For years and years and years, I've been a loyal customer of McAfee for their virus protection and security software. Lots of people swear by Norton, but I've never been one of their customers; just didn't happen that way. There's a saying in retail that if you can get a customer early in their buying days, you can have them for life because they'll practice brand loyalty. I happen to believe that's true, because if you're comfortable with something, why bother changing? (Read more...)

Disney is a corporate media juggernaut, like Viacom and News Corp. As such a juggernaut, Walt Disney Company has more arms than, uh ... well, a six-armed man. Yeah.

The Internet portal for all things in the Disney conglomerate is GO.com. What I can't figure out is what the point of GO.com is. It's your classic web portal ... featuring a layout that looks like a cybersquatter's default hosting page and the worst identity logo that I can think of. (A long time ago, the GO.com logo looked like a green traffic light, which was far better than that ugly, scripty, awful ... thing they have now.) (Read more...)

Remember in the 1980s when VHS and Betamax duked it out? Apparently the manufacturers of the future of home video have not learned from past mistakes (or, more specifically, they don't much care that consumers will by and large stand on the sidelines while they duke it out), and we're doomed to repeat the Format War for the future of DVD. (Read more...)

Working in a building where there are still plenty of people who are behind on the whole web/technological curve, one of my biggest pet peeves is when people say "backslash" when they really mean "slash." (Read more...)

I just read the most vitriolic and hilarious anti-iPhone post that's probably possible. Read it here. (Read more...)

I've heard enough about the iPhone. This must be the most overly hyped thing since Paris Hilton getting out of jail. (Good thing there's something we can over-hype just about every single day.) Speaking of Paris Hilton, if you watched her interview on CNN last night, shame on you, because you have given in to the pandering of this nation's mass media and their decision to prioritize the utterly irrelevant. (Read more...)

Here's some food for thought: If you are running a web site, make sure that you maintain as much control over your domain name as you can. That sounds like a no-brainer, but I made a mistake back in 1999. I realized it later but I let it go for a long time (years) and I didn't rectify that mistake until 2006. In trying to rectify it, I thought it was going to turn into a major pain in my ass. In the meantime, I almost unknowingly made an even bigger mistake. (Read more...)

All right. Enough is enough. HDTVs are coming down in price, SDTVs are turning into dinosaurs that are barely advertised in the Best Buy and Circuit City flyers, and content providers (that is, your cable or satellite service and your DVD player) offer the content you need to take advantage of the newer screen formats. Very soon the HDTV format will become the standard format. It's time to get with the program and stop being lame: If you own a 16:9 television, you need to get yourself some 16:9 content before I'm forced to drive over there and kick your ass. (Read more...)

When I ask that question, I need to qualify it. Obviously, Microsoft is going to sell lots of licenses of Windows Vista, if for no other reason than because it has been loaded on every new PC sold from Jan. 30 forward. (Although, Dell recently announced that it would also continue to sell some XP machines.) (Read more...)