Fremont Public Library

Website Down, Link for Online Catalog

2010-12-07T13:54:00.003-06:00

Due to our website being temporarily down, if you need access to the catalog to search for materials, please copy and paste the link below in your address bar. We apologize for any inconvenience.

http://64.107.155.140/uhtbin/cgisirsi/Fremont/x/0/57/49?user_id=mukibistro&password=ibistro

2010 Midwest Booksellers' Choice Awards Announced

2010-08-25T17:23:00.002-05:00

The winners of the 2010 Midwest Booksellers' Choice Awards, sponsored by the Midwest Booksellers Association and chosen by member bookstores, are:
Fiction: A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
Nonfiction: The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women & a Forty-Year Friendship by Jeffrey Zaslow
Poetry:The Chain Letter of the Soul: New and Selected Poems by Bill Holm
Children's Picture Book: Otis by Loren Long
Children's Literature: Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Honor Books: are:
Fiction: Driftless by David Rhodes
Nonfiction: Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François
Poetry: Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude edited by Jim Perlman, Deborah Cooper, Mara Hart, Pamela Mittlefehldt
Children's Picture Book: Moose on the Loose by Kathy-jo Wargin, illustrated by John Bendall-Brunello
Children's Literature: Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman

Shamus Award Nominees

2010-08-20T16:51:00.002-05:00

The Shamus Award is given annually by the Private Eye Writers of America to honor excellence in the private investigator genre. The winner will be announced at this year's Bouchercon in October. The nominees are:
Best PI Hardcover:
The Silent Hour by Michael Koryta
Where the Dead Lay by David Levien
Locked In by Marcia Muller
Schemers by Bill Pronzini
My Soul to Take by Yrsa Sigurdardottir
Best First PI Novel:
Loser's Town by Daniel Depp
The Last Gig by Norman Green
The Good Son by Russel D. McLean
Faces of the Gone by Brad Parks
Chinatown Angel by A. E. Roman

2010 Chicago Tribune Literary Prize

2010-08-10T09:14:00.002-05:00

Sam Shepard has won with the 2010 Chicago Tribune Literary Prize for lifetime achievement. Tribune editor Gerould Kern said, "In selecting Shepard, we recognize his significant influence on American culture. He transcends boundaries of form, with his talent stretching from the stage to page." Shephard is the Renaissance man: playwright, screenwriter, author, stage and film director, musician, songwriter and actor. He has received a Pulitzer Prize (Buried Child,, Drama Desk and Obie Awards, and Tony nominations for his playwriting; an Oscar nomination for his film acting (The Right Stuff); a British Academy of Film and Television Arts,BAFTA, nomination for his screenwriting (Paris, Texas); and Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations for his television acting. "Sam Shepard is the premiere dramatist of rural America," Tribune theater critic Chris Jones said. "His work chronicles wide-open spaces, domestic dysfunction and long, brooding silences on the prairie." Shepard joins an illustrious group of Literary Prize winners which includes 2009 winner Tony Kushner, Arthur Miller, Tom Wolfe, August Wilson, Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, E.L. Doctorow and David McCullough.
The Chicago Tribune honored the 2010 Heartland Prizes recipients Rebecca Skloot for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (nonfiction) and E.O. Wilson for Anthill (fiction) Skloot told the Tribune that the award is her first for the book. "I was absolutely ecstatic when I found about it. I was very humbled to be in (the previous winners') company." The past two recipients of the non-fiction Heartland Prize were Nick Reding's Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town and Garry Wills Head and Heart: American Christianities. Anthill is the 81-year-old biologist/naturalist's debut novel. He has had a notable career, winning two Pulitzer Prizes (for On Human Nature, and The Ants, with Bert Holldobler. Wilson told the Tribune: "The greatest surprise and the greatest pleasure from getting the Heartland award is that it's for fiction. For 43 years I've been publishing non-fiction. I thought I'd never publish anything else. But I had one novel in me." The previous two winners of the fiction Heartland Prize were Jayne Anne Phillips' Lark & Termite and Aleksandar Hemon's The Lazarus Project.

National Public Radio Top 100 Thrillers

2010-08-07T12:40:00.002-05:00

The National Public Radio, NPR, audience nominated some 600 novels to the NPR "Killer Thrillers" poll and cast more than 17,000 ballots. The final roster of winners is diverse, varying in style and period from Dracula to The Da Vinci Code, Presumed Innocent to Pet Sematary. What these top 100 titles share, however, is that all of them are fast-moving tales of suspense and adventure. Who is the NPR audience's favorite thriller writer? It's the King, of course — Stephen King, who landed six titles in the top 100. Lee Child comes next, with four winning books. And, at three titles each, Michael Crichton, Dennis Lehane, Dan Brown and Stieg Larsson tie for third.
The top Thrillers are:
1. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
3. Kiss the Girls by James Patterson
4. The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
5. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
6. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
7. The Shining by Stephen King
8. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
9. The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
10. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
11. Dracula by Bram Stoker
12. The Stand by Stephen King
13. The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver
14. Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
15. Angels & Demons by Dan Brown
16. A Time to Kill by John Grisham
17. The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
18. Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
19. The Day of the Jackal by Daphne Maurier
21. Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett
22. It by Stephen King
23. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
24. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
25. Jaws by Peter Benchley
26. The Alienist by Caleb Carr
27. Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
28. Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow
29. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
30. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
31. No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
32. Gone Baby Gone by Dennis Lehane
33. Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith
34. Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
35. Subterranean by James Rollins
36. Clear and Present Danger by Tom Clancy
37. Salem's Lot by Stephen King
38. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
39. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carre
40. The Poet by Michael Connelly
41. The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin
42. Cape Fear by John MacDonald
43. The Bride Collector by Ted Dekker
44. Pet Sematary by Stephen King
45. Dead Zone by Stephen King
46. The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon
47. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carre
48. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
49. Tell No One by Harlan Coben
50. Consent to Kill by Vince Flynn
51. The 39 Steps by John Buchan
52. Blowback by Brad Thor
53. The Children of Men by P.D. James
54. 61 Hours by Lee Child
55. Marathon Man by William Goldman
56. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
57. 206 Bones by Kathy Reichs
58. Psycho by Robert Bloch
59. The Killing Floor by Lee Child
60. Rules of Prey by John Sandford
61. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
62. In the Woods by Tana French
63. Shogun by James Clavell
64. The Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
65. Intensity by Dean Koontz
66. Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
67. Metzger's Dog by Thomas Perry
68. Timeline by Michael Crichton
69. Contact by Carl Sagan
70. What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman
71. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
72. The Cabinet of Curiosities by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
73. Charm School by Nelson DeMille
74. Feed by Mira Grant
75. Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child
76. Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
77. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
78. The First Deadly Sin by Lawrence Sanders
79. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
80. The Brotherhood of the Rose by David Morrell
81. Primal Fear by William Diehl
82. The Templar Legacy by Steve Berry
82. The Hard Way by Lee Child [tie]
84. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
85. Six Days of the Condor by James Grady
86. Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler
87. Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
88. The Eight by Katherine Neville
89. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
90. Goldfinger by Ian Fleming
91. Bangkok 8 by John Burdett
92. The Kill Artist by Daniel Silva
93. Hardball by Sara Paretsky
94. The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte
95. The Deep Blue Good-by by John MacDonald
96. The Monkey's Raincoat by Robert Crais
96. Berlin Game, by Len Deighton [tie]
98. A Simple Plan by Scott Smith
99. Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
100. Heartsick by Chelsea Cain

2010 RITA Awards

2010-08-03T11:41:00.002-05:00

The Romance Writers of America recently announced the winners of the 2010 RITA awards:
Inspirational Romance: The Inheritance by Tamera Alexander
Novel With Strong Romantic Elements: The Lost Recipe for Happiness by Barbara O'Neal
Romance Novella: "The Christmas Eve Promise" by Molly O'Keefe in The Night Before Christmas
Contemporary Series Romance: A Not-So-Perfect Past by Beth Andrews
Contemporary Series Romance Suspense/Adventure: The Soldier's Secret Daughterr by Cindy Dees
Historical Romance: Not Quite a Husband by Sherry Thomas
Regency Historical Romance: What Happens In London by Julia Quinn
Paranormal Romance: Kiss of a Demon King by Kresley Cole
Romantic Suspense: Whisper of Warning by Laura Griffin
First Book: One Scream Away by Kate Brady
Contemporary Single Title Romance: Too Good To Be True by Kristin Higgins
Young Adult Romance: Perfect Chemistry by Simone Elkeles

Auel's Final Book in Earth's Children to be published in March 2011

2010-08-02T14:38:00.002-05:00

Author Jean M. Auel's prehistoric book series, Earth's Children, will end with the sixth and final novel to be published in 2011. Auel's U.K. publisher Hodder & Stoughton has announced that The Land of Painted Caves will be published March 29 next year. Auel started her series in 1980 with The Clan of the Cave Bear, in which an orphaned Ayla, a Cro-Magnon, is adopted by a group of Neanderthals. The book was turned into a movie in 1986 starring Daryl Hannah.

Crime Writers' Association International Dagger Award

2010-07-29T12:24:00.001-05:00

Johan Theorin's The Darkest Room has won the Crime Writers' Association's International Dagger award for a crime novel that has been translated into English. Judges called the novel "impossible to reduce... to ghost story, a police procedural or a gothic tale." Theorin bested a shortlist that included Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, Tonino Benacquista's Badfellas, Andrea Camilleri's August Heat, Arnaldur Indridason's Hypothermia and Deon Meyer's Thirteen Hours.

Man Booker Longlist

2010-07-28T09:37:00.002-05:00

The longlist for the Man Booker Prize for fiction has been announced. Chair of judges Andrew Motion said, "Here are thirteen exceptional novels--books we have chosen for their intrinsic quality, without reference to the past work of their authors. Wide-ranging in their geography and their concern, they tell powerful stories which make the familiar strange and cover an enormous range of history and feeling. We feel confident that they will provoke and entertain." The shortlist will be announced September 7, with the winner revealed on October 12. This year's longlist:
Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey
Room by Emma Donoghue
The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore
In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
The Long Song by Andrea Levy
C by Tom McCarthy
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
February by Lisa Moore
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
Trespass by Rose Tremain
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
The Stars in the Bright Sky by Alan Warner

2010 Dagger Awards

2010-07-24T15:15:00.003-05:00

The Crime Writers' Association,CWA,has announced the winners of several Dagger Awards. These include:
Dagger in the Library: Ariana Franklin, “the author of crime fiction whose work is currently giving the greatest enjoyment to library users”;
Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction: Ruth Dudley Edwards for Aftermath: The Omagh Bombing & the Families’ Pursuit of Justice;
International Dagger: Johan Theorin for The Darkest Room;
Short Story Dagger: Robert Ferrigno for "Can You Help Me Out There" (which appeared in Thriller 2);
Debut Dagger: Patrick Eden, for his noir tale "A Place of Dying."

New Franz Kafka Manuscripts Found

2010-07-22T10:56:00.002-05:00

On Tuesday an Israeli judge rejected a request for a gag order on the contents of a box containing manuscripts written by Franz Kafka. Most of the found documents are letters and manuscripts belonging to Kafka and Max Brod, Kafka's close friend and editor. The box also contains a never before seen handwritten manuscript of a Kafka short story. The handwritten manuscript is of great value since Brod edited Kafka's work. There are more safe deposit boxes to be opened; more documents and manuscripts of the two authors are expected to be found.

Pritzker Military Library Literature Award Announced

2010-07-21T13:47:00.000-05:00

The 2010 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing will be awarded in October to military historian and journalist Rick Atkinson, author of An Army at Dawn, The Long Gray Line, Crusade and many others. The $100,000 honorarium will be presented at the annual Pritzker’s Liberty Gala in Chicago on October 22. "The Pritzker Award recognizes: [A] living author for a body of work that has profoundly enriched the public understanding of American military history." A national panel of writers and historians -- including previous recipients James M. McPherson, Allan R. Millett, and Gerhard L. Weinberg -- reviewed nominations and definitive works submitted by publishers, agents, booksellers, and other professional literary organizations.

Tess Gerritsen's novels Adapted to TV

2010-07-20T09:56:00.002-05:00

The TV series, Rizzoli & Isles, based on Tess Gerritsen’s series of mystery novels, has started on TNT. The first show ranked as “the most watched ad-supported cable series launch of all time,” according to Deadline Hollywood. The TV series is largely based The Apprentice, book 2 of the series. The series, in order: 1. The Surgeon (2001); 2. The Apprentice (2002); 3. The Sinner (2003); 4. Body Double (2004);5. Vanish (2005); 6. The Mephisto Club (2006);7. The Keepsake (2008); 8. Ice Cold (2010)

50th Anniversary of Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird

2010-07-02T16:12:00.002-05:00

Published in 1960, Harper Lee's novel had been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than 30 million copies. HarperCollins is releasing a special 50th anniversary hard cover edition that includes the original art work. The book Scout, Atticus, and Boo by Mary McDonagh Murphy recently was published. It contains interviews with people sharing their memories of the novel and its author. HarperCollins has a campaign "50 years, 50 events", for more information, see www.ToKillAMockingbird50Year.com

2010 Locus Awards

2010-06-29T08:58:00.003-05:00

The winners of the 2010 Locus Awards, voted on by Locus magazine readers and announced on Saturday at the annual Science Fiction Awards Weekend:
Best science fiction novel: Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
Best fantasy novel: The City & The City by China Miéville
Best first novel: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
Best young adult novel: Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
Best novella: The Women of Nell Gwynne's by Kage Baker
Best novelette: "By Moonlight" by Peter S. Beagle in We Never Talk About My Brother
Best short story: "An Invocation of Incuriosity" by Neil Gaiman in Songs of the Dying Earth
Best magazine: Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Best publisher: Tor
Best anthology: The New Space Opera 2, edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan
Best collection: The Best of Gene Wolfe by Gene Wolfe
Best editor: Ellen Datlow
Best artist: Michael Whelan
Best nonfiction/art book: Cheek by Jowl by Ursula K. Le Guin

Legendary Chicago Bookseller Stuart Brent Dead at 98

2010-06-28T13:11:00.002-05:00

Stuart Brent, legendary bookseller in Chicago, died last week at the age of 98. He founded his first bookstore in 1946. A few years later, he opened Stuart Brent Books, which became a Chicago institution and closed in 1996. The Chicago blog of the University of Chicago Press called Brent "a bookseller of the most independent sort: well-read, opinionated, and willing (or more) to shape his customers' reading habits. Over the course of his fifty years in the business, bookselling became ever more concentrated in the mall stores, superstores, and virtual stores of billion dollar corporations. The books stocked in Stuart Brent Books were chosen by a personality, not an algorithm." The Chicago Sun Times wrote: "He was proud of his roots on the city's old West Side, where his Ukrainian parents taught Mr. Brent--then called Samuel Brodsky--folk tales, stories of shtetl life, and intellectual debate. Mr. Brent's love of reading came from his father, who devoured Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain and Yiddish authors." Brent wrote a memoir, Seven Stairs, named after his first bookstore. In a foreword for Seven Stairs, Saul Bellow wrote: "Stuart Brent is the Orpheus of Chicago booksellers, ready to challenge hell itself to bring a beautiful book back to Chicago and the light of its reading lamps."

