I used to hate Bill Gates, along with everyone else. But I’ve also grown less fond of Apple uber chief Steve Jobs over the years as well.

It was always cool to hate Bill. His control issues, his company’s lack of innovation, his copying and imitating and what some would call outright theft of others’ ideas, the spectacular and endlessly irritating flops. Microsoft was a postal box for royalty cheques people said. And he looked hateable too, like Nixon.

Steve, on the other hand was always viewed as the antithesis of business blue Bill. A cultural creative and orphan, with a messed up personal life, he was a blueprint for the tortured genius. For years, guessing Steve’s genetic origins was a Silicon Valley parlour game. And he was a rebel to boot. Remember Apple’s famed Orwellian television ad in 1984 showing the robot slaves of Microsoft paying homage to a nondescript black box, until one breaks ranks and throws a spear through it, freeing them all? Investors mothered him.

But then something changed. After Job’s caprices at Apple got him bounced from the board and the fortunes of the company turned sideways, it was Bill Gates of all people who rode to the rescue, providing a much needed cash infusion in a late night phone call to Jobs, who was later quoted as having said, ¨Thanks Bill. It’s a better world.¨ I’m not sure if that conversation really happened or not, I merely remember reading about it in the newspaper. But I did notice that Apple seemed to grow more litigious after Jobs was anointed CEO in the late 1990s. Suddenly there were stories about lawyers in black suits with briefcases showing up at high schools to threaten kids with lawsuits.

Nevertheless, over the following decade Apple reached that golden intersection of narcissism and creativity that makes for business success on a huge scale. And if some like myself became increasingly irritated by Apple’s attempts to control the mobile world, even to the extent of forcing users of the ‘USB and card slot free’ iPad to purchase adapters, well there that Bill/Steve configuration at work I suppose.

However, I think Apple shareholders are in a complete state of denial with respect to the future of a Job less company. Apple stock is little unchanged since the news of Jobs departure, an event which I believe has been grossly underestimated.

I suppose with millions of iPhones and iPads rolling down the chutes investors think there is no need for for a creative genius at the helm in the foreseeable future.

But in fact, I think there is greater need for Jobs at the helm going forward than ever before, which is why I haven´t been tempted to run out and buy Apple stock even on recent dips.

Because the million dollar question now is whether Apple’s heavily proscribed product universe and pricing will survive a serious economic depression. Creativity is nice, but it’s usually optional — and in the case of Apple products it’s not cheap either. The strategic blend of mobile business tool and toy, the sexy branding and sleek unisex designs are pretty compelling in a status conscious market. But what’s staring us in the face is a potential race to the bottom to capture a bigger share of dwindling sales. That’s not exactly Apple’s tasse de thé …

However, even though I hate Steve Jobs, and as stink eyed as I am over the company’s near term future, I still want them to win. I’m still rooting for them, because everyone loves a winner. Apple now has a place in the pantheon of American business innovation, along with Ford and GE. It’s simply too famous to fail. We won’t let it.

But it’s sure going to get bumpy ..

Apple’s iPhone 4S has been unleashed upon us, and though consumers will be disappointed to learn it falls well short of a fully-fledged redesign of the world’s famous smart phone, there are enough new features to make it a worthwhile addition to your mobile toolbox. 

The 4S looks and feels identical to its predecessor, retails at $649 from the Apple store, and comes in black or white. Those are the similarities. The glaring differences? The camera and antenna have been improved and the processor is faster, which is nice but probably won’t inspire recreational smart phone users to get out their wallets.

Perhaps most impressive is the model’s dual core GPU which reportedly delivers high performance graphics up to seven times faster, which is great for the swelling numbers of  visually oriented smart phone users out there. The chipset also includes Apple’s A5 dual core 1GHz microprocessor which renders twice the processing speed overall, while offering up to 8 hours of talk time over 3G and up to 40 hours of music playback.

The key feature here of course is the enhanced performance and speed, and without sacrificing battery life, making the 4S a must have for those who truly rely on it for business or spend their working days remotely connected to their office from the field. It also doesn’t hurt that it has dual band capability which runs CDMA or GSM, making it a global phone.

Morever, the 4s offers some nifty other features including the Siri voice assistant, handy for those who cherish keyboard free functions for information delivery and commands for setting appointments and the like. Siri can be activated with a bluetooth head set.

