Computer Spot

Here’s an interesting concept – attend university for free – on a computer, through iTunes. If you’ve been hearing a little bit about something called iTunes U and have been meaning to look it up, this is what it is.

The answer to the question of what is iTunes U is simple – it’s a feature on iTunes that universities pipe their free courses to you through. But it isn’t just university courses that you get, of course. K-12 education is available on a separate channel, as well. There are 800 universities around the world that participate.

Now that you know what is iTunes U, you’re probably anxious to get started. And you probably have lots of questions. Let’s get right to it. Let’s see how it works.

If you have iTunes on your computer, you’re already halfway there. There is an iTunes U button on the toolbar on the front page.

It takes you straight to where you’re going. Right away, you get your full selection of subjects, schools, the top 10 and so on.

Click on it, and you get a full series of lectures or books or anything else. Once you have the course content on your computer, you can port it to your iDevice (which is an easy way to say iPhone, iPod or iPad), or you could read on your computer.

There’s no homework and there’s no one pushing you to go faster. It’s completely user-determined, how fast you go.

If you’re wondering about what is iTunes U good for if there’s no one pushing you, this is probably not the application for you.

You don’t get any university degrees or credits at all. This is just for those who pursue knowledge for the sake of it.

If you find that this is a great concept, to get great lectures and books and study material to take you step-by-step right from the basics to the most advanced levels, if you really want to have the benefit of the kind of education the ivyleaguers get, then this certainly is for you.

So is this a great idea or not? It depends on what you’re looking for. Of course, if you’re looking to your iPhone to substitute a college degree, you’re pretty much going to be out of luck.

But if what you’re looking for is education in something new for a practical purpose – you are in luck. And just think about all those people all around the world who just don’t have access to reasonable education.

Or else, think of all those young people in this country who would like to give a college course a dry run before they actually commit.

It’s a winner of a concept, and it’s the promise that the Internet came with, all along.

The tablet accessories market is an overcrowded one. Once you get an iPad or other tablet and you’re happy using it on its own, at some point, you’re going to wonder about a few amenities you might appreciate to go with your tablet. Smart Covers for the iPad2, for instance, would be an example of a great essential tablet accessory.

Of course, you can go to some pretty exotic extremes buying tablet accessories that turn your tablet into all kinds of things.

For instance, on some models, you can get a nice laptop-like keyboard to just plug the tablet into – voila! instant laptop.

Or you could choose from among a bewildering range of tablet docks that let you just drop the tablet into a slot so you can play the music in it or something.

Well, those would be the more exotic choices. Let’s look at a few essential tablet accessories.

To any tablet computing enthusiast, the case has to be where all the accessorizing starts. You buy a brand-new tablet, and sooner or later, you begin to notice that that gorgeous expanse of transparent Gorilla Glass is beginning to pick up a few scratches – as hard as it tries to resist them.

They make covers and cases out of all kinds of different materials and in all kinds of designs. At its simplest, a protection cover is just a silicone skin or a clear plastic overlay for you screen.

It affects the looks of your pretty tablet as little as possible and it doesn’t add to the weight either. The iPad has its magnetic Smart Covers of course that actually performs a function – it turns tablet on or off on its own.

Buy an actual case for your tablet, and you could add considerably to its bulk. But you really would make your tablet far more usable – cases usually have kick- out stands that allow you to prop your tablet up like it were a picture frame.

And should you drop your tablet, as more and more tablet owners are beginning to notice that thye do, it’ll be completely protected unless you drop it directly on its face on a sharp rock.

A tablet is basically designed to be charged through the USB port on your computer. While this may be the way most people use their tablets, there are some who don’t ever go near an actual computer.

To them, a portable travel charger would be a great idea – something that you plug into the wall socket or the cigarette lighter outlet on your car. Companies like Belkin make all kinds of portable chargers.

Sure, your tablet comes with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. But often, just connecting it to another computer through a real wire is the fastest and most convenient way. Lots of tablets allow you to connect devices through HDMI, Ethernet or USB.

