The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released a statement yesterday titled Court Ruling Will Expose Viewing Habits of YouTube Users.

The statement was in response to a federal court ruling requiring Google to hand over YouTube customer data to ViaCom. Google will provide ViaCom with a list of all YouTube customers and records on every video they have ever watched on YouTube.

Privacy advocates like the EFF are outraged — but I believe they are completely missing the point here.

ViaCom possessing this data is not significantly different than Google possessing this data. If Google didn’t want to hand over this data, they should not have recorded it. Google has no legitimate business reason for maintaining this intrusive level of detail about YouTube members.

Public libraries periodically destroy records of which books their members have checked out. This protects their members in case of a data breach by either hackers or nosy government busybodies. Google should have the same respect for individual privacy as a public library.

Unfortunately, Google’s “Do No Evil” mantra appears to be nothing more than a marketing slogan.

Bruce over at Aardvark Daily has written a nice article titled The great run your car on water scam.

The article highlights the efforts of a group of Internet marketers to con people into believing that they can violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics by using power from their car to extract hydrogen from water — which they can then use to power their cars. It’s a classic perpetual motion machine and not only does it not work but, scientifically speaking, it can not work.

Bruce also created this nice YouTube video to promote his article.

Because you bring it anywhere with you, your PDA contains a whole lot of information. In one meeting, you have probably created lengthy video presentations. For another, you have created word documents and spreadsheets. During your travels, whether it is business or personal, you’ve probably taken a whole gamut of pictures to remember the momentous and memorable trips. Surely, your PDA is getting all congested with the information you are feeding it with. If you find yourself in a similar case, it’s about time you give your PDA a refreshing clean up.

Before deleting anything in your PDA, an important thing to remember is that you have to make sure that you back up all your files in a CD, a DVD or an external hard drive. It’s always better if you know that you will be able to retrieve information anytime you need them again.

Let’s start with the files that occupy the largest space in your PDA’s. Nothing will occupy your storage more than audio, video and picture files. If you think that you are not going to be watching those videos in the near future, save them in a CD or DVD, and delete them from your PDA. If you want to take a look at pictures every now and then, only retain those that you consider your favorites. Your PDA can only take so much.

Another of those storage-hungry files is the applications that you download into your PDA. As their number in your PDA grows, you should start considering which of them are still beneficial, and which ones aren’t anymore. Having a lot of applications stored clogs and slows down your PDA. So if you have observed that you reboot your PDA more often that you should, then its time to clean up some of those old applications.

As you meet and transact with more people, your list of contacts is also growing day by day. So as the year end approaches, it is good to look back at all those that you have accumulated and delete the ones that you think you no longer need to access.

If you have to juggle so many tasks, you might also be accumulating a lot of them in your PDA than you will ever accomplish. Take a look at them and delete those that you are no longer committed to do, or those that you have already achieved.

In regards to your calendar, before deleting your records, consider first how much history you would need to look back to. It may be as short as a few months, or even as long as a year. There are some who need to look back at the dates when they were able to accomplish the important responsibilities. Only keep those that you need.

Although cleaning up your PDA might also takes some time, doing so will definitely reduce the hassle and the headache in the long run. It may seem tedious, but the benefits for you and your PDA will be all worth it.

Our taste for mobile computers has been tremendously changing. Back then, we were choosing the flashy, extra complicated ones. Then, we are starting to appreciate practicality and ease of use. However, the drastic change hasn’t stop there. We are now also looking at items that offer other features as such security, expandable memories and longer battery life for our mobile computers.

On the other hand, our desire to add more accessories to our beloved mobile computers shouldn’t only be equated to being fashionable. Although flair in design still counts a lot, shoppers also want practicality taken in consideration, so products that give users the experience just like they are using their own desktop PCs have the extra edge.

While there are a number of shoppers who are still seeking multimedia fixes such as video cameras and speakers, chart-topper products are devices that improve the overall performances of the mobile computers.

As one of the key accessories, extra storage for the mobile computer allows the user to create, share and store more information. At the same time, extra storage also allows the mobile computers to maintain an acceptable level where the system can run smoothly and efficiently without being clogged up. If you’re asking what you should buy, it actually depends on what you need. For simply transferring files from your mobile computer to a bigger storage while expanding space just a little, then a flash drive is all it takes. However, if you need larger storage, an external hard drive might be necessary. You shouldn’t be taken aback because external hard drives are now made to become compact and easy to carry around. Also, you should check whether you need a storage device that is compatible with a Mac and Windows. This may become beneficial if you need to transfer files from one device to another.

Another key accessory that is a recognized top seller is the battery charger. Instead of buying spare batteries which are rather expensive, shoppers are opting to have spare chargers in places where they most frequent. They figured out that this will save them much trouble during the times that their battery empties out and there’s just still some important thing that needs to be done on their mobile computer.

Shoppers are also on the look out to make the use of their mobile computers, especially PDA’s, a whole lot easier. This is why the popularity of foldable keyboards that are still very easy to bring around with various shades of colors has been observed to be rising. And now, at a time of heightened security, there is also a strong demand for security devices for laptops.

