,
justin

Printing to PDF

dof.jpgOne of my favorite tips to impart on my clients is how to print to PDF and save things like web receipts to their hard drive for later (if ever) printing. It’s an easy and quick way to make your life easier and save paper… you just click File > Print > PDF > Save as PDF.

And for a more in depth look at why you’d want to use this feature, check out this article about Getting Things Done.

children on the internet! OMG! beware?

For those of you who are parents of young children or highly interested in their well being because you watch too much Nightline…. you should read this article. 

This is my favorite tech columnist’s take of safety concerns for children online… which is not as scary as you might think.

How Dangerous Is the Internet for Children? – New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/technology/personaltech/28pogue-email.html?8cir&emc=cir


Here is the link to the PBS documentary about Teens online that he referred to:

justin