Often, it can be great just connecting your tablet to your large-screen TV and watching something that you just downloaded from iTunes. Getting the right complement of cables can be a lifesaver.

And finally, be sure to check out a windshield mount for your tablet. You’ll spend perhaps $20 for it, and it’ll just attach your tablet to your windshield with a suction cup. Your tablet can make for a great GPS unit.

How many times have you needed to hit Print on your computer and you’ve realized that you’re just not connected to a printer?

Physically connecting your computer to the printer of course will mean picking your computer up, making your way to wherever the printer is, or wherever a computer is that is connected to the printer through Ethernet cable.

Why on earth should anyone have to put up with this, when it’s cheap buying and setting up a wireless printer?

Printers are just getting smarter everyday. A wireless printer – one that is able to connect to computers through Bluetooth or Wi-Fi – can be had for as little as $50.

You can park the printer wherever it’s convenient, plug it into the power, and you’re good to go. It’ll just show up on everybody’s computer as a network destination, and anyone can just send print jobs.

If you’re good with setting up a wireless printer, there is no reason to have to wire things up anymore.

Now, unless you have a very old printer, you never have to connect a printer directly to the computer it needs to print from.

Nearly every printer out there has a regular Ethernet port. You just need to connect the printer to a Wi-Fi router that wirelessly connects to every computer in the building, and you’d have yourself a wireless printer just like that.

But that isn’t really as convenient as a real wireless printer.

In some buildings and installations, the router is located somewhere really inconvenient, sometimes in the basement or on another floor.

To have to put the printer next to the router can make little sense in many places. Setting up a wireless printer is the only thing that would work.

Once you have it, you could get your printer and every computer in the building to connect wirelessly to one another.

In some installations, wirelessness in a printer can make even more sense. Consider a small office where there is more than one printer – perhaps one that’s an inexpensive color laser model, one that’s a monochrome laser model, a couple of inkjet models for different levels of quality and so on.

Everyone in the office would want to connect to every one of these printers at different times. A print server would be an excellent idea in this case.

Actually, make that a wireless print server. To think of the kind of wiring you would need to do in such a situation if it weren’t a wireless set up, fairly boggles the mind.

If you are on the market for a laptop for the student in your family, there are basically four things that you need to keep in mind as you shop around.

Laptops for students need to be light because they do need to carry them around a lot, and they need to be small enough to slip into a satchel or something.

They need to have the kind of power your child’s course of study requires, and they need to be the right operating system for the kind of software your child will be using in the course of her studies.

What that means is, if you have a student who is studying video editing or animation, you don’t want one of those mass-market $300 laptops. Those will almost certainly be underpowered for this kind of thing.

On the other hand, a powerful and bulky desktop replacement type with powerful graphics processing ability will be overkill somewhat for the student who just wants to take down notes in law school. Let’s look into it a little bit deeper.

As much as you would want to buy the most powerful machine out there that you can afford, you do need to remember that with bag and power supply all put together, a powerful computer can end up weighing 10 pounds.

It’s really too much to expect students to carry around all the time. You don’t want something that’ll tire her out before she even gets into class. So when it comes to buying laptops for students, you have to really accept that portability trumps power.

And it’s not just about how light the machine is, either. While you might find yourself loving a large 16 inch screen on a laptop when you’re working at home, try using that same laptop at the coffee shop or something where there are lots of other people and you don’t find yourself free to spread out.

That’s the kind of environment your child will be using her laptop in – in class or in the dorm. There really isn’t much room at a classroom desk for a large laptop. Go for something that’s 11 inches or 13 inches in screen size, and your child will thank you for it.

Actually, the small size of the thing should work out really well. The smaller the screen on the laptop is, the smaller the battery has to be. All put together, it has to make for one lightweight laptop. Not to mention, a smaller screen is likely to use less power. That’s more battery life for you.

Try your best to look for a laptop that has the longest lasting battery. Try to get something with seven hours of battery life at least. It shouldn’t be that hard these days.

And finally, you really don’t need to buy a really powerful computer unless your child really needs it in the course of her studies.