Conspicuously absent of course is 4G capability, which Apple is no doubt holding in the wings as the main incentive for acquiring the widely anticipated iPhone 5, if and when it arrives.  But customer disappointment in the 4S over that is mitigated by other factors, including the improved antenna which appears to eliminate the reception problems of its predecessor.  Leading tech news portal CNet summed it up nicely in a recent review, saying ”..the lack of highly anticipated features like 4G and a revamped design can be hard to swallow. But as long as the “antennagate” problems that we saw on the iPhone 4 don’t return, we can live without a new design.”

Others apparently agree. Preorders for the 4S reached the 1 million mark the day the product was announced October 4th. However, not all reviewers are praising it, and some such as the U.K.’s Guardian among others are lamenting  a reduction in stand-by time, up to 100 hours less than the iPhone 3GS and 4 in fact. But something had to give somewhere, given the multiple high-performance enhancements of the 4S, including the 8-megapixel camera which comes with autofocus, colour filtering, and a back lit CMOS that grabs high quality photographic images from the dark by absorbing 73% more ambient light. It’s faster too.

Perhaps what the 4S demonstrates most of all is the marketing savvy of its manufacturer. Apple has reasoned, correctly as it turns out, that there is enough pent up demand for the iPhone to make multiple versions of the same basic unit not only possible, but profitable. Why offer 4G until they need to? 

Apple’s former CEO and co-founder Steven Paul “Steve” Jobs passed away today after his long battle with pancreatic cancer, leaving behind his wife Laurene and four children.

If not for Steve Jobs, it is unlikely that Apple could have become the industry giant it is today. Apple has come a long way with the brilliance and creativity of Steve; pioneering the personal computer industry, touch-controlled cellphones, and many other successful products.

Having just resigned on August 24th 2011, the 56 year old was recognized by many as a visionary and marketing genius. His passing is certainly a tremendous loss for the technology industry and he will be greatly missed.

Today the White House Twitter account decided it was time for a classic internet meme. The many who may think the White House is full of bureaucrats who can’t take a joke might want to reconsider. Earlier today, this was tweeted from the White House Twitter account “@wiggsd Sorry to hear that. Fiscal policy is important, but can be dry sometimes. Here’s something more fun: tinyurl.com/y8ufsnp #WHChat” in response to a complaint about the lack of entertainment found in Obama’s recent briefings.
The link leads to a Youtube video of Rick Astley’s famous “Never Gonna Give You Up”. Entertainment achieved.

Recently we were sent an invite to test drive Google’s new Music Beta service. As more cloud music services are appearing, you can be sure there will be lots of competition for Amazon and Google’s respective services in days to come. Cloud music services allow users to access their personal music library across computers, cellphones, tablets, etc. Needless to say, we were quite excited to be invited to the beta of the Google Music service.

As I proceeded to upload music from my music library via their Music Manager application, I noticed I was able to upload FLAC files (alongside the typical MP3, AAC, and WMA formats). Impressed by this feature, I decided it was best to figure out if the service could actually play FLAC files before I went and knocked on all my neighbours’ doors to tell them the great news (maybe that’s not a great idea after all…). As I suspected, there was a catch. Yes, the Music Manager application supports FLAC…but all FLAC files are transcoded to 320 kbps MP3 prior to upload. While this was quite disappointing, we have to give Google props for allowing their users to upload FLAC (kinda…) files without having to transcode them to MP3 files themselves. Then again, as the service is only in their beta release, we can expect possible improvements when everything is finalized.

The Music Manager application used for uploading your music

The Google Music Beta service

As you may already know, Firefox recently announced that they would introduce competitive release schedules to their popular browser, Mozilla. This was immediately followed by the release of Firefox 4 which claims to feature up to 6 times the performance of the previous v3.6.

After seeing Google Chrome and Firefox push for faster releases on their respective browsers, Opera has taken a stance – To release at the same speed (gotcha!). Nevertheless, they have managed to reach the 11.5 beta of the next major release which will probably bring joy to users who share bookmarks across computers with Opera Link. Along with the introduction of added support for HTML5 such as the dataset attribute, sessions history and navigation, the classList attribute, Opera is pushing for enhanced password security.

What this means is now Opera will allow Opera Link users to also synchronize passwords across computers as they are able to ensure such information will not be stolen.
This is achieved by using a randomly generated encryption key that is sent along with your password to Opera’s authentication service, where it is then retrieved onto your other computers and accessed by typing in your Opera Link password. When you input your password, it will check it against the encryption key created earlier, and if they match, you are provided access. This means not only are you protected by your Opera Link password, you are protected a second time by the encryption key which is matched against your password.

Aside from this amazing feature, they have also introduced the possibility of using extensions in your Speed Dial (yes, we know, more Opera jargon), allowing you to view weather, email, news as they update dynamically.

