Many months ago, but not that many posts ago, I launched a redesign of this site. I found a WordPress theme that I really liked, modified and tweaked its look quite a bit, and the end result was something that I was proud of and thought looked really cool.

Then, sometime in the last several months, my site was hacked. I’m not entirely sure how it was done — I am not an expert coder or a hacker by any means — but the end result was that clicking this site from any search engine results would redirect you to a .ru page and try to install a virus on your computer (though, fortunately, it was a virus that up to date browsers and virus software were able to block).

To make matters worse, this problem affected other websites that I hosted, including my mother’s personal business webpage Orene.net (she’s a wardrobe and image consult located in the San Francisco bay area) and my personal homepage TKearn.com. This really hurt my mother’s business, as her webpage was one of her main forms of advertising, and redirecting to a virus will cause you to plummet in the search engine results even after you fix the problem. Additionally, the hack remained undetected by me for quite a while, both because I was very busy at work and because going directly to the sites, which is what I usually do, still worked and only search engine results that were affected.

Some outside help was able to get rid of the hack and make the sites safe again. What the person who helped me reported was that the hacker exploited a vulnerability in my theme. I needed to delete my old theme, get it off the server, and start fresh with something else.

So I did. The result of that is the site that you see now. It’s still a work in progress, and I have a lot of additional tweaking that I intend to do. If you see something that you like or hate, or anything that isn’t working, please let me know.

Additionally, I would just like to reiterate that the site is safe again. I want to apologize for to anyone who may have experienced issues because of it — I really do feel bad about it, and I wish I had known about it earlier or taken further steps to prevent it (though I do not know what those might have been).

A few notes about this site and the conspicuous lack of new content: In the last several months, I have started a new job, which has taken up a lot of my time and energy. But, with this hacking incident taken care of, and with me settling into the job, the time is right to start getting back to one of the things that I enjoy — writing about tech. I want to get this site on the map again. And I need your help to do it: please comment on stories, let me know your opinions on things, and help me make this site more than just my own personal tech soapbox.

Your ability to block personalized ads is dependent on which web-browser you use.

Google Chrome

Chrome has a solution that you can implement right now, and it comes in the form of a browser extension. The extension works by automatically opting you out of any company that offers an opt out program, which Google says is over 50 companies including the top 15 largest ad networks. It won’t block ads (Google is not about to start helping you to block their ads), but the overly-personalized ads will now be replaced by generic, possibly repetitive ads. Here’s the link to the Chrome extension.

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox’s solution is still a “proposed” feature, meaning it will likely not be available until the next major browser release. What they are planning is a Do Not Track setting you can activate in the browser. When you activate it, it will send out an HTTP header to advertisers (well, their servers actually) that will tell them not to deliver personalized ads to you, and to only track your activity anonymously. Advertisers will have to choose whether to respect Firefox’s header (respectible ones likely will), and we will have to see how long it takes Firefox to implement this, but it is a promising idea.

Internet Explorer 9

The upcoming release of Internet Explorer 9 promises yet another solution to ad tracking. IE 9 will feature a “Tracking Protective List”, in which you either blacklist or whitelist ad tracking from advertisers by domain. We will have to see how this is implemented for the end user, and how effective this method of stopping personalized ads is in practice.

In Summary

These are three different browsers with three different methods of preventing personalized ads. The Chrome extension is the only one that you can implement right this moment, but the Firefox and Internet Explorer 9 solutions should be coming soon. It is also likely that other browsers such as Safari and Opera will adopt or implement their own methods to prevent ad tracking. Whatever method you choose to use, it is definitely a good thing that we now have more options to protect our privacy and keep web browsing anonymous.

The (Slight) Differences Between the Verizon and AT&T iPhones

The Verizon iPhone 4 is nearly identical to the one currently on offer from AT&T, but there are a few minor differences worth noting which may be decision makers or breakers for some. The biggest difference with the Verizon phone is a change of the internal antenna and cellular radio to ones that will play nicely with Verizon’s CDMA network. The advantage of this is that the phone will now run on Verizon’s much touted network, and many iPhone users should experience better signal and call quality in places where they found AT&T’s coverage lacking.

