Delete URL History

So, you have been on the internet looking at things you should not have been looking at. Can you really imagine of someone finds out what you are searching for, or the websites you have gone to? You have tried to delete url history, and all seems good. You actually think you are safe now, and no one will ever know where you were. Wrong! Data recovery software can pull up all of the history on your computer right now.

Just because you deleted the url history means nothing. Heck, if you half way know your way around the computer you probably deleted the cookies, then deleted the temporary internet files (if you have not yet, then don't bother – it does not protect you), you found some images and deleted them, and then made sure you emptied the recycle bin. Good for you. Problem is all of your usage and places you have gone can still be tracked and found.

Your computer always keeps a record of everything going on. It makes temporary files, temporary sessions, sometimes writes information into 2 different locations for backup purposes, and a few other things. And not for the reason of tracking what you are doing, but to speed up your computer when you come back to the sites again. This way you do not need to wait on the computer to download the items, you already have them on your computer.

But, if they are on your computer, then anyone can find them. And if they have data recovery software, then you are in trouble. But, you do not need to let that happen to you. You can delete url history, and all other methods of tracking your computer usage. You need an internet history eraser, and a complete one: one that gets the images, cookies, videos, and all other proof of where you were. And with the spyware out there, it can work off of the data on your computer, and then start showing popups based on your viewing history. I am guessing you would not want some of the popups to starts appearing on your computer. Find a good internet history eraser and maintain your privacy and protect your privacy.

Microsoft Zune - Product Review

Since the launch of the Zune prior to the holiday season in 2006, the Zune has claimed the number two position for all hard drive based mp3 players behind the Apple iPod. There are several opinions on whether the Zune can continue to be a player in the digital music player market. This review will discuss the features offered by the Zune and the author's opinion on the Zune's future.

As a previous iPod user I have been extremely pleased with the Zune. Although the Zune software was a bit difficult to install, since overcoming the initial installation issues everything has worked well. The Zune offers three different color options to meet your personal taste, you can choose between brown, black, or white. The large three inch viewing screen is a great feature for watching video or viewing pictures and being able to change the orientation from horizontal to vertical comes in handy.

The 30 GB hard drive provides more than enough storage for music, video and photos. You are able to store up to 7,500 songs, 25,000 pictures, or 100 hours of video. I highly recommend signing up for the Zune Pass music subscription for $14.99 per month which allows unlimited downloads to your Zune player. As a former user of Napster, I never found the subscription to be a valuable feature because it was only offered for products with smaller hard drives, which meant that you had to constantly delete songs in order to add new songs. That is not a problem with the large 30 GB hard drive on the Zune.

Another added feature provided by the Zune is the built in FM-tuner. Although I rarely use this feature, it is nice to have if you want to be able to listen to a local radio station instead of your stored files.

One feature of the Zune that I do not see much value in is the ability to share music with other Zune players wirelessly. Once a song is sent to another Zune, the user can only listen to the track three times within a three day period, then the song expires and is no longer playable unless it is flagged and purchased from the Zune marketplace. I recommend disabling this feature because it decreases battery life.

Overall, I would recommend the Zune to anyone looking to purchase a new mp3 player. Although, the wheel design is not really a click wheel like the famous iPod design, the product is user-friendly and easy to navigate from menu to menu. It has all of the normal features such as shuffle, repeat, and play all so you don't have to keep clicking once a song completes..

I fully expect the Zune to continue to catch up with the iPod in the hard drive based mp3 player marketplace. According to thestreet.com, Microsoft is planning a new marketing and advertising blitz for the spring and will be offering new colors and a bigger splash with their product features. With the money of Bill Gates behind such a strong product, it only makes sense that the Zune will continue to close the gap with Apple.

Your Brain Vs Personal Computer

When there is a battle for processing speed between your brain and the computer that you use for your daily work, which one do you think will emerge as the winner?

Most people have something like a Pentium computer running Windows, or a Macintosh. A computer like this can execute approximately 100 million instructions per second; your particular computer at home may run twice that fast or slower.

