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Gadget News, Future Smartphones, and Digital-Financing

Race to Copy Apple's New iPhone 64-Bit A7 Processor; Smartphones of the Future—On the Cloud, Upgradable, or Transient; Phablets and Smartwatches: Asian Gadget Tech Heating Up; Coolest Gadgets You Haven't Heard of Yet; Digital-Financing Threatening Traditional Banks; Microsoft's Buy-Back of Apple's iPads; Law Enforcement: New and Helpful Mobile Apps; More Law Enforcement Tech; Law Enforcement And Technology Upgrades; International Tech News: Internet Snooping and Banning YouTube.

Magazine Summary

List of ComputorEdge Sponsors

Digital Dave

by Digital Dave

Digital Dave answers your tech questions.

Another One for the Mac, Thank You; Change E-mail Address for ComputorEdge Subscription; Missing File in Outlook Express.

Little Known High Tech Stories: Gadgets, Smartphones, and More!

by Marilyn K. Martin

Gadget News, Future Smartphones, Digital-Financing, Police Tech and Int'l Internet Issues

Race to Copy Apple's New iPhone 64-Bit A7 Processor; Smartphones of the Future—On the Cloud, Upgradable, or Transient; Phablets and Smartwatches: Asian Gadget Tech Heating Up; Coolest Gadgets You Haven't Heard of Yet; Digital-Financing Threatening Traditional Banks; Microsoft's Buy-Back of Apple's iPads; Law Enforcement: New and Helpful Mobile Apps; More Law Enforcement Tech; Law Enforcement And Technology Upgrades; International Tech News: Internet Snooping and Banning YouTube.

A Trick to Avoid Memorizing Hotkeys

by Jack Dunning

It's Often Easier to Use a Right-click Menu

If you use AutoHotkey extensively then it might be difficult to remember all the hotkey combinations. Here is a quick and dirty trick for adding hotkeys to the System Tray AutoHotkey icon right-click menu.

Wally Wang's Apple Farm

by Wally Wang

The Reality Distortion Field of Critics

The Reality Distortion Field of Critics; Windows 7 Growing Faster than Windows 8; Looking Towards the Future; Bing vs. Google; Search Inside Yourself; Modifying the Finder Window.

Worldwide News & Product Reviews

by Charles Carr

The latest in tech news and hot product reviews.

Greenlight: Google's Hummingbird No Big Deal for Now; What's the Best Way to Recycle Your Old Phone to Help Your School Raise Money?; Grand Theft Auto V's 12 Hour-long World—4Hot and Not So Hot; Tech Experts Wrong About the Healthcare.gov Crack-Up?; Boost Mobile Samsung Galaxy S III with Shrinking Payments.

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Digital Dave

“Digital Dave answers your tech questions.”
by Digital Dave

Another One for the Mac, Thank You; Change E-mail Address for ComputorEdge Subscription; Missing File in Outlook Express.

Another One for the Mac, Thank You

Dear Digital Dave,

Your column has helped me many times, but after 25 years with a PC I've moved to an iMac. I was happy to move from DOS to GUI, but I just couldn't see moving to a new computer with Windows 8. A couple of my friends have done that and really regret it. So iMac here I am. Thank you for the help and I guess I'll be reading more of Wally Wang.

Mike Barletta

Spring Valley, CA

Dear Mike,

Congratulation! It's always best when people get the computer that's right for them. I hope you have a pleasant journey.

It was certainly an unforced error on the part of Microsoft. If they had left the Start Menu in Windows 8 allowing old Windows users to ignore the Modern interface, then the transition would have been a no brainer and the tablet apps may have seemed like a bonus. As it is, the confusion has stumped many people, although I personally don't think it is nearly as drastic as many people make out.

Adding to the confusion is Microsoft's insistence on using the Windows name on everything. By calling Windows RT for tablet computers "Windows" they have only caused more confusion. Especially since Windows RT cannot run Windows programs.

While I respect your decision, I would not recommend it for everyone. As a Windows user learning the Mac is no easier than transitioning to Windows 8. You will run into even more instances of things not working the way you expect them to. This is because you're accustomed to Windows. Even if the Mac is better for people who have never used a computer before, it is not necessarily better for people who have. We call what we already know "intuitive." If we know Windows, then the Mac will be uncomfortable until we learn it. This is also the case with Windows 8—although in my opinion not nearly so much.

I own various computers including a Mac. Apple makes a fine product and it's easy to use. But it is not so much better than my Windows computers that it seduced me into switching on a regular basis.

Digital Dave

Change E-mail Address for ComputorEdge Subscription

I am changing my e-mail address from xxxxxxx@comcast.net to xxxxxx@gmail.com. How do I change it for ComputorEdge without losing it? I have moved from Colorado to Spokane, WA.

Thank You,

Jim White

Spokane, WA

Dear Jim,

The way to change your e-mail address for a ComputorEdge e-mail subscription is to send an e-mail to onlinesubscriptions@computoredge.com with both your old address and the new address. ComputorEdge is happy to make the change for you. (I sent your info on, so it's already changed.)

The reason that you can't make the change yourself is that since there is no secure logon with a password, mischievous people could mess with the system by adding and changing e-mail addresses causing annoyance for our readers. So ComputorEdge will make the change if you need it.

You could add the new address and cancel the old address, but many people don't want to do that because they will lose their original Start Date—some of which go back to 2005. (Subscribers consider this a form of ComputorEdge cred.) The old records are not deleted, so even if they cancelled the old address, anyone can get their original Start Date back by having ComputorEdge make the change. Remember, ComputorEdge needs both your old address and the new address to update the record.

Digital Dave

Missing File in Outlook Express

Dear Digital Dave,

I have been reading your column and using your advice since 1987 and many thanks for your service. I recently found the contents of one of my Outlook Express folders had been deleted. Luckily I have that file backed up on a flash drive but haven't been able to figure out how to get it back into the Outlook Express folder and hope you can help. I have the XP operating system.

Thanks,

Don Jackson

San Diego, CA

Dear Don,

I no longer use Outlook Express so I'll tell you what I would try. (There may be other readers who will have a more specific answer.)

Normally when items are deleted in an e-mail program they are put in the Deleted Items folder. If you see items missing, you should always check this folder first to see if they were accidentally deleted. In Outlook Express, since it is possible to configure it to permanently delete all items in the Deleted folder, it is best to do this before closing the program. Otherwise, they may be lost after the last session.

If the items are nowhere to be found, then you need to find a way to restore the backup. Often there are Import/Export options in the File menu which allow you to bring in data or export it to another type of file. If this exists in Outlook Express, then you might be able to import the backup directly into the program from the flash drive. I did find this Microsoft support page which may help. It looks like you may want to move the original files to another location before attempting this technique. If this can't be done, then there is another possibility. However, I would do this before attempting the following.

If the backup file is of the same type as the original, then I would search for the location of the original file and try replacing the original file with the backup from the flash drive while Outlook Express is not running. (Be sure to make a copy of the original file just in case it doesn't work and you need to restore it.) When you reload Outlook Express it's quite possible the backup will be loaded. However, it is likely that anything that came in during the time since the last backup will be lost.

If anyone else has previously solved this problem, please leave a comment.

Digital Dave

Little Known High Tech Stories: Gadgets, Smartphones, and More!

“Gadget News, Future Smartphones, Digital-Financing, Police Tech and Int'l Internet Issues”
by Marilyn K. Martin

Race to Copy Apple's New iPhone 64-Bit A7 Processor; Smartphones of the Future—On the Cloud, Upgradable, or Transient; Phablets and Smartwatches: Asian Gadget Tech Heating Up; Coolest Gadgets You Haven't Heard of Yet; Digital-Financing Threatening Traditional Banks; Microsoft's Buy-Back of Apple's iPads; Law Enforcement: New and Helpful Mobile Apps; More Law Enforcement Tech; Law Enforcement And Technology Upgrades; International Tech News: Internet Snooping and Banning YouTube.

Twelve months (July 2012 through June 2013) of Marilyn's Little Known High Tech series has been compiled into an almanac (with a complete index) available exclusively at Amazon. If you want a quick reference for the obscure or unusual in computers and the Internet over the last year, then check it out.

