RHFtech Help Desk (and more)

This app is like a Swiss Army Knife of entertainment features. It slices it dices and comes with a 50-year guarantee! (Only kidding about the guarantee.)

I was turned on to it by Merlin Mann. What attracted me was that it could duplicate my TiVo remote control’s functionality (see first image below) as well as let me remotely schedule my TiVo recordings. He didn’t mention that it also could run my Roku box (see second image below).

Besides masquerading as a remote control, it shows TV listings and movie information, including theaters and times. You can buy your movie tickets also. Got a Netflix account? You can manage your Netflix queue right from the iTV app. Its got streaming video. Oh yeah, its got social media like Twitter and Facebook covered too.

Did I mention it’s free?

A recent study found the average computer is faced with 75 updates or software patches a year. That is for each computer, which means that many of us have two or three times that number. I feel like I get 75 a week.

We also get updates for our cellphones and iPods. It is quite common for me to sit down at a client’s computer to see that they have not updated their operating system nor key applications. When I start to run the updates they frequently ask, “How do I know what to update? How often should I update?”

Many of today’s updates are security patches, often in response to publicly released exploits that take advantage of a hole in the software to let the bad guys gain access. These bad guys are shrewd and sophisticated. Where once viruses, Trojans and the like were written by teenage boys intent only on proving their programming chops, the current strain of “black-hat hackers” are professional criminals intent on making money from getting control of your devices. They weaponize email and websites to achieve their goals. Although some malware still uses a shotgun approach, today’s techniques often use sophisticated spearfishing exploits targeted at specific software or configurations.

Commonly exploited applications are Adobe Reader, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Word. But any application, in any operating system can be a target. The bad guys identify a security hole, design a plan of attack and seed email and unsuspecting websites with their payloads. When the malware finds the targeted software it attacks. Unprotected and/or poorly hardened applications and operating systems (Windows XP comes to mind) are infected by these spearfishing attacks.

So the answer to my first question, “Should you update?” is yes, you should update. This applies whether you are using Windows or Mac computers. Macs are not invulnerable. They represent a small percent of the world market for computational devices, less than 5%. But they are rich targets that should attract the black-hats.

My second question, “When should you update?” is a bit harder to answer. If the patch is for an application or web technology, for example Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, or Java, I suggest you update immediately. Be careful to uncheck any add-ons offered with the patch lest your browser become infested with extra, unwanted toolbars.

Operating system patches may warrant more caution. Many Windows users have automatic updates set for Windows updates. Others only have the Windows Update application notify them when updates are available. Macs only notify the user. Downloading and installing Apple updates is a matter of choice. I recommend you not wait too long to update after patches are issued.

Once Microsoft and Apple release updates the black-hats are likely to read the related documentation and design attacks for unpatched systems. You don’t want to be the prey for a spearfishing attack do you?

Last month, on Patch Tuesday, the second Tuesday of the month, when Microsoft released their monthly patches, a small number of Windows XP users reported that their machines blue-screened after rebooting. Many bloggers were happy to point a finger at Microsoft for borking these machines. It turns out the machines were infected with a rootkit that was the cause of the blue screen. One of the patches changed critical operating system files that the rootkit was using for its attack. When Microsoft patched these files the rootkit caused the blue screen. The owners of the affected machines did not know they were infected until the patch caused the blue screen problem. Microsoft immediately withdrew the patch and later reissued a revised version that removed the rootkit infection. Props to Microsoft.

Sometimes a Windows dialog shows the Apply button next to the OK and Cancel buttons. Some people are confused by what the Apply button does. I see them click the Apply button before clicking the OK button. They think that if they only click the OK button their changes will be lost.

When you click the Apply button the computer implements your changes AND leaves the dialog window open. This allows you to make further changes.

If you ignore the Apply button and click the OK button your changes are applied AND the dialog is closed.

Clicking the Cancel buttons reverts unapplied changes to their former state AND closes the dialog.

One of the holy grails of technology is to make things go faster. This impulse pervades all technology from cars to computers. There are three new and improved technologies for data transfer within a computer, tablet device or smartphone that have recently come to market that will speed up our computing. These are solid state drives (SSD), Serial ATA Revision 3.0 and Universal Serial Bus 3.0.