Nobel Prize Winner Jose Saramago Dies

2010-06-18T09:14:00.003-05:00

Jose Saramago, the first Portugeses language winner of the Nobel Prize, has died after a long illness. His first novel, Country of Sin, was published in 1947. For the next 18 years, he worked as a journalist, publishing travel and poetry books. In the 1980s, Saramago became one of Portugal's best selling novelists. Perhaps his most known novel is Blindness . He has said that it addresses the world's "blindness of rationality." In the novel, the population of an unknown city is struck by a mysterious blindness. Chaos and societial breakdown ensues. The novel was made into a 2008 film starring Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo. Saramago critized his fellow man: "we're rational beings, but we don't behave rationally. If we did, there'd be no starvation in the world." He was outspoken and blunt, and his writing style was critized for its wordiness and lack of punctuation. His strong support ofCommunism also earned him criticism. His other books include: Baltasar and Blimunda, The History of the Siege of Lisbon, The Stone Raft, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ.

Nominees for Anthony Award Announced

2010-06-12T14:15:00.002-05:00

The nominees for the Anthony Award were announced on the Bouchercon2010 blog. Named for the late Anthony Boucher, the award winners, chosen by the attendees of the convention, will be announced this October during Bouchercon in San Francisco.
The nominees are:
Best Novel:
The Last Child by John Hart
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston
The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny
The Shanghai Moon by S. J. Rozan
Best First Novel:
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley
A Bad Day for Sorry by Sophie Littlefield
The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville
In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff
Best Paperback Original:
Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott
Tower by Ken Bruen and Reed Farrel Coleman
Quarry in the Middle by Max Allan Collins
Death and the Lit Chick by G. M. Malliet
Air Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan
Best Short Story:
"Last Fair Deal Gone Down" by Ace Atkins
"Femme Sole" by Dana Cameron
"Animal Rescue" by Dennis Lehane
"On the House" by Hank Phillippi Ryan
"Amapola" by Luis Alberto Urrea
Best Critical Non-Fiction:
Talking about Detective Fiction by P. D. James
The Line Up by Otto Penzler, ed.
Haunted Heart by Lisa Rogak
Dame Agatha's Shorts by Elena Santangelo
The Talented Miss Highsmith by Joan Schenkar

Mystery Writer Eleanor Taylor Brand Dies

2010-06-09T12:36:00.003-05:00

Eleanor Taylor Bland, author of 13 mystery books, died of cancer on June 2. Her series features African American Marti MacAlister as a tough streetwise homicide detective who lives in a suburb about thirty miles north of Chicago with her two children. Bland lived most of her life in Waukegan. Her support of the written word was legendary. She served on the board of the Waukegan Public Library and chaired the friends of the library. She mentored writers Libby Fischer Hellman and Michael Dymmoch and served as president of Sisters in Crime. Bland once commented that "the most significant contribution that we (African American women writers) have made, collectively, to mystery fiction is the development of the extended family; the permanence of spouses and significant others, most of whom don't die in the first three chapters; children who are complex, wanted and loved; and even pets." Bland received the Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award, the Chester A. Himes Mystery Fiction Award, and the Most Influential African American of Lake County Award. On her blog, Chicago author Sara Paretsky wrote: "Our world of writers, readers, humans is diminished....Grace under pressure, gallantry, these are the images that come to mind, and, always, a smile that warmed us to the core of our souls. May your memory be a blessing to those of us you’ve left behind."

New York Times Names 20 Authors Under 40 to Watch

2010-06-03T10:25:00.002-05:00

After a decade, the New York Times has presented a new list of authors under 40 that it describes as promising and "worth watching." The authors are Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chris Adrian, Daniel Alarcón, David Bezmozgis, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Joshua Ferris, Jonathan Safran Foer,Nell Freudenberger, Rivka Galchen, Nicole Krauss, Yiyun Li, Dinaw Mengestu, Philipp Meyer, C. E. Morgan, Téa Obreht, Z Z Packer, Karen Russell, Salvatore Scibona,Gary Shteyngart,and Wells Tower. In January, the newspaper's editors asked literary agents, publishers and other writers to suggest potential candidates. From those suggestions, the editors created a shortlist of about 40 eligible writers. A few well known writers, including Colson Whitehead and Dave Eggers, were not eligible due to their age. The shortlisted authors were required to submit new writing, such as a short story or an excerpt from a novel. Those who did not submit any writing were eliminated. The selected writers’ fiction will be printed in future New York Times magazines.
Adichie is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Purple Hibiscus and Half a Yellow Sun. Adrian,a pediatrician, is best known for his novel The Children's Hospital. In 2007, Alarcon's book Lost City Radio was selected as a best book of the year by many reviewers. Bezmozgis wrote Natasha and Other Stories, a collection vividly describing the ups and downs of immigrant life. Bynum's debut novel Madeleine is Sleeping was named a 2004 National Book Award Finalist. Ferris is best known for his novel, Then We Came to the End, a 2007 National Book Award Finalist. Foer's bestselling novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close received critical acclaim. Meyer's novel American Rust, a third person, stream of consciousness narrative, won several awards and was compared to James Joyce's work. It also made Newsweek's list of the Best of Books Ever. The New York Times selected Morgan's first novel All the Living for its Notable Books list; the title is from Ecclesiastes 9:3. In a rather surprising move, Obrent is on the list, yet her novel The Tiger's Wife will be published next year. However, excerpts have been published in the New Yorker. Chicago born Packer's short story collection, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, was a PEN/Faulkner Finalist. Critic Ben Marcus calls Karen Russell a "literary mystic"; she is best known for her short stroy collection St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. Scibona's debut novel The End won several awards, including National Book Award Finalist. Shteyngart is known for his vast imagination; his novels The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Absurdistan mix reality and absurdity. Tower's short story collection Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned reflects his belief that a writer "can be believably generous to a character, (a writer) can show somebody fumbling for redemption in a believable way."

Hammett Prize Winner Announced

2010-06-01T14:40:00.002-05:00

The North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers has awarded the Hammett Prize to The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry. The Hammett Prize is given annually to recognize excellence in the field of crime writing. Crime-writing is defined as any published work of adult fiction or narrative nonfiction that encompasses such areas as crime, suspense, thriller, mystery, or espionage. A collection of short stories by a single author would qualify. The winner receives a "Thin Man" trophy, designed by sculptor Peter Boiger. The Hammett Prize is named after Dashiell Hammett, the author of The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key, and The Thin Man.

Crime Writers' Association's Cartier Diamond Dagger Award to Val McDermid

2010-05-19T08:24:00.003-05:00

The Crime Writers' Association has awarded Scottish crime novelist Val McDermid this year's Cartier Diamond Daggar Award. This award acknowledges the work of an author who has made an outstanding contribution to the genre. McDermid describes her work as "Tartan Noir." Her characters/series are: journalist Lindsay Gordon, private investigator Kate Brannigan, psychologist Dr. Tony Hill and Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan. The show Wire in the Blood is based on McDermid's work.
In an interview, McDermid talks about mysteries and readers: "One should play fair with the reader, and give them the opportunity to figure it out for themselves. But in my experience, most crime fiction readers aren't just in it for the puzzle - they`re interested in the unfolding of the story. The more mysteries you read, of course, the more likely you are to guess what the ending will be, but if the book is well enough written, that isn't always a problem. However, I do like to think that I usually manage to provide a twist in the tail that will give my readers that gasp of shock or surprise at the end."

Winners of the Agatha Awards Announced

2010-05-16T16:12:00.001-05:00

Malice Domestic has announced the winners of the Agatha Awards, honoring the books best typified by the works of Agatha Christie and published during 2009.The winners are:

Best Mystery Novel: A Brutal Telling by Louise Penny
Best First Mystery Novel: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
Best Children's/Young Adult: The Hanging Hill by Chris Grabenstein
Best Short Story: "On the House" by Hank Phillippi Ryan (which appeared in Quarry: Crime Stories by New England Writers)
Best Non-Fiction: Dame Agatha's Shorts by Elena Santangelo

2010 Edgar Award Winners Announced

2010-05-12T11:19:00.002-05:00

The Mystery Writers of America named the following winners:
Best novel: The Last Child by John Hart
Best First Novel: In the Shadow of Gotham by Stepfanie Pintoff
Best Paperback Original: Body Blows by Marc Strange
Best Critical/Biographical: The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Stories of Their Greatest Detectives ed. by Otto Penzler.
Grand Master: Dorothy Gilman, the creator of the Mrs. Pollifax gentle mystery series.

Chicago Literary Hall of Fame

2010-04-22T09:17:00.002-05:00

The Chicago Sun Times Books Sunday, April 18, 2010, featured "The City of Big Writers" by Mike Thomas. Currently, there are efforts underway to create a Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. It will honor Chicago-connected living and dead literary giants. A panel of 18 Chicago writers chose 27 writers as nominees, and a panel of 5 will choose a final six. They will be inducted on May 1 during a benefit at Sanfilippo Estate in Barrington Hills. Tickets are $55 for Chicago Writers Association members and $65 for nonmembers, www.chicagoliteraryhof.org.
The nominees are: Jane Addams, Nelson Algren, Sherwood Anderson, Saul Bellow, Gwendolyn Brooks, Oscar Brown Jr., Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Callaway, Cyrus Colter, Theodore Dreiser, James T. Farrell, Edna Ferber, Leon Forrest, Lorraine Hansberry, Ben Hecht, Ernest Hemingway, Fenton Johnson, Norman MacLean, Edgar Lee Masters, Harriet Monroe, Franklin Rosemont, Mike Royko, Carl Sandburg, Shel Silverstein, Studs Terkel, Ida B. Wells, Richard Wright. Who would you choose?

100th Anniversary of Mark Twain

2010-04-21T11:16:00.002-05:00

The legendary author and humorist Mark Twain died 100 years ago today. In honor
of Twain, I offer a sampling of his wit:

"Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."
"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
"Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable."
"Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."
"The right word may be effective but no word was ever as effective as the rightly timed pause."
"Fiction is obliged to stick to the possibilities. Truth isn't."

The Fremont Public Library has all his books and many books about him. Here is a sample of his books available at the library: Mainly the Truth: Interviews with Mark Twain, Collected Short Stories of Mark Twain, Mark Twain on Travel,The Autobiography of Mark Twain , and of course, his famed Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Adventures of Mark Twain. What better way to honor Twain than by reading his books? Come to the library and check them out!

2010 Orange Prize Shortlist.

2010-04-20T09:14:00.001-05:00

The shortlist for the 2010 Orange Prize for fiction written by women features two debut novelists as well as "the seemingly unstoppable might of Hilary Mantel and Wolf Hall," the Guardian reported. The winner will be honored June 9 in London. Finalists are:
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
Black Water Rising by Attica Locke
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey.

2010 Pulitzer Prizes for Letters, Drama, and Music

2010-04-12T17:21:00.003-05:00

The winners in Letters, Drama, and Music are:
Fiction: Tinkers by Paul Harding. Finalists: Love in Infant Monkeys by Lydia Millet; In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin.
Drama: Next to Normal music by Tom Kitt, book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey. Finalists: The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity by Kristoffer Diaz, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo by Rajiv Joseph, In the Next Room by Sarah Ruhl.
History: Lords of Financeby Liaquat Ahamed. Finalists: Fordlandia by Greg Grandin,Empire of Liberty by Gordon S. Wood.
Biography: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T. J. Stiles. Finalists: Woodrow Wilson by John Milton Cooper, Jr.,Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey.
Poetry: Versed by Rae Armantrout. Finalists: Tryst by Angie Estes, Inseminating the Elephants by Lucia Perillo.
General Nonfiction: The Dead Hand by David E. Hoffman. Finalists: How Markets Fail by John Cassidy, The Evolution of God by Robert Wright.
Music: Violin Concerto by Jennifer Higdon. Finalists: String Quartet No. 3 by Fred Lerdahl, Steel Hammer by Julia Wolfe.

April is National Poetry Month

2010-04-01T14:29:00.003-05:00

Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux is clebrating 2010 National Poetry Month with a poetry blog, The Best Words in their Best Order, http://www.fsgpoetry.com. Some highlights: Publisher Jonathan Galassi discusses the state of poetry today and his favorite young poets; a listing of notable events and readings around the USA; the return of Poem a Day email, including works by Frederick Seidel, Dan Paterson, Maureen N. McLane, Tony Hoaglund, D.A.Powell, and Derek Walcott.

Author Neal Barrett Jr Honored

2010-03-31T09:43:00.002-05:00

Neal Barrett, Jr., will be honored as Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America during its 2010 Nebula Awards Weekend in May.
Barrett has published more than 50 novels and 70 shorter works His books include The Hereafter Gang, Through Darkest America, Dawn's Uncertain Light and Prince of Christler-Coke as well as the short story collections Perpetuity Blues, Slightly Off Center and A Different Vintage.
Barrett has observed: "Like many professional writers, I've written westerns, mystery-suspense, horror, noir, air war stories, the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, novelizations such as Judge Dredd, Barb Wire and Dungeons & Dragons. One of my all-time favorite jobs is writing comic books--I think I've turned out over a thousand pages by now. That's what writers do, you know--they often do what needs to be done. And I've found that a real pro puts everything he or she has into whatever project comes along. You name it. I can't tell you how many names besides mine are out there over the work I've done for a series or special projects."

2009 Stoker Awards

2010-03-30T16:34:00.002-05:00

The Horror Writers Association gave 2009 Stoker Awards to the following works:
Novel: Audrey's Door by Sarah Langan
First Novel: Damnable by Hank Schwaeble
Long Fiction: The Lucid Dreaming by Lisa Morton
Short Fiction: "In the Porches of My Ears" by Norman Prentiss
Anthology: He is Legend edited by Christopher Conlon
Collection: A Taste of Tenderloin by Gene O'Neill
Nonfiction: Writers Workshop of Horror by Michael Knost
Poetry: Chimeric Machines by Lucy A. Snyder
The award is named for Bram Stoker, author of Dracula. The tropy which resembles a miniature haunted house was designed by author Harlan Ellison and sculptor Steven Kirk. Lifetime Achievement Awards were given to Brian Lumley and William F. Nolan.

Printer Buying Basics

2010-03-29T13:36:00.000-05:00

Ready to buy a printer? These are the specs you need to understand to make an informed choice.

For a general discussion of the kinds of options you have, see "Major Printer Types Explained." And for advice to keep in mind when you go to the store, see "Shopping Smart."

Basic Printer Specs

Dots per inch (dpi): This number defines how many dots the printer can fit onto a square inch of paper. Due to baseline specs set long ago, all dpi numbers are a multiple of either 300 or 360--for example, 1200 dpi or 1440 dpi. The higher the maximum resolution, the more detailed an image the printer is capable of creating. Vendors use other technologies to stretch the capabilities of those dots, however, so the actual number is not quite as important as it used to be.

Engine speed: This number is usually expressed in pages per minute (ppm), and sometimes as characters (cpm) or images (ipm) per minute. In any case, check the claims carefully. Vendors often show performance numbers that reflect printing in draft mode, which is faster but not as good-looking as the standard-quality setting; or worse, they omit the initial processing time before the first page prints, which is an unavoidable part of every print job. An industry standard for "laser-comparable" printing has evened the playing field, and you'll see that spec on some printers. Note that print speed varies depending on the complexity of the job, too; printing complex graphics or on both sides of the page (duplexing) will slow your printer.