*                    *                    *

Race to Copy Apple's New iPhone 64-Bit A7 Processor

Apple launched its newest line of iPhone 5S and 5C in September 2013. The Motley Fool soon reported that Apple's "blazing 64-bit chip," has prompted Samsung to announce that their next smartphones will have 64-bit processing functionality too. And since Samsung runs on Android OS, it means that Google is probably already working on a 64-bit chip, which is also prompting OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) to upgrade to accommodate a 64-bit chip too.

Also in September 2013, Forbes ran an article about how Apple's new iPhones, with their 64-bit A7 processor, has changed the "smartphone ecosystem." Apple has ushered in a new age, or Business 3.0, which is all about mobile and how to respond to an Internet where more devices communicate—even without people. "Business strategists now need to wake up to the Device Age, where most business transactions will be accomplished through a device of some kind."

Smartphones of the Future—On the Cloud, Upgradable, or Transient

In September 2013, Business Insider (through Yahoo! Finance) reported that a professor at the prestigious Warwick Business School in England has reported that Apple and Samsung shouldn't be too smug about their shares of the smartphone market, with new cloud smartphone operating systems already in the works. The advantages of cloud smartphones will include tons of apps that can be written for the cloud, not a particular phone. And cloud-apps would make smartphones cheaper, since they wouldn't need fast processors or a lot of memory.

Yahoo News in September 2013, reported on a start-up called Phonebloks that aims to be the first "upgradable and customizable smartphone." Like a PC, components of the Phonebloks smartphone could be replaced like plug-and-play, from CPU to a graphics card and even the camera. At the moment, Phonebloks is just soliciting non-financial interest on Thunderclap, in order to get the attention of brands like Nikon, Sharp and Intel for manufacturing support partnerships.

But instead of an upgradable smartphone, how about a transient-phone that is Born To Die? In July 2013, Associated Press (through Newser) ran a story on how the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is working on building electronics that vanish in water. Called Eco-friendly Vanishing Technology, the goal is to create "transient technology"—like smartphones—that simply "dissolve at the end of its useful life, thus saving space in landfills and reducing waste." The university's Materials Science and Engineering department isn't quite there yet, but has designed a chip built on a thin film of silk that dissolves when hit with water.

Phablets and Smartwatches: Asian Gadget Tech Heating Up

"Phablets," or smartphone and tablet combos, are all the rage right now—except in the US where we love our brand-name iPhones and Droids. BGR (through Yahoo!News) in June 2013, announced that a Chinese company, Huawei, was releasing a 7-inch Android device that can make phone calls. The MediaPad 7 Vogue is offered in a Wi-Fi only model, or an HSPS+ model that can also make phone calls. (People laughed when Samsung birthed a phablet category with its Galaxy Note series in early 2012, and people were walking around holding 7-inch slate computers to their ears. But then Samsung sold 10 Million Galaxy Note phablets, and the laughter died out amid the stampede of the copy-cats.)

In August 2013, Forbes reported that Google was getting ready to start competing directly with sometime-partner Samsung over smartwatches. When Samsung announced the release of its new $300 Galaxy Gear smartwatch/phone in September, AT&T quickly announced that they were going to start selling the Pebble Smartwatch in their stores. Sony and Qualcomm will also launch smartwatches before the end of the year.

It was then revealed that Google had stealthily purchased WIMM Lab in 2012, with WIMM's current site saying it had "entered into an exclusive, confidential relationship for our technology during the summer of 2012." With Apple rumored to have delayed the launch of their iWatch until late 2014, Google and Samsung appear headed for stiff competition over smartwatches, especially since reviews of the Pebble smartwatch called it "disappointing, with limited apps." Google is no stranger to "device wearables," like Google Glass. Nor is Samsung hesitant to launch in new "combo" directions, like launching the "phablet" craze (see above). But can Asian tech companies succeed if Google becomes less "giving" with their Android technology?

By September 2013, Stuart Dredge in The Guardian tried to sort out the upcoming Smartwatch Wars. There hasn't been a lot of public interest in smartwatches until now, although it is estimated that 500,000 smartwatches will be sold in 2013. But with Google, Apple and maybe Microsoft releasing smartwatches in 2014, sales are projected to reach 5 Million.

Google is reportedly moving more into hardware, from smartwatches to a new game console powered by Android. And while Microsoft is rumored to be prototyping a smartwatch under the Surface Team, CEO Steve Ballmer's exit may kill the project. Apple's Tim Cook, however, has expressed doubt that young people (who don't wear regular watches, and yank out their smartphones for the time) would even want to buy smartwatches.

In addition, some forecasters think demand for "wearables" could slow down tablet sales, and are adjusting tablet projections downward. Although small-screen tablets (7" diagonally) are becoming more popular, since they are cheaper and easier to carry around. (And it's unknown if these gloomy projections are including the phone-tablets, or phablets.)

Coolest Gadgets You Haven't Heard of Yet

In September 2013, Marc Saltzman of "Digital Crave" at Yahoo Shopping! rounded up some unusual tech-toys that are definitely worth your attention. New Trent Powerpack+, is a powerful little $70 battery that can charge a smartphone up to six times, and can be recharged via the micro USB port. Or how about Weiser's Kevo/UniKey's deadbolt lock, that is Bluetooth-enabled and can unlock with just your iPhone eKey code if you can't find your keys?

A Bluetooth-enabled Virtual Keyboard on a Keyring is finally a reality from CTX Technologies. And the $139 Asus Cube with Google TV gives your TV access to the Internet, streaming services, over-the-air TV and apps, as well as 50 free gigabytes of WebStorage—similar to TV-disrupter Aereo.

Also in September 2013, the Associated Press (through Silicon Valley) revealed what gadget companies are prepping for Christmas. Samsung hopes their new $300 Galaxy Gear smartwatch will catch fire this Holiday Season. Especially since it can link wirelessly to Samsung phones and tablets, can check e-mail and Facebook, and even make phone calls Dick Tracy-style. Besides AT&T's Pebble smartwatch, Qualcomm and Sony will also be offering smartwatches before the end of the year.

Apple's newest iPhones come in 3-5 colors, even if dribbling down the production pipeline in limited quantities. And Samsung's Galaxy Note 3 "phablet" comes with a stylus for handwriting on its large 5.7 inch touchscreen. As noted above, small-screen tablets (7" diagonally) are becoming more popular, with Amazon's Kindle Fire and Google's Nexus 7 paving the way in the US, followed by Apple's iPad Mini.

In October, there will be an updated e-reader released by Amazon, as well as one from Kobo which will also play video and music. Already-previewed game consoles from Microsoft and Sony will be released this November. People are still buying traditional desktop and laptop computers, and Microsoft will release its (tinkered-with) Windows 8.1 in October. Apple will be releasing a new MacPro computer for high-end professional users. And the highly promoted 4K TV sets, from Sony and others, are said to be coming down in price in time for the holidays.

Digital-Financing Threatening Traditional Banks

In June 2013, The Motley Fool sounded an alarm for banks, since more and more online giants (especially Amazon, eBay, Google and Apple) are working on their own digital payment methods. Especially secretive Google, which already has a 7% stake in Lending Club, which is a peer to peer loan Web site that offers personal loans at interest rates significantly below traditional credit cards and other financial institutions.

In mid-September 2013, Zack's Equity Research announced that Google has recently updated its Google Wallet, to make it available to more smartphone users. The update will require "near field communication" (NFC) enabled smartphones to make swipe/tap-payments possible wherever Mastercard PayPass is accepted. eBay's PayPal has also recently updated its payment applications, supplementing online payments with offline payment solutions.

Microsoft's Buy-Back of Apple's iPads

In September 2013, according to Bloomberg, Microsoft dangled a new carrot to entice customers to buy its Surface Tablet. Microsoft is now offering (through October 27) a promotion to give credit worth a minimum $200 to customers who turn in "gently used" Apple iPads 2, 3 and 4 to MS stores. The credit is only applicable at Microsoft stores, of course, and the sales team will strongly suggest customers upgrade to a Surface. Microsoft claims the promotion is more about eco-recycling, although MS just took a $900 Million writedown of Surface inventory at the end of the fiscal year on June 2013.