If you’re wondering where to get one of these best selling mobile computer accessories of all shapes and sizes, try looking over the internet. Some websites would even help you sort out the most inexpensive products from among two or three choices. You can also find unbiased reviews, detailed product description and advice to make sure you make the right choice with your purchase.

This is the second part of our Camcorders Review Series. This second camcorder model is a budget camcorder for those people who don’t want to spend a fortune on a camcorder — the Canon MV890.

Just because it is cheap it doesn’t mean it is not very good it has a widescreen and a 22x optical zoom for filming those special family moments. The 2.7inch LCD screen won’t let you down either. The footage is recorded on MiniDV tapes for easy storage. The camcorder is easy shooting so anyone can make home videos in an instant. With just 6 buttons you need to learn to use. The camcorder is light at only 380g and is very balanced. The sliding lens cover protects the most important part of a camera, the lens, so it doesn’t get damaged. You can capture all of the atmosphere as well as to record your own voice-overs explaining what is going on, using external microphone plugged-in to the MV890.

The 22x optical zoom on the camera means you can zoom in 22 times on a picture or video you are filming, it is perfect for zooming in on something far away. For example if you are standing on a mountain and you want to take a picture of a town which is far away you can zoom in and get a closer picture. The 2.7inch widescreen means everything you film will be exactly the same on a widescreen TV you will know the perspective of the things you are filming. The large screen is great for framing and on-the-go playback. The MiniDV tapes are video cassette tapes. They are small so they are easily stored and they can hold 60-90 minutes of footage which is a lot far the small 1.99GBP price you have to pay for the 60 minute tapes. The bad thing about the tapes is that you need a Mini DV player to play the tapes the tape player is about 299GBP which is very expensive.

At 380g the camcorder the camera is very light so you won’t be carrying around a heavy camcorder or while you are filming have to put it down to rest you are s it is so heavy. The camera has a strong strap so it won’t fall off easily. It is balanced so it won’t tip out of your hand when you are filming. The sliding lens cover is a very important part of the camera if you didn’t have one of these you could easily damage you camera lens which would ruin the whole experience of filming, the lens cover stops this.

Overall I think this Camcorder is very good for its price, although it is more suited for beginners and not for people who know how to use one. The Camcorder is cheap but the Mini DV player is quite expensive it might be better getting a camcorder with a DVD to store the films. Overall I give this Camcorder a 6/10.

I use Microsoft Project to plan and schedule my major projects. One of my newest projects presented a challenge. This project requires the input of dozens of contributors — none of who have licenses for Microsoft Project. Microsoft Project isn’t cheap, so a new alternative had to be found.

Luckily, the folks at Projity have released OpenProj, a free alternative to Microsoft Project.

As a seasoned Microsoft Project user, OpenProj took zero training time for me to adjust too. All of the controls were easily found in reasonable locations. Except for the improved performance, I barely noticed that I wasn’t using Microsoft Project.

OpenProj is available for the Windows, Unix, and Macintosh platforms. I am running Ubuntu and I was able to install their Debian package with one simple dpkg command.

If your organization is planning medium and larger projects, I highly recommend that you give this application a try.

LectureFox is a nice aggregator site which tracks university lectures which are posted online. All of these lectures can be viewed for free by anyone with an Internet connection.

The lectures come from prestigious universities such as MIT, Yale, Tufts, the University of Washington, Caltech, UCLA, UCSD, Vanderbilt, the University of Virginia, Carnegie Mellon, the University of Edinburgh, Harvard, Oxford, and more.

Some of the lectures are available in video, while others are available as podcasts.

The lectures are divided into five categories:

• Physics
• Chemistry
• Computer science
• Mathematics
• Faculty mix

If you have a love of learning and no interest in academic politics, these lectures could be the answer for you.

Recently, I had the opportunity to try out managed spam filtering services that are designed to provide email security to small and medium business. After doing some research, I came across an “in the cloud” spam blocker service called “MX Police.” To filter spam “in the cloud” means to filter mail before it reaches your mail server. Filtering mail before it reaches your network enables you to drastically reduce the drain on your resources and increase the security of your network.

Installation of MX Police was painless. We provided MX Police with our domain name and current mail server, and MX Police set up our account right away. All that remained at that point was to cut over the DNS records, which allowed MX Police to filter our mail. The process for cutting over the DNS took less than five minutes, and our mail was filtered almost immediately.

Within the first 24 hours, I noticed a dramatic decrease in the amount of mail being passed on to our mail server. I do not have the exact numbers, but I would estimate we were using around half the bandwidth we used previously. This made sense, as about 85% of our mail is typically spam.

MX Police delivered a quarantine message to each user at 6pm on Monday through Friday. This message contained a list of emails currently in the spam quarantine for the day, with a one-click release to my Inbox. Not a single legitimate message was flagged as spam during our evaluation, so we never needed to release any messages from the quarantine.

