Worst Passwords of 2011

Do you have one of these top (bottom?) 25 worst passwords from this year?  If so, run, do not walk, to whatever system/website/account has it and change it!  Now!

Also, continue reading the article from Yahoo! because it contains some hints about creating some stronger passwords than the ones listed here.


1. password
2. 123456
3.12345678
4. qwerty
5. abc123
6. monkey
7. 1234567
8. letmein
9. trustno1
10. dragon
11. baseball
12. 111111
13. iloveyou
14. master
15. sunshine
16. ashley
17. bailey
18. passwOrd
19. shadow
20. 123123
21. 654321
22. superman
23. qazwsx
24. michael
25. football

Watch for people scanning prices with their phones on Saturday!

If you see an unusual number of people down at your local Target, Wal-Mart, or what-have-you-Mart scanning barcodes with their smartphones, they're probably using Amazon's Price Check app.  Why would they be doing this?  Well, this Saturday, Dec 10, Amazon will give you 5% off, up to $5 per item.  You can do this for up to three items, thus saving you up to $15!

Thanks to lifehacker for the info!

Why it's called a "Big Mac" and not a "Big Win"

Here are the instructions for setting up your computer (Mac or Windows PC) on McDonalds free wi-fi.  Hmmm... Seven steps, or three?  Which is going to get me back to my fries faster?

Thanks go to Daring Fireball via Cult of Mac (so you know it's biased, but so what?) for this link.

Geez, I wish I could present as well as this guy!

And he's a 6th grader!

When are you coming back from your break?!?

What does it say about a product that's in Beta and you already can't live without it after just a week or two?  Well, right now, it's called Siri, Apple's "intelligent" assistant.  The service was down for a few hours yesterday and it's down again today.  I'm finding myself checking every so often to see if it's back (when Siri's down, it tells you that it can't connect to the network).  And it's not just me either.  Do a Twitter search on "Siri down" or "Siri outage" and there are numerous posts about it.  Do a Google search for the same thing and you'll find any number of stories.

So, anyway, what do I think it says about the product?  I think Apple has a big hit on its hands.  I just hope it knows just how big it is and this is just a pre-release glitch and not what we can regularly expect from Siri.

Why I *need* two iPad 2s!

Apple has had an iPad and Siri since 1987!

Yup, really!  Check out this video from 1987.  It's kinda hokey, but weird how close the functionality of the Knowledge Navigator is to an iPad if it had cell service and Siri.  Maybe the iPad 3?

Thanks to Cult of Mac for the link!

Free games!

So I'm going to date myself a little here, but here's your chance to score some free games!  Yes, they are a little bit old, but I just loved playing Zork on my Commodore 64!

Box art from Wikipedia

Just in case

Actually, I guess I should say iPad 2 in case...  After all, if I'm going to spend at least $500 for a device, I'm going to want to protect it, right?

So with what seems like thousands of case options out there, which case is the best?  I've been looking them over, but there are so many!  Which ones do you like?

In a couple of weeks, I'll post my finalists list as I get ready to buy an iPad 2.  But if there's one that any of you particularly like, I'd love to hear about it!

Why I'm getting an iPad 2 and not an Android tablet

Viruses!  Trojans!  Malware!  Oh, my!

Electronista reported recently that the number of malware on the Android platform has climbed to 44.  And the number of them on the iPad/iPhone?  Zero.  The same as that on the WebOS platform.  But then we would expect that, wouldn't we...

An iPad? Or something else?

Well, I have my heart set on an iPad 2 at this point and I have almost enough saved up for it.  However, for those of you without the iPad-love have other options.  This little list of the top-5 top-4 alternatives give you some other choices.  What's yours?

DealNews - Top 5 iPad Alternatives

A Blog made out of trees?

I love this quote: "For those of you under the age of 25, a magazine is a blog made out of trees."

It's from an article (on a blog...) describing how a die-hard professional Windows user (a former editor of Windows Magazine no less!) became an Apple fan-boy.  Here's a hint if you are a Windows user and want to avoid the same fate:  Do not get involved with Apple's gateway drugs!

How the Editor of Windows Magazine Became an Apple Fanboy

iPad 2!!!

Wow.  I. Want. One.

How to keep up with it all...

You may have noticed I haven't done much posting lately.  The problem isn't lack of desire; it's lack of time!  I'm taking two courses at college in the evenings and until recently, was finishing up an independent study class.  Just to show you what it's like, one of my weeks had a final on Friday, read a book and write a report for a class for the following Tuesday, and study for a midterm for the other class on Thursday.  All this while keeping up with class attendance, class reading, and doing assignments!  I'm amazed I didn't drop dead that week!

The only way I was able to keep things straight was to have all my assignment deadlines online and at my fingertips.  I could bore you with all the to-do list type applications that I went through or mention the probably hundreds that I didn't have time for, but I won't do that.  If you'd like to take your own journey through that vast field, just Google "to-do list applications" or "GTD" (Getting Things Done).  It'll definitely keep you busy.

For me, I just had a few requirements:

• online - I had to be able to access it from anywhere.
• easy - nothing complicated.  Just let me enter a task, a due date, and be done!
• quick - See "easy".  Quickly add a task and date.  Keyboard shortcuts are a real help here.
• flexible - But when I need it to do some more complicated things, those features should be available somewhere.  And nothing fancy either: recurring appointments, flagging tasks, stuff like that.