Law Enforcement: New and Helpful Mobile Apps

In March 2013, the University of North Carolina developed a free mobile app specifically for police officers in that state. Called ASSET, or Arrest, Search and Seizure Electronic Tool, the app contains vital information about North Carolina legal issues their law enforcement personnel face every day, from search warrants to GPS Tracking.

In June 2013, Police Magazine ran an article about four mobile apps that can be especially useful to law enforcement. The Officer's Guide to Recovered Firearms was developed by Purple Forge for the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) federal agency. The free app has a database format to help local law enforcement process recovered firearms used in suspected crimes. The HeartStart is another free app that explains what to do if someone goes into cardiac arrest, with how-to instructions for CPR and even Automated External Defibrillators.

Another helpful iOS app is the Police Miranda Warning, which is a quick reference for field officers. (Police officers no longer need to carry Miranda cards if they have this app.) The last recommended app is Vehicle Identification System, compatible with iOS, Android and Windows Mobile, to help police quickly classify makes and models of suspect vehicles. This is especially helpful if the field officer is trying to corroborate witness testimony on a suspect's vehicle, and the witness doesn't know the model or make. Another helpful law enforcement app mentioned in Comments is the U.S. Cop app, with over 1,000 pages of content useful for everything from an Accident Investigation to a Pill Identifier, plus Case Law resources.

In early September 2013, the Los Angeles Times announced a new law enforcement app coming to the 3,600 members of the Los Angeles (California) Police Department. The app is called JusticeMobile, and provides LA law enforcement with "real-time access to state and federal criminal justice information." Beta tested by the San Francisco PD, the secured app lets police on the street check suspect information without using radios or patrol car computers. A spokesman for the SFPD called the app a major success, with the instant access to California justice information "a law enforcement game changer."

On September 12, 2013, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launched a new smartphone app to solicit the public's help with "fugitive and unknown suspect child predators." Tips can be reported anonymously through the free app, or by phone or online 24/7. According to the Washington Times on September 14, 2013, this Predator App nabbed its first child sex crimes suspect in just a matter of days. The app is currently only available through Apple, but ICE is planning to expand to other platforms.

More Law Enforcement Tech

In June 2013, South University reported that police departments around the US are embracing new law enforcement technology to make it easier to track down and catch criminals. The City of Albany (New York) Police Department (CAPD) has police carry laptops so they can make and upload e-reports from the scene. CAPD crime analysts can then map the entire city with real-time crime data, which helps police supervisors better assign their resources. CAPD has also purchased a two-story, portable "watch tower" to provide surveillance in high crime areas or where large crowds congregate.

In the same article, a detective with the Major Crimes Unit in the Spokane, Washington, police department, records and stores (local?) chat data from the Internet. Washington D.C.'s police department use Shot Spotter to detect gunshots, as well as closed-circuit television cameras that rotate through various areas of the city.

IBM also got heavily involved in "advanced analytics" crime-fighting technology around 2011. The Memphis (Tennessee) PD uses an IBM system called Blue Crime Reduction Utilizing Statistical History, or Blue CRUSH, to identify crime hot spots. It is part of IBM's overall SPSS software for predictive analytics, and includes such crime-prediction variables as weather, holidays and local paydays.

Law Enforcement and Technology Upgrades

CNet reported in September 2013 that the NYPD is encouraging all iPhone owners to hurry and download iOS7, which has an Activation Lock so thieves can't deactivate your Find My Phone feature. In New York last year, theft of iPhones and iPads leaped 40% over 2011 thefts, and NYPD had to create a special team in February 2013 just to recover stolen Apple devices.

The Associated Press (through Officer.com) at the end of September 2013 reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is going to test new dashboard cameras and overhaul basic training for new border patrol agents. This is in answer to complaints that border agents are using deadly force against immigrants illegally crossing the Mexican border, especially in response to rock-throwing incidents.

Nky.com (Cincinnati, Ohio) at the end of September 2013 ran a story that state police departments are upgrading their Taser technology. Ohio's Hamilton County Sheriff's Department is phasing out their X26 Tasers, and replacing them with newer X2 Tasers, which can aim and fire at two targets at once

International Tech News: Internet Snooping and Banning YouTube

In June 2013, Slate reported that "global Internet access means US-based Internet services often have a heavily foreign customer base." Looking at the stats, only 30% of Google's gmail users and only 16% of Facebook's users actually reside in the United States. So the tech giants have huge foreign customer bases—which greatly pleases American intel snoopers like the National Security Agency (NSA). The author prophetically warned that "there's a great business opportunity here for someone to build a webmail service that's based in Berlin or Paris or Stockholm, or someplace else where the local government is prepared to erect a firm privacy framework."

In September 2013, the Associated Press (through the Denver Post) reported that Brazil, angered by Washington's massive online spying, wants to do just that—break away from the "U.S.-centric Internet." Brazil doesn't plan to bar its citizens from the American-based Internet, but does plan to link to other South American countries, then lay underwater fiber optic cable directly to Europe in order to bypass US eavesdropping. In December 2012, other countries had also advocated greater "cyber-sovereignty" at a meeting in Dubai, which was opposed by the US and European Union. American critics fear such geographic-isolation could render popular software applications and services inoperable, and endanger the Internet's open and interconnected structure.

The San Jose Mercury News at the end of September 2013 announced that eccentric/crazy John McAfee was in Silicon Valley recently to announce he knows how to make the Internet hacker-proof. He plans to launch a new cybersecurity company "to provide a new type of Internet, a decentralized, floating and moving Internet that is impossible to hack, impossible to penetrate...", McAfee claims.

The Associated Press (through the Denver Post) in September 2013 reported that Pakistan has banned YouTube for one year. The measure was instituted to block video that Muslims saw as "insulting and blasphemous." But Pakistani educators, students and some companies feel the ban is unfair, and a petition is before a Pakistani court. This ignited an old debate over how to reconcile the right of a free flow of information, with public sentiment that Islam needs special protections. Google (owner of YouTube) reports that only Tajikistan, China and Iran currently block YouTube, while another 56 countries have localized versions of YouTube in order to tailor content to local standards.

Marilyn is a freelance writer and humorist, with a special interest (besides computers and technology) in Science Fiction. Besides short stories published in various magazines, she also has some new e-books available on Amazon Kindle: Hunting Monster Aliens is an on-going series of novellas, about a wise-cracking team of ghost investigators who occasionally turn into alien-monster hunters. Culture Crash! A California Yankee Transplanted to Texas is a collection of humor essays chronicling her adventures in her new home-state.

Twelve months (July 2012 through June 2013) of Marilyn's Little Known High Tech series has been compiled into an almanac (with a complete index) available exclusively at Amazon. If you want a quick reference for the obscure or unusual in computers and the Internet over the last year, then check it out.

ComputorEdge E-Books has converted many of Marilyn's computer humor columns into four e-books. Now available in a four-book Kindle bundle from Amazon.com The Best Computer and Internet Humor, Anecdotes, and Jokes Found on the Web. Marilyn's collection of the funniest stories about our computing machines and how we use them at home, the office, and in cyber space. Save 25% off the individual book price!

A Trick to Avoid Memorizing Hotkeys

“It's Often Easier to Use a Right-click Menu”
by Jack Dunning

If you use AutoHotkey extensively then it might be difficult to remember all the hotkey combinations. Here is a quick and dirty trick for adding hotkeys to the System Tray AutoHotkey icon right-click menu.

If you want to know what all the falderal is about, see the ComputorEdge Web page "Introduction to AutoHotkey: A Review and Guide for Beginners." Or, if you would like to see just a few of the many ways that AutoHotkey can be used with Windows, check out "AutoHotkey Scripts and Apps for Learning Script Writing and Generating Ideas."

Rather than memorizing a bunch of AutoHotkey hotkey combinations, it's often easier to add the option to the right-click menu for the running AutoHotkey script icon in the Windows System Tray. This can usually be done with one line of code as shown for last week's StripReturns.ahk script which removes unwanted returns from selected text:

Menu, Tray, Add, Strip Selected Returns, ^+!S

This one line of code adds the menu item Strip Selected Returns as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The menu item "Strip Selected Returns" is added to the bottom of the right-click menu for the StripReturns icon in the Windows System Tray.