There are two disadvantages to the CDMA technology that Verizon uses however. One is that it is not as fast as AT&T’s HSPA network (should one have excellent reception and bandwidth). This means that, compared to places with great AT&T coverage where few people use their phones (if such places do indeed exist), users will find the Verizon iPhone slower.

The second disadvantage is that Verizon’s CDMA technology does not allow for simultaneous voice and data use. That means that it is impossible to, say, browse the internet while on a phone call. This is likely not something people do terribly often, but sometimes it can be invaluable to look something up in Wikipedia or refer to an email during a call.

There is one feature that may be an available only on Verizon however, and that is the ability to use the phone as a Wifi hotspot. This feature is already available on many phones Verizon sells, including most of their Droid lineup, and typically requires an additional monthly cost. What it allows you to do is turn your phone into a Wifi router that your computer can see and connect to, allowing you to access the internet on a computer or tablet (up to 5 devices at a time) using your phone’s cellular connection. The mobile hotspot feature could come to the AT&T iPhone at some point in the future (should AT&T choose to implement it), but there are no announced plans.

Price-wise the two phones cost exactly the same, but the monthly fees associated with them may be slightly different. Fifteen dollars a month buys you 150 megabytes of data on Verizon and 200 MB on AT&T. For $25 dollars a month, you can buy 2 gigabytes on AT&T and $30/month will get you unlimited data use on Verizon. This means that light data users (which is likely most people) are essentially paying the same on either network, medium data users (200 MB-2GB) can save $5 a month on AT&T, and heavy data users (>2GB) should choose Verizon.

Why you May Want to Wait to Buy a Verizon iPhone

All that being said, the best course may to be to wait a few months before buying any iPhone, and here’s why.

Apple has, like clockwork, been coming out with a new version of the iPhone once a year, always in late spring or early summer (June or early July). If you buy an iPhone now, you will be committing to a new two year contract and won’t be able to upgrade to whatever new phone Apple comes up with. Since the next iPhone is only 4 months away (assuming Apple keeps to its schedule), it makes sense to wait for the new model. You won’t want to miss out on whatever improvements Apple makes to the next iPhone.

It is also important to note that many people won’t be able to buy the new iPhone, at least not without paying additional amounts to their carrier. If you are currently on contract with a carrier that’s not Verizon, you will almost certainly have to pay some kind of early termination fee to cancel your plan. If you are on Verizon and you’re not eligible for a phone upgrade (which typically only happens when two years have elapsed and you need to renew your cellular contract), you will have to pay the unsubsidized price for your iPhone. Currently, the unsubsized prices for the iPhone are $599 and $699, adding $400 to the price of the phone.

I have no doubt that Apple has something exciting up its sleeve for the next version of the iPhone (they always do) and it makes sense to wait for it — it’s only 4 months away, and it might cost a lot of extra money to get the Verizon iPhone now. But, if you’ve been waiting a long time for a Verizon iPhone and just cannot wait any longer, you will not truly go wrong buying an iPhone 4 on Verizon. There’s no telling whether the Verizon network will fare better than AT&T’s when it gets slammed with iPhone users, but the iPhone 4 is a great device and Verizon is not charging any more for it than the competition.

…and yet I feel my thoughts about the product from back in February 2008 still hold true.

I was recently asked to write a short piece on “My Favorite Gadgets of All Time”. I decided to take that topic and write about

For me, the original iPhone was a revelation. It wasn’t that it had a touchscreen — I’d seen a lot of stylus driven Pocket PCs and Treos. It wasn’t that it had a completely integrated iPod — many phones had mp3 capabilities and some, like the Walkman series, were even more than decent at it. It wasn’t even about the UI — it was intuitive, fresh, and new, but very simplified (especially the original 1.0 release). It was all about the web browser.

Mobile Safari showed me that it was possible to have a true, desktop-like internet experience on a mobile device. I could carry around the internet – and it was the true internet, as I was used to experiencing it — in my pocket! This blew my mind, and opened up new worlds of possibilities of what I could do and where I could do it. Plus, I could consistently get “woah!” reactions from people who’d never seen it by whipping out my iPhone and navigating to their favorite site.