But in this world, the fastest computer in the world is your brain, the most unbelievable element of a human body. Why do I say so? Let me just give you some examples to further support my point.
Just imagine that your personal computer is just starting to understand human speech, and starting to take dictation. It can only understand one speaker and the dictation software will definitely make a lot of mistake. Therefore, with 100 million instructions per second, your particular computer may not be able to handle it.

On the other hand, your brain which is made up with one trillion cells with 100 trillion connections between those cells, can understand any number of speakers. It may even understand multiple languages at the same time. Your brain can also process complex visual images, control your entire body, understand conceptual problems and create new ideas.

You brain can also store memory that up to as long as 100 years, with a total "hard disk space" of about 5 million MB, or even more? When you are in your 80s, the times when you enjoyed when you were young, you can recall them in a matter of seconds, which is much faster than a personal computer provided it can survive at top performance for more than 10 years.

There is a super computer that is built by a Japanese company, which has a theoretical maximum speed of 1 petaflop (1 guadrillion operations per second), which is pretty fast, but still is not as fast as your brain.

Coming Undone

TO come undone is to be ruined. With computers, you can often avoid this state by using the undo command—a feature we take for granted until we need it to bail us out of a spot of trouble.

Webopedia defines undo as a return to a previous state by undoing the effects of one or more commands. For example, if you're working on MS Word or OpenOffice Writer and accidentally delete a block of text, you can quickly recover it by going to the Edit menu and choosing "undo" or typing its keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z on a Mac. Conveniently, this feature works on multiple levels, so you can go back and undo a number of commands starting from the latest to the earliest.

Multiple undo is particularly handy for graphics programs such as Adobe Photoshop, where using the wrong filter can quickly turn a promising photograph into a gray mess. On Corel Draw, having multiple undo levels encourages users to experiment with different visual effects, secure in the knowledge that if they screw up, they can always retrace their steps to an earlier stage of the illustration.

It wasn't always that easy to recover from mistakes.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the most popular word processing program, WordStar, had no undo command. Before Version 6, MS Word had only one level of undo. And strange as it may seem, Photoshop didn't have multiple undo until 1998.

Today, multiple undo is built into most applications but operating systems feature only the most rudimentary forms of the command. If you delete a file by mistake in Windows or Mac OS X, you'll be able to recover it by pressing Ctrl+Z or Command+Z, but only if the file is still in the trash or recycle bin. Ubuntu Linux has no similar command. To recover a file, you must click on the wastebasket and drag the file out.

Operating systems take a different approach to keep users from doing serious damage. For example, if you try to format a hard drive, Windows XP and Mac OS X will pop up a dialog box that asks if you're sure you want to erase all the data on the disk. In addition, Linux and Mac OS X will ask for an administrative password to make sure the user is authorized to make such drastic changes. Somewhere along the line, so the theory goes, the user will actually think about what he's going to do before he does it.

But the late Jef Raskin, who designed the original Macintosh interface, held that confirmation dialog boxes were a bad idea because people eventually click on "yes" or "OK" by habit, without understanding what's going on—until it's too late. It makes more sense, Raskin said, to have a general undo command that worked consistently throughout the system.

Anyone who has mistakenly overwritten a file and realized it the split second after clicking "OK" will appreciate Raskin's point of view.
Raskin left Apple in 1982 after Steve Jobs took control of the Macintosh project and went on to design a computer called the Canon Cat, which featured a prominent "undo" key where the backspace key is on most modern keyboards.

Unfortunately, the Cat didn't catch on—and neither did the undo key.

Nobody seems to know when undo became a standard feature in software. Alan Dix of Lancaster University, has studied human-computer interfaces extensively and notes that as early as 1984, undo was already considered an important part of most sophisticated systems.

Beyond the obvious task of returning a document or file to its previous state, undo is really designed to reduce risk by helping users recover from errors, Dix writes.

The problem is that undo doesn't always work the way users expect it to. Certain commands cannot be undone, and sometimes, you can lose track of where you are in the undo history. I imagine these problems become even more challenging at the operating system level.

Still, some undo is better than no undo. I've often wished for an undo switch that worked in the real world—but that's another story.