BUYING a new computer is a lot like buying or renting a new home. First you have to pick it out and pay for it, and then you have to move your stuff. And as if PC moving day weren’t hard enough, most people now faced with this task have to migrate from an older version of Windows to the new Windows Vista, which typically stores user files in different folders from previous versions.

Fortunately, there are a number of tools to copy folders and files from one machine to another. The Windows Easy File Transfer program that comes with Vista can help migrate program settings while Laplink’s PCMover can migrate settings and try to move your software.

Source: Moving Day for That Vista Machine – New York Times

Officials at Virginia Tech used email to notify students and community members that a shooter was on campus, but in addition to the fact that the first message was sent more than two hours after the first attack, email messages likely wouldn’t reach many of the intended recipients for hours.

That’s because, unlike Blackberry touting business executives and politicians, most students don’t check their email constantly throughout the day. Students aren’t always deskbound and when the shootings were taking place, some were walking on campus, others were in class while others were on their way to school.

At the University of Texas in Austin, scene of a deadly shooting back in 1966, university officials have the capability of notifying students and community members via text-messages that go directly to student and staff cell phones.

The University has signed a deal with Mobile Campus, an advertiser-supported service that allows administrators not only to send out emergency notices but also more mundane communications such as band practice or class cancellations.

Other campuses that work with the service include Kent State, also scene of a tragic shooting along, with Clemson University, University of Florida, Texas State and Santa Fe Community College among others.
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The service itself is free to universities and to students but cell phone companies typically charge users a small fee per message received and sent, unless users subscribe to plans allowing a certain number of monthly messages.

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Click here to hear Larry Magid’s podcast interview on texting versus e-mail.

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by Larry Magid

I’m not one to jump ship at the first sign of trouble but, like a lot of other Vonage customers, I’m considering my options in case the popular Internet phone company is required to curtail operations. I’m not saying it will happen, but because of a patent infringement suit, it is a possibility.

A court has found that Vonage infringed on patents from Verizon Communications. If the finding isn’t overturned and if Vonage and Verizon can’t reach an agreement, the Internet phone company could be forced to cease using the technologies in question.

On its website, Vonage has pledged that “that existing customers will not experience any interruption in service” and that “the company continues to believe it will succeed on appeal and continues to work on designing around the Verizon patents. But in court papers, the company acknowledged that it could have a problem if it’s forced to stop using the allegedly infringing patents.

“While Vonage has studied methods for designing around the patents, the removal of the allegedly infringing technology, if even feasible, could take many months to fully study and implement,” the company wrote in a court filing according to the Associated Press.

As one of Vonage’s more than more than two million customers, I must admit I’m a little nervous though as we learned when the maker of the Blackberry was in a similar situation, these things have a way of getting worked out in out-of-court settlements. Still, it’s worth considering the alternatives.

The reason I’m concerned is that I not only use Vonage for outgoing calls but for incoming ones as well and if there were to be a disruption in service, people might have trouble reaching me. I could transfer that incoming number to another phone company but that process could take up to 45 days.

Unrelated to Vonage’s recent troubles, I have been testing a competing service from SunRocket that offers most of the same services as Vonage at a lower cost. The company provided me with a trial account for testing purposes. › Continue reading…

by Larry Magid

You’ve heard about social networks like MySpace and Facebook where people use PCs to set up profiles and check in with their friends. You may also be aware that you can now access these networks from a mobile phone so you can update your own profile and visit others from wherever you are. But now there’s a new twist – phone-based social networking with built in geo-location.

Palo Alto-based Loopt is a mobile social networking service designed to “put your friends on the map.” (Disclosure: Loopt is one of several sponsors of a non-profit social networking safety project I work with called ConnectSafely.org.) The service, which costs $2.99 a month, currently works with phones from boost mobile – a pre-paid service owned by Sprint. But Loopt Vice President Mark Jacobstein said it will soon launch with several major carriers. › Continue reading…

by Larry Magid

Don Imus’ reference to Rutgers University women’s basketball players as “nappy headed hos” is not only a form of racial and sexual stereotyping, but an example of how far our society has come in permitting this type of innuendo. At the same time, the strong reaction to these remarks gives me hope that perhaps we may be at a turning point as a society by no longer tolerating this type of behavior.

I know what it’s like to be mocked on national radio. I’m a CBS technology consultant and when Howard Stern was with CBS Radio, he used to play my network sound bites, exaggerate my lisp and imply that I was a gay nerd.