However, when a person right-clicks on an icon in the System Tray, the last window is deactivated. This isn't a problem if the window is either not needed or the name of the window is known. But, in the case of StripReturns the last window must be active to strip the select returns.

We could capture the name of the last window and use it to activate the window, but that may be more complicated than necessary. The following is a quick way to activate the last window (where the selected text resides) and run the StripReturns routine.

A Quick Trick for Adding Hotkeys to the System Tray Menu

I tried using WinActivate to move the last window and WinWaitActive to wait until the window was open, but the results were inconclusive and the routine did not function properly. I suspect that the WinWaitActive didn't work because I didn't know the name of the window. I also tried WinGetTitle to retrieve the name of the window, but came up blank.

The additional problem arises if I put the new code inside the original hotkey routine. The window activation code runs even when it isn't needed. I could attempt to add a conditional, but again more complication. The problem seemed to get more and more convoluted. I finally took a much simpler approach.

The first step was to create a new label (subroutine) to run from the right-click menu. This isolates any window changing activity from the actual hotkey combination. A new label StripReturns is used:

Menu, Tray, Add, Strip Selected Returns, StripReturns

Return

Since this is the only line in the auto-execute portion of the script, it should be followed by the Return command. This prevents any following commands from being executed when the script loads.

(I found that when the label StripReturns followed the Menu, Tray command without the Return, the label would execute whenever I reloaded the script. Putting the Return into the script after the Menu, Tray… line of code keeps it cleaner.)

Since the use of the AutoHotkey WinActivate, WinWaitActive, and WinTitleGet was becoming so complicated, I opted to use the built-in Windows hotkey for tabbing to the last window (ALT+TAB). (Sometimes we become so fixated on using the AutoHotkey command for everything that we forget that there may already be a simpler way to do things in Windows.) The following code shows a simple way to add the right-click option—and it works:

Menu, Tray, Add, Strip Selected Returns, StripReturns

Return

StripReturns:

SendInput, !{tab}

Sleep 200

SendInput, ^+!S

Return

Since the target window will be the window where the text was just selected, it should always be the one activated with ALT+TAB (SendInput, !{tab}). The only concern is whether the window is active before executing the hotkey combination CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+S (SendInput, ^+!S). That's why the Sleep 200 command is used to wait 200 microseconds.

Note: If running ClipJump, the AutoHotkey Clipboard Manager, the right-click option would not execute in StripReturn, although the hotkey combination (CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+S) worked fine when the target window is active.

The Complete StripReturns.ahk Script

Both the new StripReturns.ahk script file and the compiled StripReturns.exe file with the right-click menu option can be found in StripReturns.zip at the ComputorEdge AutoHotkey Dropbox download Web site. The following is the StripReturns.ahk script with the StripReturns subroutine in context:

Menu, Tray, Add, Strip Selected Returns, StripReturns

StripReturns:

SendInput, !{tab}

Sleep 200

SendInput, ^+!S

Return^+!S::

previous := % ClipboardAll

Sleep 200

clipboard := ""

SendInput^c

Sleep 500

StringReplace, clipboard, clipboard, `r, , all

StringReplace, clipboard, clipboard, `n `n, |, all

StringReplace, clipboard, clipboard, `n`n, |, all

StringReplace, clipboard, clipboard, `n, %A_Space%, all

StringReplace, clipboard, clipboard,  |,`r`n`r`n, all

SendInput ^v

Sleep 500

clipboard := % previous

Return

*                    *                    *

Now available in e-book format from Amazon, Jack's A Beginner's Guide to AutoHotkey, Absolutely the Best Free Windows Utility Software Ever!: Create Power Tools for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Building Power Tools for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8, AutoHotkey is the most powerful, flexible, free Windows utility software available. Anyone can instantly add more of the functions that they want in all of their Windows programs, whether installed on their computer or while working on the Web. AutoHotkey has a universality not found in any other Windows utility—free or paid.

Based upon the series of articles in ComputorEdge, Jack takes you through his learning experience as he explores writing simple AutoHotkey scripts for adding repetitive text in any program or on the Web, running programs with special hotkeys or gadgets, manipulating the size and screen location of windows, making any window always-on-top, copying and moving files, and much more. Each chapter builds on the previous chapters.

For an EPUB (iPad, NOOK, etc.) version of A Beginner's Guide to AutoHotkey click here!

For a PDF version for printing on letter size paper for inclusion in a standard notebook of A Beginner's Guide to AutoHotkey click here!

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Jack's latest AutoHotkey book which is comprised of updated, reorganized and indexed columns from the last six months is now available at Amazon for Kindle hardware (or free software) users. Since the columns were not all written in a linear fashion, the book has been reorganized and broken up into parts by topic. The book is not for the complete beginner since it builds on the information in A Beginner's Guide to AutoHotkey. However, if a person is reasonably computer literate, they could go directly to this book for ideas and techniques without the first book.

If you've been following along with my AutoHotkey columns, then there is little new information in the book (although I have added more clarification for techniques I felt were either confusing or wrong). The only reason I can see to buy it would be as a handy reference. The AutoHotkey commands used are included in a special index to the chapters in which they appear. Even I can't remember everything I wrote.

For an EPUB (iPad, NOOK, etc.) version of Digging Deeper into AutoHotkey click here!

For a PDF version for printing on letter size paper for inclusion in a standard notebook of Digging Deeper into AutoHotkey click here!

Jack is the publisher of ComputorEdge Magazine. He's been with the magazine since first issue on May 16, 1983. Back then, it was called The Byte Buyer. His Web site is www.computoredge.com. He can be reached at ceeditor@computoredge.com. Jack is now in the process of updating and compiling his hundreds of articles and columns into e-books. Currently available:

Just Released! Hidden Windows Tools for Protecting, Problem Solving and Troubleshooting Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP Computers.

Jack's A Beginner's Guide to AutoHotkey, Absolutely the Best Free Windows Utility Software Ever!: Create Power Tools for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 and Digging Deeper Into AutoHotkey.

Our second compilation of stupid ComputorEdge cartoons from 2011 and 2012 is now available at Amazon! That Does Not Compute, Too! ComputorEdge Cartoons, Volume II: "Do You Like Windows 8 or Would You Prefer an Apple?"

Currently only at Amazon.com, Jack's Favorite Free Windows Programs: What They Are, What They Do, and How to Get Started!.

Available from Amazon, Misunderstanding Windows 8: An Introduction, Orientation, and How-to for Windows 8! Also available at Barnes and Noble and ComputorEdge E-Books.

Available exclusively from Amazon, Windows 7 Secrets Four-in-One E-Book Bundle,

Getting Started with Windows 7: An Introduction, Orientation, and How-to for Using Windows 7,

Sticking with Windows XP—or Not? Why You Should or Why You Should Not Upgrade to Windows 7,

and That Does Not Compute!, brilliantly drawn cartoons by Jim Whiting for really stupid gags by Jack about computers and the people who use them.

Wally Wang's Apple Farm

“The Reality Distortion Field of Critics”
by Wally Wang

The Reality Distortion Field of Critics; Windows 7 Growing Faster than Windows 8; Looking Towards the Future; Bing vs. Google; Search Inside Yourself; Modifying the Finder Window.

When Steve Jobs was alive, critics often dismissed Apple's products as part of Steve Jobs' "reality distortion field." Back in 2010, Jim Balsillie, the former co-CEO at Research In Motion, even wrote that "For those of us who live outside of Apple's distortion field, we know that 7" tablets will actually be a big portion of the market and we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real Web experience."

Jim Balsillie was right about 7-inch tablets, although few of those tablet sales came from the Blackberry Playbook, which Blackberry eventually abandoned. However, Jim Balsillie was completely wrong about Adobe Flash support as Adobe gave up development of Flash for mobile devices. For years, critics claimed that Flash support was crucial, yet they never examined the technical issues that made Flash run poorly on mobile devices. While marketers crowed that Android devices offered full Flash support, they never told customers that Flash wouldn't run very well. So isn't distorting the truth just another form of a "reality distortion field" no matter where it comes from?

The latest confusion of logical thinking comes from Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Qualcomm who said, "I think they (Apple) are doing a marketing gimmick. There's zero benefit a consumer gets from that (64-bit processing)."