Internal memory: This spec will be expressed in kilobytes (KB) or megabytes (MB), if at all (most personal printers don't have any memory). Among business printers, the amount of standard internal memory is an indication of how much print data the machine can accumulate when a queue of jobs is waiting to print. How much is enough, and how much is too much? A low-end business printer might have anywhere from 32MB to 128MB of RAM, while higher-end machines will have 256MB to 512MB of RAM, and graphics-oriented printers might start with 1GB. If you have a very busy office, or if you print complex or graphics-intensive files, you will need more--sometimes a lot more. Check for a printer's maximum upgradable memory to make sure that the model has room to grow along with your needs

Monthly duty cycle: The specs for all business printers and most personal printers will include a number indicating the maximum number of pages the device can print per month without failing. The typical personal printer's duty cycle will be somewhere under 5000 pages, while a lower-end business printer will dwell in the 20,000-page range. Higher-end workhorses boast duty cycles of 100,000 or more pages. Your print volume should fall well below the duty cycle of the model you're considering--if it doesn't, look for a printer with an even higher limit (or expect your printer to poop out a lot sooner). The duty cycle number is also indicative of the printer's durability: The higher the duty cycle, the better-built it probably is.

Networking: A personal printer will always have a USB connection for use with one computer. An increasing number have integrated wireless, for use in a home among several wirelessly connected computers. A business printer will have an ethernet connection so that it can function on a network; some models might also have wireless capability for use in an appropriately equipped small office. Most business printers also have embedded Web pages or other tools for easier management over a network.

Paper-Handling Specs

Standard and optional input tray(s): The number of sheets your printer can take in its standard configuration should exceed the number of pages you print per day--ideally by a multiple of three or more, so you don‘t have to touch the tray more than once or twice a week. A personal printer typically holds 100 to 150 sheets of paper in a single tray, usually with no upgrades available. A business printer will hold 250 sheets of paper at a minimum, but higher-end models can accommodate 500 to 1000 or more pages in their standard or upgraded configurations. If you have a very busy office or you need to print on multiple sizes or types of paper, you will want multiple paper trays; make sure your chosen printer can accommodate such upgrades.

Multipurpose tray or manual feed slot: These features are designed to feed a single piece or a small quantity of thicker media, such as envelopes, through your printer. They are best for occasional use, as many require some fiddling before or after you print. If you want to print on a special stock all the time, look for a printer that can dedicate a tray to this task.

Duplexing: Two-sided printing, or duplexing, is a great feature because it can cut your paper costs in half and spare some trees. If that appeals to you, look for a model with automatic duplexing; the feature is available on some personal printers and many business printers. Some printers offer manual duplexing, with prompts that tell you how to rotate and reload the paper to print the second side; this approach is better than nothing, but it's a real hassle if you want to duplex all the time.

Next: Other Useful Features

Other Useful Features to Consider

Displays: Many personal printers and some business printers have small displays on their front control panels, to aid you in selecting menu options or communicating printer status. While the typical display might consist of one or two lines of character-based messages, higher-end and photo-oriented printers might have a full-color LCD, measuring anywhere from 1.5 inches to 7 or 8 inches in diagonal width--all the better to view and edit photos directly from the printer. In general, it's preferable to have any kind of display telling you something, rather than having to interpret the blinking and colors of a few lights for yourself. Color LCDs enhance the experience by offering better graphical capabilities and more room to show options. A few displays are also touch-sensitive, which feels more natural when you're navigating on-screen options.

Media-card slots and PictBridge ports: If you want to print photos on your inkjet, a model with integrated media slots or a PictBridge port provides convenience. But if you already have such ports on your computer, of course, you needn't bother duplicating them on your printer.

USB port: This connector lets you insert a USB flash drive and print directly from the drive. It is sometimes combined with a PictBidge port. Though it's a handy feature, it's best used in conjunction with security functions, so people can't simply walk up to the printer and mess with the device or your network through this port. (An IT friend of mine glues USB ports shut in his office--secure, but difficult to undo!)

Operating system compatibility: All printers work on the PC platform, but not all models offer equal support for the less-common Mac and Linux platforms. If you use multiple computer platforms in your environment, make sure that the printer has full-fledged drivers for all of them--and be sure to check for functionality differences.

1998-2010, PCWorld Communications, Inc.

Protect Your Facebook Privacy

2010-03-29T13:34:00.001-05:00

6 Steps to Protect Your Facebook Privacy
Harmeless quizzes and your choice of friends can reveal information that may be used against you; be aware.
Rosemary Hattersley, PC Advisor
Sunday, March 28, 2010 06:16 AM PDT
Whether you're a committed telephone addict, a tabloid aficionado, or a web surfer extraordinaire, we're sure you can't help but notice that every couple of days seems to bring another security scare. Scare stories make for good headlines, of course, but some affect you more than others. Such is the case with privacy -- something we're increasingly expected to manage for ourselves.

There are plenty of straightforward ways to claw back some peace of mind. As we outlined in our in-depth look at the latest online security threats, the little bits of information with which we furnish web apps can be collectively turned against us.

A good example is the Facebook app that asks what single topped the charts the day you were born. I don't mind admitting that my answer to this is one of those dated comedy tracks. But I'm not about to amuse Facebook's entire London network (several million-strong and counting) with its details, particularly when doing so narrows down my date of birth to a seven-day period. How many guesses does a hacker need to correctly ascertain and make use of my date of birth (DOB) on an official form, such as applying for a credit card? Not many, given those odds.

Changes to Facebook's interface now promote the idea of searching, Friends Reunited-style, for old acquaintances based on school years. Again, you're semi-publicly drilling down into the detail and then proudly displaying the results.

If you and five of your friends all went to the same school, it takes only one person to list their DOB for a snoop to reasonably deduce that you were all in the same school year.

Don't even get me started on the dangers of posting your full address, phone numbers, and myriad other details that only true friends should be privy to. And it's no better if you have a blog and post the information there. Web crawlers will happily serve it all up on a platter to anyone who knows how to use a search engine skilfully.

It's great to share; it's even better to check first who you're sharing it with.

Plug Facebook information leaks

Step 1. Click Account at the top right and choose Account Settings from the drop-down menu. From here, you can swap your existing password for a stronger alphanumeric one. It's also a good idea to remove your maiden or middle names if you included them at registration.

Step 2. Click the Networks tab to check you're happy with the sharing settings for any network you may have joined. You're no longer required to join a network, however, so you may prefer to remove yourself from it altogether. Also consider unlinking your Twitter and MySpace accounts, your personal blog and so on.

Become a fan of PC Advisor

Security Advisor

Step 3. The Privacy Settings are equally important; they're also under the Account menu. Facebook has tightened up some of its defaults, but it's wise to check what you're sharing with whom. In particular, don't let third parties use your profile picture in their advertising, which may fool some of your less tech-savvy friends.

Step 4. If you log into Facebook with a mobile phone number, have signed up for Facebook texts or listed your number at sign-up, be aware that your phone number will be available for all your 'friends' to see (plus networks such as Foursquare). If you don't want them to call you or send you text spam, alter your settings on the Mobile tab.

Step 5. Hackers often seek out a weak link, such as someone who appears to accept friends willy-nilly. Having been accepted, they try to become friends with that person's friends, who assume the newcomer must be kosher. Go to Accounts, Edit friends for a list from which you can purge anyone you don't actively know.

Step 6. You'd be surprised what you can learn about people based on their answers to Facebook's quizzes. Most apps request permission to post your answers to the Live Feed and to your Wall but, even if you ignore such requests, commenting on someone else's results could reveal more than you intended to.

Become a fan of PC Advisor

Security Advisor

1998-2010, PCWorld Communications, Inc.

What to Do When You Lose Your Tech Gear

2010-03-29T13:32:00.000-05:00

What to Do When You Lose Your Tech Gear
When your cell phone, laptop, or other gear goes missing, these essential tips will improve your odds of recovering it —or ensure that the lost item won’t come back to haunt you.
Robert Strohmeyer, PCWorld
Sunday, March 28, 2010 07:00 PM PDT
Illustrations: Edwin FotheringhamYou don't know what you've got until it's gone, they say--and they might very well have been talking about my cell phone. A couple of months ago, while walking through the departures terminal at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, I reached into my coat pocket to grab my Motorola Droid--and panicked. Where I had expected to feel the cool metal case of my most trusted travel companion, my fingers reported only pocket lint and a couple of crumpled business cards. My phone had gone missing, and with it the security of my contacts, my banking information, my entire e-mail history, and my Facebook and Twitter logins--and I didn't even have a passcode on the phone.
As I stood in the midst of the bustling airport and realized the extent of my predicament, I felt a rush of blood to my head. If some less-than-honest person were to find the phone before I did, they would be just a single finger-tap away from every e-mail I had sent or received during the previous two years. If they tapped on my Facebook app, they could pretend to be me and hustle my family, friends, and colleagues with Western Union scams. In addition, they would have easy access to my GPS data, showing exactly where I live and potentially putting my family at risk.

After quickly checking the terminal and failing to spot my phone on the ground anywhere, I grabbed a stool at the nearby airport lounge, booted up my laptop, and began the arduous task of changing the passwords on all of my online accounts--from Gmail to PayPal to Twitter. But just then I heard a familiar ringtone emanating from behind the bar. Some Good Samaritan had found my smartphone on the floor minutes earlier and turned it in. My data, my identity, and my loved ones were safe--but only because I was lucky.

At that moment, I vowed never to repeat that experience. Since then, I've become a faithful custodian of my phone and all of my other mobile devices. Here's how you can add serious security to your mobile gear, making it harder to lose, easier to recover, and less prone to exposing your personal data if it falls into the wrong hands.

What to Do If Your Phone Goes Missing

The best time to worry about cell phone security is now, before your phone disappears. By taking some sensible precautions, you can make your phone easy to recover, and even safeguard your data.

Losing a phone actually entails three separate losses: the hardware itself, the data on the device, and the security that you would normally enjoy by maintaining control over your data.

To minimize the collective impact that these losses can have on your life, you should address each of the three facets separately. First, take steps to make your phone recoverable, or at least easily replaceable, in the event that it goes AWOL. Second, keep an up-to-date backup copy of the data on the phone in a safe place. Third, make sure that nobody else can access that data if your phone gets lost or stolen.

Lock Down Your Phone

Protect your Android phone by setting an unlock pattern like this one to confound thieves and interlopers.Before we consider various fancy-pants tricks for securing and finding a lost phone, let's focus on the most basic task: setting a password.
Nearly every cell phone on earth--smart or otherwise--has some kind of passcode protection built in, yet almost nobody uses the feature because it adds an annoying 3-second delay to the process of making a call. Well, get over it. Set a password--or an "unlock pattern," if you're an Android user. Do it now, and you'll avoid worrying later on whether someone out there is reading through your e-mail or accessing your Facebook account on your lost phone.

Make Your Phone Recoverable (or Easily Replaceable)

Usually, losing a cell phone is a short-term problem. (When in doubt, check under your car seat.) But even if your handset ends up wandering miles away in the hands of a stranger, you may be able to get it back. Regardless, taking the right precautions ahead of time can minimize the various expenses associated with losing the device.

The first step in taking the sting out of losing your mobile phone is to shell out a few dollars per month for handset insurance from your carrier. When you buy a new phone, do this at the same time. If you have a phone but haven't yet signed up for insurance through your carrier, do so now. For a monthly fee of about $8 (for smartphones), the insurance will guarantee you a quick, free replacement if you lose the phone--and it will get you up and running if you do something silly like run over the handset with a motorcycle.

Of course, collecting on your handset insurance is a last resort if you lose your phone. The better outcome is to find the device quickly after it vanishes. Fortunately, you have plenty of good options for doing this.

Where's My Droid, a free download from Android Market, makes your phone ring so you can find it easily.If you lose your phone in some mundane way, such as by dropping it under a coffee table, and you're sure it must be nearby but you just can't find it, you can call it from another phone so that it will ring until you can home in on it. If you frequently set your handset to silent mode, you can obtain any of several cheap or free apps (available for most smartphone platforms) designed to override the phone's current settings and make it ring at full volume whenever it goes into hiding.
For Android users, the free Where's My Droid is a great first choice among quick locator apps. This Android Market download lets you set up a passphrase that you can use to activate a loud ring on your phone. Just borrow a friend's phone and send your passphrase via SMS (or use your phone's SMS e-mail address, such as 4155551212@vtext.com), and your phone will automatically adjust its ringtone to maximum volume and ring for a preset length of time--or until you find it and tell it to stop.

Where's My Phone enables a Good Samaritan finder to call you and return your BlackBerry.BlackBerry users have a number of choices as well. The best free option is Where's My Phone, available from the BlackBerry App World store as a feature-limited version of a more robust paid app. With the free version, you can trigger a loud alarm via e-mail to help you find your BlackBerry. The $4 paid version adds more features, such as GPS location.
For iPhone users, a 99-cent app called Beep My Cell offers similar functionality, along with the option to add a custom message for anyone who finds the device (if it's not where you thought it was). Rather than relying on e-mail or text messages to trigger its beeping, you log in to beepmycell.com and click Beep My Cell to start up the noise.

Another low-cost utility is Phone Finder With Google Maps, which brings this functionality to Windows Mobile handsets. A text message to this $1.50 app causes PhoneFinder to kick on the ringer and transmit the phone's GPS location to the handset that sent the SMS, giving you two ways to look for it at once.

Create a Smartphone Backup

The more extensively you use your cell phone, the more completely you de pend on the data it stores. So regularly backing up your phone makes sense.

Often the easiest way to perform a backup is by using a cable connection: Most smartphones--including models ranging from iPhones to BlackBerrys to Palm WebOS phones (including the Pre) to Windows Mobile devices--come with syncing utilities that are de signed to create a complete backup of the phone's contents. Thanks to those programs, if you sync your phone regularly, you should always have a recent copy of your files, contacts, messages, and photos safely stored on your computer. Do this religiously.

Unfortunately, though, not all smartphones encourage you to synchronize and back up your data manually. The worst offenders in this regard are An droid phones, which tend to behave a lot like stand-alone computers; for this reason it's easy to neglect syncing the phone to a desktop PC for months on end. Though Android is designed to work seamlessly with Google's cloud-based apps (such as Gmail, Calendar, and Contacts), which automatically sync all of your data to the Web, most of the data stored on your device won't automatically sync to anything.

MyBackup Pro, a $5 app, archives the entire contents of your Android phone on a Web-based server.A number of backup apps are available for Android, but my favorite is MyBackup Pro. This $5 app wirelessly syncs all of your Android phone's data--including apps, contacts, bookmarks, SMS messages, pictures, and music playlists--to a se cure server. If your phone is lost, stolen, or damaged, you can download the data onto a replacement phone and pick up where you left off.
Adopt Advanced Security Measures for Your Gear

Dealing with a misplaced phone that you know is somewhere in your own home or at a friend's house is no big deal. But if you leave your phone in a cab or unwittingly drop it on the sidewalk, you will probably need more-advanced recovery and protection features to get it back and keep its contents safe. Fortunately, a few cool programs and services are available that cover every major smartphone platform. They aren't free--but if your data is valuable to you, they're worth paying for.

TenCube's WaveSecure protects Android, BlackBerry, Symbian S60, and Windows Mobile phones.If you want protection across multiple smartphone platforms, your best option is TenCube's WaveSecure. Available for Android, BlackBerry, Symbian S60, and Windows Mobile phones, WaveSecure provides as complete a package of protection as you can hope to have for a device that's prone to wandering away.
For $20 annually, WaveSecure en ables you to track the location of your phone, monitor its call log, and detect whether someone has changed its SIM card, all via a Web browser. In the event that your phone is lost or stolen, you will quickly have a pretty clear idea of where it is and what it's up to.

