There are several methods that these manufacturers use to create 3D images on an LCD television; some are more expensive than others, and some are more feasible than others. This article will discuss the three primary methods of 3-D home theater technology that will be used in upcoming years.

Lenticular viewing: This technology has been pioneered by Philips, and is available as of today. TV sets that use this technology can be watched without those funny glasses that audiences used in theaters. These televisions use a lens that can send different images to each eye. That is, your left eye will see a completely different image from your right eye, which will emulate your two eyes’ use of stereopsis (the process by which your eyes discern depth). The one weakness of lenticular viewing, however, is that a viewer must sit in a very specific spot in front of the TV. This means that only a couple people would be able to comfortably watch the TV at once due to its small viewing angle.

Passive glass systems: Hyundai is developing this type of LCD monitor which will allow both 2D and 3D images to be viewed. To watch the 3-D images, viewers will need to wear the traditional glasses in order to watch three dinemsional media. This technology is nothing new: the TV has two overlapping images and the glasses have polarized lenses. Each lens is polarized so that it can see only one of the two overlapping images. This technology is very feasible and 40 to 50 inch LCD TVs with this technology are currently available for purchase.

Active glass systems: This system is very similar to the passive glass system, except rather than the TV doing all work, the glasses do. The glasses synchronize with the refresh rate of the TV, then they alternate the polarization of each lens, making the wearers of the glasses see 3-D images. With this technology, people could be watching a 2-D movie comfortably, then at will switch the movie into 3-D. This type of monitor is being developed by Samsung and Mitsubishi, but the downside is that the glasses could be very expensive. Some predict the glasses to be upwards of $100.

You will no doubt have noticed that some programs and software’s warn you during their uninstaller that there is a possibly shared file that may be deleted as part of the uninstall process. It is usually best to leave these files intact as; speaking from personal experience, there have been odd occasions when other things have gone wrong after I’d fully uninstalled some software. Part of the reason why so many people get frequent .DLL errors is due to the fact that so many different things can be accessing and using the same .DLL at the same time – including spyware and viruses!

Here is a simplified explanation of what the registry is:
The registry is what the windows system uses to store hardware and software configuration information, user preferences and setup information on your computer. The longer you own your computer, the more errors and invalid entries your registry is likely to have. This leads to decreased system performance and an unstable computing environment.

How to fix minor errors yourself:
There is some limited help available to repair common errors – 2003/XP and vista have a built in scan and repair tool that you can utilize; provided that you have access to your windows CD/DVD. All you need to do is use the start/run function, type – “cmd” [without the quotations]. This opens up the dos command window. In the command console type – “help”. This brings up a list of dos commands.

On the left is the commands list and on the right is the description of what each command does. Go through the list and find – “chkdsk” type this into the console and it will begin checking the health of your files and hard-drives. It will give you an overview of its findings. It may recommend using the fix command if it finds errors – “CHKDSK/F”. Make sure to do this if it is suggested.

If your registry errors are causing errors in windows loading up, you can try the command –“fixboot” which will write a new boot sector, or if this fails you can try “fixmbr” which will write a new boot-up sequence. The chkdsk and fixboot commands will help to repair common problems, but be advised that this will most likely not solve the whole problem –especially if it is registry related. The only sure way to fix registry errors is to use a reliable and high quality registry repair tool.

We have all seen the icons that appear next to the address bars on some websites, and the logos that appear on the bookmark list when you bookmark the websites. If you use Firefox, you will see the icon appear on that tab bar.

But have you ever wondered how it’s done? Here’s how to add it, and I’m going to try to make it as easy as possible for you to implement it on your own website or blog site.
So here is how you add it to your website

1. Find a picture you want to use, and make sure it’s something that looks good at 16 x 16

2. In order to make the image appear on the website, it has to be in a icon or .ico format. You can use a image editor program to do it, such as Irfanview, or you can follow this link to html-kit, and use their FavIcon from pics Generator. A website that lets you create your own Icon, is http://www.favicon.cc/ . You can just draw in the icon you want and download the picture. and it gives you a live view of the icon you are drawing, underneath the input area.