So…about two hours ago, Mozilla announced the released of their newest major update to their popular web browser, Firefox.

What’s so special about this update?

 
Minor modifications

 
Where are the other features?!

Simply put, we decided all the other new “features” Mozilla brought up in their Firefox 4 release were simply too insignificant to occupy the precious time of our readers.

So we have spared you from having to read a  huge wall of text  then decide you’ve just wasted your time. If you still wish to see all the other minor “features” implemented in the new update, feel free to see them on the official Firefox website.

I really could care less about the minor modifications…tell me about the speed increase!

As we are well aware, one of the most important things when browsing the internet for most of us is the speed in which the page is displayed. The team at Technewsgalore is no different. So we’ll happily give you some significant numbers from the benchmarks comparing Firefox 3.6 and Firefox 4.

Kraken – Difference: Almost 3.55x faster! (Lower value means faster performance)

Firefox 3.6  -  14,293 milliseconds (ms)

Firefox 4  -  5,072 ms

Sunspider – Difference: 3.2x faster! (Lower value means faster performance)

Firefox 3.6  -   620 ms

Firefox 4  -  206 ms

V8 – Difference: 7.08x better!  (Greater value, greater performance)

Firefox 3.6  –  733 ms

Firefox 4  -  5189 ms

Yes those numbers are quite impressive. However, numbers mean nothing if you can not experience it yourself. So go ahead, try out Firefox 4 and tell us how you like it!

This is a simple guide those of you who signed up to Technorati but have no idea how to confirm the claim token required for you to submit your site.

Follow the below steps:

Sign in to Technorati
Click on the submission of your site
Find the claim token on the next page
Create a new post on your blog with the token. Example: VVRJ8T4Z97PY
Click “Return to profile”
Click “Check claim”

Now the Technorati spiders should have already crawled your blog, simply wait until your submission is reviewed by the Technorati staff!

Search Engine Optimization, what exactly is it?

In short, SEO is the act of optimizing your website or websites to rank well in major search engines such as Google. When done well, SEO can bring you more traffic, more revenue, and allow your site to be more frequently crawled by their web spiders.
SEO is not only referred to as Search Engine Optimization, it is also referred to as Search Engine Optimizer (the person who is doing the optimizing).

How do I go about optimizing my website to rank better in search engines? Easy, grasp some simple concepts and you can be jumping up the search rankings in no time.

Original/Quality Content

This is one of the major variables to help you gain a better search ranking. Your content should be high quality, original, and worthy of being read. Any SEO is aware that the quality of your content is highly important and this can not be stressed enough.

Innovation/Creativity

Okay, this may not be as commonly executed but think about it this way. You’ve created such a “fresh” website that major tech news sites and webpage recognition sites just can’t stay away from talking about you. If done well, this can certainly bring you a substantial amount of backlinks.

Avoid query strings in URLs (Dynamic URLs)

Often people fail to notice the importance of limiting their URLs to something that looks static or “permanent” to search engines. Think of an URL as that specific content’s address on the internet. If major search engine are unable to have something permanent or long term to index, why would they bother? When creating a website, make sure you avoid links that contain query strings such as “php?id=123″. This shows that the content is randomly called on-the-fly from a database according to the query, thus the content is not static and would not be much of importance to search engines. To rewrite your URL into something more search-engine-friendly such as “/content/article-on-SEO”, enable the mod_rewrite setting or the rewrite_module to tell the server how to handle links. For more information on using the .htaccess file, try the articles over at http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/htaccess.html.

Keep flash content to a minimum

Many people who start to learn how to code websites come across websites designed in flash every once in a while. It is a common mistake for beginners to marvel at the beauty of flash webpages being interactive, full of movement and just breathtaking. If you choose to include flash content on your website, keep in mind that it is harmful to your SEO, and keep it to an absolute minimum. Flash content is not like html where you can add meta tags, its primary purpose is merely to enhance user experience.

Limiting the use of AJAX (if any)

Yes, everyone knows implementing AJAX technology helps enhance user experience. However, since AJAX is loaded dynamically, this means search engines are unable to index it. Another downfall of AJAX is that it does not reload the URL, any content a user may want to link to will not be shown as they viewed it, potentially causing frustration and decrease in traffic.

Never have empty alt tags

Web crawlers only crawl text, not images. Therefore if website ranking is of any importance to you, you should not be forgetting to include alt tags in any images. Alt tags are the only way for web crawlers to “read” your image. Alt tags should be descriptive, but not long. Try to keep any alt tags to a 4 words max. Also avoid using an image to show a large document unless you do not wish for it to be crawled.