Solid state devices replace rotational storage devices like hard drives. They are much faster than hard drives and more durable. They are also expensive. SSDs use non-volatile memory to read, write and store information. The most recent Intel/Micron joint venture fabrication facility builds SSDs using 25-nanometer NAND technology. The factory cost billions of dollars to construct and outfit. 25-nanometers is very small. At this size a few atoms misbehaving can ruin a device. SSDs are desirable as computer drives but I am waiting for SSD prices to drop significantly before deploying them as replacement drives in my existing computers.

As an aside, I recently had a conversation with a friend who consults to a large German optical company that makes the lens for these plants. He said he was working on the 11-nanometer next generation NAND lens. Unbelievable! What an incredible human accomplishment to work at this microscopic level.

SATA is the typical way internal drives connect to a computer. The first version of SATA allowed for theoretical speeds of data transfers up to 1.5Gb/s. Revision 2 doubled that theoretical speed to 3.0Gb/s. Most modern computers have drives and controllers that communicate using SATA 2.x. SATA Revision 3.0 is also known as SATA 6Gb/s because it has doubled the maximum transfer rate once again. Real world data speeds never come close to these maximums but each major revision has significantly sped up our computers.

I tested an ASUS U3S6 controller card in my custom-built Windows 7 main computer. The computer has an ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 motherboard, 12GB of DDR3 RAM and an Intel i7-920 (2.66GHz) CPU.  The U3S6 adapter card has two USB 3.0 connectors on the back plane and two SATA 6Gb/s connectors on the inside. These are used to connect to a computer’s internal drives. The adapter card connects to the motherboard via a PCI Express x4 interface

I needed 6Gb/s drives to test so I bought two Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX hard drives. There are not a lot choices today. This is likely to change in the near future. I also acquired a BYTECC T-200U3 external docking station, that incorporates a USB 3.0 connector, to test USB 3.0 data transfer rates.  These four pieces of equipment cost me about $300.

I wanted to get SSDs but they cost much more and the SSDs’ capacities are too small so I went with this setup: A $30 add-on card and two new SATA 6.0Gb/s capable 1TB hard drives. A single Crucial Real SSD 256GB SATA 6Gb/s costs $759 at Newegg today. My configuration is slower than the SSD but I have 8x the storage for less than half the price.

I first benchmarked my existing drives using the motherboard’s built-in SATA 3Gb/s controllers and the external USB 2.0 ports. I used PC Wizard 2010 to run the hard drive benchmarks. I then installed the board and benchmarked the SATA 6Gb/s controller and drives, and the USB 3.0 docking station with both the new and old drives.

In my testing SATA 6Gb/s is about 50% faster than SATA 3Gb/s controllers+drives not the 100% I hoped for. However, my computer is much more responsive. Applications and files open much faster than before I installed the board and new drives.

USB 3.0 may be a big improvement but I didn’t see it in my initial testing. It is supposed to work at speeds up to 10x USB 2.0. This board’s USB 3.0 ports connected to a USB 3.0 external hard drive are only about 40%-50% faster than USB 2.0 equipment. This is good but nowhere near the 10x range I hoped for. The ASUS-supplied software drivers are the probable culprit. I am hopeful that ASUS will release new ones in the near future.

The bottom line is that I recommend this board and new hard drives to anyone who has the money and the motherboard expansion slot. The 50% improvement with USB 3.0 is nice but less than hoped for. However, I do not believe you will be disappointed if you upgrade your rig. I am not looking backwards.

I am a fan of Cablevision. They provide a great choice of bleeding edge technology services, which they seem to be constantly adding to and improving. They have the best customer service for a large company. I do not know of other large companies in their league when it comes to customer service. Sure, I wish their services cost less (free would be great) but I feel they provide real value for the price. I cannot make this statement about my AT&T Wireless service.

I am also a fan of TiVo. They revolutionized TV-viewing for me and millions of other TiVo/DVR users. I have had many TiVos through the years. I upgraded to the TiVoHD several years ago. Unlike the earlier TiVo versions it requires CableCARDs to get most of the cable company channels. These little cards require a cable company technician for installation but then disappear from consciousness. They cost a few dollars a month to rent, less than the cable company boxes.

The switch to high definition (HD) television signals put a strain on the capacity of the cable companies. They have large pipes but their capacity is not infinite. So they are changing their model for distributing content signals to subscribers.

Before HD the cable companies pushed every channel down every coaxial cable to all their customers. If you had a cable box and subscribed to premium channels you could decrypt the channel signal and watch the content. If you didn’t subscribe you could not see the channel but it was streaming into your house.