2a. If you used Irfanview – all you need to do is open the picture in the program, Press Ctril + R. Then look at the bottom of the screen for Preserve Aspect Ratio and un-check it. Then set the width and the height to 16. Press ok, and then Press S to save it, and under the filename you will see a box that says Save as type. Change this to ICO – WIndows ICO and save it as favicon. ( You can use different names for this icon, I just prefer to use favicon )

2b. If you used Html-kit, just click Browse in the Source Image box, and find the image you want to use, and then click generate FavIcon.ico. Then on the next page click Download Favicon.ico.  The file is zipped so you need to use a program to uncompress it. If your computer doesn’t automatically open the file, then I recommend using IZArc.

3. Once you have the picture converted to an .ICO file, you need to upload it to your website. I prefer to put the favicon.ico file in the root directory of the website.

4. Now that it’s on your website, you need to add 2 lines of html code to header part of your website. If you use Wordpress, this is how you add it.

4a. Wordpress – Log into the Wordpress back office, and click on Presentation. Now goto Theme Editor, and on the right hand side under theme files, you want to locate Header and then click on it. Once it opens you want to find the last <link rel=  Line then copy and paste these 2 lines in. Remember to put in your website address, and the name of the icon if you changed it to something other than favicon.ico

<link rel=”icon” type=”image/x-ico” href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com/favicon.ico” />
<link rel=”shortcut icon” type=”image/x-icon” href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com/favicon.ico” />

The reason I type out the full address to the FavIcon is because of a bug in some wordpress themes. I have noticed that if you just use /favicon.ico, that sometimes the icon will only appear on the home page and not appear on other pages.

The first link rel line adds the Icon to Address bars, and Firefox Tabs,

The second link rel line adds your icon to a users Bookmark list.

The majority of people just don’t think about the way things work.  Software programmers constantly make improvements to their drivers due to user’s complaints, performance issues, incompatibility issues, etc. What could be better than if a new utility was created which was able to update, install, and take care of each and every driver, as necessary?  No doubt we should pause to describe what a driver does.  Without delving too deeply for now, a driver is simply an application that provides necessary information about a webcam, monitor, or motherboard, and others.  I was thrilled when, while looking for a certain driver, i happened upon a great tool – a driver detector that discovers a legitimate and up-to-date rendition of any possible driver in just seconds.  A very handy utility, it can routinely (and you don’t even need to be involved!) search and update all your computer’s drivers for say once a week.

There’s no doubt that drivers are crucial elements that need looking after, in the same way that you (hopefully) maintain your windows system.  You will soon discover that it’s no trouble to find exactly what you need when you need it, or before you need it, no time-wasting web searches are required!  Regardless of the path you go for, it’s a good idea to keep a backup of your drivers on an external device of some sort.  You never know when you’ll need it!

When you use these tools, regardless of whether you have to download a Windows audio or a digital camera driver, it just “knows” the best available drivers.  What a helpful idea!  It keeps your drivers up-to-date almost identically to the way you periodically upgrade your windows.   With each passing day, computers are growing more and more complex; the downside of this is additional preventive maintenance and time requirements to have to deal with.  An additional tip: in the event your current (perhaps older) computer becomes problematic in means of performance see what new drivers can do for it – this might just get it back on track.

CLICK HERE to check out the website.

With the final release due in a couple of months, Microsoft have provided a beta test version of Office 2010 that’s free for members of the public to download. The beta test version will run unhindered until October 2010 at which point users must decide whether they wish to purchase the final release or have it removed from their hard drive.

For the costs involved, the majority of home users may still be better off with the free OpenOffice Suite (www.openoffice.org) as it should provide all the features you are likely to need at no cost. This having been said, the Office Suite has remained a popular flagship product over the years due to business users often requiring a specific function or application only present in the Microsoft offering. I, for example, use Outlook (Entourage to you fellow Mac Users) on a regular basis and haven’t yet found an alternative that suits my needs.

Having not been the biggest fan of Office 2007 (especially the ‘ribbon’ interface discussed in the past) I wasted no time downloading the 64-bit professional version of the beta to put it through its paces. I have now been using it for a couple of weeks, and it does appear notably faster than Office 2007 and certainly more stable. The speed increase could easily be attributed to the fact that a 64-bit version of the application is now available to run on modern 64-bit computers.

Office Professional 2010 includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, InfoPath, OneNote, Outlook, Access and Publisher. The home edition (also currently available in beta) includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote. After the official release, computer manufacturers may choose to bundle new machines with a starter edition of Office which includes just Excel and Word; this version of Office will replace the aging Microsoft Works Suite.