Yet in the same interview, Anand later says, "From an engineering efficiency standpoint it just makes sense to go do that (64-bit processing). Particularly the OS guys will want it at some point in time."

So if Apple's announcement of 64-bit processing for the iPhone 5S A7 processor is just a marketing gimmick, then it should have no purpose from an engineering efficiency point of view. Yet if it makes sense to move to 64-bit processing from an engineering efficiency point of view, then how can it still be a marketing gimmick? To see a list of apps that take advantage of 64-bit processing, visit PC Magazine so you can see that 64-bit processing really can translate into greater speed to run more complex apps, which certainly doesn't sound like just a marketing gimmick.

When it comes to criticizing Apple, critics seem to lose all sense of logic while developing amnesia when it comes to revisiting their past comments that show how completely wrong they were in hindsight. There's nothing wrong with being wrong in hindsight when you used logic to construct your criticism in the first place. There is something drastically wrong when you pretend you never made any particular critical statements or when you deliberately lie to tear down something you don't like by distorting reality.

In the area of distorting reality, Samsung has been accused of faking benchmarks by deliberately tricking their smartphones and tablets to report faster results when it detects certain benchmarks running. AnandTech basically found that practically all Android companies (with the exception of Google's Motorola division) cheat on benchmarks to make their devices look faster than they really are.

By cheating on benchmarks, Android manufacturers are claiming that their devices are faster than they really are when they're not. Samsung even claims they do not cheat when confronted by evidence that they do. The latest Samsung scandal involves peeking at confidential documents between Apple and Nokia. When companies deliberately lie to your face, what does that say about people who refuse to acknowledge these lies?

Figure 1. AnandTech's list of which Android manufacturers are cheating on benchmarks.

Sadly, distorting reality seems prevalent in all areas of life, so it's like a breath of fresh air when you can find honest people. It's bad enough when other people try to deceive you, but it's even worse when you deliberately and knowingly deceive yourself to avoid dealing with reality.

Windows 7 Growing Faster than Windows 8

Here's an odd statistic. According to NetMarketshare, adoption of Windows 7 outpaced adoption of Windows 8. Usually the fall brings an uptick in PC sales due to back to school buyers. What's likely happening is that people still prefer the Windows 7 interface over the Windows 8 tile interface that's more suitable for a tablet or smartphone.

Why would adoption of Windows 8 still trail Windows 7 unless more people simply preferred Windows 7? Most likely, corporations prefer sticking with the familiarity of the Windows 7 interface to avoid massive retraining of workers if they switched to Windows 8. Beyond mobile devices, what advantage does Windows 8 offer PC users that makes them dramatically more productive than using Windows 7? If you can't answer that question, that's probably the heart of the reason why people prefer Windows 7 over Windows 8.

While corporations consistently downgrade new PCs to Windows 7 (just like they used to downgrade from Vista to Windows XP), the big question is what will happen to the corporate computing market in the future? Will businesses cling to Windows 7 just like they used to cling to Windows XP? Or will corporations eventually decide that the Windows 8 tile interface provides massive productivity gains so everyone should upgrade to Windows 8 as quickly as possible?

While corporations debate the dilemma posed by Windows 8 and Windows 7, the French police have decided to save money by moving to Linux. Major Stéphane Dumond of the French Home Office reportedly said at the Evento Linux conference that, "Using an open-source desktop lowers the total cost of ownership (TCO) by 40 percent in savings on proprietary software licenses and by reducing costs on IT management. Using Ubuntu Linux massively reduces the number of local technical interventions."

In 2010, Jean-Pascal Chateau, the Commandant of La Gendarmerie Nationale, said of the migration from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux: "We weren't experiencing technical problems, but financial ones. For the same amount of work, yielding the same results, we realized that Windows would cost us �2 million more than Ubuntu every year."

Corporations looking to upgrade from Windows XP can move to Windows 7 (avoiding Vista) and then cling to Windows 7 until making the next migration to a future version of Windows. Or they can save money, migrate to Linux, and never have to worry about spending more money for operating system upgrades ever again. From a financial point of view, it only makes sense to look at Linux.

For corporations that still need to run custom Windows applications, just turn their current Windows XP computers into virtual machines and run them on Linux. Now they'll have the safety and free price of Linux with the ability to run Windows with no compatibility issues whatsoever, which they might run into trying to run Windows XP applications in Windows 7 or Windows 8.

Migrating from Windows XP to Linux makes sense from a cost perspective, especially if you run your current Windows environment as a virtual machine in Linux. Since so many Windows enthusiasts dislike the high price of the Macintosh, they should switch to Linux to avoid the high price of upgrading to Windows 8. With access to the Linux source code, Linux offers far more freedom than Windows can ever give you.

In case you like the look of OS X but don't want to pay for it, use Ubuntu Linux and slap on the Macbuntu theme that can make your Linux PC look like a Macintosh. Now you'll have the best of both worlds without having to pay for a thing. If you visit this site, you can choose between making Linux look like OS X or Windows XP.

Figure 2. Macbuntu makes Ubuntu Linux look like a Macintosh.

Then again, you can spend money upgrading to Windows 8, spend more time and money training all your workers to use the Windows 8 tile interface, and after all that additional time and money spent on Windows 8, wind up with close to zero productivity gains for your effort. If anyone can give a reason why corporations should upgrade to Windows 8, let us all know so we can see how the time and effort to upgrade to Windows 8 will result in massive productivity gains for everyone.

Looking Towards the Future

Coming soon will be the Mac Pro, new iPad models, and updated versions of iWork for OS X and iOS, not to mention iWork for Cloud that lets anyone use iWork from a browser running any operating system. What may also come in the future could be an updated Mac mini.

The new iPads will likely contain Apple's latest A7 64-bit processor along with an updated camera and possibly even a fingerprint scanner just like the iPhone 5S. Apple already lists the technical specifications for the Mac Pro so the only surprise will be the price. With free versions of iWork for iOS, you can start being productive on an iPad with a full office suite so you can create and type documents on an iPad, contrary to Bill Gates' claims that iPad users "are frustrated. They can't type. They can't create documents."

If you want to see an example of what happens when you fail to look towards the future to see the impact on your own life, you can read this news story about Wiley Publishing, the publisher of those For Dummies books. President and CEO Steve Smith said, "due to the market transition away from print to digital and the economic realities facing some of our markets, we have initiated a company-wide restructuring effort that will result in approximately $80 million of run-rate savings going into fiscal year 2015."

Basically, this means laying off workers because the company executives didn't foresee that the print book industry was dying right before their eyes. Rather than adapt to changing conditions, they remained paralyzed with hope that the past would magically return to the days when the company could remain profitable without changing one bit just as long as they continued denying evidence right in front of their faces.

With Borders Bookstores going out of business and e-book sales gradually increasing while printed book sales decline, it's easy to see how Wiley failed to respond to changing conditions until they found themselves in financial difficulty. Perhaps Wiley can ask Borders Books, Blackberry, Blockbuster Video, and Kodak how denying all evidence of future problems could possibly cause hardships eventually. When you're driving on a road that ends over the edge of a cliff, it's hard to believe that so many corporate executives will ignore clear warning signs of a looming and inevitable disaster while barreling full speed ahead until it's too late.

Bing vs. Google

If you try Microsoft's Bing search engine, you'll find it's pretty much the same as Google's search engine with minor differences, and that's the problem. When Google is already the leader, a rival needs to offer something dramatically better and different to compete successfully. Otherwise Bing risks always being stuck in the number two position like Pepsi is always considered second in popularity after Coca-Cola.

To convince people that Bing is better, Microsoft's running an ad campaign called "Bing It On," which claims that users prefer Bing two to one over Google. Disputing Microsoft's results, Ian Ayres, a Yale law professor, found in his own tests that people preferred Google slightly more than Bing.

Yet if you examine how each side reached their conclusions, you'll find that Microsoft isn't sharing their data and Ian Ayres only samples 1,000 people, which is hardly statistically relevant.

