The Answer Guy

06.28.10

The first hard drive I purchased, way back in the 1980s, held 10 MB . That's about enough space to hold two mp3 music files. Paltry doesn't even begin to describe that size of hard drive. Today it's hard to find a new hard drive that's smaller than 1TB . That's enough space for 200,000 mp3 music files.

06.01.10

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The privacy concerns associated with online social networking sites have been in the news quite a bit lately. The fingers of blame are being pointed squarely at Facebook, for the most part, as much for it's ubiquitousness as its practices. While I'm happy to leave the question of Facebook's moral obligation to provide privacy to the deontology students, in this column I'm going to cover how you can at least change your privacy settings to reduce your exposure.

04.29.10

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Well, it's spring cleaning time again. How the heck did that happen? If you haven't done all the updates on your computer you might not have noticed that the time changed. Yes, it's spring.

04.01.10

We are living in an unprecedented era of human existence. We are nearing the ability to collect the sum of all human knowledge and distribute it instantly to everyone for free. We're not there yet, but we are taking major steps towards that goal.

02.28.10

There was a time, not so very long ago, that people only had one computer and it wasn't connected to any network. This wasn't back when I was in high school and had to outrun dinosaurs to get home for lunch. This was post-Star Wars. How times have changes in just two decades.

01.30.10

As of January 1 it is no longer legal in BC to use a hand held cell phone or text while driving. While I concede that driving without due care and attention should be against the law, I'm sure that I'm not alone in wondering what options are available for using hands free technology to keep connected.

12.30.09

Ah New Years. There are few days as laden with the burden and hope as the first day of a new year. The hope of course is the promise that this, this new year, this year could be better than last year. And thus is the burden created. The responsibility of carrying the promise of an entire better year. Well, let me tell you, it's more than most days could bear. And if you're the kind of person that puts stock in the idea of making a commitment, a promise, a resolution on this day, well that's where a little technology just might come in handy.

11.26.09

Well, it's time for the annual geek Christmas list again. This time around I'm writing the gift guide column sitting in an internet cafe in the city of Manado in northern Sulawesi. That's an island in Indonesia. Southeast Asia is ground zero for gadgets. We forget sometimes in Canada, under the influence of 24/7 media from south of the border, that North America isn't the centre of the world. Not even the centre of the tech world. The PC may have been invented in the USA, but it was built in Southeast Asia along with everything else.