WaveSecure also lets you remotely back up the contents of your phone to the secure server and then wipe all of your data from the device. So even if the phone falls into the hands of a thief, none of your personal information will be at risk. After removing the data, you can either turn the location information over to the authorities in hopes of getting your phone back (don't count on it) or forget the stolen handset and use the insurance you bought from your carrier to purchase a replacement, and then download the backup of your data onto the new device.

Apple offers a similar tracking service, called Find My iPhone, for iPhone users. But you can get Find My iPhone only as a component of Apple's MobileMe service, which costs a whopping $99 per year (or $149 for a four-user family pack).

Subscribers to Apple's pricey MobileMe service can use Find My iPhone to locate their lost device.

To its credit, the Find My iPhone interface is relatively slick and works very well. Like WaveSecure, Find My iPhone lets you track your phone's whereabouts and send a custom message to whoever may be holding it at the moment. It also allows you to wipe out the phone's contents remotely and lock the handset with a passcode re motely (in the event that you failed to set one up before losing the device).
Palm Pre users can obtain similar protection by signing up for Where Is My Pre. The premium version of this service, which costs $2 per month, enables you to view your phone's location on a map, send messages to the device, modify the phone's preferences remotely, and even take pictures with the phone's Webcam re motely to see who's holding it.

Protect Your Laptop From Loss or Theft

Losing your smartphone is bad enough, but losing your laptop can wreak serious havoc in your life. When your PC skips out on you, not only must you cope with lost data and the risk of having your information compromised, but you must also replace the laptop, which can be an expensive proposition. I'll explain how to improve your odds of getting your laptop back if it's lost or stolen, and share a few tips for securing your personal and business data.

Record your assets: A cheap laptop may cost as little as $400, but many business users and gamers carry machines worth $1500 to $2000--or more. Re gardless of how much money you spent on your laptop, it's wise to keep re ceipts related to your purchase, take a picture of your laptop, and register it on your homeowner's or renter's insurance policy. That way, losing your laptop won't have to be a huge financial burden on top of all the unavoidable hassles you'll face. (For more tips on dealing with insurance companies, see "Insurance Assurance."

Back up often: If you haven't been backing up your data as frequently as you should, don't feel bad--just go do it. Do it now. Do it weekly. But don't simply copy your files onto DVDs. Perform full system backups to a reliable, high-capacity external drive using Windows Backup or a similar backup utility. For a complete guide to using Windows Backup, see "Create Idiot-Proof Backups With Windows' Built-In Tools."

Back up redundantly: In addition to getting into the habit of maintaining a local system backup on an external drive, it's smart to back up your most important data (or even your entire system) to a remote, cloud-based service such as Mozy. That way, if catastrophe strikes your home or your office, you'll still have all of your information saved in a separate, secure location. For advice on selecting an Internet backup service that meets your needs, see "Find the Right Online Back up Service."

Install a Recovery App and Sign Up With a Tracking Service

If your laptop is stolen, you have about a 2 percent chance of getting it back. But your odds can drastically improve if you run a tracking and recovery app such as zTrace or LoJack for Laptops.
For about $60 per year, with tracking service, these apps hide in your PC's BIOS and periodically connect to the Internet to report their location. If your laptop disappears, just contact the company to activate tracking and recovery services that will respond to a signal from your laptop and record its location with surprising accuracy, based on the IP address that it connects from.

Once either LoJack for Laptops or zTrace locates your laptop, the service will work with the appropriate law enforcement authorities to investigate the theft and reclaim your equipment. In addition, you can initiate a remote data wipe that immediately begins erasing everything on your hard drive in a manner that the local user can't interrupt or override. That way, even if the police never find your computer, your data won't fall into the wrong hands.

Of course, not everyone is dishonest, and your laptop might find its way into the possession of a well-intentioned soul who wants nothing more than to return it to you. For such an eventuality, it makes sense to label your laptop with your name, phone number, and e-mail address; a Good Samaritan who finds your laptop can then ring you up and arrange to reunite you with it.

Protect Your Other Mobile Tech Gear

Laptops and cell phones aren't the only devices that can cause trouble when they stray from their owners. Losing e-book readers, media players, GPS devices, portable hard drives, and even thumb drives can be expensive in terms of both replacement costs and data loss.

Most specialized mobile devices can't run high-end tracking and recovery software, but you can make them less anonymous by labeling them with recovery tags. One approach is simply to print your name and phone number on a return address label and affix it to the device, but you may get better re sults from a professional asset-recovery service like StuffBak.

StuffBak offers a reward to those who find and return your stuff, increasing the odds that you'll get lost gear back quickly.For about $10, you can buy a preactivated aluminum asset tag from StuffBak, preprinted with a unique ID number, StuffBak's Web address and toll-free phone number, and a reward offer that gives whoever finds the device an incentive to return it. When the finder reports the device's ID number to StuffBak, the company will arrange for a courier to pick it up and return it to you.
StuffBak's labels come in various sizes, ranging from tiny circles for cell phones and thumb drives to large, highly visible tags for laptops to wrap-around labels that you can affix to the zipper of a travel bag.

Don't leave your portable drive's data exposed to whoever finds it. Encrypt it with the free TrueCrypt utility.

Portable hard drives can be particularly troublesome to lose, because you don't want to share the data on them with the world. To protect your business and personal information, consider using a robust utility such as the open-source TrueCrypt encryption software to protect the drive's contents from snoops.
TrueCrypt creates a secure volume on your disk, encrypting data on the fly as your PC reads and writes from the drive. When you first access the drive after connecting it, you simply enter a strong password; thereafter, it functions just as any other drive does. But if the drive ever gets lost, anyone who tries to read what's on it will have difficulty doing so. TrueCrypt works on USB keychain drives, as well.

Four Habits That Help You Avoid Losing Your Stuff

Losing things is easy. Getting them back can be tough. Here are four simple habits that can help you prevent losses and improve your chances of getting your gadgets back if you do leave them somewhere.

1. Keep receipts: Whenever you take a cab, eat at a restaurant, or grab a cup of coffee at a café, ask for a receipt and hold on to it for a day or so. That way, if you suddenly realize that you left your Kindle, keys, or other belongings behind, you are only a phone call away from starting to recover them. Receipts often include important information you may not know or remember, such as the name of the person who helped you, and that person may remember you and your lost item.

2. Label everything: Whether you use laser-printed return address labels or fancy professional asset tags, labeling your belongings gives finders a way to reach you and return the item. Most people are honest enough to be willing to help you if you make it easy for them to do the right thing.

3. Pack consistently: If you always store each piece of gear in the same place, you're more apt to notice when something isn't where it belongs. For instance, if you consistently put your phone in your inside coat pocket, you have a better chance of realizing that it's not there as you leave a restaurant. Get into the habit of knowing which pockets your essential items live in, and you'll be less likely to leave them behind.

4. Accessorize: Covering your smartphone in a flashy case may suggest that you look to Petulant Tween magazine for tips on style and aesthetics, but it'll also make your handset catch your eye on a cluttered restaurant table. If you tend to leave things behind, sacrificing a little dignity in return for maximum visibility may save you headaches in the long run.

Insurance Assurance

Technology can be expensive. Fortunately, many homeowner's and renter's insurance policies cover lost, stolen, or damaged electronics. But cutting through the red tape and getting full value for your lost equipment takes some effort. Here's what you need to know.

First, be sure to keep records of all of your expensive purchases. Whether it's a shiny new laptop or a portable projector, any device whose value exceeds your insurance deductible is worth recording on your insurance policy.
At a minimum, keep your original purchase receipt in a safe place, and record the product's serial number along with it. You might want to take a photo of the device, too, and keep that picture with the receipt and the serial number. That way, even if you can't locate exact model information later on for some reason, you'll have a clear record of what it is you've lost.

For an industry that constantly deals with unforeseen events, insurance companies hate surprises. So call your insurance agent and arrange to add your devices to your policy. Giving the insurance company information about the date of purchase and the amount paid, as well as the model and serial numbers, will streamline the process of getting reimbursed if the device goes the way of the laundry sock.

If your equipment gets lost or stolen, you'll have to do some legwork before the insurance company will cut you a check. In particular, you may need to file a police report about your loss and provide a copy of that report to the insurance company. Though the police are unlikely to find your laptop (or even care that it is gone), the paperwork will demonstrate to your insurance carrier that you've tried to recover it. If you don't present it up front, your agent will probably contact you weeks after you file your claim to ask for one--and that will mean a longer delay before you get your money.

Do the work early, and you'll take a lot of the hassle out of the process of obtaining reimbursement for a stolen gadget.

1998-2010, PCWorld Communications, Inc.

Make Videos Online

2010-03-23T11:10:00.000-05:00

Create Cool Videos without Pricey Video-Editing Software
Web-based Animoto can whip your photos, videos, and music into a killer slideshow-style movie--and it couldn't be easier to use.
Rick Broida
Monday, March 22, 2010 03:15 PM PDT

Want to create a custom video, the kind with photos, video clips, and music? Normally, it's a time-consuming and/or expensive hassle.

You can use Microsoft's Windows Live Movie Maker free of charge, but it's pretty limited--and kind of a pain in the neck, in my humble opinion.

You could also spend upwards of $100 on a movie-editing package like Adobe Premiere Elements of Pinnacle Studio. But those are big, complex apps--and like Movie Maker, they have to be installed. Surely there must be some kind of cloud-based solution?

There is, and it's called Animoto. This cool service makes moviemaking embarrassingly quick and easy, and the results look like something that took days or weeks to create in a commercial movie-editing program.

It's a three-step process. First, you upload your photos and/or videos. If your stuff's already online somewhere else, no problem: Animoto can pull media from Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, and other sites.

Second, choose your music. You can upload a favorite MP3 or choose a track from Animoto's extensive (but mostly indie) library.

Finally, select a pace for your video: normal, half speed, or 2x speed. With that done, Animoto goes to work, assembling everything into a seriously slick music videos, complete with titles, transitions, and special effects. Don't like the finished product? You can make changes manually or just let Animoto have another whack at it--it'll generate different results every time.

When you're satisfied with the results, you can share the video via the usual methods (Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, etc.), or download it for your own use.

I like Animoto's pricing options a lot. You can test-drive the service for free, but that limits you to a 30-second movie. If you want a full-length flick, you can buy that for just $3. Or, if you see yourself using Animoto a lot, $30 buys you a one-year membership (with all the videos you care to make).

Whether you're looking to have a little video fun or produce something meaningful for a special occasion, Animoto takes virtually all the hassles out of traditional movie editing.

1998-2010, PCWorld Communications, Inc.

2010 Dilys Award and 2010 Ridenhour Prizes

2010-03-16T12:19:00.003-05:00

The sleeper best seller The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley has won the 2010 Dilys award. The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association gives the award to the mystery title of the year that member booksellers have most enjoyed selling. The award is named for Dilys Winn who established the first mystery specialty bookshop in the United States.
The National Institute and Fertel Foundation awards Ridenhour Prizes. The Ridenhour Courage Prize was awarded to the late Howard Zinn, "honored for his determination to showcase the hidden heroes of social movements throughout history." Zinn's most noted work was his People's History of the United States. The Ridenhour Book Prize was given to Joe Sacco for his graphic novel, Footnotes in Gaza, "a work of profound social significance." This is the first time this award has been given to what the judges called "an illustrated book."

2009 National Book Critics Circle Winners

2010-03-15T17:05:00.002-05:00

The 2009 winners of the National Book Critics Awards are:
Fiction: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
General Nonfiction: The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
Autobiography: Somewhere Towards the End by Diana Athill
Biography: Cheever by Blake Bailey
Criticism: Notes from No Man's Land by Eula Biss
Poetry: Versed by Rae Armantrout
Joan Acocella received the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. Joyce Carol Oates received the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award.Of Oates, Edmund White said "Who has she not written about?"

Keeping Your Laptop Healthy

2010-03-08T17:14:00.002-06:00

Caring for Your Laptop

Lincoln Spector

Mar 8, 2010 9:51 am

Jeremy Sutherland wants advise on keeping his laptop healthy

Last month I discussed general PC maintenance, so this time I'll stick to laptop-specific issues. You're more likely to damage a laptop than a desktop PC (no one has ever driven off, forgetting the desktop on top of their car), and once damaged, laptops are harder and more expensive to repair.

Keep the battery cool. Today's lithium batteries wear out no matter what you do, but you can postpone the inevitable. Avoid heat and use the battery as little as possible. If you're going to be running on AC power for awhile, shut down or hibernate the computer, remove the battery, and work without it.

Be careful about eating and drinking. Spill coffee on your desktop keyboard, and you'll have to spend $15 on a generic replacement you can plug in yourself. Spill it on your laptop keyboard, and you could short out the motherboard. I'll admit that I use my laptop in cafes just like everyone else, but I put my tea as far from the electronics as my table allows.

When home, turn it into a desktop. You don't always need portability. When working at your desk, plug in a full-sized monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Not only does this get around the food and beverage problem discussed above, but it protects items far more valuable than your laptop--your arms, hands, and eyes. You can't set up a proper, ergonomic working environment with a small keyboard attached to a small monitor.

Find the right carrying case. Before taking it on the road, pack the laptop properly. Depending on your carrying preferences, look for a carrying case, backpack, or shoulder bag with a padded section designed especially for a laptop. (I use a backpack because the even distribution of weight is better for my spine.)

Clean the keyboard properly. When keys starts sticking, it's time for a cleaning. Shut down the PC. Keep it open as you turn it upside-down and very gently tap on the back so that crumbs fall out. Then use a can of compressed air (you can buy this at any computer store for a few dollars) to blow out whatever is still stuck. Be sure to read the instructions on the can, first. Then turn the PC upside-down and tap it gently again to get the last bits out.

Clean the screen when it needs it. If you can't see the email for the dirt, it's time to do a little cleaning. Start with a dry, microfiber cloth--the sort you get at an optometrist's office (you can also buy them at photo and computer stores). Move it in circular motions. Be gentle, but apply slight pressure on particularly stubborn spots.

If that doesn't clean the screen, make your own cleaning solution by mixing distilled water (make sure it's distilled) and white vinegar in equal proportions into a spray bottle. Turn off your laptop. Spray this mixture lightly onto the microfiber cloth, not onto the monitor. Wipe as described above, then wait ten minutes before booting up.

Add your comments to this article below. If you have other tech questions, email them to me at answer@pcworld.com, or post them to a community of helpful folks on the PCW Answer Line forum.

How Not To Shut Down Your PC

2010-03-08T17:14:00.001-06:00

How Not to Shut Down Your PC

Rick Broida

Mar 8, 2010 3:24 pm

Imagine my horror the other day when I saw an otherwise sharp friend of mine shut down his laptop by holding down the power button until the system turned off.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!" I cried. "Why'd you do that?"

"What? I was just turning off my PC," he replied innocently.

Sometimes I forget that some of the stuff I take for granted isn't common knowledge. So in case you've been committing this same heinous shutdown crime, allow me to enlighten you.

That is not, repeat, not the proper way to shut down a PC. The proper way is to click Start, Shut down. (I know, it's ridiculous that after all these years, Microsoft still forces you to use the Start button to end your computing session.)

Alternately, you can press (and immediately release!) the power button, which will either shut down your PC or put it in sleep/hibernate mode, depending on how Windows is configured. (To change that configuration, see Change the Function of Your Laptop's Power Button.)

The only time you should press and hold the power button is if your computer is locked up and otherwise unresponsive. A five-second press will usually force a "hard" power-off, after which you should wait another five seconds before turning the machine back on.

