BRUCEB NEWS
The Circus of Dr Lao: A Small, Strange American Masterpiece
Psst. Come in, come in! I’ve got a weird and wonderful book for you. There are books that feel like neatly arranged shelves. Then there are books like The Circus of Dr. Lao , which feels more like someone opened a door in the back of the room and a carnival wandered…
iPHONES AND CARRIERS
I ran across an interesting article about the effect Apple is having on the wireless business. The conventional wisdom has been that AT&T and Verizon are abusing their market…
FIREFOX, CHROME UPDATES
Lots of people have installed Firefox to do their Internet browsing. Sometimes, out of curiosity, I ask people why they use it instead of Internet Explorer. There are people who…
DISABLE INTERNET EXPLORER SECURITY WARNING
There’s some new wording on a security warning in Internet Explorer 8 that nearly drove me nuts. If you don’t like it either, instructions to disable it are below. All too often…
VISTA VS. WINDOWS 7
I’m frequently asked whether to buy a computer now or wait until Windows 7 is available in late October. If you buy a Vista computer now that has the hardware I recommend, you…
INSTALLING USB DEVICES
Microsoft has accumulated a remarkable library of drivers for all the hardware devices and gadgets and gizmos that we hook up to computers with USB cables. The drivers that are…
TIPPING POINT TO 64 BIT
We’ve reached the tipping point. Many of you will buy 64-bit versions of Vista on your new computers from now on, and almost all of you will buy a 64-bit version of Windows 7….
ERRONEOUS SECURITY WARNINGS IN VISTA
Starting on July 14, some Vista computers began displaying erroneous warning messages from the Windows Security Center. If you run Windows Live OneCare on a Vista machine, you…
RICHARD FEYNMAN AND PROJECT TUVA
This is not directly related to computers but it’s a nice thing to know about. Bill Gates announced today that he has made a classic series of lectures by Nobel prize-winning…
MICROSOFT OFFICE 2010 – DETAILS HAZY, ASK AGAIN LATER
The bloggers were buzzing about Microsoft Office 2010 today, after Microsoft gave a nice presentation at a Partner Conference. The new Office suites won’t be on the market until…
MICROSOFT OFFICE 2010: THE MOVIE
I’ll write about the features in Microsoft Office 2010 later. For the moment, take these two clips as evidence that Microsoft might actually be able to do cool advertisements….
CHANGE COMES SLOWLY
One of the things that kept Vista from being adopted quickly was a simple problem: once we are used to doing something a certain way, it’s difficult for many people to change….
BING AND SEARCH RESULTS
Bing is Microsoft’s new service for Internet searches. As I wrote last month, its search results are more or less comparable to Google and it has some nice design touches that…
WINDOWS HOME SERVER FOR BUSINESS
I recently wrote an article praising the use of Windows Home Server as a backup device for small businesses. Shortly after that, Microsoft put up a web page about using Windows…
GOOGLE DROPS THE BOMB
Google announced tonight that it plans to turn its web browser, Google Chrome, into a full-fledged operating system. Its first target is netbooks, which will primarily be used…
WEB HOSTING
At some point on Tuesday, the web host for bruceb.com will change from XO Communications to GoDaddy. In theory it’s going to go smoothly and you won’t notice. If bruceb.com…