Before using MX Police, I was averaging over 100 spam messages per day to my account. During the 38-day evaluation period, I received only 3 or 4 spam messages in total. I am impressed with that figure, especially considering no legitimate correspondence was tagged as spam.

Besides the five-minute set up, we did not have to perform any administration at all. There are no knobs or dials to tweak, and there was no hardware or software to manage. During the evaluation, all that was required was our domain name. Near the end of the evaluation, they requested a list of all email addresses in order to update the system and “lock” it down.

Exporting email addresses was quite easy with the MX Police Exchange export tool. We ran the command on our Exchange server, and they updated their database with the email addresses. From that point on, we just let them know when we needed a new email address added, and they updated their database accordingly.

After setting up the individual email addresses, they told us to lock our firewall to only accept mail from their networks. This is a great idea because it prevents spammers from attempting to bypass the security and send mail directly to our servers. Spammers will often cache DNS records for 30 days or more, so the sooner you import your email addresses, the better the system works.

If your business requires spam filtering, I give MX Police two thumbs UP!

A new brand evolution of speakers is now being marketed by Apple. They are called iLit Wave Color Changing Speakers. It is also called the iLit Speaker System. They are a 28xm x 10cm x 6cm. It’s not just about sound anymore. It’s all about light, hearing music and seeing it glow in different rooms and it only weighs 1.5 kilogram.

This Speaker System looks just beautiful in daylight and looks just awesome in the dark. This exclusive glow in the dark speaker allows you to listen to your favorite songs in the night and allows you to have a great light show in your room as well. The patterns that this iLit gives is awesome, if one is using this speaker in the dark, this can provide safety as it glows so the person won’t trip trying to turn their off their music.

This gives you a light show and a sound show! This glow in the dark speaker includes over 200 different color combinations. Also you can even manually change the device to show only one color. Great for any purpose, change the color that suits the purpose and then you will be able to feel like home! Set the patterns to match the rhythm of your sound of wherever you are! For example, when you’re in your basement you can make the pattern seems like your secret hideout. Also if you are really in love with a color, change the only color to that color and you’ll slowly fall in love with this speaker. With 11 different volumes, one can crank it up for a huge party of use a small volume for a sleeping song. This is just some more options to the 200 different color combinations, they single color ability and the multiple rhythms and pattern that iLit Wave Color Changing Speakers allow. This speaker is also designed in a special design, not like normal speakers that are just a block up but the sides of the speaker is wavy so it adds to the effect of lights that is it used. Also you can hook up your iPod to this speaker to play songs from your iPod directly!

The price for this iLit Speaker System is only £39.99 which is about $64 USD. The price is a bit high so this gadget gets a rating of 7/10. Why a high rating for such a high price? Like mentioned before, 11 different volume levels and over 200 different color and many different options. Many of my friends have this product and they really loved this product because they could change everything to things that they like and play around with it. It took them a while to get used to it but after they have gotten used to it, they started using it on a daily basis. The rating would have been 8/10 but the price was higher than the expected price of this product so therefore it was dropped to 7/10.

If you are planning on creating a quality layout design for mobile devices, the general rule of thumb for it to work is that focus shouldn’t only be placed in creativity, but also on usability. To make this combination means identifying what information is necessary, and then presenting that information in the clearest, most concise manner which users will find easy to navigate.

To get maximum results, there are three main things that every designer should know and follow in designing pages for handheld and mobile devices. First, the design should avoid clutter and maximize screen use. Second, it should minimize page length. Third, the designer should resist incorporating graphics that reduce the readability of the content.

In particular, it is much easier for the designer for mobile devices and PDAs if he can reference to an existing website. With regards to this consideration, there are following reminders that you could use to determine if the interface design for the PDA version of your website is creative and effective.

The first rule is to reduce the necessity for the user to scroll down in order to view the page completely. A lot of mobile devices have small screens, and are therefore limited when it comes to presenting information at one time. If there are large amount of information that needs to be viewed, it would require the user some amount of scrolling which may reduce his concentration. The designer therefore has to make sure that the entire page length would fit the screen.

Unlike desktop computers, navigation in PDAs or mobile phones is a much difficult feat. Therefore, the PDA version must only have three or four levels of navigation as the maximum level although the desktop version might have more. Having navigation levels more than these might only confuse the user.

However, even though the navigation level is kept at a minimum, it should still reflect the structure of the existing website so that the PDA version can easily create its identity in the user’s mind. Users shouldn’t feel alienated whether they are browsing a site from their PDAs or their desktops. In the same way, the design and the layout of the content should also adopt that of the existing website.

In a mobile environment, users also have to deal with a lot of distractions compared to when they are using their desktop computers. Given the very limited short-term memory of the PDA compared to a desktop PC or a laptop, the design should require very few memorizations from the PDA to perform a task. Otherwise, the PDA’s performance would be slowed down and the attention of the user will be lost.

As devices are becoming smaller, using only text as inputs or outputs might limit the capabilities of the hand-held device. Therefore, considering the possibility of having speech and sounds as inputs or outputs for the PDA version of a website as substitutes for texts or even graphics can also be an effective solution to address the need for creativity and usability.