But if you do this all the time, Windows won't be able to perform its necessary shut-down housekeeping stuff, and ultimately you'll muck up the OS.

8 HDTV Myths Demystified

2010-03-08T17:12:00.000-06:00

Fact or Fiction? 8 HDTV Myths Demystified
HDTV shopping is fraught with complexity, confusion, and potential pitfalls. We sort through eight of the most confounding HD concepts to help you avoid the hokum and buy with confidence.
Zack Stern
Sunday, March 07, 2010 06:00 PM PST

HDTV Myths
If you're buying your first HDTV or an upgrade from a starter set, your new television may deliver a better picture than the one you're used to. But picking the right HDTV can be confusing, especially when your favorite blue-shirted salesperson may be steering you in a certain direction in hopes of a bigger commission. Or maybe the rep is just misinformed. Whatever the reasons, the environment has encouraged a cavalcade of claims about HDTVs--some of which were true for first-generation sets but have little relevance to today's buyers, some of remain valid, and some of which were never true.

I'll highlight some of the most prominent assertions made on the showroom floors of big-box retailers and explain the realities, along with tips and details for buying an HDTV, selecting the best content, hooking up the set at home, and more.
Claim: "HD" signifies a specific standard of quality.

Status: False

Though "HD" does stand for "high definition," HDTVs come in several resolutions; and in any event, a set's resolution doesn't completely determine the exact image quality you'll see on your screen. For one thing, screen sizes vary. Other factors affecting the picture include the transmission--over the air, via cable, by satellite, or from the Internet--and the original source material.

These variables help explain why you can get high-def content from Amazon, Hulu, iTunes, Netflix streaming, a Blu-ray disc, and other sources, and yet encounter wildly different picture quality.

The basis for the real broadcast signal standards is ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee), and even that has many options.

If you have an HDTV and a digital tuner, ATSC governs your over-the-air signal. ATSC content may be in either standard-definition (in either 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio) or high-definition (16:9 aspect ratio) format, with the resolution varying accordingly. A standard-def transmission consists of 4:3 images transmitted at a resolution of 640 by 480 pixels.

The most familiar of the HD resolutions are 720p (consisting of a 1280-by-720-pixel frame) and 1080i (composed of 1920-by-1080-pixel images). The "p" stands for "progressive scan," meaning that the set creates the image by continuously redrawing the frame, line by line. The "i" stands for "interlaced," meaning that halves of the full frame are shown 60 times per second, but your eyes combine them into a full-frame image reproducing itself at a rate of 30 frames per second. At the same resolution, a progressive-format image looks better than an interlaced image.

Over-the-air broadcast standards top out at 720p and 1080i, but you can obtain the full 1920-by-1080-pixel frame in 1080p from Blu-ray discs, certain Xbox 360 models, and the PlayStation 3 units.

Compression and bit rate are other factors in picture quality. A Blu-ray disc should look better than a cable TV feed of the same content at the same resolution, since the disc has more bandwidth than the cable broadcast.

When choosing for picture quality, remember: 1080p is at the top, 720p and 1080i look similar, and anything below them won't be as good. Keep those terms in mind because they represent official standards, not marketing terms.
Claim: If you don't buy a 1080p HDTV, you're wasting your money.

Status: False

In all likelihood, you want a 1080p HDTV--and you should be sure to get that resolution if your set has a diagonal screen size of 32 inches or greater, since you'll be able to see the additional resolution on a big-screen from across the room. Furthermore, there's no reason to avoid a 1080p HDTV if it doesn't cost substantially more than sets with alternative resolutions, given that 1080p is becoming ubiquitous. If the difference is within $100, I recommend going for a 1080p set if your budget can handle it.

But having said all that, I should warn you that you probably won't see any improvement in picture quality from 1080p versus 720p on a smaller HDTV. And you may not even have any 1080p sources to exploit: Over-the-air broadcasts and most cable feeds top out at 1080i.

If you're getting a big set or if you're connecting 1080p sources such as a Blu-ray player, a Microsoft Xbox 360, or a Sony PlayStation 3, a 1080p set is your best bet. But in many other situations, a 720p set will perform just as well for all practical purposes.
Claim: You bought an HDTV, so everything you view will be in HD.

Status: False

HDTV Resolution
Today, not everything on television is broadcast in high definition. DVDs and shows that were recorded for broadcast under the prior analog standard will continue to look about the same as before. (Some HDTV sets even make old shows look worse, by showing off more imperfections of the original recording.)

For satellite or cable TV service, you may need to ask your provider to activate HD content. The transition might require setup on both the provider's end and your end; some cable boxes need to be reconfigured to output HD signals even after you connect them with the proper cables.

A 500-station cable lineup may carry both the high-def and standard-def versions of many channels, so make sure that you've selected the HD version of the one you're watching.

Nearly all prime-time broadcast channels and many daytime shows present their content in high definition. If you don't see a night-and-day difference between a prime-time broadcast in HD and what you remember from analog TV, something isn't configured properly. (Check to confirm that the cable box and service provider are sending an HD signal and that you are using HD-capable cables.)

An Xbox 360, a PS3, a cable box, TiVo, and nearly any other HD-capable device can output in either high definition or standard definition. After you connect an HD-capable cable, you'll probably need to update a settings screen to tell the device what resolution of signal to output. Here's how to get started with a few common devices.

On the Xbox 360, if you're using the component connection, be sure to flip the switch on the cable to HDTV. Go to My Xbox, System Settings, Console Settings, Display, and choose HDTV Settings. Select the option that matches your TV's highest resolution.

On the PlayStation 3, choose Settings, Display Settings, Video Output Settings. Select the cable type connected to your TV, and choose the resolutions that your TV can display.

On the TiVo HD, select TiVo, Messages and Settings, Settings, Video, Video Output Format. Since broadcasters may present different TV shows at different standards, you can instruct your TiVo to keep their native settings or to scale them for your TV. Review the options here; I like to keep the Native setting.
Claim: DRM can prevent content from playing on your HDTV.

Status: True

Digital rights management (DRM) tools prevent you from copying copyrighted content. In most cases, HDCP--High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection--is the benevolent cop. HDCP is a handshaking protocol that provides a foundation for DRM. (The actual DRM can vary or be hidden, so look for HDCP labeling.) To avoid any problems, though, you need to use the correct gear.

HDCP works with Blu-ray discs, digital downloads, and other content sources. The technology checks for an unbroken digital connection from your content source to your TV. If the digital connection breaks off--perhaps because you connected to an unauthorized splitter or are using an analog feed--HDCP will detect that fact. In such situations, using DRM enforcement, HDCP can throttle your show quality or stop you from watching at all.

To ensure--or to be as sure as possible--that DRM won't prevent you from watching shows, connect an HDMI or DVI cable between your source and your TV or monitor. (If you use HDMI, then by default you have an HDCP-protected connection, and you're good to go. But if you try to use a monitor or an older HDTV with DVI as a display device for protected content, verify in their manuals that both devices support HDCP.) If you need to connect to a splitter, receiver, or other device in the middle, make sure that it supports HDCP, too.
Claim: Brand-name cables are worth the extra money.

Status: False

HDTV
Don't buy cables strictly on the basis of their brand name. A cable's connector type, length, and gauge are the most important factors in signal quality. As a first criterion, choose a digital cable if possible--either HDMI or DVI (just about any new HDTV will include a digital connection). Such cables can carry a 1080p signal if your content supports it, they'll play nicely with DRM, and they won't pick up interference the way an analog cable can.

If you don't have a digital connection, you can still obtain signals at up to 1080p via component cables. The resulting picture quality should still be first-rate. However, if you drop down to a lesser cable type--S-video or a single, composite RCA cable--say goodbye to your HD signal. At a minimum,your HD-compatible devices should have component, HDMI, or DVI ports. In addition, they probably have S-video and composite ports for compatibility with older televisions. Avoid those ports.

In any situation, get the shortest cables that can make the connection you need. Extra loops of cabling may pick up interference and distort analog signals, and image quality may degrade as cable length increases, especially if the cabling runs across entire rooms.

Thicker cables can improve quality, but the difference is greatest in speaker wire. Consider buying thicker-gauge cabling if you plan to run it across a distance of 50 feet or more.

If you take these steps, instead of reaching for a brand name, you'll get great video and audio connections for a reasonable price. You can save even more on cables at a site such as Monoprice, where you can expect to pay a few dollars for nearly any cable type, rather than $20 to $50 for a single, brand-name HDMI cable.
Claim: You're in imminent danger of burn-in from letterboxing and on-screen graphics.

Status: False

Burn-in is no longer a serious issue for HDTVs. Years ago, static on-screen graphics from network TV logos, stock tickers, videogames, letterbox bars, and other patterns could wear unevenly on a TV. If you left your set on and tuned to a station that showed such stationary elements for hours at a time, you might have been able to see them lingering when you tried to watch other content. First-generation plasma screens were the ones most susceptible to this effect.

LCDs and other TV types haven't exhibited this issue, and recent plasmas have incorporated effective countermeasures against the problem. If you're buying a new set, don't worry about burn-in.

Plasma TV watchers may encounter temporary image retention--which can look the same as permanent burn-in--but the images eventually go away. Static images imprint themselves in a way reminiscent of permanent burn-in. But in this case, the pattern fades away with normal use. To speed up the process, play a station with a static pattern, use a PC utility such as JScreenFix, or activate the TV's built-in mode to clear the problem.
Claim: HDTVs can cause audio-sync problems with games.

Status: True

Music videogames such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero require perfect timing between audio cues and on-screen graphics. If the two are not aligned, the most likely cause is that the TV is performing extra image processing but audio is being routed directly to a receiver. As a result, the picture gets slowed down, and the audio plays too soon.

The tiny delay that some TVs add may be perceptible only in these games, but you can turn off extra video processing in the TV's menu system. Look for a "game mode" setting. Most recent music games can recalibrate to take the delay into account. Look for those settings in the game's options.

Alternatively, you can solve the problem through the audio; receivers often give users the option of adding their own compensatory delay. If your HDTV set feels a little slow when you use it for gaming, read about how to reduce your input lag.
Claim: A TV with a faster refresh rate can look better than a slower TV.

Status: True

In the past few years, vendors have marketed TVs with refresh rates of 120Hz, 240Hz, and beyond. These sets can interpolate frames between the ones you'd normally see, thereby smoothing out motion through enhanced picture processing.

PCWorld's HDTV testing has demonstrated a correlation between high refresh rates and smoother image quality in TVs. However, we occasionally see high-refresh-rate TVs whose images look more jittery than those on 60Hz sets. These discrepancies arise because smooth motion performance depends on the combined operation of the panel's refresh rate and the software algorithms inside the set.

As 3D-capable TVs come to market, refresh rate will play an increasingly important role in picture quality. One technique used to produce 3D effects requires input and playback of a 120Hz signal. (Practically all current TVs accept only a 60Hz signal, regardless of their advertised refresh rate.) Look for 3D branding and a 120Hz input in those cases.
More About HDTVs

For recent PCWorld assessments of HDTVs, see our HDTV Product Center and our charts listing the Top 40- and 42-Inch HDTVs, Top 46- and 47-Inch HDTVs, and Top 50-, 52-, and 55-Inch HDTVs.

Finalists 2010 Pen/Faulkner Award Announced

2010-02-24T10:44:00.002-06:00

Finalists for the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction are
Sherman Alexie for War Dances;
Barbara Kingsolver for The Lacuna);
Lorraine M. López for Homicide Survivors Picnic and Other Stories;
Lorrie Moore for A Gate at the Stairs;
Colson Whitehead for Sag Harbor.

How To Use Google Buzz

2010-02-23T12:56:00.000-06:00

How to Use Google Buzz
If you're a Gmail user, chances are you now have Google Buzz in your inbox. Here's how to make the most of it (or just get rid of it).

Patrick Miller, PCWorld
Feb 12, 2010 7:00 pm

* Email
* Print
* RSS
* 0 Comments

*
* ShareThis
*
*

* 185 Yes
* 34 No

Recommends

On Tuesday, Google announced Buzz, a new social networking service integrated with Gmail. On Wednesday, you probably mashed your F5 key waiting for it to arrive in your Gmail account--and maybe you even tried to cut in line. By Thursday, you were likely worried about the privacy issues. Well, if you're buzzing about Buzz, we have the tips you need to make it work for you. And if you're wishing it would buzz off, we'll show you how to remove it from your Gmail account.
Keep Buzz Out of Your Inbox

Set up filters in Google Buzz to keep your inbox clean.Google Buzz's default settings send you an e-mail notification every time someone mentions you in a post with an @ reference or replies to one of your buzzes. Since all this stuff also shows up in your Buzz stream anyway, the redundant reminders get annoying fast.

In the filter rules, specify what should happen to Google Buzz alert messages.Fortunately, Buzz e-mail notifications are easy to eliminate with Gmail's filter tools. Just click the Create a filter link at the top of the page, to the right of the search field. In the 'Has the words' field, type label:buzz and click OK. In the next screen, select Skip the Inbox and Mark as read to ensure that the message doesn't show in the inbox or set off your Gmail notifications (alternatively, you can choose to delete the notifications entirely).

(For more Buzz filtering tips, read "Google Buzz: 5 Tips for Power Users.")
Hide Your Followers

To keep your following/follower list from displaying, uncheck the appropriate box in your Google profile.While Twitter users adore broadcasting their follower counts to the world, Buzz users have plenty of good reasons to keep such information private--particularly since in Buzz, the following/follower lists are not attached just to a cryptic pseudonym but to publicly viewable account names complete with a first name, a last name, and in many cases an e-mail address and links to Picasa and Blogger accounts.

You might not want to show the world your Google Buzz followers.Combined with Buzz's opt-out privacy policy and automatically suggested followers, this arrangement can lead to uncomfortable situations for some users, such as one user who ended up automatically adding his landlord, another who involuntarily added a one-time contact from a Craigslist transaction, and still another whose list somehow included her abusive ex-husband. If you don't want your contacts to be a matter of public record, you can hide your following/follower list by going to your Google Profile, choosing Edit Profile, and unchecking the Display the list of people I'm following and people following me box.
Learn to Love the Side Menu

Muting this post will get rid of annoying buzzes.If your Buzz feed is getting out of hand, look for several management features embedded in the drop-down menu in the top-right corner of each post. For other people's buzzes, you can choose to mute a particularly active buzz that you don't care about, or stop following that person. For your own buzzes, you can mute, edit the content of a buzz, delete some of the comments, or delete the buzz itself.
Prep Your Contacts List

Make sure to keep your Google Buzz privacy on point. A good first step is to control your Gmail contacts list.Buzz's privacy settings are based on your Gmail contacts list, so if you haven't already set that up you'll want to go through it before getting too busy with Buzz. You can do so via the Contacts menu on the left side of the Gmail window (just click the New Groups button to the left of the Search Contacts field), or through the Buzz input box's privacy settings (click the Public button and pick Private to get the option to publish to existing Contacts groups or create a new group).