All of this goes to show you that you can believe what you want or you can examine the facts and realize that they don't always tell you anything specific. To strengthen their case, Microsoft should release their data showing how they reached their conclusion so others can see for themselves how dramatically better Bing really is. If Bing really isn't that much better than Google, than Microsoft should stop wasting money on marketing and start pouring it into research to make Bing better in ways that everyone can't ignore. Marketing can never replace having a great product in the first place.

If Ian Ayres wants to prove that Bing isn't better than Google, he needs to study more than 1,000 people before drawing conclusions based on such a small sample. Even then, judging the superiority of Bing vs. Google remains subjective unless there's some objective way to measure specific results that actually matter to people. Being one second faster or finding 1 percent more data than a rival really doesn't show superiority.

When both sides can demonstrate clear goals and measuring criteria that actually matters, then it will be easy to see which search engine is "better." Until then, both Google and Bing are basically the same, but Google still holds a more commanding lead simply because it has been around longer than Bing and more people are used to it.

Rather than rely on a single, general purpose search engine, browse through this search engine list and you'll find specialized search engines for business, accounting, books, medicine, job searching, and games that will likely return better results in your particular field of interest.

Search Inside Yourself

In the old days, many companies were rigid, conformity loving places of individual repression. Today's high-tech companies shatter that mold by offering unique perks and freedom to their workers. At Google, they offer a unique course called "Search Inside Yourself," which the creator of the course has turned into a book by the same name.

The basic idea behind "Search Inside Yourself" is that by searching what you value most out of life, you can find true happiness while if you allow yourself to get distracted by material goods, status, and power, you'll tend to look outside yourself for happiness and never find it. The author describes three types of happiness:

1. Pleasure

2. Passion

3. Higher Purpose

Where most people go wrong is that they seek pleasure first and foremost. This is why you see so many unhappy people at Happy Hour at the bar. As long as you search for happiness in outside objects, you'll only gain momentary pleasure. To keep searching for happiness outside of yourself can eventually lead to addiction to whatever outside substance is bringing you happiness.

Passion is when you're engaged in something you truly enjoy and time seems to fly by because you're truly enjoying the activity for its own sake. This type of happiness is more sustainable because you can keep doing this activity and gaining enjoyment from it. This is what happens when people are playing sports, engaging in hobbies, or just enjoying life. Few people take time to determine their greatest passions in life. Sadly, most people spend more time planning their weekends than they do determining their passions in life. When you find what makes you passionate in life, you'll always be happy.

A Higher Purpose is the ultimate form of happiness because when you align yourself to a higher purpose, any activity, no matter how much drudgery it may seem, can bring you happiness since you'll be totally joyful knowing you're working towards a high goal with meaning and purpose to your life. This is what far too many people ignore.

You can often see this in religious converts, but anyone can achieve this by deciding what purpose they want to give their lives whether it's saving the whales or educating children. There is no right or wrong answer. Find what gives your life meaning and pursue that activity. Then everything surrounding that goal will make you passionate and give you pleasure, and you'll find true happiness everywhere in life.

Pleasure is the easiest form of happiness to achieve, but the least sustainable. Passion is harder to identify, but more sustainable. The trouble is when you're called away from your passion to empty the garbage or do your laundry, you may not feel happiness being pulled away from your passion. A higher purpose infuses your life with total joy so any activity that serves that higher purpose brings you happiness, and that's the ultimate goal you want to achieve.

By reading the "Search Inside Yourself" book, you can get both an insight into the type of employee training that goes on at Google as well as guidelines for finding happiness in your own life. If you're working at a company that doesn't value the happiness of its employees, you're probably working at the wrong company.

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When OS X 10.9 Mavericks appears, you'll be able to view multiple tabs within the Finder so you can see different folders in a single window. Until then, you have to open multiple Finder windows to view different parts of your folder structure.

If you have a Finder window open and need to view another one, just click the File menu and choose New Folder window (or press Command+N). To define what each new Finder window displays, click the Finder menu and choose Preferences. When a Finder Preferences window appears, click the General icon.

Now click in the "New Finder windows show" pop-up menu and choose which folder you want a new Finder window to display automatically such as your Documents folder.

Figure 3. Modifying the Finder window.

In the early days, before Wally became an Internationally renowned comedian, computer book writer, and generally cool guy, Wally Wang used to hang around The Byte Buyer dangling participles with Jack Dunning and go to the gym to pump iron with Dan Gookin.

Wally is responsible for the following books:

Microsoft Office 2013 For Dummies

Beginning Programming for Dummies

Beginning Programming All-in-One Reference for Dummies

Breaking Into Acting for Dummies with Larry Garrison

Strategic Entrepreneurism with Jon and Gerald Fisher

How to Live with a Cat (When You Really Don't Want To)

The Secrets of the Wall Street Stock Traders

Mac Programming For Absolute Beginners

Republican Fairy Tales (Children's Stories the 1% Tell About the Rest of Us)

The Zen of Effortless Selling with Moe Abdou

The 15-Minute Movie Method

Erotophobia (A novel)

Math for the Zombie Apocalypse

In his spare time, Wally likes blogging about movies and writing screenplays at his site "The 15 Minute Movie Method," finding interesting news stories about cats at his site "Cat Daily News," and providing the type of advice he wishes someone would have told him when he was much younger at his personal Web site. Wally can be reached at wally@computoredge.com.

Worldwide News & Product Reviews

“The latest in tech news and hot product reviews.”
by Charles Carr

Greenlight: Google's Hummingbird No Big Deal for Now; What's the Best Way to Recycle Your Old Phone to Help Your School Raise Money?; Grand Theft Auto V's 12 Hour-long World—4Hot and Not So Hot; Tech Experts Wrong About the Healthcare.gov Crack-Up?; Boost Mobile Samsung Galaxy S III with Shrinking Payments.

Greenlight: Google's Hummingbird No Big Deal for Now

The following is reaction to Google's search algorithm update, dubbed Hummingbird, from Adam Bunn, Director of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) at the London-based digital marketing agency, Greenlight:

September marked the 15th anniversary of when Google began and alongside a birthday Doodle and Easter Eggs to celebrate has come news of what has been a silent shift to a new search algorithm, Hummingbird. Whilst Google says Hummingbird is the biggest overhaul to its search engine since "Caffeine" in 2009, affecting 90% of searches, Adam Bunn, director of search engine optimization (SEO) at leading independent digital marketing agency, Greenlight, says Panda and Penguin updates—not Hummingbird, will be the major cause of ranking fluctuations for the foreseeable future. However, Bunn points out that the way Hummingbird is said to work will have clear implications for SEO.

Google launched the Knowledge Graph, and the associated knowledge cards, last year. They are the special results that appear when searching for things like "things to do in Paris," and demonstrated that Google understands, to some extent, the meaning of a search term and therefore is better able to return results for it.

The unveiling of Hummingbird (incidentally the first time I know of that Google has given a name to its entire algorithm), shows Google has taken the algorithm behind the Knowledge Graph and applied it to the entire index instead of just the Knowledge Graph.

It's the next step in Google's quest for artificial intelligence.

Practically, this seems to mean the Google algorithm now considers more carefully full sentences rather than having emphasis on individual words.

That's quite a big departure from how Google is believed to have worked in the past where seemingly inconsequential words were not included in the "forward index" that search engines build for each page they crawl to enable them to retrieve and sort documents faster. In a crude example, a forward index may drop the word "the", meaning the two searches "the warmth" and "warmth" would end up being treated very similarly. A more advanced algorithm and index would actually recognize the importance of "the" in this instance since it determines whether the user is searching for a song or the concept of warmth and, most likely, heating.

Of course Google pre-Hummingbird was already advanced enough to differentiate between these two searches, but it does serve as a sort of conceptual example that, if you scale up in complexity, gets close to the difference between the old algorithm and the new one.

I wouldn't get too excited about this being a massive change that is going to start causing huge fluctuations in rankings. Google said it started using it about a month ago (based on observed rank fluctuations from Greenlight's Integrated Search Marketing technology platform, Hydra, our best guess is August 20th) so unless it has started small and is planning on ramping it up later, which is somewhat possible, the impact has already happened.

