Paul – Page 185 – Paul's Tech Talk

Citigroup bank might be saved through the recession.

PaulNovember 24, 2008

According to reports from ABC News, Citibank is having a hard time and might need to be assisted by the government.

[ad#ad2-right]The company has seen its shares lose 60 percent of their value in the past week, reflecting a crisis of confidence among skittish investors. They are worried all the risky debt on Citigroup’s balance sheet will turn into losses as the economy worsens and the markets stay turbulent — losses that could be nearly impossible to reverse.

[via ABC News]

Although this is somewhat expected, I don’t think we can afford to pay the debt of a bank. We are all having to deal with this recession. I don’t know how they can afford to pay for Citigroup and expect this to help bolster the economy. I guess only time will tell!!!

Google SearchWiki dies after two days!!

PaulNovember 22, 2008

According to Techcrunch Google Pulls the Google SearchWiki. Unsure as to way but here’s what they said:

Users are reporting that the recent changes to Google’s search engine, called SearchWiki, have simply disappeared from the site. It’s certainly gone from my account.

[ad#ad2-right]User reactions were mixed but weighted heavily towards “this is lame,” and there was no way to turn off the features other than to conduct Google searches without being logged in. Another way to turn it off was to switch search engines.

[via TechCrunch]

I’ve got my theory on this, and it’s quite a good theory. I think it was a making search results come up wrong or not at all. The last two days they’ve had that going my page views have drop BIG time. According to my Stats I’ve had 236 Unique Visits for Thursday, and 232 Wednesday. My Friday stats show that I only got 185 Unique Visits, dropping 40 to 50 people. My stats for today which is incomplete shows that I’ve only gotten 136 unique visits. Although that is complete you can see where I dropped drastically. I think Google was getting yelled at by websites due to the stats dropping. I am guessing people could tell if they wanted to go to a site just by reading the comments. This will hurt every site, including TechCrunch. I will say this is only a theory and this might or might not be the case.

This however is the best possible explanation that I could come up with. Do you know why they did that? I don’t know?

Youtube gets ready to Launch “LIVE Event!!” 5pm PST/8pm EST

PaulNovember 22, 2008

As the time approaches for the live even for Youtube. There are many confirmed and only one I want to see right now. As many people will agree that Mythbusters is the best show on Discovery Channel. They have been confirmed to be there tomorrow.

Some of the major players confirmed to be there are Mythbusters, Soulja Boy Tell’em, Katy Perry, Esmee Denters, Akon, FRED, and Will. I. Am. Now I don’t know all these stars. I do Know Mythbusters and I’ve heard of FRED. I’m just stating who is going to be there.

[ad#ad2-left]Then the Obvious question comes to my mind and I am sure this is being asked by everyone right now. Is Mythbusters shows coming to Youtube? I would say from what all is going on with Youtube, they might become a competitor to Hulu. With them adding High Defination Viewing and allowing bigger video to be uploaded. There is no question that Youtube and Google is getting ready to release a major statement, or change there direction. So be ready tomorrow at 8 PM EST/5 PM PST and let’s see what happens.

Google Creates the ultimate Search Wiki!!

PaulNovember 21, 2008

Google has started to do let people rate the searches and help find the better articles. Google is calling it Searchwiki. Here is a screen shot:

[ad#ad2-left]You can now help judge and rate search results. You can also X out the ones that are not right. I am going to play around with this even more. It started out on Google Trends and Now people are all wanting to know more about this. This could help my site even more. I want to know what others are thinking about this? Is this Good or can this be good for the spammers? You decide.

Some other Websites talking about this are:

TechCrunch

Wall Street Journal

ZDNet

These are just a few but I wanted to let you see what other websites are talking about this new feature. I do want to hear what you think about all this and what is likely to come later on?

How to disable autorun the easy way!!!

PaulNovember 21, 2008

I read a report from Cnet about USB devices spreading Virus and I will quote:

The bad guys are intentionally developing new flavors of malware designed to propagate through USB devices,” said Gunter Ollmann, chief security strategist for IBM’s ISS security division. “They are today’s floppy drives.”

[ad#ad2-right]An infected computer can spread a virus to a clean USB thumb drive that is inserted. That USB drive will then be spreading the virus onto other computers if the operating system on those machines has an AutoRun-type feature enabled. The AutoRun function in Windows launches installers and other programs automatically when a flash drive or CD is inserted. The Mac has an equivalent function, according to Ollmann.

[Via Cnet]

In order to disable “autorun“, which in Vista is called Autoplay. In order to disable Autoplay from starting when you insert media into your computer here is how you do it:

You will need to be Logged in as Administrator before this can be done:

Next click start and type “Autoplay” without quotes. It will bring up a screen but all you have to worry about is this:

You will need to make sure there is no check mark for “Use AutoPlay for all media and Devices”. Click save and close.

[ad#ad2-left]Once that is done, you will have no more Autoruns from USB devices. If you want to disable Autorun in XP, I’d suggest reading some of these articles for XP.

Wikipedia – AutoRun

How to Disable Autorun

These are just a few and are really nice to articles but there are others out there that might be more to your liking. I suggest searching Google for them. I hope this helps you out!!!