Search the Future

Standard Internet search engines like Google, MSN, or Yahoo search for things that have already been written, therefore they search in the past. A very clever web site allows you to search in the future!

PubSub calls their technology a "matching service" rather than a search engine, but it's all in the way you look at it. You create a search in PubSub by simply adding your search terms and clicking "Start Matching Now!" PubSub adds the search to what they call a "subscription stack", basically a list of future searches you have created. They also give you a link that you can bookmark, and later check back to see if there is any new content that matches your search terms. PubSub is a free service.

For instance, if you want to find out about any new tsunami news, you could enter "tsunami". PubSub watches over 8 million web logs and 50,000 Internet news groups for new content on "tsunami". It checks for any new matches at 3 billion matches per second, and when it finds new content it will be made available to you at the link that it provided in your subscription stack (or the link you bookmarked).

If you want to search for old news you would use a regular search engine, but if you want to find and stay on top of new information that has yet to be published, try PubSub. It also searches the US Securities & Exchange Commission's EDGAR filings, so you can stay on top of news in the corporate world. This would be handy if you were tracking stocks in various companies, for example. Keep tabs on what people are saying about you, your company, or any topic of interest to you.

PubSub also provides a handy sidebar for Internet Explorer and for Firefox.

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Clean Out Your Hard Disk The Easy Way

At some point your hard drive will start to run out of disk space, especially if you store a lot of music or movies, or simply never bother to delete all those programs you like to try out. A full hard drive can result in a general slowdown and poor performance. Here's an easy two-step process to cleaning out your cluttered hard drive.

Step 1: Delete Unused Software

Go to Start, Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs. When you go through this list, do not remove anything that you do not recognize! Windows puts its update files in here, and you may make Windows or an important application inoperable, unless you know what you are removing. When you click on a name, it tells you when that program was last used. If you haven't used a program for more than one year, consider deleting it. If you need it again, you can always reinstall it.

Step 2: Run The Disk Cleanup Utility

Go to Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup. This utility sometimes takes a long time to scan the drive, consider running it before going for lunch, or overnight! Once it has finished scanning, it gives you a list of the types of files that are available for cleaning. If you have problems with the utility hanging, you can try deleting all the files in your Temp folder and also try doing a defrag of your drive.

Cleaning up your hard drive on a regular basis (I suggest monthly or quarterly) is good maintenance and will help keep your PC in top shape.

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Google Sightseeing

I've always been fascinated by satellite views of places I've been, and now there's a web site dedicated to vacationing the virtual way.

Google Sightseeing became an overnight success because of its simple premise: what kind of interesting places can we see using satellite images of familiar places? See such things as the pyramids in Egypt, the Calgary Tower, and even planes in flight. CLICK to go there now!

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Improve Wireless Networks with MIMO

Theres a new wireless router technology called MIMO - Multiple Input Multiple Output - that promises 8x faster wireless connection for your wireless computer. Your existing wireless connection is slow or sporadic so you've been considering an upgrade. Do the new generation of MIMO routers really work as claimed?

Most wireless connetion problems stem from interference of some kind. You've done everything you could to reduce it - see Peters Top 10 Wireless Network Tips - but nothing has helped.

Wireless Standards

The existing standards to date for wireless networking are A, B and G. The upcoming N standard is expected in late 2006 or early 2007, but nothing is certain except that vendors will introduce the newest technologies before the N standard is officially published.

Standard Name	Common Name	Speed (Mbps)	Range	Available
802.11a	Wireless A	54	short	now
802.11b	Wireless B	11	medium	now
802.11g	Wireless G	54	medium	now
not a standard	Super-G	100 - 108	medium	now
not a standard	Wireless G + MIMO	100 - 108	long	now
802.11n	Wireless N	108	long	2006/2007

The IEEE takes years to get a true standard ratified, but vendors will often jump the gun and release products with new technologies to get a head start on their competitors. The same process is being seen now with MIMO. Belkin, for instance, calls their MIMO routers "Pre-N" routers, to signify that they are available before the N standard has been released. Netgear, Linksys, D-Link and Belkin are some vendors that have MIMO routers available today, and more are expected to follow.

The MIMO Difference

It appears that vendors are hawking MIMO as being 8x faster and 3x longer range than Wireless G. But upon closer inspection, the fine print shows that this is only the case under certain circumstances.

MIMO uses multiple antennas and overlays the signals so they don't get mixed up. It then combines these two signals and can get an effective speed of 108 Mbps. But 108 certainly isn't 8x faster than Wireless G's 54 Mbps! What's going on here?

MIMO uses a second technology to improve things. Before, signals would bounce around and Wireless G would only be able to maintain one connection between the router and a wireless device. But the MIMO routers can actually use multiple distinct radio streams over the same signal at the same time. (This is known as "spatial multiplexing".)

What this all means is that the farther away a router is from the wireless computer, the more paths the reflected signals will take, and for longer distances this means an increased speed. So for a MIMO wireless router and PC in the same room, the speed will be 2x a normal wireless G. If you placed the computer 3 rooms away, it would be 4x faster than a G at that range - not 4x faster than G! And for example out in the back yard, it would be 8x faster than a Wireless G router at that range. So in the last example, you might get 5 Mbps with Wireless G, but with MIMO you'd get 40 Mbps.

Sharing the Sandbox

One question that requires an answer is, "does MIMO work with my non-MIMO computer or notebook?" Fortunately the answer is yes. Using a MIMO router with a standard Wireless G or even a Wireless B network card will show improvements in range. This is because MIMO conforms to the WiFi standard, which simply means that signals in the same frequency range will work together, no matter what vendor's equipment is. So a Belkin router using MIMO will work with your regular old Wireless B or G notebook.