Decide which groups of Gmail contacts may see your Buzz activity.You'll probably want to create a few commonly used groups before diving into Buzz--having to spend a few minutes dealing with the privacy settings each time you want to post a new buzz to a new group kind of kills the spontaneity of it all. (Also, the Buzz Web app doesn't let you specify new groups--you have to do it from the normal Gmail page.)
Tie Your Sites Together

Specify which other networks should connect with your Google Buzz activity.Now that you have your Buzz feed under control, it's time to start tying in your various social networks. When Buzz first surfaced in your Gmail account, you created a Google Profile (if you didn't have one already). At that time, you should have had the option to link other networks to your Buzz account--Flickr and Picasa accounts for sharing pictures, for example, or your Blogger feed. As of this writing, you can officially link only Blogger, Flickr, Picasa, your Google Reader Shared Items, GChat status, and Twitter accounts to your Buzz feed, though WordPress blogs can connect to Google Buzz with a little more work.

To add these sites, just click over to the Buzz tab in your Gmail and click the X Connected Sites link to bring up a window that lets you pick which ones to add. If you have an account or a page you want to link that isn't showing up, go over to your Google Profile, click Edit Profile (in the upper-right corner) and add it to your Links list there.

While you're connecting these sites, you can also set them to share only to certain groups of friends, which is worth doing if you don't want buzzes about your public tweets, photos, and so on to be indexed by Google as part of your Buzz account.

Keep in mind that if you're an avid user of Google Reader, all of your Shared Items will also be posted as buzzes. This means that anyone following you through Buzz and Reader (which is bound to be a decent amount of your follower base, considering that Buzz pulls from your Google Reader followers) is going to get hit with twice the posts, so you might want to consider keeping them separate until Google comes out with more-integrated sharing functions.

Buzz by E-Mail

You can Buzz via e-mail by sending a message to buzz@gmail.com. This works only with messages sent from your Gmail address, though, so SMS and MMS items sent through an e-mail gateway won't do the trick.

Since you can't define privacy permissions within an e-mail, you need to set them in advance. Start by sending a test e-mail to buzz@gmail.com; once it goes through, you'll see that the Connected Sites option now includes privacy settings for 'Posted via Buzz@Gmail'. Set it to Public or Private as you wish.

At the moment, only the e-mail's image and subject heading will show up in the buzz. Anything you put in the main e-mail field will not.

POP/IMAP mail-client users will want to read Gmail's desktop client support page for help in making sure that they're sending from the right address (for more, see "Google Buzz: 5 Tips for Power Users").
Touch Up Your Text

Though Google Buzz's input box lacks the rich text formatting options of an e-mail or blog post, you can still use a few tricks to make your text stand out. Bracketing your text with *asterisks*, _underscores_, and -dashes- will turn it into bold, italicized, and struck-through text, respectively.
Grab Some Add-Ons

Chrome Buzz lets you view your buzzes from the Chrome browser menu bar.Already, a handful of Buzz add-ons to help you integrate Buzz into your social life have surfaced. Firefox users should check out Buzz It, which lets you share your current Web page in Buzz via Gmail (useful if you want to keep your Google Reader shares separate from your Buzz shares.) Chrome users have Chrome Buzz, which adds a menu item that keeps tabs on your Buzz feed so that you don't have to keep checking back to the Gmail page. And WordPress users can add their buzzes to their WordPress blog with the Google Buzz ER sidebar widget.
Push Your Buzzes to Twitter

You can peruse your Google Buzz feed just as you would read any other RSS feed by going to the URL http://buzz.googleapis.com/feeds/username/public/posted, where username is your Google account name. This is a feed of all your public buzzes, which can then appear in any application that can use RSS feeds--handy if you want to see buzzes in an RSS reader, for example.

TwitterFeed can publish your Buzz feed to your Twitter account.Combine this feature with TwitterFeed, a service that lets you use RSS feeds to publish in Facebook and Twitter, and you can get Google Buzz to publish your buzzes to Twitter. The arrangement isn't perfect--the RSS feed refreshes every 30 minutes--but considering that there's no native support for Buzz-to-Twitter publishing, it's worth trying out for now. You'll want to set TwitterFeed to post only the description, or you'll end up with a lot of tweets saying "Buzz from your username"; to do so, under Advanced Settings in the Create Feed page, set 'Post Content' to Include description only.
Kill Buzz Dead

Gone through all this and still don't like what Buzz has to offer? You're not alone. Unfortunately, truly getting rid of Buzz takes some doing.

This link will turn off Google Buzz, but you'll need to do more to kill it completely.You can disable Buzz by scrolling down to the bottom of your Gmail page and clicking the tiny turn off buzz link, but that won't get rid of it completely--you'll still have followers and connected sites, you just won't see them from the Gmail page. (Logging in through the mobile Web app, for example, should still work fine.)

Before you eliminate Buzz entirely, you need to go through a few steps. From the main Buzz page, click the Following X People link and unfollow everyone; then click on the X followers link and block everyone. Next, you need to delete your Google Profile: Go to Google Profiles, select View My Profile, Edit profile, scroll down to the bottom of the screen, and select Delete profile.

Once you've done that, disable Buzz from the Gmail window. You'll have successfully killed your Buzz.

Have your own Google Buzz tips? How about horror stories? Share them in the comments!

Patrick Miller is a staff editor for PCWorld. Catch him off-duty @pattheflip or follow his newfangled Google Buzz page.

How To Save A Whole Web Page

2010-02-23T12:55:00.000-06:00

Save a Whole Web Page

Lincoln Spector

Feb 22, 2010 9:56 am

Rwiringa asked the Answer Line forum how to save an entire Web page, including images, for off-line viewing.

You've got a number of options here.

The first is to do just that: Save the page and its image files. And the current versions of most browsers make this very simple.

In either Firefox or Chrome, press CTRL-s to bring up the Save As dialog box. In the 'Save as type' field, select Web Page Complete, and save the file to your desired location.

If you're using Internet Explorer, select Page (near the upper-right corner), then Save As. In IE, the ‘Save as type,' menu offers two "Webpage complete" options. You want Webpage complete (*.htm; *.html).

When they save the page, all three of these browsers create an .htm file, plus a folder containing all the necessary images. The code in the .htm file has been altered to look for image files in that folder.

The result isn't always perfect, and heavily coded pages may not render properly. I tried several pages from pcworld.com, and found various images missing, although the ones you'd most want--those that are part of the editorial content--were there.

Another problem with this method: If the .htm file and the folder get separated, or if you change the folder's name, the page won't find its images.

Internet Explorer offers a one-file solution that gets around this problem: Web Archives. To create one, select Page, then Save As. For ‘Save as type,' select Web Archive, single file (*mht). Now you know why IE offers two Web Archive options.

These archives aren't perfect, either. You can only view them in Internet Explorer (a serious problem if a Linux user must look at them), and they still drop a lot of images.

The final solution is to save the page as a .pdf file. These files are compact, don't have to travel with a folder of images, can be read with a free reader that almost everybody has, and include all of the images on the page.

But how do you convert a web page to a .pdf? There are plenty of programs available that can do it for you. Many of them install as print drivers, so that anything you can print can be converted. I'm currently using the free Bullzip PDF Printer, and see no reason to change.

But there's an even easier way to convert a Web page into a .pdf file. Copy the URL to the clipboard, go to pdfmyurl.com, paste the URL into the appropriate field, press ENTER, and save the file. My thanks to forum regular Oldschooljohnny for introducing me to pdfmyurl.com.

Nominations for 2009 Agatha Awards Announced

2010-02-20T14:36:00.003-06:00

Malice Domestic has announced the nominees for the 2009 Agatha Awards, which honor the traditional mystery, books similiar to Agatha Christie mysteries.
Best Mystery Nominees:
Swan for the Money by Donna Andrews;
Bookplate Special by Lorna Barrett;
Royal Flush by Rhys Bowen;
A Brutal Telling by Louise Penny;
Air Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan
Best First Mystery Nominees:
For Better, For Murder by Lisa Bork;
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley;
Posed for Murder by Meredith Cole;
The Cold Light of Mourning by Elizabeth Duncan;
In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff.

Popular Mystery Writer Dick Francis Dead

2010-02-18T11:34:00.003-06:00

So far, it has not been a good year for writers and their avid readers. Dick Francis, a champion jockey for the British royal family who left racetrack to write crime fiction, died February 14 at the age of 89. Francis wrote 43 novels and sold more than 60 million books. His protagonists often were former jockeys. He won many awards for his novels, including the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Allan Poe Award an unprecedented three times. In the last several years, since his wife's death, Francis coauthored books with his son Felix. Their book, Even Money,was published last September. Their latest book, Crossfire, is scheduled to be released later this year. In his autobiography, The Sport of Queens, Francis wondered how he would be remembered: "I heard one man say to another, a little while ago,'who did you say that was? Dick Francis? Oh yes, he's the man who didn't win the National!' What an epitaph!"

New Microsoft Windows 7 Phone

2010-02-15T12:09:00.000-06:00

Windows Phone 7: An In-depth Look at the Features and Interface
Windows Phone 7 adds new social networking and productivity features all within a clean and touch-friendly interface.
Ginny Mies, PCWorld
Feb 15, 2010 10:03 am
Email
Print
RSS
8 Comments

ShareThis
121 Yes56 No
Recommends
Microsoft took the wraps off of Windows Phone 7 Series (the official name for Windows Mobile 7) here Monday at Mobile World Congress. Slated to launch on handsets by holiday season 2010, Windows 7 is a complete overhaul from previous versions of the OS.

Slick, touch-friendly user interface

If you're familiar with the Zune HD's user interface, you'll feel right at home with Windows 7. Microsoft hinted that the Zune and Windows Mobile teams were working closely and you can definitely see this relationship in Series 7. The menus and interface have the same fluid animations and clean typeface as the Zune HD's.

The Quick Launch screen is a far-cry from the old Windows Mobile start screen. Large, colorful tiles serve as shortcuts to your most-used or favorite apps or Web sites. You can also place live tiles on the screen with links to your Facebook profile or friends.

These tiles are live, meaning if the content of the app or site is updated, the tile will update on your screen. So if you have a link to a friend's Facebook profile on your Quick Launch screen, that tile will update when they change their picture. It is a bit creepy if you don't know them very well, but cool nonetheless.

With a tap and drag, you can easily move them around in any order you like or press a broken heart icon to remove them from the screen. Swiping right takes you to a list of all of your apps. If you want to move one of your apps to your Quick Launch display, you simply press down on the app and select "add to quick launch." When you're in an app, you'll see a row of other menu options at the top of the display. Like the Zune, you can "pan" through these menu items with a flick of your finger. If you want to go back to the previous menu, you simply hit the arrow key at the top of the interface.

Social and Productivity Hubs

The People Hub aggregates you friends from all of your social networks in three screens: Recent, All, What's New. Recent will show you friends who have just updated their profiles or statuses while All will show you all of your friends. What's new quickly aggregates status updates all into a single feed. You can also quickly share your own status update.

The Pictures Hub lets you see all of the pictures on your hub, your most recent pictures and what's new with all of your friends. The phone will pick the latest pictures you uploaded or have taken with your phone. And, like the People Hub, What's New in pictures shows your friend's most recent picture uploads. The Pictures Hub allows you to easily share your own photos with your social networks.

The Office Hub lets you easily sync your documents between your phone and your PC. Office Hub comes with OneNote, for notetaking, Documents and Sharepoint for presentation collaboration. Users will also have access to an Outlook Mail application which gives similar features, like flagging important e-mails, that you'd find on the desktop version.

Zune Player and Xbox Live Comes to Windows Phones

Despite the rumors leading up to the conference, there was no "Zune Phone" announcement, but all Windows 7 phones will ship with the same music and video features as the Zune HD. Users will also be able to manage their music with the Zune PC software. Does this mean the death of the standalone Zune HD player?

If you're an Xbox owner and want to keep tabs on your friends' achievements, Windows 7 phones will come with a mobile version of Xbox Xbox LIVE games, Spotlight feed and the ability to see a gamer's avatar, Achievements and gamer profile. Users will also be able to purchase games and apps easily from the Windows Marketplace as well.

Windows 7 phones will also ship with Bing Maps, which has some unique features that are on par with Google Maps. Bing Maps dynamically update with street-view photos, 3D graphics and directions. It also shows you real-time traffic updates and reviews of local businesses via Yelp.

Microsoft Holds More Control Over Hardware Partners

According to Microsoft, hardware partners will not be able to replace the Windows 7 UI. So if you're a fan of HTC's TouchFLO user interface, which runs over older versions of HTC Windows Mobile phones, you're out of luck. It is a bit surprising that Microsoft has locked in the Windows 7 interface because one draw of the platform was the number of different flavors you could get it in.

Microsoft is also taking further control over the hardware side. All Windows Series 7 phones will ship with three hardware buttons: Home, Search, and Back. They'll also all be capacitive touch-enabled with multitouch.

Microsoft's hardware partners include Dell, HTC, Garmin ASUS, LG, Samsung, SE, Toshiba, HP and Qualcomm. NVIDIA, which provided the Tegra chip in the Zune HD hardware, is noticeably absent. Microsoft had no comment.

Microsoft plans on bringing Windows 7 phones to all four major US carriers, but are working with AT&T and Orange more closely to bring full lines of Windows 7 phones to the carriers. Microsoft plans to have Windows phones in the market by the end of this year for the 2010 holiday season.

Black Quill Awards

2010-02-10T11:16:00.002-06:00

Dark Scribe magazine has announced the winners of the Black Quill Awards,honoring the best work in dark horror, suspense and thrillers--were named by Dark Scribe magazine. Editors' choice and readers' choice prizes were given in each category.
For novel of the year, Dark Places by Gillian Flynn was the editors' choice and Drood by Dan Simmons the readers' choice. The "Best Small Press Chill" awards went to Kelland by Paul G. Bens Jr. (editors' choice) and As Fate Would Have It by Michael Louis Calvillo (readers' choice).

HTML 5 vs. Flash

2010-02-08T13:16:00.001-06:00

Is It Time for the Web to Abandon Flash?
More… Facebook Twitter Digg Print
By Tony Bradley

The public battle between Adobe and Apple over bringing Flash to the iPhone, and now iPad, platforms has heated up the debate over the life expectancy of Flash as newer technologies, specifically the emerging HTML5 standard, enter the scene.

Adobe Flash helped to fill a void for a cross-platform multimedia experience on the Web. With the glaring exception of the iPhone and upcoming iPad, Flash can be found on virtually every other operating system--desktop and mobile, and for every Web browser.

Flash is almost a standard in and of itself. Just try surfing the Web without installing the Flash Player software and you will quickly see just how pervasive Flash is. As close as it is to being a standard, though, it is still a proprietary technology from one vendor.

The advantage that HTML5 has over Flash, and other proprietary Web development platforms like Microsoft's Silverlight, is that it is a protocol standard--or at least it will be once it's finalized, not a single-vendor solution.

Small and medium businesses (SMB's) pay huge sums of money, at least huge to them relative to their overall budgets, to developers to create and maintain Web sites. Many of those Web sites rely heavily on Adobe Flash to provide animations and other cool, interactive content.

Abandoning Flash would require a Web redesign, which can be a formidable, frightening, and costly undertaking. However, if Flash is dying a slow death SMB's might be doing themselves a favor by hitching their sites to a rising star like HTML5--even if only by attrition rather than a complete revamp of the site.

Flash isn't truly dead yet, though. In fact, it could be a long while before HTML5 gains enough traction to truly threaten Flash.

Adobe CEO Shantanu Naranyen said during the Adobe Q2 2009 earnings call "I think the challenge for HTLM 5 will continue to be how do you get a consistent display of HTML 5 across browsers. And when you think about when the rollout plans that are currently being talked about, they feel like it might be a decade before HTML 5 sees standardization across the number of browsers that are going to be out there."