Although the ribbon interface remains, it is certainly a lot clearer than that provided with Office 2007. The confusing Office orb has been replaced with the familiar file menu, there are fewer distracting borders, a neutral colour scheme and most importantly it is customizable to the user’s individual tastes. The applications look and behave like a ‘family’ now and have become more intuitive to use as a result of the more refined user interface.

An important new feature due for release in the final version but missing from the beta is the ‘Web Apps’ which will extend the Office functionality to a compatible web browser. Very similar in form to Google Docs, Office Web Apps allows users to collaborate, edit and share Office documents online. This is an incredibly important new feature that has no doubt come about due to the success of Google Docs.

Users interested in downloading the beta version of Office 2010 should visit www.microsoft.com/office/2010 to get their hands on a copy.

At Microsoft’s opening keynote for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the tech world braced itself for Ballmer unveiling a novel slate form-factor computing device from HP, something to rival the yet unannounced Apple tablet.

Earlier on Wednesday, speculation was revving up for the Microsoft announcement, as it was thought Ballmer would introduce the dual-screen Courier tablet which we got a taste for late last year, after a Gizmodo leak.

However, it turned out that Microsoft didn’t manage to beat Apple to the punch and release a breathtaking tablet. What Ballmer unveiled was “something that’s almost as portable as a phone and that’s as powerful as a PC running Windows 7.”

The HP tablet is a basically a color e-reader running Amazon Kindle software, with few other details besides a sub-$500 price point and an estimated arrival on the market by mid-2010. So disappointing was the release that Microsoft and HP’s shares fell yesterday according to BusinessWeek.

Microsoft’s CEO also briefly showed off two other similar products, one from Archos (which was running a movie, hence focused on multimedia) and a larger-screen slate from Pegatron, for reading newspapers and magazines.

Overall, the three slate devices presented by Ballmer are basically just regular Windows 7 PCs, but in a smaller form factor and lacking a keyboard. Despite an attractive design, there is nothing particularly special about them.

The over-hyped, yet disappointing slate computers presentation from Microsoft leaves way for Apple to surprise the world in late January, as analysts expect a better offering from the Cupertino company. That’s unless hype gets the better of them as well.

The Domain Name System (DNS) converts web addresses, such as cbronline.com, into a unique Internet Protocol (IP) number, which computers use to communicate with each other.

Google believes that its own public DNS system should speed up the web browsing process, which can be slowed down by multiple DNS requests on a single site. “The average Internet user ends up performing hundreds of DNS lookups each day, and some complex pages require multiple DNS lookups before they start loading,” said Prem Ramaswami, product manager, on the official Google blog.

“Our research has shown that speed matters to Internet users, so over the past several months our engineers have been working to make improvements to our public DNS resolver to make users’ web-surfing experiences faster, safer and more reliable,” Ramaswami said.

DNS provider Nominum earlier this year launched Intelligent DNS, which it said makes Internet browsing safer. The new platform can block access to any site that is carrying malicious software such as botnets, phishing attempts and illegal content. This also uses real-time visibility to protect against attacks within seconds of their launch.

Speaking to CBR about the launch of Intelligent DNS, Gopala Tumuluri, Nominum’s VP of marketing and business development said that legacy DNS did not adequately protect users from online threats. “All legacy DNS did was get the request for a domain name and get the IP address from that,” he said. “It didn’t check whether the site was safe, secure or even whether it was the intended destination.”

The recently introduced 21-inch iMac was the top-selling desktop for the month, Stephen Baker, NPD’s vice president of industry analysis, said in an interview. Apple’s high-end iMac 27-inch model took the No. 3 spot in the desktop category, he said.

“Apple gets a bounce whenever they come out with new computers,” Baker said. “For the most part, October was a down month on the Windows side because [PC manufacturers] were working through inventory before the Windows 7 launch.”

The company also took the top spot in the notebook category in October, with the $1,199 MacBook Pro, Baker said. Overall, Apple took 4 out of the top 10 positions for notebooks in U.S. retail for the month, according to Baker. In addition to the top-seeded MacBook Pro, Apple also secured the 8, 9, and 10 positions.

“[The $1,199 MacBook Pro has] always been a great seller,” Baker said. “It’s priced pretty aggressively for Apple, but to some extent, it also benefited from the same slowdown on the Windows side.”