Recommendation

As a bridging technology to the upcoming Wireless N standard, I highly recommend routers with MIMO technology now. They work with your existing equipment and will help to maintain a higher speed connection at a longer range.

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Download: Spamihilator and K9

It's been over a week since I posted last, and I promised myself no matter what I'd be doing at least two updates per week. So I'll make up last week by posting a few more articles over the next few days. This first article is about preventing spam for home users.

QUICK DEFINITION ABOUT "SPAM" - Unsolicited email that was sent to you and thousands or millions of other people, also known as junk email.

I've been testing freeware anti-spam programs for quite some time. These days many Internet service providers (ISPs) offer email spam filtering. Typically the spam arrives in your inbox with the subject line marked. So instead of seeing "v1agra" you might see "***SUSPECTED SPAM*** v1agra" or something similar as the subject.

If your ISP does not offer a spam filter, you don't need to spend any money to filter out all that junk email! There are two good spam filters that I recommend.

K9

K9 is a simple but powerful anti-spam application that uses Bayesian analysis to determine good vs spam email.

QUICK DEFINITION ABOUT "BAYESIAN" - Bayesian refers to the Bayes theorem statistical analysis, which calculates probabilities of an email being spam, based on a variety of words and other techniques. Simply put, if the subject contains the word "viagra", there is a good chance of it being spam.

One of the advantages of using this type of spam filter is that the more emails you get, the better it gets at predicting the spam. In fact it learns what you consider to be spam. This is an advantage over your ISP's spam filter, which always uses the same rule set and may continually let the same spam through or mark the same good emails as spam. K9 will not produce any of these false positives if you train it correctly.

K9 is a small download and automatically works with Outlook or Outlook Express. If you use another email client such as Eudora or Thunderbird, you will have to manually configure them (although Thunderbird has a built-in spam filter). As with any anti-spam software, you should create a SPAM folder in your email client to send messages that K9 marks as spam. This way, you can occasionally check the folder to see if it is targetting emails correctly. I found K9 to be the most accurate of all the spam filters I used (98.5% correctly identified on a regular basis) however as it's learning list got large it sometimes slowed down noticeably. However my computer wasn't particularly fast anyhow, newer computers may not slow at all.

K9 only works with POP3 mail; it will not work with web mail such as Hotmail, Yahoo mail, nor will it work with secure email that uses SSL, such as MSN.

Spamihilator

Spamihilator came highly recommended, and I was impressed by its polished interface. Spamihilator (a bit of a mouthful to pronounce) uses the same Bayesian technique as K9. It uses white lists and black lists so you can identify specific good and bad email addresses. As well it has a newsgroups feature which checks the recipient address instead of the from address, because some mailing lists use the same recipient address. This handy feature makes sure you get all your mailing list emails - no matter what the subject line is - without having to teach Spamihilator about each one.

Spamihilator also goes a step beyond K9 by employing a plugin system. This means that in addition to the Bayesian filter, other custom filters can be used. It comes with a few, such as an image filter and a file extension filter. The one main difference is that Spamihilator does not mark spam emails then send them into your email client, it actually deletes them before they get there. Fortunately it has its own recycle bin that keeps deleted emails around for a while so you can check it periodically.

Spamihilator supports IMAP as well as POP3, and also works with any email client, as well as secure connections over SSL. It also has a useful set up wizard that guides you through the setup. All in all a very configurable, excellent spam filter.

Conclusion

Remember that these spam filters use Bayesian filtering which takes a little bit of effort to train, and you should see good results in a week or two. While these programs are great for the home user, most corporations that have their own mail server will use a server-based anti-spam solution that can be controlled centrally by a network administrator.

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Gaming Console Custom Skins

These days it is common to find a gaming console of some sort in the home, such as Xbox or Playstation. If you want to spice up the look of the unit and make it more personalized, consider a new skin for it.

The Designer Skins site lets you pick a design from their library for your gaming console. Made of durable 8 mil or 12 mil vinyl and printed with durable U.V. resistant solvent inks and scratch proof, they make your console look great. They are also re-peelable in case you apply them incorrectly. Makes a great gift.

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New Anti-Spyware Downloads Available

I've updated the downloads page to include more software to keep your system running smooth.

I've included links to my recommended anti-spyware programs:

• Ad-Aware
  
• Spybot Search & Destroy
  
• Microsoft AntiSpyware
  
• Pest Patrol
  
• Webroot Spysweeper

I've also included SpywareBlaster, which isn't a spyware cleaner but it immunizes and prevents spyware from getting on your system. The list includes free and commercial with free trial periods.

Commercial enterprises require a less labour-intensive way to keep spyware off their client workstations. There are a number of enterprise anti-spyware suites that are administered from a centralized server. This enables a network administrator to manage and monitor all of the spyware activity on the network, reducing downtime and bandwidth usage, and keeping malicious software off user's computers. If you are looking for an anti-spyware package for your network, feel free to contact me.

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Canadian Music Swapping In Peril

The Canadian Recording Industry Association reports that changes to Canada's copyright law will be introduced this spring. Currently, this means that Canadians who swap music on popular file-sharing networks were immune to prosecution. That may be about to change.

Copyright reform has been on the agenda for some time, to get our laws more in tune with American laws to help bolster the lagging Canadian music industry by protecting musicians and labels. More on the story here. We will continue to update the progress of this bill at Tech for the Timid.

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