Create relevant links

If you’ve been talking about an event or product everywhere in your article, and you say something like “Read more about it HERE”, we all know that HERE is about the product thus clicking on the link should lead us to more information about the product. However, computers are not humans, there is no such thing as “logic” in machine language, it’s “I’ve been coded to follow this format, so I do this. No questions asked”.  If you link to a product page with the word HERE, the web crawlers will attribute the content in that link with HERE, and of course, HERE itself tells us nothing at all. Always link to another page or site using 2 or 3 words that describe what is there or else you may be losing some valuable attention from search engines! =(

Frequently link to others and don’t hesitate to link within your site

You may be thinking, the more backlinks I have, the higher chance of an increase in my ranking. So maybe I should never link to other websites to prevent giving a higher ranking making it harder to rank well myself? Despite the logic, this will definitely not be beneficial to you. What your readers are seeking is probably information and news. If your site is unable to provide certain information not within your niche, you should allow your readers the freedom and benefit of exposing them to other information. The internet contains a great wealth of knowledge, if you refuse to allow your readers a convenient way of obtaining relevant information, they will do it themselves. Besides, linking to others is also a way of interactivity and who knows, maybe you’ll get to make some friends or partners that way.
It is also important to refer your readers to other pages on your site that they otherwise may not be easily exposed to. Often you’ll find that something you’re writing about is closely related to another post on your website, so why not tell them and allow your readers more knowledge? Internal linking is also helpful for web crawlers to crawl your site if your content is linked in a web-like manner, just don’t over do it.

Include a sitemap

Last of all, always remember to include a sitemap. Sitemaps basically show all the links on your website in a simple, yet organized manner. Having a sitemap can allow a web crawler to quickly and efficiently index your website and possibly index isolated pages that they might otherwise not find. There are a couple of sitemap generators that can be found online, if you do happen to get a sitemap for your site, don’t forget to notify Google Webmaster Tools of its presence!

Note: I have not discussed tags or keyword targetting in this article as they should only be considered after the points  above are well practiced.

Computer Startup Time – Current Problems, Future Advancements, and Solutions You Can Consider For Now
By Neon Zidane – neon.zidane@gmail.com

Please report any errors or suggestions for improvement. Thank you!

Table of Contents

Introduction – Booting Process

Current Startup Issues

Future Innovations and Advancements

What You Can Do For Now

End Notes and Conclusion

Introduction – Booting Process

First of all let’s familiarize ourselves with how the computer boots up. It’s a very simple to understand process. When you first press out the power button, the computer goes through an initialization process. Firstly, it’s important to check if a CPU is present and functional. If there is an error related to the CPU, depending on your motherboard model, it your motherboard might make a beeping sound, flash the power light, start to smoke, or burst into flames (no biggie ). Usually, after this, if you have a multiple CPU configuration system, one CPU (CPU 0) is selected to run the BIOS and initialize the kernel (a central component of your operating system which will “turn on” the remaining CPUs). At startup, a CPU can only address 1MB of memory, but some Intel processors have a special configuration where they use the last 16 bytes of the memory.

Then the computer starts executing the BIOS code, and starts checking for present hardware (Power on self test). Usually when there is a hardware error, it will display a message on the screen and make a beeping sound. Most motherboards make a beeping sound because if your video card turns out to be not functional, how else can they convey the message to you? Many of the modern (post 1996) BIOSs can use Advanced Power Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) to list devices the computer has, and then the kernel uses this information.

After the POST, the BIOS wants to find an operating system to boot. It will search through a list of devices in a user-configurable order (CD, Hard Drive, Floppy, USB flash drives, memory cards, etc.) otherwise it will present you an error that says “Non System Disk or Disk Error” which could indicate that the disk could not be boot from. This could mean the disk is not functioning (broken hard drive, scratched/bad CD, etc.) or a configuration error you have made. If a bootable device is found though, the BIOS will read sector 0, the first 512 byte sector of the disk (remember that sector n-1 is the last sector of the hard drive where n is the total amount of sectors on the drive). Important data is in there: a boot sector. It also contains a partition table, 64 bytes – 16 bytes per partition (That’s why you can’t create more than 4 partitions on a hard drive, you will have to use a logical partition).

Since the boot sector is so small (460 bytes of usable space), it will either 1) launch another boot sector, 2) launch a second stage boot loader (could be DOS loader, NTLDR, BCD, GRUB, Lilo, maybe some strange virus you got off some website you shouldn’t be visiting anyways, etc.), or 3) Directly launch the kernel and start the operating system. Either way, if configured correctly, your computer will be told where an operating system is located and a file that will start the kernel. Your operating system splash screen will appear and in a few moments you are ready to use your computer system!

