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.