Another of my favorite gadgets was the first crop of netbooks — the original Asus EEE PC and the competitors that came shortly thereafter. Whether running Linux or Windows XP, all of these machines were new in that they were computers small enough to take practically anywhere and cheap enough so people could actually afford to buy them (as opposed to UMPCs). Like the iPhone, they allowed me to have real computing power wherever I was, whenever I needed it (I personally had an original Acer Aspire One). Now, the current netbooks are even less expensive and get phenomenal battery life, and have been largely responsible for pushing down the prices of laptops overall.

The site has gotten a dramatic redesign. It’s more modern, packed with more features (threaded comments!), and does a

Landlines are expensive and most of us are using our cell phones as our primary means of making and receiving calls. So, why are so many people still hanging onto their corded phones?

Well, more and more people aren’t. In fact, a new study shows that almost 30% of U.S. families have gotten rid of their landlines, up from 25% last year and 10% in 2005, and the rate at which people are cutting the cord is increasing. As Business Insider points out, the losers in this transition are also the winners, as the largest telcos — AT&T and Verizon — are also the largest wireless providers.

But, there are still a few important reasons why you might want to keep your landline.

When dialing 911 on a cell phone, where the call is routed varies by state, but it often goes to a less-vital regional emergency responder, such as the highway patrol. Further, when a 911 call originates from a cell phone, the operator only has a general idea of where the call is originating from. On the other hand, when you call 911 from a landline, the call typically goes to local emergency response, typically fire, and the address you’re calling from comes up for the operator immediately. This saves vital seconds in an emergency, as the call will not have to be routed around as much and less information needs to be communicated over the phone. The quicker that a fire engine or ambulance is dispatched, the more likely it is that the home won’t burn down or that the life will be saved.

Additionally, landlines may be the best method of communication during a larger disaster. Typically, networks go down in a disaster, as they get flooded with people trying to call each other. The potential is for this to happen with both landlines and cellular networks — as it did during events like 9/11 — because it occurs when the volume of calls exceeds capacity. As more and more people get rid of their landlines, they will become a more reliable means of getting through to somebody in an emergency. It should be noted that landlines do work in power outages, provided the phone itself does not require power, and will keep working even after all the cell phone batteries have died (it can take days to restore power after a major storm or earthquake). Also, while it is true that the cellular providers have been dramatically increasing the capacities and abilities of their networks in the past couple years, this has been matched or exceeded by an increase in the use of those networks as people rely on their cell phones for more of their calls and internet use.

Disasters and emergencies don’t happen very often, and it can be easy to overlook benefits that one hopes they will never need. Still, if you can afford a landline, it is probably better to be covered than to one day, at the worst possible moment, regret cancelling it.

Related Posts:

• Article: The Future of Technology
• The iPhone 4 — Quick Impressions
• Article: Windows Phone 7

A while ago, I wrote several posts about my favorite add-ons in Firefox, sharing the little (and big) tools that made browsing faster, safer, and easier. At that time, Firefox was the only browser that had anything like add-ons, but that has changed since now Google Chrome and Apple Safari have opened up to third-party extensions in their most recent versions. It’s been amazing how quickly new extensions for Chrome have been created since Google opened up the platform. I have moved to Chrome as my primary browser, primarily because I was finding it faster in day to day use than Firefox, but largely because I was able to find Chrome substitutes for almost all of my most used Firefox add-ons. Since Chrome extensions are relatively new, and many people are discovering the functionalities that they can add to the browser for the first time, it seems like the ideal moment to look at some of the best extensions for Chrome:

Oldies but Goodies

Some of the most important Firefox add-ons now have nearly identical Google Chrome versions. When I say “important”, I mean the add-ons that will make web browsing safer, more secure, and faster.

I wrote about AdBlock and Web of Trust in this post on Firefox add-ons, and both have Chrome versions. Web of Trust warns you when you navigate to a dangerous, risky, or deceitful webpage, and lets you vet links before you click on them. AdBlock eliminates most adds on pages across the web, which makes surfing faster (since the browser does not have to load the adds) and safer (since adds on some pages may contain malicious code).

Other Firefox add-ons that I have written about with Chrome siblings are Google Search Preview, which shows you thumbnail images of the pages in Google search results, and Speed Dial, which allows you to create easily-clickable page thumbnails when you open a new tab.

