40Tech

Okay, so hands up if you’ve heard of RockMelt.

If you are one of the people who put up your hand — stop that. This is text and I can’t see you. Know, however, that you are quite possibly more connected and in tune with the techieverse than your now shame-faced tech-writer. Somehow, for reasons unknown to all but the almighty Goog itself, my keenly developed tech senses missed this wonder entirely! But, that’s all behind me, now. I’ve seen the light, got an invite, and have been playing with the world’s latest, greatest — and Google Chrome based — social browser for several days now.

Here’s what I’ve discovered:

Cookies. We have a love hate relationship with them. They track what we do and report all kinds of information back to the site that generated them — and to third parties as well, in many cases. But they also often provide a better user experience, keeping track of our preferences and removing small annoyances like having to sign in to a website every single time we open it up. Unfortunately, as is the case with most things on the internet regarding your privacy and security, the only completely effective way to protect yourself is to simply turn the potential problem off. The only problem with this course of action is that turning off cookies also has the effect of making a huge part of the web practically unusable.

So what to do about it? Well, if you use Google Chrome, try out Disconnect.

How many of you have had that moment in time when you need to share a file (big or small) with someone who just shuts down when introduced to new technology? Tools like Dropbox, while they make obvious sense to anyone who traffics in such things, will, in many cases, be responsible for blank stares, open derision, and comments like “can’t you just mail me a CD?” Alas, not everyone has made it to our little techie corner of the world.

Ge.tt is going to solve that little problem for us all.

One of the big news stories last week was the hacking of Gawker Media’s servers. As part of the attack, user accounts were compromised on Gawker sites, including Lifehacker and Gizmodo. More than 500,000 user emails and 185,000 decrypted passwords were posted online.  If you’re not sure which account you used on a Gawker site, and want to determine if your account might have been compromised, there’s a tool for that.

It was my birthday the other day. I turned 35. Yep, 35, and I write for a blog called 40Tech. I’m mature for my age, ok? Either way, I was feeling pretty good about myself that day. 35 years old is young, right? Well, that’s what I thought until I saw this video by Accenture that has little kids explaining cloud computing.

I now feel positively ancient. Video after the jump.

I don’t know about you, but I rarely even look at a Craigslist post that doesn’t have a photo of the product attached to it. I don’t see the point. If someone doesn’t take the time to take a photo of what they’re selling, I simply don’t trust it — and I really don’t want to drive to wherever that person lives for a first look at my potential purchase, you know? Spotli has made my life easier by providing a visual search tool for Craigslist and other places to buy online.

Whether due to failing eyesight or website clutter, some websites can be difficult to read.  If you find yourself in that situation, here are some tools and methods for making a site easier to read.  Some of these tools work by stripping away extraneous material, others make the text of a site larger, and some do a combination of the two.

Are we approaching the day where remote access software will be meeting its grim reaper – the cloud?  A few months ago, we compared LogMeIn and Teamviewer, two popular choices for accessing your PC when away from home or the office.  How often do you need to access your PC remotely, though?  Now that we now live in a cloud-based world, where we let third parties manage our data, how will consumer remote access products survive?

Internet Explorer has been slowly but steadily losing ground in the “browser wars” since the invention of that little hot little canine browser, Firefox. Google Chrome shook up the market even more and is continuing what’s considered to be a fast upward climb. Safari is Safari, and Opera is largely underestimated.

In the article I read about IE’s plummet, on Mashable, the tone was very much in the negative for Internet Explorer, citing phrases such as “to little, to late” and “Hail Mary” in reference to the coming improvements of IE9. Now, I am no fan of Internet Explorer (my web-designer-self hates it with a furious feral fire), and no disrespect intended to the knowledgeable minds over at Mashable, but I think a little bit of perspective may be called for.

Does your blood boil when you see a company gouge its consumers?  In a world with competition, that wouldn’t be such a big deal.  The free market would rule, and consumers could just move on to a competitor.

That isn’t always possible, though, in a world where, for a variety of reasons, monopolies or pseudo-monopolies exist.  In some situations, you have to suck it up and accept a company’s onerous terms, or not play ball at all.  Here are three markets desperately in need of more competition.