ON COMPUTERS | BY BOB AND JOY SCHWABACH
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December 2007, Week 4 |
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This digital Mojo lets you put any program onto any hard drive,
flash or otherwise, and then run that program on any Windows XP
computer anywhere you happen to be. Attaching your Mojo-enhanced
drive to that PC makes it come up with your own familiar desktop
screen and all your familiar programs. Beats lugging your
laptop.
We first came across it recently as part of StealthSurfer, a
$179 flash drive that lets you surf the Web, well, stealthily.
But we can beat the devil out of that price,
But, the well-informed among you will argue, StealthSurfer
contains other programs that are useful, like Tor, which lets
you surf the Web like the proverbial ghost in the machine. No
matter what site you visit, it doesn't know you've been there.
But that one is free too, from
TorProject.org. So let
us move on and talk about the import, and importance, of these
free programs.
Joy loaded MojoPac onto her iPod. It can be loaded onto any
device with its own storage drive, be that a flash drive or a
traditional spinning disk hard drive. It needs just 128MB for
itself. Joy chose to load it onto her iPod because that has 80GB
of storage, enough to hold the Mojo and just about any other
program we can think of, even games like Halo or WarCraft.
Our Mojo-enhanced iPod is the only computer device we'll need
when traveling. (Too bad we never go anywhere.)
Another new feature we found in StealthSurfer is Hushmail.
Hushmail is a free e-mail service from
Hushmail.com that
encrypts your e-mail as well as scans it for viruses and filters
out spam. The premium version, which comes on StealthSurfer,
lets you have unlimited e-mail accounts plus 250MB of storage
for $50 a year.
Other useful software found on the StealthSurfer is also
available for free. This includes the excellent Web browser
Thunderbird from Mozilla.com,
and RoboForm from RoboForm.com.
This last automatically fills out forms on the Web and remembers
and encrypts all your passwords.
GUITAR STARTER
Why is it that children all over the land seem to be taking
guitar lessons now? Is it an effect of the successful video game
Guitar Hero? Probably not. It's a mystery, but with a catchy
tune.
A lot of guitars will be gifted this season. And to go with
these, we found a great
If the disks are run on a Mac with the new Leopard operating
system, the guitar lessons can be combined with iTunes, Garage
Band and iChat in a four-panel view that lets you play along and
then join others playing through the chat connection. The
Windows version has the same great instruction but without the
special Mac features.
The company also has a $30 program of guitar lessons, Play Music
Together, aimed at children 10 and under who like a Muppet-type
character to play along. Like Beginning Guitar, it has great
video tutorials. The program is available for PC or Mac.
BILL ME LATER
BillMeLater.com is an alternative
payment system for people who are leery of giving out their
credit card information over the Web. It's an easy-to-use
service and Web site that lets people shop now and pay later at
over 700 Web sites. You enter your name and birth date and the
last four digits of your Social Security Number. The service
then does a credit search on you in about three seconds to
determine if you're an acceptable risk for paying later.
BillMeLater pays the merchant for your purchases and then, well,
bills you later. About 3 million people have signed up so far.
BOOKS
"Upgrading and Repairing PCs, 18th edition" by Scott Mueller;
book and DVD, $60 from
quepublishing.com.
The title tells you most of what you need to know about this
book, and the CD, in which Scott Mueller explains the contents
of each chapter, tells you that true nerds still exist. Thank
heavens for that. One of the new things in this edition --
The wireless security section is particularly timely these days
for many businesses. Discount store chain TJ Maxx had 45.7
million credit card numbers stolen this year, for instance, in
what is euphemistically known as an "unauthorized intrusion."
The company used the old WEP encryption system for its data. WEP stands for Wired Equivalent Privacy and its code can be broken by software that's available for free on the Web. Many businesses still use WEP encryption, however, because it's cheap. |
Mojo
is an old African term for a talisman with magic powers. Now
it's digital.
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