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February 2010

02/26/2010

How can you stop John’s BlackBerry addiction?

By Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Switch

SITUATION John has a BlackBerry addiction. His body twitches every time his BlackBerry goes off. He can’t stop himself from checking every message that comes in. It’s become a serious distraction. In meetings at work, he finds himself sneaking the device under the table to read messages covertly. (It annoys John’s colleagues that he thinks he’s fooling them.) John’s wife becomes increasingly irritated that he can’t focus on their dinner conversation, and one day he almost has a fender- bender because he is trying to email someone while driving. John knows that he needs to cut it out, but every time he resolves to stop, the Black-
Berry buzzes. [John is fictitious, but we all know a John.]

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Defining your next gadget's real price

It hasn't been a very good week for Apple. Well, at least, not for the people that make its shiny computers for it over in Asia. According to stories in the press, workers at a Chinese plant owned by Apple supplier Wintek have been poisoned by n-hexane. n-hexane is a gas used to clean those lovely big flat-screen displays. Wintek also supplies Nokia, and others.

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02/25/2010

Good guys 1, botnets 0. Waledac is no more

The computer security industry scored another hit against the bad guys this week, with the news that Microsoft had felled the mighty Waledac botnet. People across the world have been liberated from a nasty, malicious web of online crime - and the funny thing is that most of them will probably never know it.

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02/24/2010

Big Brother moves into the bedroom

Here at Geektown, we're used to monitoring cases of privacy violations, but we ran across a particularly shocking case a little while ago. It concerns a teenaged boy, and alleged spying via web cam, and a local school.

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02/22/2010

A Milestone in phone technology?

For the average person, the question of the last few years has been, Do I need a smartphone? After all, ten years ago, cellphones were just beginning to penetrate the market. I remember a friend of mine bought one and the first thing I said to her was "Why? Why not save the expense and just use a payphone?" Nowadays, of course, cellphones have become so ubiquitous that payphones have begun disappearing from sidewalks for lack of use. Will smartphones become the new cellphones?

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How much broadband data is enough?

How much data is enough? When looking at an ISP, I originally used to look purely at how much speed I'd be getting for my money. Back in the day, I remember having to contend with 56Kbit/sec of theoretical speed over a dial-up line. I say 'theoretical' because it was often something like 42Kbit/sec, depending on the quality of the copper phone line that I was using. Then, it rose to hundreds of kbit/sec, and as broadband services got better, we could suddenly enjoy multiple Mbit/sec, which opened the world of video up to us. But these days, there's another factor we have to consider - the data cap.

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02/19/2010

Fancy being robbed?

An interesting site has sprung up in the last few days. Please Rob Me is a production of Forthehack, an incubator for new web ideas. The site does one thing, and does it well - it tells you who's not at home, so that you can go and rob them. That's right - rob their empty homes. But it doesn't actually want burglars to go calling, it's just trying to make a point.

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02/18/2010

Hulu and Boxee face off

All is not well in Boxee-ville. The online video service, which collects movies on your computer along with video from across the web, is being cut off by Hulu this week. And it raises questions about who should be allowed to consume online video content, and how.

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02/17/2010

A new way to chat, and stay chatting

Back in the old days, phone calls were discrete things that you did when you specifically wanted to talk with someone. You'd dial a number, someone would answer, you'd talk about what you needed to discuss, and then you'd hang up. But Internet communication is changing all that, as several online services are showing us.

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02/16/2010

Windows Phone 7 Series - an iPhone beater?

Well, better late than never, I suppose. Microsoft now has a new mobile phone platform that it hopes will rival the iPhone, and Google's own Jesus-phone, the Nexus One. It took its own sweet time -- and you won't be able to buy one of these until this Christmas season. But it looks as though it might be worth the wait.

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Danny BradburyDanny Bradbury

Danny Bradbury is a technology journalist with 20 years' experience. He writes regularly for publications including the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Financial Post, and Backbone magazine. Danny also writes and directs documentaries.

Maurice CachoMaurice Cacho

Maurice Cacho is a Toronto-based journalist mixing his love for tech with a passion for news. He's also CP24's Web Journalist and appears daily on CP24 Breakfast and weekly on the channel's tech show, Webnation, discussing tech news and trends.

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