As a parent of a young woman who was until recently herself a college athlete, I find it unbelievable that anyone could associate playing basketball with practicing prostitution but that’s essentially what both Mr. Imus and his producer did (his producer referred to the woman as “some hard-core hos”). › Continue reading…

 by Larry Magid

I’ve always been a big fan of TiVo and I still am. What’s not to like about a device that lets you record your favorite TV shows and pause and rewind live TV? Of course, TiVo has plenty of competition now that practically every cable and satellite company has its own personal video recorder (PVR).

A few years ago I tried out a Dish Network PVR and found it disappointing compared to the TiVo 2 that was also available at that time but Dish Network didn’t give up. Its current high-definition recorder, the ViP622, is however a serious challenger to TiVo and a good reason to consider subscribing to Dish Network as your high-definition provider. Dish Network provided me a unit to use for evaluation purposes.

The device – which is free to new Dish customers with a qualifying subscription package – is a quite remarkable device. To begin with, it has plenty of storage. Its 320 gigabyte hard disk stores up to 200 hours of standard definition TV or 30 hours of high-def programs or somewhere in between if you record both high-def and standard def. The device records programs compressed in both MPEG 2 and the relatively new MPEG-4 standard for high def programs › Continue reading…

Before I describe the bargain high-definition television I’ve been watching lately, a quick lesson in resolution and why you should or shouldn’t care.

Three high-def signals are currently available: 720p, 1080p and 1080i. The 720p has 720 lines vertical by 1280 pixels horizontal. The “p” stands for progressive, which means that 720 lines are shown at the same time. So 1080p gives you 1080 vertical lines and 1,920 horizontal pixels. The 1080i has the same resolution, but the lines are interlaced, which means each line gets painted sequentially.

You may not notice the difference, but theoretically 1080p is smoother. All broadcast TV signals today are either 720p or 1080i, so for TV it doesn’t matter. But some game consoles and Blu-ray and high-def DVDs are 1080p.

Bottom line: Any high-def TV is going to look a lot better than any standard set regardless of the type of signal you have, but if you plan to get a high-def DVD player, you’ll get a slightly better signal on a 1080p set.

The trouble is 1080p sets are typically a lot more expensive than 720p, and that brings us to my short review. I have been testing a 47-inch Vizio 1080p LCD TV, which sells for $1,700 online and at Costco and Sams Club.

I mostly watched high-def programs from a Dish Network personal video recorder and did a fine job with 720p and 1080i programs, but the TV really stood out when I played high-def Blu-ray DVDs. It has four picture modes: standard, movie, game and custom.

A few minutes with the custom settings improved the picture considerably. It comes with removable stereo speakers that sound good. It also has all the inputs you’ll need, including two HDMI ports along with component, composite, S-video and VGA. It also has digital and analog audio outputs to connect to an external sound system.

After two weeks of watching, I’m very pleased with this set. It’s on par with the slightly more expensive Westinghouse LCD I tested but, typical of other LCD sets, the blacks are more faded and the color less vivid than most plasma sets. Still, there are some advantages to LCD. It looks good even in a brightly lit room, it typically uses less power than plasma, and the picture quality won’t diminish over time.

If possible, it’s best to check out a variety of sets at a store and see if they’ll let you switch channels or at least check out a couple of DVDs. In-home testing has taught me that different TVs look better on different shows, so the only way to know for sure is to do some channel surfing.

I get some of my best ideas when I’m out bicycle riding, but I worry that I’ll forget them by the time I get home. I rarely have pen and paper with me, so sometimes I call my home answering machine to leave a message about the idea. But now I can use my cell phone to “jott” it down by calling a toll-free number and dictating the message. When I get home, it will be in my e-mail inbox. › Continue reading…

We are slowly entering the age of Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) where TV shows are just as likely to come to us over Internet as they are via cable, satellite or antenna. Today most people who watch Internet TV are sitting at a computer or possibly watching video podcasts on their iPod, but the day will soon come when most of our TVs are connected to the Internet giving us not hundreds, but thousands or even millions of channels to watch.

While we’re not there yet, I had a sneak preview of what it’s like to watch Internet content on a big screen TV when I installed an Apple TV device to a borrowed 47-inch Vizio LCD high definition TV. [Apple TV only works with widescreen TVs.]

Like all Apple products, the sleek 1.1-inch-high, 7.7-inch-square $299 device exudes elegance from the moment you start taking it out of its beautifully designed box. It connects to a TV with your choice of cables – I used a single HDMI cable that provides both audio and video. That and the electrical plug were the only cords I needed. Apple TV connects to your Windows PC or Mac via either a wired or wireless home network. › Continue reading…