It is time to say good bye.

I started blogging for That Damn PC four months ago and I have now decided to leave because of personal reasons, especially related to time management. I hope at least a few of my posts have helped someone sometime. They have helped me learn a few things so as to share them here, and I know one place where to look for specific tips that I may forget in the future.

That Damn PC will soon get another blogger, so keep coming back. Even better, subscribe to the site and you will be notified once activity resumes here. I will continue to drop by once in a while. You can also check out the other sites on the b5media Technology Channel and the favorites I linked to in the sidebar below for news and nuggets.

I thank b5media for this opportunity. In particular, I thank Kori Ellis, the Technology Channel Editor, and Rachel Segal, the Content Director, who were always there to listen to my problems and made it easier for me to blog here.

I will keep in touch.
Sravan

Jason was kind enough to accept my guest posts for his blogs Microsoft Weblog and Uncover the Internet. These are my first guest posts ever: one about Microsoft’s involvement with Open Source and another about watching movies legally on Youtube. I hope you enjoy them.

We are all aware of the terrible Australian bushfire. Today I came to know about another recent fire accident.

My fellow b5media blogger Cheril Vernon lost her home and her pets about ten days ago when a fire broke out at her home in Palestine, Texas. Cheril writes three blogs for b5media: NewToTV.com (twitter), MischaNews.com and GossipGirlReport.com. She is also Community Editor for The Palestine Herald.

Read more about the fire and what you can do to help Cheril. Thank you for reading this. Kindly spread the information to everyone.

I’ve realized that my last Tech Channel Roundup was nearly a month ago and I’m guilty of it. So, bear with me as I overload you with a number of interesting links that I found in some of the sister blogs.

Milo discovered a product especially useful for enterprises of all sizes called Nightwatchman, a good news that Microsoft didn’t lay off anybody in the Vista team. I knew that they didn’t touch the Silverlight team, but frankly I’m surprised about this because Vista hasn’t been very profitable to Microsoft. Or has it? One bad news is the Windows 7 minimum requirements. It may not be a good experience to try it on my netbook which just meets the minimum requirements and my laptop which is old enough to even miss the minimum. But if anyone is interested, you can get the Windows 7 look into Windows XP. He also found a couple of amusing videos, one called “how to say i love you.” and another a confirmation of love, a marriage at Taco Bell. Recession, aye?

Jason found a few websites that can assist you in unique ways: one for helping educate your kids, one a calendar to help others, and another to scan your computer online. He covered a lot of Windows Powertoys, a mobile media browser and found another reason to continue loving Zune. He also has a couple of how-tos for selecting non-linear text in a word document and sharing Outlook calendar availability. One bad news, I mean another one, is that Microsoft is shutting down MSN Groups.

Claire thought out loud about the gap between Linux and mainstream users, learnt something new about less (which all you Cygwin users may find useful), discovered a wonderful browser called Kidzui which attempts to make the Internet a more kid-friendly place.

Juan wonders whether the Mac is not invincible anymore and whether Apple really needs to make a netbook. He is glad to find a symbol cheat widget and an app that can save his day with a bunch of drawings. The latter isn’t my cup of tea. He along with Jayvee found out about Apple’s stand on piracy.

What a journey the last 25 years has been! Here is wishing Mac a very happy birthday.

The first Apple Macintosh was launched on Jan 18, 1984. It was the first commercially successful computer with a GUI and a mouse instead of CLI.

To the left is the first Mac and to the right, the latest.

Jef Raskin envisioned the first Mac and wanted to name it McIntosh, after his favorite type of Apple, but had to settle for Macintosh. That compromise allows us to call it a Mac.

One specialty of Mac is that Apple oversees all aspects of its hardware and pre-installs its own operating system (currently the Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”) on all Macs. Macs have always been special like the Ford Mustang, something that everyone wishes to own, but few do because of their considerably higher pricing compared to the Windows PCs.

Macs are lauded for their user-friendliness, performance, aesthetics, and quality, like most other Apple products. Check out the Mac line and tell me if you find nothing mouth-watering.

Computeworld is featuring a special series on this occasion.

For all kinds of information about Macs, visit our sister blog The After Mac.

Image Source: Wikipedia.

We are still more than ten days from the new year, but a majority of the world has already started retrospecting the last twelve months and forecasting the next twelve.