Current Startup Issues

How many things can you do in the time it takes your computer to start up? This means from turning on, operating system loading, then to a point where everything is ready, and you’re ready to start your favourite application (If your login is password protected, don’t count that!). Make a coffee? Make your entire breakfast? Go to school/work and then come home to find out your computer has FINALLY started up? Computers, unlike some other electronics, aren’t in a ready state the moment you turn them on. For example, a television would be ready within a few seconds of you turning it on, a phone would be ready the instant you turn it on. Even your CD player, DVD player, or Blu-ray player would be almost instantly ready when you turn it on. Usually you’re only waiting for it to spin up the disc. The vast amount of resources a modern operating system requires, and the speed limitations of hard drives, processors, and other hardware aren’t appealing to users. Solid state drives are a possible solution, but remember that there are always new software advancements, too. As hardware advancements are being made, operating systems are also becoming more resource-crunching, we might have a lot of trouble dealing with operating system startup issues in the future.

Future Innovations and Advancements

Computer startup times have been a frustrating issue for many computer users. The bad news is that there hasn’t been a method to completely elimate the wait time during computer startup, but the good news is many computer manufacturers are finding solutions to this dilemma. Microsoft’s Windows Vista has been said to be a huge blunder in computing technology and has been one of the primary targets in Apple’s “Get a Mac” advertising campaign (Makes me wonder how they will target Windows 7 in the future). Windows 7 is said by many to be a vast improvement over Windows Vista, most notably in terms of performance, and one of the apparent things Microsoft has tacked is startup time. It’s finally about time, after decades of computing technology, that we are finding ways to cure startup issues.

A leading BIOS manufacturer, Phoenix BIOS has shaved the POST time to about a second. But that doesn’t really affect the time it takes your Windows operating system to start up. The American-based Chinese computer manufacturer Lenovo has tackled Windows starting times by taking advantage of Microsoft’s newest innovation; Windows 7. They have added the “Enhanced Experience” to many of their newer products, which claims they can slim down Windows 7 boot times by a whopping 56% times faster than XP or Vista. Such computers that have been optimized for this purpose will bear a sexy Windows 7 logo and a “Lenovo Enhanced Experience” sticker.

What You Can Do For Now

Remember it takes a while for us to invent an “instantly ready” computer system. Meanwhile, you can do many things to your computer that will chop your starting time down. All these features will work on modern operating systems, and will make a big impact no matter what your system specifications are.

1. Remove all unnecessary programs that start up when your computer starts up. There are many ways to do this and many tutorials on how to accomplish this. For example, on Windows go to Start > Run > msconfig and you will be presented with a list of services for you to disable. Make sure you are disabling unnecessary services, otherwise your computer will boot in safe mode because some essential services could not be started. You can do a web search of some necessary processes that you can remove (such as search indexing). When installing programs, remove the option to start up when your computer starts.
2. Do a complete scan of your computer for malware – viruses, adware, spyware, all need to be gone. Update your antivirus software frequently (turn on automatic updates if the feature is available).
3. Perform a disk defragmentation, disk cleanup, and remove all temporary files your browser stores.
4. Use the standby or hibernate mode on your computer. Standby uses minimal power (on desktops they use the +5 volt stand by) to suspend the memory to RAM (because RAM is volatile memory – it requires power to maintain stored information). Hibernate saves your session to your disk, and allows you to completely turn off your computer and/or unplug the power from your computer. When you turn on your computer, your session is resumed instantly (for stand-by) or after a while for hibernate because your computer has to load the data from the hard drive to the RAM.
5. Tweak your visual settings for performance. On Windows, right click My Computer, click the advanced tab, and click “Performance.” Remove the boxes out of some unnecessary features you don’t need. I leave Animate Windows, Show Window Contents While Dragging, Smooth Edges of Screen Fonts, Use Drop Shadows for Icon Labels on the Desktop, and Use Visual Styles On Windows and Buttons.

End Notes and Conclusion

There is a wealth of information on the internet, and it should be one of your sources for obtaining information on virtually any computer subject. There are rapid advancements in computers and one day, who knows – computers will have instant startup along with ease of use so everyone can use a computer and take advantage of its many features.

This content is written by Neon Zidane. The author accepts no liability whatsoever for the validity, accuracy, completeness, or quality of the content provided. Liability claims against the author relating to material or non-material damages, caused by the use or misuse of the information provided, or by the use of flawed or incomplete information are basically excluded. The author expressly reserves the right to modify, supplement, delete parts of this information or the without separate notification, or to end the publication in part or completely.