Cable companies are implementing switched digital video (SDV) to cope with the extra bandwidth requirements of high definition. SDV is more like the Internet. You send a URL request for a webpage and that gets sent to your browser. SDV works similarly. The cable companies are more discriminating now. Rather than stream all their channels to every household all the time, they send the most commonly watched channels to everyone but only send infrequently watched channels when a subscriber actually wants to watch it. They conserve bandwidth this way and can accommodate a much larger selection of high definition channels.

SDV requires that the subscriber’s cable equipment communicate your channel choice back to the cable system so that they can send you the channel you want to watch. CableCARDs are one-way devices that do not work with SDV signals. As an example, if I want to watch the Encore HD channel, 816 on Cablevision in my area, I need a cable box because 816 is an SDV channel that is only streamed when a subscriber wants to watch. The TiVoHD cannot make that request.

The cable companies provide SDV Tuning Adapters to workaround the limitation that CableLabs, a cable industry association, designed into CableCARDs. The tuning adapter boxes are generally provided free to CableCARD customers, like me.

I picked up a Cisco STA1520 tuning adapter at the Cablevision Norwalk, CT store last week. I installed it yesterday.

I am not a fan of the tuning adapter. The box is overly large for its limited functionality, 11.75” x 8” x 1.75” (w-d-h). It adds three more cables to my home theater cabling mess. It adds to the heat generation and electrical requirements, and is yet another lighted LED in my home theater. Since it has a USB connection to the TiVoHD it could get its power via USB if Cisco designed it better, eliminating the need for a power cable and AC/DC block. It also requires a call to Cablevision to activate once it is successfully installed.

The box takes at least 20 minutes to install if all goes well. It took me 50 minutes to install because I mistakenly connected the USB cable when I installed the box. You are supposed to wait until the tuning adapter is ready before doing that. It took a call to Cablevision, a 15 minute wait on hold and then talking to two CSRs before it was fixed.

I can now watch channel 816. Whoopee!

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You might want to read my prior post about CableCARDS and computer OCURs – Too little, too late, too difficult, too expensive

David Pogue, a truly nice guy, an unabashed Mac fan, a Yale graduate with a degree in music,  a blogger for the New York Times Technology section, an author of technology books, a really good presenter on technology and other topics and a resident of Westport CT, recently penned “A Closer Look at Windows Live”. His closing line, “It’s worth the humiliation to spread the word.” sums up his appreciation for the Windows Live services and applications.

Windows Live is Microsoft’s free collection of applications like Windows Live Photo Gallery, a photo tool, Windows Live Mail, an email client, or Windows Live Writer, a blogging tool. I used Window Live Writer to pen this post. It is also a collection of online services live Hotmail and Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Calendar or SkyDrive.

Pogue’s discovery of SkyDrive is quite possibly what inspired his article. SkyDrive is a free, 25Gb online storage space. You can backup files to it. Post and share photos and integrate it directly into Windows Explorer.  

There are limitations on the size of what you can upload and what you can share. (See About Windows Live SkyDrive for more information.) The largest file that you can upload is 50MB. However, SDExplorer  Pro ($13.75) lets you upload larger files. I successfully tested uploading a 60GB video to check this out. This may be a violation of Microsoft’s Terms of Use for SkyDrive.

SDExplorer is a Windows utility that integrates SkyDrive into Windows Explorer on your computer. There is a free version and a pro version (mentioned above). Once SDExplorer is installed on your Windows computer, your online SkyDrive storage shows up in Windows Explorer, as you can see in the image below.

The first time you double click on the SDExplorer icon brings up a SkyDrive Explorer logon dialog.

After you logon you can navigate your SkyDrive as if it were a drive on your computer.

Use drag and drop, copy/paste and other Windows Explorer functions on SkyDrive as if it were a local device.

SkyDrive + SDExplorer has its limitations. Uploading files takes a lot more time than downloading them due to the asymmetric Internet connections we all have. I have a very fast Internet connection but my upload speed is 1/6th of my download speed.  The speed of your Internet connection has a material impact on cloud storage functionality.

SkyDrive is great. It is large. It is free. But it needs to evolve. It will be great once Microsoft integrates Live Mesh synchronization service and SkyDrive. Until then…

You might want to take a look at How to Email Photos to Your Free 25GB Windows Live SkyDrive to learn more about using SkyDrive.