You do need to remember that a young person can be really tempted to stray into gaming in her spare time if she has a really capable computer. Get as little computing power as your child can actually manage with.

How much is a computer science degree needed? This depends on the market needs. The dynamics of information technology have drastically changed and continue to do so.

Information technology is now part of any organization and acts like the nervous. In fact, regardless of what degree qualifications other members of staff hold, part of their job will usually involve an IT aspect.

With this intertwining comes the question of how much worth a computer science degree.

Granted technical skills will always be marketable from the simple fact that the world runs on code. However the large majority of this code is not written by humans but rather computer generated.

A computer science degree that is directed towards utility computing and social networks is currently the way to go.  In other words, anyone who pursues a computer science degree needs to become a technology generalist as well.

It is not enough to just know how to write code. You need to adopt, relate, mold and use the existing technology to meet the changing business dynamics where your computer science degree can be most beneficial.

Thus, a degree in computer science tells an employer that you have the basic skills. But to profitably apply it in a business setting will require wielding this sword in a changing landscape effectively using business and social knowledge.

Even companies like Google and Microsoft recognize the need to have a well-rounded knowledge of IT. A computer science major is undoubtedly a high market demand.

However, having experience and skill in other areas such as finance, law, management or other disciplines will make it easier for anyone with a computer science degree to appropriately apply their skill to improve a specific departmental section or resolve a related problem.

As the director of Talent and Outreach Programs in Google’s People Operations Department Yvonne Agyei said in an interview, “”In addition to software engineering roles, we have roles within business, within legal, within finance where having a facility for technology and a passion for technology are important.

It helps if they have familiarity with our products. Having that knowledge is really important regardless of what aspect of the business you go into.”

Sometimes a hiring decision is largely determined by the experience a computer science degree holder has. As one interviewer said “It’s not going to be a show-stopper for me if someone does not have a computer science degree.

Particularly, if I am looking for developers, I am looking at what skill sets they have, how many years of experience and their knowledge of the subject matter.”

Indeed, to get the most out of a computer science degree, balancing it with business, collaboration or communication skills will make for valuable employees.

There are a number of individuals have as a new device. Form of the question is an intriguing element of design and overall system performance and features.

You can change the settings to show no anger or place. Background of the election results offered a change to show the setup.

The performance of the Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II supports dual-core 1 GHz ARM processor with Orion chipset.

Android v two.3 gingerbread will be highlighted in order to assist their mobility. The processor is powerful enough to enjoy the High Definition entertainment on your mobile device.

In the meantime, depending on the quality of support four.3 inch super AMOLED capacitive touch screen with 480 x 800 pixel resolution. It looks promising for a Smartphone with a clear view.

Frame your picture? You can collect your 8-megapixel camera to every moment in their existence.

The digital camera is a vehicle focuses and LED flash, so you can document it, the high-resolution video to 1080 pixels.

The finest quality and the captured image are great. In addition, 2-megapixel secondary camera is also bundled in this draft.

You can look at it as an ideal person camera phone and the Android Smartphone. Other features include attractive Gorilla Glass Show, V4 Touch Wiz., I Swype text.

One of the obvious and understandable reasons for this could be the fact that it runs and uses a very small but powerful little pieces of high-tech stuff like the above energy and energy software and hardware used.

Other specifications Samsung i9100 is a very good enough to get your communication and entertainment. This model comes with two versions (one with 16 GB of memory, and the other with 32 GB). Variation is the only storage option.

Connectivity from design supports Wi-Fi with DLNA and Wi-Fi now, Bluetooth v3. With HS. To help Samsung Galaxy S II GPS with A-GPS and Google Maps, you will find anywhere and attractive space.

As with other models, it also has a 3.5 mm audio jack and FM radio. It has some interesting applications such as Adobe Flash 10.Ona, Google apps and social networking integration. His endurance is determined by the Li Batterly mAh to 1650.