And, while the algorithm has now been given a name, it's still largely the same algorithm under the hood, albeit with some tweaks and additional components. So all the traditional stuff (e.g. PageRank) and not so traditional stuff (Panda, Penguin), is still in the mix and quite as relevant as it ever was. For the foreseeable future I think the major fluctuations that keep marketers up at night are still going to come in particular from Panda and Penguin updates, rather than the changes launched in Hummingbird.

But the way Hummingbird is said to work does have some obvious implications for SEO. Looking at full sentences, instead of just words on a page, means some trusty approaches to optimization, particularly optimizing "automatically" by having repetitions of keywords on pages by virtue of their appearance in headings, titles, navigation elements, footers etc., aren't going to be as effective. Keywords in those elements often lack context, and instead Google might want to see content with meaning, which comes from the other words nearby and full sentence structures. It might be impossible to escape the implication that pages just have to have proper written content.

Web: greenlightdigital.com

Twitter: twitter.com/GreenlightMKTG

What's the Best Way to Recycle Your Old Phone to Help Your School Raise Money?

Mike Reffel eleGreen.com outlines three options for getting rid of old electronics in an eco-responsible way while helping raise some dough for your local school:

We constantly hear about schools facing closure or hard times due to funding. We hear about schools using outdated textbooks and programs getting cut due to budget constraints. At the same time, most of us are facing similar hardships in this economic environment. To alleviate these concerns, eleGreen is pleased to introduce eduGreen, a program aimed at raising funds for schools and you. Our solution comes in not one, but three different options according to your needs.

As an industry leader in mobile device buyback, eleGreen is devoted to reducing ewaste. We purchase used electronics like cell phones, tablets, and computers. We focus on providing superior customer service and have the fastest turnaround for payment. To participate in eduGreen is completely free and can be modified to benefit any school or 501(c)(3) uniquely. Additionally, we would like to note that we have a very strict privacy policy to protect our client's information.

Option 1: This is a charitable option that allows family and friends of students to donate their used cellular devices to schools. Upon receiving these devices, eleGreen evaluates their value and issues payment to that school plus an additional 5%. The way this works is if a school receives 1,000 devices worth $100 each, the school would receive $100,000 plus an additional $5,000! On average, most schools have around 1,000 students, and each student household owns between 23 devices.

• Pros: Higher income potential for schools; Tax writeoff for parents

• Cons: Parents are less likely to donate their devices

Option 2: While Option one is a great solution to help schools offset costs, we acknowledge that not everyone can afford to simply donate their devices in this economic environment. Option 2 allows for schools to still receive the benefit of charitable contributions without requiring parents to give away these devices without payment. With Option 2, eduGreen assigns each school or charity their own coupon code, which can be redeemed by the parent in such a way that 5% of the value of their device goes straight to the schools as a donation from elegreen. This way parents are paid the full amount for their devices and schools get some funding as well. All shipping would be specific to the parent/student selling their device.

• Pros: Parents are more likely to redeem this option to fund their new devices

• Cons: The payout will be gradual and could potentially change between each payment; Not as hands-on for students

Option 3: This option allows students to take a hands-on approach in the mobile device industry by physically examining these devices and creating the quotes for customers directly. This would require people to come on campus and meet with students directly. This option allows the school to safely buy the devices for a lower price than eleGreen would buy them. For example, a device we would buy for $100 would be purchased for $80 by the school, which would allow the school to make more instead of just the 5% increase an extra $20 creating a total of $25. This would be closer to a job for the student but could be made extracurricular as a student would be performing a service for the school.

This option allows students to have a more hands-on approach with mobile device technology and get real world experience, but it is the most difficult option to set up. Additionally, the responsibility for this option may require supervision. We will make the accommodations to send a representative to the school to train and set up the process.

• Pros: More profitable for schools; students would learn jobs skills and gain real world experience.

• Cons: Students in this position would have a big responsibility, and would need to be trained; Places a student in a position to meet strangers (though they would be supervised by an adult/teacher)

More info at www.elegreen.com.

Grand Theft Auto V's 12 Hour-long World—Hot and Not So Hot

Buzzfeed.com's Joseph Bernstein writes:

You've probably noticed, if you've played Grand Theft Auto V, that the persistent virtual day�night cycle is just a little faster than our own. One hour in GTA V time is two minutes in real life. One year in GTA V is 17,520 minutes, or 292 hours, or a little over 12 days.

That has some basic implications, like, say, if you take 35 hours or so to beat the game, you've played about a month and a half of "GTA time." A 25-year-old man like Franklin, with a life expectancy of 79 years, would have approximately 648 real-world days to live, or less than two real-world years. Nico Bellic, it goes without saying, is long dead.

More broadly, that means that the planet on which GTA V takes place orbits the sun—or some star—every 12 days. That's more than seven times faster than the closest planet to the sun, Mercury, which circles the sun every 88 days.

This got us to wondering: Where, exactly, would this mystery planet that orbits the sun be? What would it look like? Could planet GTA actually exist?

Caleb Scharf is the director of astrobiology at Columbia University. Here's what he told us about the location and composition of planet GTA, if planet GTA existed in our solar system:

"So, to orbit our Sun every 12 days means the planet would need to be about a 10th of the distance from the Sun as the Earth currently is (from Kepler's laws), or about 0.1 astronomical units in radius [1 Astronomical Unit = 92 955 807.3 miles].

"This is inside the orbit of Mercury (whose orbit is roughly 0.39 astronomical units in radius). That's a brutal place to be. My very crude estimate of what the surface temperature would be (keeping everything else about Earth the same, like its absorbency of radiation): 1,200-1,300 Fahrenheit—pretty toasty. That's the melting point of aluminum and twice the melting point of lead (so much for bullets).

"In terms of composition, there would be no surface water (obviously!), rock, and metal ores on the surface. If there was an atmosphere it'd be pretty nasty—I suspect a lot of evaporated minerals/metals, etc., and a very nasty radiation environment this close to the Sun. ...

So we're left with only one logical conclusion: Planet GTA is actually a secret, government-funded ringworld orbiting directly behind the moon, where members of the Illuminati keep their mansions and commit crimes against normies with impunity.

If you've read this far you are in danger.

Lots more at www.buzzfeed.com

Tech Experts Wrong About the Healthcare.gov Crack-Up?

They are if you listen to Huffington Post CTO John Pavley, who writes in his HuffPost Blog:

Many technology experts are blaming the software behind Healthcare.gov for all the problems Americans have encountered while trying to sign up for health insurance in accordance with the Affordable Care Act. That's not how I see it.

A look at Healthcare.gov's source code, on its own and through a couple of Google's performance-analysis tools, tells the story of a rush job, a Web site that seemed to start with the best of technical intentions but was opened to the public before it was ready.

You can supposedly find the software that powers Healthcare.gov on a publicly available GitHub.com repository. But it's a sanitized repository: All of the development history is missing. There is just one massive check-in of the code, called an "initial commit," which was uploaded three months ago. This indicates that, despite all the hoopla and Jekyll, a very innovative approach to scaling a Web site to accommodate thousands of requests per second by transferring most of work from the server to the user's browser. Theoretically, Jekyll harnesses the power of the user's computer and takes the load off the government servers. The other technical components of Healthcare.gov are just as innovative: Bootstrap, jQuery, Backbone.js, Underscore and JSON. These are not the old-fashioned horseless carriages of the Internet, they are the technological equivalent of the Tesla Model S and the Toyota Prius.

If the developers behind Healthcare.gov had stuck to the plan, they could have had a super-scalable Web site available to the American people to run at a relatively low cost.

Clearly that's not what we have. We have a slow, buggy and frequently unavailable Web site that's attracting criticism from every corner of the Internet, including a Reddit conversation on "How not to optimize a Web site."

The more I look at the code and the more I read about Healthcare.gov, the more I'm convinced it's not the architecture or tech stack, it's the scope of the requirements. Which is to say, they started out in good shape but tried to do too much, too soon. There are many unoptimized files left on the site, which they seem to have rushed out the door.

As it is, Healthcare.gov has too many client-side features, all of which have to request files and resources from the government's servers in real time to respond to user requests. That means many more roundtrips between the browser client and the backend servers, which defeats the whole purpose of Jekyll and all those other shiny new technologies.