Jayvee inspects the culture of FAIL on the Internet and finds that video advertising is going to decline. Actually, the rate of growth of online advertising has reached a saturation point even though online advertising itself is continuing to rise.

In these tough times, when the economy has been slowing down, Clair suggests that choosing Linux and open source software has become more necessary. For those who are already in that path, there is a free Ubuntu training course. Ubuntu is Linux for human beings, isn’t it?

A survey found that only 1% of people are using Google Docs, and many of those use Microsoft Office already. However, Colleen feels that the Microsoft’s stranglehold on office suites may be slipping away with Microsoft promising and postponing their next release and the availability of too many options for the users.

Juan says that 2008 is the year of iPhone, which is not very debatable in the user sense though this is also the year for RIAs, Twitter (@bsravanin) and cloud computing. But then, he is an Apple guy. :-) He also shares the offer that MacUpdate is having as a holiday promo. A good offer, far better than dreaming about the Apple 24″ LED display which is about $900!

Speaking of promos, Jason has a post about the Sears Wish Promotion, similar to the HP Magic Giveaway which has recently ended. There is already several Top 10 lists too, like the top 10 viral videos of 2008. I personally don’t like the fact that these lists do not consider the rest of the year that is still to be lived through. The more important news is, in case you haven’t already heard, that a serious security flaw has been exposed in the Internet Explorer and it is advised to not use it for financial and other sensitive transations of any kind.

While you wait for the security update, be sure to take note of the 8 security bulletins that Microsoft is ending the year with. Various OS users may want to check out the 2008 Service Pack 2 beta releases.

Dear Website Administrator,

I am sorry if you consider your website as a blog but it clearly isn’t one and you should stop your blog if you intend to maintain it in this way. Though I wasted a lot of time and energy digging deep I couldn’t find when you exactly started the PC-Guide category on your blog, which is a reproduction of That Damn PC.

I did not sign up for your free online backup services and I was told that the previous bloggers here at That Damn PC did not either. I once again request you to stop copying every single post from me or anybody else. You must have received a “Cease & Desist” notification from the Legal department of b5media a month ago. It was sent to you and another member of your brotherhood. The other member thankfully took it seriously enough, but you have continued to doggedly pursue your act of cloning.

While your unrequited link love has brought me a lot of frustration and lost me a lot of traffic, I also thank you for enabling me to ponder about the concept of blog cloning and the types of blog fraud. I am willing to wait till the end of this year because patience is a virtue. After that, it would be utterly stupid of me to not explore ways of dealing with website plagiarism.

Regards,
Sravan

I hope you have all had enough to watch, read, and talk about the US Elections. Though Obama won in a “landslide”, it was only a majority by 8 million votes (6%). Surely many are happy with the result, and many unhappy. Let it be, hope that this is happening for the best, and get back to that damn pc.

Speaking about hope, for those part of a small startup and already feeling the pinch of the enconomic crisis, don’t lose hope. Check out Jason’s good news about Microsoft’s BizSpark helping startups. Who knows, this could be just perfect for your needs. And we all thought M$ is a selfish giant taking away our $s. Well, many still do.

Milo thinks that Windows 7 may be faster, but wonders whether it is because of the applications that are not installed on the laptop. For the beginners, Windows 7 is the Microsoft Windows successor of Vista.

Juan is impressed with the new sleek Aluminum MacBook, raving about its touch and feel, and how the old MacBook looks like a boy in front of the new all-grown man. :-) Pun orignally unintended and here unexpected.

Claire shares a few features to look forward to in Ubuntu 8.10 and a tool for GNU/Linux that reads your email and e-books aloud for you.

Did you ever use Windows 3.x? Do you still think about it? I do get nostalgic once in a while about some Windows 3.x OS on which I had learned Excel and Foxpro. Jayvee gives us the sad news that Windows 3.1 is no more. Gone. Dead. Puff!

Number 1, we picked the name for the confessional — correction, you picked the name for the confessional — and it will be…

The IT Confessional

I know, you’re all surprised and excited. I know I am. The second piece to this post is what you’re all want to hear. Who won the contest?

The winner of this particular contest is Kevin Potter for his awesome, “Is that a big or little zero?” story! I will be contacting Kevin (or better yet, if he wants to email me at jesse.middleton at b5media dot com) to get him his KB.

I want to thank everyone who posted and emailed in their stories, they were a great read and many of them will be used to form some, hopefully, entertaining posts at That Damn PC.

Keep checking back for me and sending your stories in.