forum

Symantec's Norton user forum in beta

After year's of prodding from pesky security software reviewers like myself, Symantec has finally created a user forum for its Norton products. Although still officially in beta, the forum is has been operating in-house for a few months and thus has been generating some useful how-to information.

Moderator Dave Cole sums up the project in a welcome note:

We've been working on re-launching our product forums for several months now and are happy to finally officially open the door on the beta. We kicked off this project with the intent of creating a place where Norton customers, employees … Read more

Twing offers deep search for forums

Searching forums for specific posts can seriously suck. Most have proprietary search tools that can be unfamiliar or downright difficult to use. Some even require you to fill out a captcha to avoid getting attacked by bots or having its forums infested with spam. Twing is a new service that's attempting to solve these problems with a search tool that scours hundreds of user forums and lets you search by individual posts or a topic thread all in one place.

I found it to do a pretty good job giving me some basic results with simple queries. You can … Read more

Confessions of a Linux newbie

This year my one-and-only New Year's resolution was to begin the transition to open-source software in general and Linux in particular. I thought I was just setting out to learn a new operating system. In fact, I was entering an entirely new world of computing.

My Linux education began with a lesson in community. I struggled to get Ubuntu, my distribution (or "distro") of choice, to recognize either of my two wireless adapters. One of many comments to the blog post in which I described my wireless woes pointed me to a program that got me connected … Read more

Report: U.S. ranked No. 4 for networked readiness

In an increasingly networked world, the United States moved up several notches in its global rankings this year, according to the 2007-2008 Global Information Technology Report released Wednesday by the World Economic Forum.

The United States, based on a Networked Readiness Index that examines information and communication technologies and whether they're being leveraged by individuals, businesses and government to improve competitiveness and development of a region, moved into fourth place from seventh last year, according to the report. That's not too bad, considering there were 127 countries included in the report.

Key metrics taken into consideration included population, … Read more

Meetro team launches Lefora, free hosted forums

The team behind location-based instant-messaging service Meetro is launching a free hosted forum service this morning called Lefora. CEO Paul Bragiel came in to give me a demo of it in action last week and I came away impressed. It's a wonderfully easy way to set up good-looking forums without a lot of hassle. Bragiel said that the idea came after looking at many of the popular forum tools out there and getting frustrated with "antiquated" systems that involved knowledge of coding languages, or having to host everything on your own dime. Most of all, Bragiel said … Read more

Gates: Businesses need to embrace the poor

MIAMI--In two separate speeches on Friday, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates made the case that businesses need to see serving the poor as part of their mission and that governments need to see private businesses as potential partners.

One of the big topics for both audiences was the notion of microfinance--improving the access to credit and banking to the poor.

"The idea of how they create loans for the poorest is part of it," he said at the Government Leaders Forum. But although today microfinance has focused on loans, there is more to it. "We need to get … Read more

Where we are all children of men

EPISODE 66

Other than getting accosted by former reality stars, it's pretty much a regular day at The 404 ranch. George Clooney gets 2girls1cupped, MissBimbo scares Meridith Viera, Paramount is creating an awful studio to make low-budget horrible video games, and we talk about movies opening this weekend with special guest Karina Longworth.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

Craigslist cleared on discrimination claims

Craigslist.org can't be held liable for discriminatory ads posted on its site, according to a court ruling released Friday.

A group of Chicago lawyers had sued the online classifieds site over real-estate ads that stated discriminatory preferences such as "no minorities" or "no children." The group, the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, argued that such ads are prohibited under the Fair Housing Act and that Craigslist should be held liable for allowing them to be posted on its Web site. Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court … Read more

This week in awesomeness: 20 years ago, we all got Rickrolled

Two decades ago this week--on March 12, 1988--the corny pop song "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.

What does this have to do with the Internet? Oh, just about everything.

For those of you who actually have lives and don't pay attention to the latest iteration of goofy Internet phenomena (think "all your base are belong to us," "the Internet is a series of tubes," or lolcats), Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" is the Web equivalent of the … Read more