TechPost

Today I was at my grandparents house and my grandpa was telling me how relieved he was that he was going to be able to switch from Earthlink to Comcast as his ISP(internet service provider.) It seems like a simple task to me but the problem wasn’t simply changing ISP’s, it was the fact that they had been using the same Earthlink email address for 15 years. They were finally able to make the change due to Earthlink allowing my grandparents to keep their email addresses for $3/month. How nice of Earthlink.

Many of you probably know/used to be/are AOL users that were in the same boat. I personally believe that you should NEVER use an email address that has been issued by your ISP. Using an ISP’s email address will either keep you locked into using them for service or force you to get a new address when you leave.

Okay, so what should you do? My personal email is handled by Gmail. Gmail is a great free service that is ad supported. Yahoo and Hotmail are also good services that I use. These are all large companies that will most likely continue to support email for years to come. The downside to using these services is the loss of privacy. To varying degrees these companies are keeping tabs on not only who you correspond with but what is in each email you send and receive. I have no problem with this, in Gmail it allows me to see ads that I may actually have an interest in rather than random advertising being displayed.

Solution Number Two: Get your own domain name and email hosting. This sounds expensive but you can do it for less than $20 a year. This option guarantees that no matter what happens, you are in charge of your email and your privacy.

If you are thinking about getting a free web based email account my favorite service is Google followed by Yahoo and then Hotmail. For a custom domain, you should take a look at GoDaddy. If you want to throw in a website with that domain name I recommend Hostgator.

The much anticapated new search engine powered by miscrosoft has gone live at http://www.bing.com.  I will be checking it out over the next few days and will give an updated report.

What year did NASA start using the shuttle? Not sure? Why dont you bing it!

I binged my professor and the results were interesting!

Are you confused or wondering what I am rambling on about? Well, I am just replacing terms we would normally use such as googled or google with binged and bing. Why would I do such a thing?  Bing is a new search engine that Microsoft is working on and it looks very interesting. Yes, MS actually has a product other than Windows 7 that appears to be something to get excited about.

The Bing service is not active yet but this video will give you an idea of what is in store for us.

The following is an email that MS CEO Steve Ballmer sent out to employees yesterday morning.

Today, at the D Conference in Carlsbad, CA, I’m announcing the release of Bing, our new search engine. This is an important milestone for Microsoft as search is a critical business for us and Bing is a significant step forward in redefining search and expanding our share of the online advertising market. But Bing is just the start. We know this is a journey that will require a long-term commitment to hard work and investment in innovation in order to be successful.

We have always believed that search offers huge opportunities for innovation. Currently, only one in four searches succeeds on the first try. And while search is pretty good for navigating the Web, it’s not good at helping people use the Web to accomplish more complicated decision-based tasks.

With Bing, our goal is to do more than just make it easier for people to find information. Today, we’re delivering a powerful set of tools that will enable people to make faster, more informed decisions.

In short, Bing is a decision engine that goes beyond what people have come to think of as search—and what our competitors offer today.

A new search product requires a name that clearly signals the arrival of something unique. We chose Bing because it’s short, memorable, and symbolic of the moment when information and opportunity come together and a simple search becomes an engine for taking action.

Today, we’ll begin launching Bing internally so Microsoft employees can have an exclusive preview. You’ll find improvements that showcase innovative engineering work, including tools that automatically organize, refine, and anticipate searches. We’re also delivering strong innovation in shopping, local search, travel, and health—the areas where people want to use the Web to help them make decisions that are important to their lives.

Next week, Bing will go live outside Microsoft at bing.com. I urge you to let your friends and family know that we have created a powerful new search engine that brings fresh innovation to their Web experience.

When Bing goes live you can find it on the web at http://www.bing.com

Brewing over in the Google labs is a new method for viewing current and dated news. The project is called Google News Timeline and it displays information chronologically in a  zoomable, graphical timeline. You can select sources such as the AP, New York Times, Fox Sports or even magazines. I did a search for Popular Science and magazine covers for every issue popped up in the timline. Another interesting feature is the ability to go back in time and see what the big stories were, I put in my birth year and saw some interesting facts from the day I was born. Go check it out and let me know what you think.

Google News Timline can be found on the web at http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com

What if you could connect to the internet and be warned about sites that may harm your computer, or block site categories such as illegal gaming, porn, or “time wasters”? What if you could also block individual websites, view usage reports, and connect to websites faster? Well, a free service does exist that does all the above and more.

OpenDNS is a service that routes all the DNS requests from your network instead of using the service that your ISP provides. Setup is very easy to do and can be accomplished in less than 5 minutes.

To get started go to www.opendns.com and register for a free account. This is very simple and straightforward, the second step is the most complex part of this process.

After you have registered you need to log into your router and change the Static DNS 1 and Static DNS 2 to the ip addresses provided which are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. Save your new settings and you are done. During the sign up process you can review instructions on how to do this with your specific router.

You may find that some sites you visit are now being blocked but you can easily go into the Dashboard at the opendns.com site and make changes until you find a good balance.

OpenDNS can be found on the web at http://www.opendns.com/