When you have to meet a deadline in front of millions of people, you have to limit your scope, you have to keep the design simple, you have to build an MVP (minimum viable product) and then add features to support real-world traffic over time. All of today's most popular Web sites, handling millions of users, such as Google, Facebook and The Huffington Post, were originally built with a tiny feature set that has expanded gradually over time.

I can't get very deep into Healthcare.gov to do a more complete analysis because it keeps booting me out. So the developers behind Healthcare.gov are on their own. If they want to live up to their initial promise and completely open-source the code on GitHub.com, I'd bet thousands of developers would volunteer to fix all of their bugs for them.

Read more here

Boost Mobile Samsung Galaxy S III with Shrinking Payments

Product: Galaxy S III

Manufacturer: Samsung

Carrier: Boost Mobile (uses Sprint network)

Web site: www.boostmobile.com

Price: $339.99 cost of phone with monthly or daily no-contract plans

We touched on Boost Mobile's shrinking payments pricing plan a few months back. Let's dig a little deeper.

Shrinking payments works by reducing your monthly payment $5 for every six payments that you make on time, even if those six payments are non-consecutive. This goes on until you hit payments of $40 a month, when the reductions stop. So, start out paying $55 a month and, then, in as little as 18 months, you could be paying $40. All without a long-term contract.

In addition to shrinking payments you get nationwide talk, text, Web, and e-mail along with voicemail, long distance, call waiting, and call forwarding

So, that's pretty cheap. How do they do it? For one thing, Boost Mobile (like a lot of companies) messes with the word "unlimited"—or, at the very least, messes with what we assume unlimited means. And you know what happens when we assume. For example, you really do get unlimited video, but transmission speed is limited to 600kbps up to 2.5GB of data, then drops off pretty sharply to 3G speeds of 256kbps or below for the remainder of that month's billing cycle. So, as long as you know that going in—and know your data needs—you're OK.

The Galaxy S III has lots of great features: It's very light and sleek (but get a case ASAP). The combined Android 4.1 OS and hardware make for a very stable package. I never once had the phone freeze up on me. The 4.8" screen is absolutely dazzling, I don't care what else is available out there. Battery life could be a little better. It takes a little planning to make it all the way through a work day. Dim the screen whenever possible and try to limit video and games to times when you're plugged in and you should be OK.

Sure the Samsung Galaxy S III is no S 4, but it's no slouch either, And Boost Mobile is actually doing a pretty decent job of getting a smartphone of this quality into users' hands for a price that doesn't break the bank. Just make sure you know what your data needs are—and definitely make sure you send in every payment on time so you can reduce that monthly bill to $40 as quickly as possible.

Basic specs (from Boost Mobile)

——————————————————————

Android OS version 4.1 (Jelly Bean). Multitasking, customizable home screens, and deep interactivity

4.8-inch Super AMOLED HD touchscreen

8 MP camera with 1080p HD video

2MP front facing camera

1.5 GHz dual-core processor

Wi-Fi and GPS enabled

Lithium Ion 2100mAh battery

Talk time of 9 hrs

2GB RAM/16GB ROM - supports microSD card up to 64GB (card not included)

Dual mode 3G/4G LTE — Switch seamlessly between Sprint's reliable 3G nationwide network, which reaches more than 279 million people, and the 4G LTE network, where available.

Share with Share Shot and S Beam - Share your videos, pics, music and contacts with friends instantly by just tapping the phones together

Free 50GB of Dropbox for two years, a $200 value

Environmental Certification

In addition to being an editor and columnist for ComputorEdge and ComputerScene Magazines, where he has written hundreds of feature articles and cover stories over the past decade, Charles Carr has also penned well over 1,000 non-tech newspaper and magazine articles and columns for various publications, including two widely-read columns each week for San Diego's North County Times newspaper.

Carr has covered such diverse topics as pesticide use in area schools, invasive background checks for county volunteers, asthma awareness, the debate over standards-based grading, potential vulnerabilities in electronic voting machines, and Southern California's devastating 2003 and 2007 wildfires. He has also written many humorous pieces.

Carr has also edited dozens of stories and articles written by others which have appeared in major publications and web sites across the country.

He has been a contributor and technical advisor to L.A. and San Diego Parent magazines and receives dozens of requests a year to appear on Southern California television and radio stations to talk about important events in the tech world.

Carr has judged many writing competitions including San Diego Press Club and Time-Warner Communications contests and was sole judge for the national NAPPA Tech Toys awards for five years (which his kids really appreciated). He was recently a judge for the national "Poetry Out Loud" competition.

He has won many writing accolades, including Press Club awards for Best Column Writing, Consumer Writing and Best Arts and Entertainment, and has repeatedly taken top honors in San Diego Songwriter's Guild competitions for his original musical compositions.

Carr will soon publish his first book, What a World, a collection of his best writings.

Learn more at www.charlescarr.com.

Editor's Letters: Tips and Thoughts from Readers

“Computer and Internet tips, plus comments on the articles and columns.”
by ComputorEdge Staff

"ClipJump, Very Interesting," "Preview Copied Picture Problem," "Adobe Flash Player," "Drive Recognition," "Why Won't Undelete Work on Flash Drive?" "Cable TV"

ClipJump, Very Interesting

[Regarding Jack Dunning's September 20 article, "ClipJump, the Free Windows Clipboard Manager":]

I have used clipboard managers since their birth, but this just turns up the gravity. I am liking it a lot and the credit goes to obviously the programmer and Jack Dunning for letting me know about this.

-Floran, Spain

Preview Copied Picture Problem

[Regarding Jack Dunning's September 20 article, "ClipJump, the Free Windows Clipboard Manager":]

When I copy a picture from a Web page, I can paste it into Paint to verify it's in the clipboard. When I check the Clipboard History, the copied item is listed as a path name to the (.jpg) file location in the Temporary Internet file folder. If I click on the listing to use Preview, all I see is the Path name in the preview window, not the picture. Using Windows 8.

It appears that the problem is associated with Internet Explorer. When you use Copy, rather than copying the image IE copies the path which will work in Paint, but not for ClipJump. Chrome actually copies the image and Firefox gives the option to copy the image or the path. If you want to see what is in the Windows Clipboard, you can use the Windows program clipbrd.exe.

Jack Dunning

-Ron Cerrato, San Diego, CA

Adobe Flash Player

[Regarding the September 27 Digital Dave column:]

Your suggestion on AFP installation worked perfectly.

Thank you very much!

-David Niles

Drive Recognition

[Regarding the September 20 Digital Dave column:]

Dave: I did some further checks on the Toshiba external USB drive. I tried it on a Gateway laptop; recognized there, no problem. Tried it on my desktop again, in the USB 3 port that I normally have a 1 T external in for routine backup. It was recognized with the D, the drive letter normally assigned to the Seagate external. So I changed the letter to E. Then plugged the 1 T Seagate into the USB 2 where I had connected the Toshiba. Machine still recognizes the Seagate as D and now recognizes the Toshiba as E, which is what I want.

Why the Toshiba was not recognized in the USB 2 port, I have no clue.

Regards,

-Bonnell Frost, Loveland CO

Why Won't Undelete Work on Flash Drive?

[Regarding the September 6 Digital Dave column:]

Dave, I just want to thank you for your suggestions pertaining to attempting to restore an accidentally deleted folder (not simply a deleted file) of files from a flash drive.

Unfortunately none of the ideas worked, which leads me to conclude that while restoring a deleted file from a flash drive may be possible, it may be all but impossible to restore a deleted folder of files.

This is rather scary, because accidentally deleting when in Windows Explorer can happen easily and quickly to any of us.

Thanks, Dave.

P.S. Of course, if any reader has had success restoring a deleted FOLDER from a flash drive, please tell us all how it was done.

-Jay, San Diego, CA

Cable TV

[Regarding the September 27 Editors Letters: Tips and Thoughts from Readers column:]

My solution to the commercial problem is to make sure I record all primetime programs I plan to watch in advance. Watch the next day or later, fast forwarding through the commercials or other content I don't want to see. It's not what you can see on TV that's important, but what you can record and playback days or weeks later. In my case, I need to record at least three channels simultaneously while viewing a previous recording, due to the way the networks schedule their broadcasts in primetime.

-Ronc, San Diego, CA

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