For Gmail Users

Google Chrome has some great extensions that make dealing with Gmail a whole lot easier. By far, my favorite is an extension called Google Mail Checker Plus. Mail checker plus essentially integrates Gmail into the browser — it displays the number of unread messages, makes an alert noise when a new email comes in, and allows you to preview the message and choose to delete, archive, or read it wherever you happen to be in the browser. This allows Chrome to work more like a proper email program, notifying you of new messages and allowing you to easily triage your inbox without having to jump into a Gmail window every time. Google Mail Checker Plus easily beats out any Gmail add-on I have seen for Firefox, as well as Google’s official extension (called Google Mail Checker) which does not allow you to preview messages without going into Gmail.

Another nice extension for dealing with Gmail is Better Gmail, which allows you to customize the Gmail interface to your liking, and adds little niceties to the experience, like highlighting a row when you mouse over it. There are tons of little tweaks you can make to change Gmail, and it takes playing around with the settings a bit to discover what you want. There is also a Firefox version of this extension which behaves almost identically.

For Facebook Users

There is a very useful extension called Facebook Photo Zoom, which automatically shows you an image in full size on Facebook when you mouse over it. This doesn’t sound like it would make that big of a difference, but it allows you to quickly see that image of your friends in your feed (or wherever it happens to be) without forcing you to click through to another page or photo gallery, and this quickly becomes something you start to take for granted. It is possible to toggle this on and off right in the browser, which is important for times it might get in the way, such as when you are looking a gallery or uploading photos.

Reference Tools

Wikipedia Companion allows you to look something up on Wikipedia in a convenient pop-up window, so that you can look something up without leaving the page you’re on. The extension makes searching Wikipedia a one-click affair, which is perfect if you just want to quickly access a piece of information.

Google Dictionary, an official extension by Google, allows you to quickly lookup any word you find online without leaving the site you are on by either highlighting the word or typing it into a pop-up search box.

For Android Users

If you have a phone running version 2.2 or later of Google’s Android, you’re going to want to look at an extension called Chrome to Phone, created by a Google engineer during his “20% time”. The extension allows you to take pages, maps, or links and send them to your phone, so that you can view them on the go. There is a corresponding (free) Android application that needs to be downloaded to the phone for this to work. I haven’t used this myself, since I’m currently using an iPhone, but it reportedly works well and is very useful, not to mention cool.

Related Posts:

• My Favorite Firefox Addons, Part 1
• My Favorite Firefox Addons, Part 2
• iPhone OS 4.0 (iOS 4) — Run Though, Impressions, and Tips

I’ve finally had the opportunity to spend some time with an iPhone 4. I’ve got some quick initial impressions on the device coming up after the break. (To find in-depth impressions and run-through of the software — iOS 4 — click here).

• Since the exterior of the phone is made entirely out of glass and metal, it really does have a higher quality feel than the plastic iPhone 3G and 3GS. That said, the metal and glass give the phone an unexpected heftiness. While the iPhone 4 is a smaller than previous iPhones (particularly in width), it is not any lighter, which makes it seem surprisingly heavy for its size. The weight won’t be a problem for those used to the previous iPhone models, but those coming to the iPhone for the first time may need to adjust to carrying a heavier phone.
• The phone is really thin. Apple says it’s the thinnest smartphone out there, and while that may or may not be true, it’s more than svelte enough to fit into narrow pockets. It’s not as astonishingly thin as the iPod Touch, but, then the iPod Touch doesn’t have to fit cellular antennas inside or include as large of a battery to make them run. Without a doubt, the iPhone 4 is extremely attractive and sexy device.
• The iPhone 4 has an amazing screen. The clarity, resolution, and brightness surpass any display I’ve ever seen. Everything is spectacularly sharp — it makes the screen on my iPhone 3GS look fuzzy and pixilated by comparison. Having a screen like this makes using the phone a real pleasure, since text is easier to read and everything on the phone just looks fantastic.
• The new 5 megapixel camera seemed to take really nice pictures. That said, the iPhone’s screen will make any picture look good, and I never had the opportunity to load pictures onto a computer. But, there seems no doubt that the iPhone 4’s shooter is a nice improvement over the fairly mediocre cameras of the previous iPhones. Video looked good too, and played back smoothly and stutter-free on the phone.
• After reading the reviews online, I was expecting Facetime to produce crystal clear video calls. My expectations probably shouldn’t have been so high — after all, the resolution of the iPhone 4’s front camera is VGA so the quality can only be so good. In my experience, calling from one iPhone 4 to another in an Apple store, video looked compressed and pixilated and often stuttered and froze. This was true when using both the front camera and the rear camera, though the rear camera was, as you would expect, better. For comparison, the video and audio performance seemed of comparable quality to a medium to low-quality Skype call — not spectacular, but certainly usable, and making out the image of the other person and their surroundings isn’t a problem. However, it definitely does not compare to a high-quality Skype video call using nice webcams and high speed internet connections. It should be noted that Facetime performance will likely better over a faster and less-crowded wifi connection than that found in the Apple store, but in the real world people are often going to be making Facetime calls from mediocre wifi connections like those found in coffee shops, airports, and hotels.