Fake antivirus designers can get their work done in some ingenious ways. Around the time the British royal wedding spectacle was going on, one particular malware designer thought of a pretty clever way of exploiting the Royal wedding craze to his advantage.

He put up very a popular portrait of Princess Diana on a website (because he knew people would be searching for Princess Diana).

When people clicked on the website, they got redirected time and again until they suddenly found themselves on a website that came up with a very Microsoft-ey-looking dialog box – that said that their computer was infected, and they needed to pay $60 then and there to get rid of it.

This was fake antivirus, of course. And if nothing else, people can always tell a fake antivirus pitch by how they demand money right away. Reputable companies always offer you a free one month trial.

Anyway, reputable companies never pop up a warning like that. Fake antivirus isn’t some kind of fringe business. The FBI believes that they make will that’s the one billion-dollar industry every year.

They steal money, they take control of computers, they steal information, and they turn your computer into a kind of remote-controlled robot to make it send out lots of spam to everyone else.

The problem with fake antivirus is so bad, the normally immune Macintosh operating system has just had its first fake antivirus announced. [Score for Macintosh: 01, and Microsoft 10,000].

Fake antivirus makers use every trick in the book to get through. Sometimes, they use simple spam and online advertising.

At other times, they do it through actually calling you at home and asking you to visit their website for something or the other. Once you get there, you’ll find familiar fake antivirus running putting up.

Most of these attacks come from countries in Eastern Europe and China. There are set on stealing from the West. When fake software detects that your computer uses Chinese or Russian something, it just won’t try to steal from you.

Some of these businesses make such a great living from what they do. They try pushing fake software with convincing-sounding names like Win Drive Cleaner or XP Internet Security Organization and just get past a lot of people’s defenses.

And since they actually ask you for permission and get you to pay, your antivirus software is often a little unsure whether it needs to stop this thing that you paid money for.

Some of these organizations actually have 1000 employees and proper offices in Eastern Europe. Just imagine – some of these companies make $200 million a year. That’s more money than Twitter makes.

When these fake antivirus companies are so big, they can afford to constantly rewrite their malware code so that your antivirus software has a very hard time indeed detecting anything. As usual, personal vigilance is all that will protect you.

If you’re a gamer, it’s safe to say that next to the processor in your computer, the graphics card is the most heavily-pounded component in your system.

The way each new generation of videogame title uses up computer graphics power these days, you can never have enough.

The graphics card, a separate processor much like your main processor Intel or AMD processor, is the part of your computer that draws and renders all the complex imagery that your game involves.

If you want truly realistic imagery in your videogame, you’d better be prepared to equip you computer accordingly.

Sometimes, even if you buy the most powerful graphics card on the market, it still won’t be enough. You need something more. Something like dual video cards of the same kind of the same computer.

There are basically two kinds of standards for those who wish to use dual video cards their system. You can either go with the Nvidia standard that they call SLI or you could go with the AMD standard that they call AMD CrossFireX.

Typically, the AMD standard is the one that’s the most flexible. Go with the SLI standard, and you absolutely have to buy two identical expensive cards.

With the AMD standard though, if you have two compatible cards, one powerful and the other less so, you could still have them add up.

If you’re kind of on a budget and you’d just like to be able to use a less powerful card as well, you really should choose AMD.

AMD offers another advantage, as well. You can actually get the onboard graphics, as modest as it might be, to pitch in. Before you can go with dual video cards, whichever company you want to side with, you need to make sure that your motherboard is capable of a setup like this.

Go with AMD, and you will be able to get CrossfireX performance out of practically any motherboard that has two PCI Express slots.

With SLI though, you’ll need a motherboard that has SLI certification. You can expect such certification on any motherboard with Nvidia chipsets and motherboards based on Intel’s X58 or P55 chipsets.

However, if you’re going to be taking the plunge with dual video cards, you do want to make sure that the specific games that you have been mind to play on a setup like this, do benefit from dual video cards. Not every game is programmed in such a way that it can take advantage of this much power.