So after a bit of testing, I settled on... are you ready for it?... Todoist.  Like I said, it's nothing fancy, but it lets me do what I need to do to keep organized and on top of my homework quickly and easily and for free!  There's a monthly paid version, as well, with more powerful features which is probably worth it if you need those, but for me the free version is good enough.  

Right now, I'm just using it online, but according to their website they have both iPhone and Android apps available (third-party I'm assuming), and an API to extend Todoist's functionality.  Something I'll have to play with (once I have some time... :) ).

Yee Haw!

Apple's gonna be be having an "event" on March 2...

Thanks to Engadget for this link, but if you want a whole boatload more, just Google "Apple March 2"

Okay, once and for all, it's OS "ten", not OS "ex"...

The official word from the official source is that you pronounce the name of the operating system Oh-Ess-Ten, not Oh-Ess-Ex.  So how do you pronounce OS X 10.6.6?  A little Googling seems to indicate that you can say Oh-Ess-Ten-point-Six-point-Six.  (i.e., you don't need to say the second "ten")

Are we all clear on this now? :)

Microsoft Mathematics 4.0 for Windows for free!

Here's a freebie I found on Dealnews.  Download Microsoft's Mathematics 4.0 for Windows free!

If you don't know about this program (I didn't!), this is what Microsoft says about it: "Microsoft Mathematics provides a graphing calculator that plots in 2D and 3D, step-by-step equation solving, and useful tools to help students with math and science studies."

Sounds like a handy thing to have especially since I'm taking Stats (well, maybe it could help) and I'm planning to take an upper-division math class later this year.

Preaching to the choir...

It's 2011, do you know what's on your Windows PC?  By that, I mean, are you fairly sure you don't have viruses, trojans, keyloggers, and other assorted malware nasties churning in your rig?

Well, if you still aren't running at least some antivirus, or if what you have is more than a year old, here's a story from PC Mag all about 2011's best antivirus software.  It seems to be fairly comprehensive and gives you options for the best scanners and removers, both paid and free.  If you have a few minutes, be sure to check it out.  It could save you a number of hours later.

Personally, I have antivirus running and do a general malware scan with a different product on my Windows 7 PC.  And my Mac?  Still going along without.  Yeah, yeah, I should take my own advice.  One of these days I will, but I still haven't seen any alarms being raised, so yeah, one of these days.  However, that doesn't mean I don't regularly run Clam on it just to check...

How about you?  What do you do to keep your PCs (including Macs) safe?

Easily shrink pictures for uploading or sending

I guess that's why they call the app "Shrink Pic."


Basically, anytime you want to send a picture via email, upload one to a blog or share one via IM,Shrink Pic "automatically creates a temporary copy, resizes it and sends it instead."


For instance, the below picture's size on my hard drive is 450K.  When I insert the picture into the post (which uploads it into my WordPress storage), Shrink Pic resizes it to 52K, saving me a lot of space for more pictures!  I've only had Shrink Pic for a little while, but it seems to work great!



Shrink Pic doesn't modify the original, nor does it seem to change it when moving pictures from folder to folder, even if it's something like my online DropBox account.


for Windows, via LifeHacker

Happy belated birthday to Wikipedia!

Wikipedia turned 10 on January 15, 2011.

I always used to turn to Google when I wanted to find out about something.  Now, I usually end up on Wikipedia first, collect some relevant information (at least according to the Wikipedia article's author(s)) then turn to Google to do more detailed search and research.

Happy Birthday and here's hoping for many more!

EMail recall

As mentioned in this post, hitting "Reply All" in an email could be an embarrassing thing.  If you happen to use GMail, you might have an out--the timing of which is even up to you!  Check out this post from a friend of mine who owns an IT consultancy.  As an aside, he's a good guy who knows his stuff.  Check out his company if you are in the market for IT services!

Take a tablet and call me in the morning?

Okay, I want a tablet PC now.  Of course, the front runner is the iPad.  However, there were a number of tablets introduced at CES and Laptopmag.com has their top-10 here.  Are these your top 10?  What others would you include in the "top" list? (This is purely selfish, of course.  I just want to get more options! :) )  Personally, before I even saw this list, the Motorola Xoom and Asus slider were up there for me.

Boom! Tablets come out of nowhere! And everywhere!

According to this story from USA Today, tablets sold 21 million units in 2010 after literally no market in 2009.  2010 saw the introduction of a number of tablets, but by far, the Apple iPad was the most popular.   Apple is estimated to have sold 13+ million units of the iPad itself according to this article.  And 2011 is expected to be even bigger.  The USA Today story states that a number of companies will be bringing out their own tablet and there are also rumors of an updated iPad.  Like I said before, I can't wait!

iPad "2" rumors

PCMag.com reported about some leaked images for an iPad "2" case.  Unfortunately, the pics have been taken down, but based on those pics, PCMag is guessing that the iPad redesign will have it looking more like the iPhone 4, have a rear facing camera, and a possible USB or memory card slot (some kind of slow anyway).

I can't wait to see what Apple has in store (no pun intended) for us in 2011!

EDIT: Here's USA Today's take on what Apple might possibly have in store for the new iPad.