Keep in mind, these are all first impressions, and I reserve the right to change them once I’ve gotten to spend more time with the device. After I’ve had a chance to use an iPhone 4 at length (which may not be for a week or two), I’ll do a more in-depth post about the device.

Related Posts:

• iPhone OS 4.0 (iOS 4) — Run Though, Impressions, and Tips
• The Dark Sides of iOS 4
• Apple’s Long-Term Strategy for the iPad

Back in August, I wrote a post that rounded up some of the easiest methods for getting around email attachment size limits. Lots of people run into these limits when trying to send large files over email — especially from corporate, school, or ISP provided email accounts — and it can be hard to know you’ve run up against it until the person you were sending the file to reports the email didn’t go through. Keep reading for an update and expansion on that original post — many of the services I originally wrote about have changed, and some new ones have come along.

What’s Changed:

TransferBigFiles.com. When I wrote the original post 8 months ago, TransferBigFiles was my favorite method for getting around attachment size limits. All you had to do was upload a file and enter the email address of your recipient and they would receive an email with a link to the file. Well, the site still works that way, but instead of having a 1GB per file limit, it’s now 100MB. If you sign up for a free account, it’s 250MB, but that still constrains you to dramatically smaller files than you were able to send before (though 250MB should be more than large enough for most any photo or audio files you wish to send, and most video files should work as well). You will now also need to sign up for an account to use most of the features of the service, such as password protecting the file or including a message to the recipient. Paid accounts start at $5 a month, let you transfer files up to 2GB. Overall, TransferBigFiles is still a useful service, but now you may need to sign up for an account, and you’ll have to look somewhere else if you want to transfer really big files.

FileDropper.com. FileDropper hasn’t changed dramatically, but it has gotten less convenient for those wishing to use it to email files. The service still lets you upload files up to 5GB for free (and with paid accounts up to 250GB). However, when you upload the file, instead of giving you a link to that file (which was easy to copy and paste into an email), it now gives you a link to a page from which you can download the file (after entering a captcha). This adds a step to the process, and could prove confusing to the person you’re sending the file to, especially if they’re not computer-savvy.

What Hasn’t:

Gmail. Gmail still has an attachment limit of 25MB, which at the time was the largest of the email providers out there (and plenty big for most pictures, audio files, or Office documents). However, they have been surpassed by…

What’s New:

Hotmail. The new Hotmail, which launched earlier this month, now reigns supreme as the free email provider with the largest attachment limits. Using Hotmail, you can send up to 200 files, each of which can be up to 50MB (which allows you to theoretically send 10GB worth of files in a single email). Hotmail does this by uploading the file(s) to Windows Skydrive, a service which gives you 25GB of free online storage, and then including links to the files (or a gallery of thumbnails in the case of images) in the email. This method has both pros and cons. The biggest upsides are that you won’t be hampered by your recipient’s attachment size limit, and that your files won’t be taking up space in you or your recipient’s email accounts. However, because Skydrive has a capacity limit you may find that you run into it, which would mean having to clear things off of it before you could use it to send more large files. You can set your attachments to have an expiration date (90 days by default), which will be important to keep Skydrive from getting filled up if you are using Hotmail to send files frequently.

Related Posts:

• Get Around Those Pesky Attachment Size Limits
• iPhone OS 4.0 (iOS 4) — Run Though, Impressions, and Tips
• Gmail Tips and Tricks