NPD has not released an official report on the sales data, and Baker declined to give a rundown of the other computers in NPD’s top-10 lists for desktop and notebook retail sales in the United States in October. It is important to note that while the NPD data includes online and retail stores, it does not factor in direct sales.

Sales of computers in October were obviously very good for Apple, but Baker doesn’t feel that the so-called “halo effect” from the iPhone or iPod is what is driving sales. Rather, he points to the overall consumer experience.

“Over past few years, Apple has continued to gain share in the market, and there are a lot of ways to explain that,” Baker said. “It could be the stores, the computers themselves, the iPod, or iPhone. I think it’s a combination of all those things.”

USB continues to be the answer to conncectivity for PC, Consumer Electronics, and Mobile architectures, It is a fast, bidirectional, low-cost, dynamically attachable interface that is consistent with the requirements of the PC platforms of today and tomorrow.

SuperSpeed USB brings significant performance enhancements to the ubiquitous USB standard, while remaining compatible with the billions of USB enabled devices currently deployed in the market. SuperSpeed USB will deliver 10x the data transfer rate of Hi-Speed USB, as well as improved power efficiency.

Notes:

* SuperSpeed USB has a 5 Gbps signaling rate offering 10x performance increase over Hi-Speed USB.
* SuperSpeed USB is a Sync-N-Go technology that minimizes user wait-time.
* SuperSpeed USB will provide Optimized Power Efficiency.No device polling and lower active and idle power requirements.
* SuperSpeed USB is backwards compatible with USB 2.0. Devices interoperate with USB 2.0 platforms. Hosts support USB 2.0 legacy devices.

1. Make regular backups.  It should be said that there is no absolutely safe way of protecting your computer.  Virus creators regularly find holes in new computer products to use them for infection of computer systems.  Some dangerous viruses can considerably damage data files or even erase an entire file system!  Make regular backups of your data files to an external file storage device.  This can be a separate hard drive, flash card, compact disc or another file storage device of your choice.  To ease the procedure you can use some automatic backup software as well.

2. Be ready to reinstall your system if it crashes because of viruses.  Get distributives of your operating system and distributives of software which you use and keep them together in a safe place.  In this case if a virus infection causes unrecoverable system failure, you can rapidly reinstall your working medium.

3. Protect your network connection with a Firewall.  A Firewall is a piece of software which blocks suspicious and potentially dangerous connections from preventing viruses from penetrating your system.  Windows XP operating system has quit a simple but reliable built-in firewall.  You can enable it as follows. 1) in Control Panel, double-click “Networking and Internet Connections,” and then click “Network Connections.”  2) Right-click the connection on which you would like to enable firewall, and then click “Properties.”  3) On the “Advanced” tab, check the option to “Protect my computer and network.”  If you need more flexible control of connections with your network, you can get and install more advanced firewall software like “Norton Personal Firewall” or “Outpost Firewall.”  If you use this software you have ability to permit or to block particular connections and to monitor your network activity.

4. Use antivirus software.  Install antivirus software which will scan your system searching and erasing viruses on a regular basis.  I have been installing AVG Antivirus on my client’s machines for years now and it has proven to be both effective and reliable!  In fact, it has picked up viruses on machines that were running Norton Antivirus (which Norton itself failed to notice)!

5. Regularly update operating system.  Windows XP has a built-in automatic updating service.  It regularly contacts the Microsoft server(s) to find updates and notifies you if updates are ready to be installed. Updates are important because hackers regularly find holes in an operating system which are often used by creators of viruses.

6. Don’t install and don’t run suspicious software!  Check new programs which you are going to install with anti-virus software.  Don’t download software from suspicious websites.  To download software, always seek the website of the software creator or official distributor.  Do not open applications received by email from unknown persons.

7. Limit access to your computer.  Protect entry to your computer system with a password.

8. If you use “Microsoft Internet Explorer,” consider moving to another browser.  As IE is the most distributed browser today, virus creators actively use defects in its security system (and there ARE a few!) to infect computers.  Infections may also arise if you visit a webpage which contains invisible harmful code.  Major IE competitors like “Firefox” and “Opera” browsers now provide the same comfortable interface and range of services for working on the Web.

9. Use spam protection. Viruses are often distributed via email.  Switch on spam filters in your email box to block spam receiving.  If you need assistance with using of the filters you can ask your email service provider and I’m sure they will be of assistance.