HTML5 has been under development since 2004, and only now is it becoming mainstream enough to start showing up in Web browsers and Web sites. But, the current versions of the top three browsers--Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome--all contain elements of HTML5 compatibility.

HTML5 doesn't have to mean the death of Flash, though. There is also an opportunity for Adobe to adapt and evolve Flash to continue playing an important role even in an HTML5 world. HTML5 may deliver much of the same features and functionality that developers rely on Flash for today, but HTML5 won't be perfect and it won't do everything, so Adobe can reinvent Flash to fill a new void.

Still, Flash is a single-vendor solution that requires users to install additional software in order to view it, and the battle with Apple illustrates why Flash may not be available for all platforms. Small and medium businesses should seriously look into migrating to HTML5 for future Web development projects to embrace the coming standard and stay ahead of the game.

Tony Bradley tweets as @Tony_BradleyPCW , and can be contacted at his Facebook page .

Make The Most Out of Your Home and End Keys

2010-02-05T13:08:00.000-06:00

Make the Most of Your 'Home' and 'End' Keys
Rick Broida
Feb 2, 2010 4:00 pm
You know me: I love a good keyboard shortcut. The Home and End keys aren't shortcuts in the traditional sense, but many users never bother to lay a finger on them--and that's a mistake.

Indeed, you may hold Home and End in the same regard as Pause/Break and Scroll Lock, but while those keys are downright useless, your Page Up/Page Down neighbors most certainly are not.

Here are three places the Home and End keys come in very handy:

In Microsoft Outlook:

While in Mail view, a tap of the End key jumps you to the bottom of your Folders list, Inbox, or individual message (depending on which pane is selected). Tapping Home jumps you back up top.

In Your Word Processor:

I'd wager Home and End were created with word processors in mind, as the programs make valuable use of them. Tapping End moves your cursor to the end (natch) of a line, while Home moves it to the beginning. Ctrl-Home and Ctrl-End, meanwhile, jump you to the top and bottom of your document, respectively.

In Your Web Browser:

Borrowing from word processors, Web browsers use Home and End to jump to the top and bottom of a Web page. The only difference: no Ctrl key required.

Have you found any other dynamic uses for this venerable pair of keys? If so, shout 'em out in the comments!

Why Does My PC Slow Down

2010-02-05T13:05:00.001-06:00

Sudden Temporary Slowdowns
Lincoln Spector
Shermlindcastle asked the Answer Line forum why his PC occasionally slows down to a crawl.

There's nothing pretty about software overburdening your CPU and slowing everything down. And finding and fixing the cause isn't always an easy task. These suggestions will hopefully help.

The first thing to do is check for an infection. Malware isn't the most likely cause, but it's the most potentially dangerous, and is relatively easy to identify and fix.

Don't trust your regular, always-on antivirus program this time. If your PC is infected, that program has already failed and is probably compromised. Try the free version of either SUPERAntiSpyware or Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. Better yet, try both.

If the scans don't find anything, chances are your PC isn't infected (unless you have other reasons to think so; see Remove a Virus or Other Malicious Infection). But your Registry could be corrupted, and a scan of that should be your next step. In fact, such a scan solved Shermlindcastle's problem. CCleaner (another excellent, free program) found about 200 Java errors. Uninstalling and reinstalling Java fixed the problem.

But if you're not so lucky, you'll have to find the culprit on your own. Start searching your memory (your brain's memory, not your PC's). When did the problem start? What did you do to your PC just before that? Did you install anything new? Allow Windows or an application to do a major upgrade?

Also, note what programs are running, and what peripherals you're using, when it happens. Keep a journal--on paper, so you don't have to type an entry into it when Windows is moving like an exhausted turtle.

Another idea, suggested by forum moderator Scott Maxwell: Keep an eye on your processes: When things are fine, right-click the taskbar and select Start Task Manager. Click the Processes tab, then click the CPU column heading once or twice to put the most demanding processes on the top. Keep the Task Manager running at all times.

When your PC slows down, check the Task Manager window to see what's at the top of the list.

When you've identified the culprit, ask yourself how badly you need that program. If you need it, see if there's an update or a bug fix, and if there isn't, complain to the manufacturer.

Or you can just uninstall it. Don't simply use the program's own uninstaller (or Control Panel's program removal tool, which simply launches the program's own uninstaller). These uninstallers are often horribly inadequate, removing a program's functionality while leaving behind the problems. Instead, use the free, portable version of Revo Uninstaller or the $30 version of Total Uninstall. Why consider a $30 program over a free one? The free version of Revo can't handle 64-bit applications (not an issue if it's not a 64-bit PC), and Total Uninstall does a better job in situations where an uninstall requires a reboot.

Set Up Your HDTV for Watching Sports

2010-02-05T13:02:00.001-06:00

Set Up Your HDTV for Watching Sports
We have three tips for optimizing your big screen for the big game.
Lincoln Spector, PCWorld
Tuesday, February 02, 2010 06:00 PM PST
You're all geared up for Super Bowl Sunday--or, if football isn't your thing, maybe you're anticipating the men's slalom at the Winter Olympics. Either way, you have your pizza, your beer, and your brand-new, beautiful HDTV. But is that HDTV giving your favorite sport everything it's capable of giving?

Even if your set is already perfectly calibrated, three extra adjustments can help your new plasma or LCD present sports in their best light. In tweaking your settings, you should compensate for daytime viewing, make sure that you're not losing image quality through your DVR or set-top box, and take full advantage of your 120Hz or 240Hz set.

Here's why--and here's how.

Fix Your HDTV for Daytime Viewing

Sports events often happen during the day, and if you prefer watching them live, that means viewing them with the sun shining through your windows. Even if you've placed your HDTV where sunlight won't hit the screen directly (and you should), you must compensate for the presence of any window in the room by making the picture brighter.

Simply turning up the brightness won't help. The Brightness setting on most HDTVs doesn't actually control brightness, but black level; turning it up makes the image brighter, but more washed out. To fix that, you have to increase the Contrast (called Picture on some sets), which controls the white level. You'll probably have to fiddle with both controls, going back and forth between them, until you're pleased with the result. Then fiddle with them again the next time you watch TV at night.

You have other options. If you own an LCD set, for instance, the Backlight control changes the picture's brightness without throwing any other settings out of whack--so if sunlight is making the game hard to see, just turn up the backlight. (If you have a rear-projection set, the Iris setting will do the same thing.)

Plasma sets offer no such convenience, so your best bet in this case is to set up separately calibrated modes for day and night viewing. Most HDTVs offer various modes, some preset and some user-configurable. In some HDTVs, even the presets are configurable. If your set has two or more configurable modes, calibrate one at night and one during the day. (How do you know if a preset mode is configurable? Select it and start trying to configure the TV. If the mode name changes to something like 'User', that's the only configurable mode.)

If your plasma HDTV doesn't allow you to configure more than one mode, or if the above steps sound like too much trouble, experiment with the preset modes and hope that you find a good one. The Sports mode, if your TV has one, is an obvious choice, although it might not actually be appropriate for your situation. Vivid mode may also work well during daylight hours.

Don't Let Your Set-Top Box Get in the Way

If your TV signal passes through a set-top box or a DVR, it could be arriving at the television in an altered, lower-quality form. You can fix that with the right setting.

First, some background: HDTV broadcasts come in two standard resolutions, 1080i and 720p, each with its own advantages. Though 1080i has more pixels and therefore offers more detail, it interlaces the image, drawing only half the lines with each pass (first the odd lines and then the even ones). This approach can cause problems with rendering fast-moving objects. In contrast, 720p--the p stands for progressive--draws all of the lines with each pass, avoiding those problems. (1080p offers the best of both worlds, but it isn't a broadcast standard.)

Converting either format to the other one will compromise image quality. Converting either to 1080p--which any 1080p HDTV will do automatically--will do little or no harm, depending on the quality of the TV's upscaling circuitry. Keep in mind that much of what you watch on a 1080p set (except a Blu-ray Disc or material from a 1080p streaming video source such as Vudu) is upscaled, deinterlaced, or both; but not all TV upscalers are created equal, and image quality can vary accordingly. If your TV signal passes directly from the cable or antenna to your HDTV, your TV alone will convert the image, and you don't have to worry about this problem at all. But if your signal goes through a DVR or set-top box (a certainty if you have satellite, and a likelihood with cable), that box is probably set to output everything at one of the broadcast HD resolutions--and as a result, the quality of material sent at the other resolution is being hurt by the conversion.

What to do? Go into your DVR or set-top box's Setup menu and look for a setting called Video Output, Format, or even TV Type. Once there, if you find a Native option, which sends everything to the TV without changes, pick that. If Native isn't available but a 1080p option is, go with that one. You can keep either of these options indefinitely, because it allows every broadcast, no matter the resolution, to upscale to your TV's resolution without going through another, potentially harmful conversion first.

If neither option is available on your set, you'll want to change the output setting to match the broadcasting standards of the television station. If you're going to be watching ESPN, Fox Sports, or ABC, set the DVR's output to 720p. For CBS or NBC (broadcasters of the Super Bowl and the Olympics, respectively), go with 1080i.

Go for Smoother Motion

Many of today's LCD HDTVs have 120Hz or 240Hz refresh rates. Among other advantages, these faster sets can interpolate extra frames, smoothing out fast motion--if you set them correctly.

You won't find the word interpolate in your set's manual. TV manufacturers give the function trademarked names like Motionflow, Smooth Motion Technology, or Auto Motion Plus. HD video runs at 60 frames per second. With interpolation turned off, a 120Hz HDTV simply shows each frame twice. With the feature turned on, the TV creates an extra frame based on what it thinks should be in between each two.

Not everyone agrees that this approach really helps. My own experience is that it definitely helps with text crawls running at the bottom of the screen (pretty common in sports broadcasting), and that it sometimes makes a slight improvement with a moving camera or a ball flying across the screen. But I've also noticed that, when set too high, interpolation can create a slight but unfortunate judder effect.

Manufacturers say that their default settings reflect their recommended optimization for the widest variety of circumstances. My recommendation is to find the option to control this feature (it probably has the word motion in its name), pick a middle setting, and judge how it looks for the material you're viewing. Don't use the highest setting, though: You'll see more distortion than advantage.

With your HDTV properly set, nothing will stop you from enjoying the big game or any other competition--unless, of course, you bet on the loser.

More Author Goodbyes

2010-02-03T11:45:00.002-06:00

Louis Auchincloss, who wrote more than 60 works of fiction, literary criticism, and biographies, died January 28 at age 92. He was best known as a chronicler of the New York old money elite. Gore Vidal once wrote of Auchincloss: "Of all our novelists, Auchincloss is the only one who tells us how our rulers behave in their banks and their boardrooms, their law offices, and their club. Not since Dreiser has an American writer had so much to tell us about the role of money in our lives.” Auchincloss’s last book, published in 2008, wasThe Last of the Old Guard, and many believe the title aptly describes the author.
Ralph McInerny best known for his mystery novels (Father Dowling series), died on January 29 at the age of 80. A Renaissance man, he published more than 80 books, wrote numerous scholarly articles, edited 3 national magazines. He also wrote poetry, and he was a full Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Of his writing, McInerny said "Finally, that is what any writer does, return again and again to the original aspiration that came to him when young. It is the writing, producing a well-made story, that counts. All the rest is gravy."
Howard Zinn, historian and civil rights activist, died on January 27
at the age of 87. He taught at Spelman College and Boston University and was a visiting professor at the University of Paris and the University of Bologna. He is best known for his revisionist A People’s History of the United States which has sold nearly two million copies. “Our nation had gone through an awful lot —the Vietnam War, civil rights, Watergate — yet the textbooks offered the same fundamental nationalist glorification of country,” Mr. Zinn recalled in a recent interview with The New York Times. “I got the sense that people were hungry for a different, more honest take.” He served on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and marched for civil rights. He traveled with the Rev. Daniel Berrigan to Hanoi to receive prisoners released by the North Vietnamese and wrote the antiwar books Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal and Disobedience and Democracy . His memoir appropriately was titled You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train.

Facebook Chat Firefox Add-On

2010-02-02T12:17:00.000-06:00

Add Facebook Chat to Your Firefox Sidebar
Rick Broida
Jan 28, 2010 2:50 pm
Already this week we've looked at reducing feed clutter from your Facebook home page and downloading entire Facebook photo albums with just one click.

Today, let's solve another Facebook hassle: when you leave the site, your chat sessions get left behind. Wouldn't it be nice if you could keep a Facebook chat going regardless of what site you're viewing?

If you use Firefox as your Web browser, you can add Facebook chat to the Sidebar, thus keeping it alive and active even while you browse elsewhere. (I also find it a more convenient location than the bottom-right corner of the screen, which is where Facebook shoehorns it.) Here's how to make it happen:

1. In Firefox, press Ctrl-B to open the Sidebar in Bookmarks view.

2. Right-click the bookmark folder where you want to add Facebook chat, then choose New Bookmark.

3. Name the new bookmark Facebook Chat, then paste the following URL into the Location field: http://www.facebook.com/presence/popout.php

4. Check Load this bookmark in the sidebar, then click OK.

Now just click your new bookmark and presto: Facebook chat in the sidebar. Not too shabby, eh?

Laptop Buying Guide

2010-02-02T12:14:00.000-06:00

Jason Cross, PCWorld
Wednesday, January 27, 2010 05:30 PM PST
Perhaps no common computer product has as many variations, with as wide a performance range, as the modern laptop PC. From tiny netbooks to big and powerful desktop-replacement systems, the differences in pricing, features, and performance are staggering. Follow our comprehensive guide to make sure you get the laptop that's right for you.

Buying a new notebook can be tough because you have so many options to consider, and no shortage of reasons for purchasing one. Maybe you're about to head off to college and you need to take notes in class. Perhaps your current laptop labors when running today's applications, and it's time for an upgrade. Or maybe you're happy with your desktop PC, and you want a companion device for surfing the Web from your couch. Even if you know what you want to do, with so many laptop models available it can be hard to decide among them. The potential for confusion is enough to make you choose something that just looks cool or happens to be available on your warehouse store's shelf--but that approach can end in heartache.

It's best to start by deciding which category of laptop you're most interested in. Laptops fall into four main categories: netbooks, ultraportables, all-purpose laptops, and desktop replacements. The laptop category that is right for you depends on the kind of user you are.

Once you have decided on a category of laptop, it's time to start considering the specs. To learn how to wade through all the product names and acronyms, check out "Laptop Buying Guide: Making Sense of the Specifications." And before you ask the store to run your credit card, read our advice in "Laptop Buying Guide: Shopping Tips."

Netbooks

For their intended purpose, netbooks are a great choice. They aren't powerful enough to do everything you need a PC to do, but are rather meant to be companions to your main PC. Small and light enough to carry around all day, they're the perfect device for taking notes in class or surfing the Web on a commuter train. A typical netbook weighs about 3 pounds or less and has a screen size of 6 to 10 inches. Most cost around $300 to $400.

If you're seeking a new primary PC, you'll want to look elsewhere. Netbooks' limited screen resolutions (10-inch netbooks typically top out at 1280 by 768), RAM, and processing power make editing photos and spreadsheets a pain. In addition, some Web pages, Flash games, and applications simply don't fit well on a small screen. Still, there's something to be said for a system with a battery life of 6 or more hours; in our PCWorld Labs tests, that's how long most of the newest netbooks last.