You couldn’t buy a computer today that didn’t have sound built in. Every computer out there, whether it’s something you buy from a name brand or a machine that you build from the ground up with parts, you can be sure that there is going to be a Realtek high definition sound chip in there that’s good to go right out of the box.

So computer retailers really have their job cut out for them when they try to sell you a new computer sound card.

The first question you ask is, “Why on earth would I want that when I have a perfectly good soundcard built right into my computer?”.

If you have a PCI slot on your computer, you certainly have room for the discrete sound card. You’re supposed to buy and install a card in there the way you buy and install a separate graphics card for gaming purposes.

Now it’s extraordinarily difficult to convince computer buyers to upgrade with the discrete computer soundcard.

You certainly have it pointed out to you often enough in the ads that just because you have a CD player in a boombox, it doesn’t mean you wouldn’t appreciate the sound of a proper discrete CD player.

The difference is in the sound quality, of course. But in the matter of a sound card, there are differences that would come down entirely to function.

It’s like half of America is in a band – or at least, they like to experiment with playing and recording music by themselves right at home.

Music equipment is certainly cheap these days, and music software can turn any old computer into a fully-fledged multitrack recording studio. You just need to add a $100 USB music keyboard, and you would have nothing stopping you. Except your computer soundcard.

The thing is, that inbuilt sound cards or even cheap discrete sound cards, are only capable of playing recorded music well. They aren’t capable of producing music well. How so, you ask?

If you were using onboard sound or if you had a cheap Sound Blaster installed, if you tried to play a software instrument on your computer with it, every key you pressed, you’d hear a sound for it about a half second later.

In other words, you need a sound card that’s intended for music production. Look for something that is capable of ASIO software drivers.

And look for something that has as many pairs of inputs and outputs as you would wish to have separate software instruments playing at the same time.

Let’s say for second you have no interest in producing music. What if you’re just a gamer or someone who likes a little bit of entertainment?

Well, you’ll certainly notice how much richer and deeper and crisper the sound is when you plug your home theater system into discrete soundcard.

Do try that once. And since video games these days have sound design built into them that would put a big budget Hollywood blockbuster to shame, your gaming well benefit from a new computer sound card too.

It doesn’t even have to cost much. A professional $85 soundcard from a brand like M-Audio would do.

There are some parents that worry non-stop about how much time their children spend watching television and playing things like video and computer games. This is a relevant concern, because too much can be bad for children.

Some suggest that children under two have no screen time and then that it be limited from then on. However, you also have to think about the world in which they are going to live when they get older.

Computers are in almost every home and are common in most workplaces. Allowing your children some time to play computer games can actually be a wise investment in their future.

Many children today go into kindergarten knowing the basics of using a mouse and starting and using simple programs on a computer. In fact, they may start doing some work at that age on a computer while they are at school.

Teachers will help children that do not know what to do, but if your children have some limited interactions with computer games on your home PC, they will already know what do and they will already know that learning computer games at school are going to be just as fun as what they would do at home.

What you want to so is to find computer games for kids that have learning potential. Today, there are many of them on the market.

Most of them are made just to help children learn things like the alphabet, counting, colors, basic logic skills, and computer dexterity. Some are just for fun, but they end up having a learning element to them as well.

Some are generic and some are made with characters that your children may know from TV like the Wiggles, Sesame Street, or whatever it is that they love.

Parents should limit the time children are playing computer games, and if at all possible, play along with them. This can be hard when both parents work and time is limited, but if you play with them, you are on top of what they are learning in computer games and you also know when they are ready for something more advanced.

It is also easy to get lost in doing a chore while your child plays and they end up being on the computer longer than you intended. Some play is good, but they should have limits on time playing games and when watching TV.

Remember that as children get older they are going to want to find computer games online. There are plenty of good ones, but it is also easy for them to wander away to sites that you may not like.

See what you can do to put parental controls on your computer and also on popular sites like YouTube and Facebook. You want to know what they see and you want to know that they cannot find things that are well beyond their years.

If they cannot follow rules you set up while playing games, limit or cut out time as punishment. They’ll soon learn to follow your computer games and online activity rules.