Most netbooks are based on Intel's Atom line of processors. These chips can run the standard Windows operating system you're accustomed to and all your usual applications, but they're not very fast compared with more-expensive Intel CPUs such as the Pentium Dual-Core and Celeron found in ultraportables, or the Core 2 Duo and Core i5 found in all-purpose or desktop-replacement laptops. Couple this limitation with the fact that netbooks typically have only 1GB of RAM (very few offer 2GB as an option), and you're looking at pretty slow performance.

A netbook is fine for simple Web browsing or word processing, but it struggles on streaming video, editing photos, or running multiple applications simultaneously. And if you're thinking of playing 3D games, forget it: The majority of netbooks use Intel's integrated graphics chips, and not very good ones, at that. Some netbook models may have one of nVidia's Ion GPUs (graphics processing units), which are a lot better at handling graphics and decoding video, but even these won't play the latest and greatest games well, especially in combination with the low-power Atom CPU and limited RAM. Alternatively, some netbooks now supplement their Intel GPUs with a Broadcom decoder chip that does nothing but speed up video playback and improve its quality; if you want to use your netbook to watch a lot of Hulu or YouTube videos, you may want to pay a little extra for this option if it's available.

One more drawback: Netbooks almost never have an optical drive, so you can't play DVDs or load software off a disc without buying and using an external, USB-attached DVD drive.

Ultraportables

Slim and light, ultraportable laptops are a step up from netbooks. Sure, in choosing an ultraportable over a netbook you tack on maybe a pound of weight, but that added weight means a more powerful processor, more RAM, and often a larger screen. These systems are ideal for users who need a fuller PC experience but still want a machine that's easy to carry around. Screen sizes vary, from around 11 inches to 14 inches, but models with larger screens are usually considered "ultraportable" only if they're especially thin. You can expect an ultraportable to weigh from 3 to 4.5 pounds, typically; battery life extends from 4 to 6 hours. Prices generally land in the $600-to-$800 range, but some superthin models with larger screens can cost more than $1000.

Compared with netbooks, ultraportables have more processing power. Ultraportables use either dual-core CPUs--the same as you might find on an all-purpose laptop--or low-voltage processors from Intel or AMD that aren't as powerful as what you find in bigger notebooks (or more expensive ultraportables) but are far more capable than Atom netbook processors. Most ultraportables have 2GB to 4GB of RAM, too. As a result, ultraportables perform a lot better than netbooks on everyday applications, and they're far more suited to running multiple applications at once.

In the name of saving weight, cost, and battery life, many ultraportable laptops stick with integrated graphics chips that lack the oomph to handle modern games or video decoding. Still, it's not too hard to find ultraportable PCs with dedicated GPUs from nVidia or ATI; typically these laptops are powerful enough to run modest 3D games, and they do an excellent job on accelerating video.

If you're interested in playing DVDs, or if you often need to load software from a disc, you'll want to make sure to look for an ultraportable with an optical drive. In slimming down, many ultraportables these days have omitted the optical drive, but you can find some models (typically the pricier ultraportables with dual-core CPUs) that incorporate them (unlike netbooks, which eschew the optical drive entirely).

All-Purpose Laptops

Models in the all-purpose laptops category are, well, all-purpose: They're large and powerful enough to serve as your everyday computer, but portable enough to accompany you when you're on the go. This category has more options than almost any other class of laptop. You can find durable ruggedized laptops for business travel, convertible laptops with reversible screens that turn them into tablets, gaming laptops, cheap notebooks, expensive and stylish laptops, and more.

Generally an all-purpose laptop is defined as a system with a screen from 14 to 16 inches, and weighing more than 4.5 pounds. Most of these models use full-power dual-core and quad-core laptop CPUs (as opposed to ultra-low-voltage processors or Intel's energy-sipping Atom CPUs), and you can expect even entry-level systems in this category to have about 4GB of RAM, often with options for up to 8GB. The weight can vary widely depending on the model and configuration, but 5 to 8 pounds is common.

You'll find a wide range of prices as you shop for a general all-purpose laptop. Low-cost models can be as cheap as $400, but piling on extra options or choosing a system with a sleeker body or a better processor and graphics configuration can drive the price to $1500 or more. Optical drives remain standard, and Blu-ray Disc drives are optional on many all-purpose laptops.

You can get an all-purpose laptop with almost anything you desire, if you're willing to pay for it. Some have integrated graphics, others have drastically more powerful discrete mobile GPUs that will let you play the latest 3D games. Want a Blu-ray drive and an HDMI output so that you can hook the laptop to your HDTV? Some models have those features. Looking for 1TB of hard-drive space? You can get that, too. A touchscreen? Check. The array of features and options is dizzying. Manufacturers sometimes prepackage sets of features into specific laptop models for sale, whereas companies such as Dell, Fujitsu, HP, and Lenovo give you some level of customization of your laptop, so you can buy a configuration that best matches your needs.

Larger screens and more-powerful processors mean shorter battery life, though. Most all-purpose laptops last from 2 to 5 hours on a charge, depending on the model and how you use it; playing games and using Wi-Fi drains the battery faster than light Web surfing does, and cranking up the display's brightness shortens battery life considerably.

Desktop-Replacement Laptops

A desktop-replacement laptop (also known as a power laptop) is just what it sounds like: a larger laptop aimed at people who need the performance and large display size of a desktop computer but want to be able to move the machine from room to room easily. Screen sizes start at 16 inches and go up to 18.4 inches; models with higher screen resolutions are ideal for photo or video editing. Don't expect to carry one of these notebooks around with you all day, though--typically they're too large to fit in a regular backpack, and at 8 to 12 pounds they're tough on the shoulders. Consider these laptops as being more "luggable" than "portable."

The processors in these beefy laptops are typically top-of-the-line, either dual-core or quad-core chips whose performance rivals that of the CPUs found in all but the most powerful desktop computers. Discrete graphics chips from ATI or nVidia are standard on most desktop replacements, too. If you pick the right power laptop, you can play even the most demanding modern games. As for the amount of RAM, 4GB is the bare minimum. A hard drive of 500GB or more is common, while some laptops have up to 1TB of storage.

Of course, all of that power comes at a price. The battery won't last long (typically 2 hours or less with heavy use), so you shouldn't stray too far from an outlet. The high-power CPUs and GPUs run hot, too, making it uncomfortable to rest a desktop replacement notebook on your lap. And then there's the literal price: Cheap models may cost $1000 or less, but a nicely loaded desktop replacement will easily push $2000 or more.

This category is really for two types of people: Gamers, who need tremendous CPU and GPU power to play the latest titles, and professionals (such as video editors, photographers, or engineers) who need large displays and lots of horsepower to do their work.

Author Visit with Chris Bohjalian

2010-02-02T11:01:00.002-06:00

Best selling novelist Chris Bohjalian will be at the Vernon Area Public Library this Saturday, 2/6/10, at 11:00 a.m. He will read from his latest novel, Secrets of Eden. Books will be available for sale and signing. Bohjalian's other novels include: Before You Know Kindness, Double Bind, Midwives, Skeletons at the Feast.
The Vernon Area Public Library is located at 300 Olde Half Day Road in Lincolnshire. Call to register: 847-634-3650 or register online: www.vapld.info

Author Kage Baker Dead at 57

2010-02-01T17:51:00.003-06:00

January has been a bad month; we have been saying goodbye to many beloved authors. On Sunday, January 31, Kage Baker died of cancer. Baker was best known for her Company series of time travel novels and stories. The Empress of Mars was an expansion of her 2003 novella, which won a Sturgeon Award and was a Hugo and Nebula finalist. She also wrote fantasy, including The Anvil of the World and The House of the Stag. In 1999, she was a finalist for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She published about 70 short stories, including Hugo finalist "Son Observe the Time" and World Fantasy finalist "Caverns of Mystery."

Reclusive Author J. D. Salinger Dead

2010-01-28T15:58:00.002-06:00

J.D. Salinger, author of the well-loved classic Catcher in the Rye died of natural causes earlier today. Its narrator, 17 year old Holden Caulfield seems adrift, failing out of school, wandering in New York. He observes the world around him and often does not like what he sees and hears. He cries out against phoniness, describing an acquaintance “The jerk had one of those very phony, Ivy League voices, one of those very tried, snobby voices.” Later Holden reveals the meaning of the title: "I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in a big field of rye and all. ... Thousands of kids, and nobody big at all, nobody big but me. And I'm standing on the edge of this crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to come and catch them. If they start to fall ... and don't look where they're going. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all." Although many have sought the rights to the Catcher in the Rye, Salinger refused to sell rights to any of his work. The novel brought much unwanted attention to the private Salinger. A few years after it was published, he decided to live in seclusion. In a rare 1980 interview with Betty Eppes, he said "There's a marvelous peace in not publishing. There's a stillness. When you publish, the world thinks you owe something. If you don't publish, they don't know what you're doing. You can keep it for yourself." Salinger published no other full-length novel. His shorter fiction includes Nine Stories(1953); Franny and Zooey(1961); and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). Much of this work was published initially in the New Yorker magazine, as was his last story to be published, Hapworth 16, 1924, which appeared in the New Yorker in 1965. His daughter Margaret Ann Salinger has said that her father wrote many stories to be published after his death. We wait.

2010 Edgar Award Nominees

2010-01-23T11:02:00.002-06:00

The Mystery Writers of America have announced the nominees for the 2010 Edgar Allan Poe Awards honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, and television published or produced in 2009. The Edgar Awards will be presented at a banquet on April 29, 2010, in New York City.
The nominees for Best Novel are:
The Missing by Tim Gautreaux;
The Last Child by John Hart;
The Odds by Kathleen George;
Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston;
Nemesis by Jo Nesbo;
Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn
The nominees for Best First Novel are:
The Girl She Used To Be by David Cristofano;
Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley;
The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf;
A Bad Day for Sorry by Sophie Littlefield;
Black Water Rising by Attica Locke;
In the Shadow of Gotham by Stepfanie Pintoff
The nominees for Best Paperback Original are:
Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott;
Havana Lunar by Robert Arellano;
The Lord God Bird by Russell Hill;
Body Blows by Marc Strange;
The Herring-Seller's Apprentice by L. C. Tyler
A full list of the Edgar nominees can be found on the Mystery Writers of America website, www.mysterywriters.org

Cheap Alternatives to TV, DSL, and Cell Service

2010-01-23T09:55:00.000-06:00

Cable Cutters: Cheap Alternatives to TV, DSL, and Cell Service
Thanks to a spate of agile new Web-based and wireless services, cutting ties with your service provider is easier than ever.
Zack Stern, PCWorld
Tuesday, January 19, 2010 04:00 PM PST

I don't like service providers. Cable TV, landline phone and fax, mobile phone, ISP, and even satellite radio companies have so little real competition that they know they don't have to impress me very much to get my business. I either pay the full fees and become connected to them by their cord (physical or wireless), or I don't get any service. Until lately.

Now those companies face new pressure from Web-based technologies and services that can offer similar features for far less money, or even for free. Many of these services ride in on the cord owned by the big service provider, relegating said service provider to the job of operating "dumb pipes."

Which TV executive knew just a few years ago that paid and free online services could threaten cable companies? Ditto for the VoIP challenge to landline phones, online fax services replacing another cord, Internet radio being a better value than a satellite subscription, and more.

Here I'll explain the alternatives that can help you walk away from the biggest corded companies that we love to hate. You can pick and choose which are still worth keeping and which to toss. Are you being pressured into buying a service provider's "triple play"? Try three strikes and you're out.

Pay for TV and Movies Instead of Cable Service

Microsoft keeps Zune TV and movies too much of a secret. There's a lot here to like.

The cable--and satellite--TV model is on life support. Who wants to pay $100 or more a month for an endless well of unwatched shows? Even if you have an appetite for premium-channel shows, you can save money by buying some à la carte and watching others free online.
Paid, per-show TV sources are all around you. Apple iTunes, Amazon VOD, Zune Marketplace, Blockbuster On Demand, and Jaman store thousands of shows and movies.

All offer various purchase and rental options, often $3 to $4 to rent a movie for a day. Expect to drop about $30 to $40 per season of scripted, premium-channel TV (HBO, Showtime, and such), or, often, about $10 less for network shows.

That sounds pricy at first, and it often costs more than buying a physical disc. But total up four or five of those seasons and a handful of movies, and you could pay half as much as cable over the same time period.

If you want to watch video on a portable device, stick with iTunes for iPod and iPhone compatibility; or Zune Marketplace for Zune support. Unfortunately, the other stores don't offer portable media player support. If you have an AppleTV or an Xbox 360, you can at least watch your shows in the living room.

Netflix is a good base service for any cable TV-free home. The cheapest subscription for the DVD-by-mail service is $8.99 each month, but much of the value comes in the thousands of shows and movies you can stream from Netflix to your PC. Plus, Netflix can stream to a TiVo, Xbox 360, PS3, dedicated Roku device, and other hardware, so you can watch in the living room without a media center PC.

Similar streaming services like Amazon, Blockbuster, Jaman, and others can play on much of the same hardware. Check your TV-connected hardware against these services' support pages.

I've also got my eye on the upcoming Boxee Box and Sezmi service; both will offer hardware that plays Internet-streamed video on a TV. Sezmi, which will be rolling out nationwide this year, even promises local shows and live sports, one of the biggest deficits in online libraries.

Next: Free TV, Movies, Phone Service, and more

Get Free TV And Movies

Crackle is owned by Sony, so you'll find mostly Sony Pictures content.

Hulu is still my king of free TV sites, although it's uncertain if it will--or won't--change to a paid model. And I've been occasionally frustrated when show episodes or seasons disappear just before I try to watch. But the majority of recent network shows are available. Plus, you'll find movie and TV favorites alongside B-level misses.
As I write this, you can watch "Spartacus" and "All the King's Men" alongside the Norm MacDonald vehicle, "Dirty Work."

Check Hulu first, but also scan other sites for free TV and movies. Crackle, Comcast Fancast, and even YouTube have movies and TV content. If you you're looking for a specific show that you still can't find online, visit its Web site or its network site directly.

Live sports can still be elusive. Check the network that's broadcasting the content for a stream; I saw a Monday Night Football game this way last fall. MLB.com hosts live baseball, but you'll have to pay for service. Justin.tv could be your best ace for any sport. While unsanctioned, many users play live streams of their local stations; just click the sports button.

And remember the cheapest, highest-quality TV source of all: an antenna. Over-the-air HD content looks great, often better than video compressed for a cable TV feed. You'll just need a TV with an HD tuner--typical for most sets built in the last several years--or a PC TV tuner.

Cut Landline Phone And Fax Service

Extensive customizations tailor RingCentral to your day-to-day phone service, business needs, or both.

If you have a reliable ISP, a voice over IP (VoIP) phone company can replace a traditional landline. You can place calls through a PC, but you'll have a better experience on a dedicated VoIP handset. The device connects to your network over Wi-Fi or wired ethernet to route calls.
Skype deserves its VoIP ubiquity. You'll make free calls to other members or pay about 2 cents per minute to dial out to a real phone. Traditional phones can also call in to you. But several alternatives challenge the Skype giant.

I like the features and versatility of RingCentral. Depending on the package you buy, you'll get a local phone number for incoming calls, an incoming toll-free number, and an incoming fax line. Call-routing functions make RingCentral excel. Like Google Voice or my1voice, RingCentral can send incoming numbers to any phone. You can have it ring your VoIP handset, a mobile line, a hotel room, a temporary office, or anywhere you happen to be. Or you can have it go straight to voice-mail during off hours, if you don't want to be reached.

Most RingCentral plans bundle fax service, or you can just pick that for about $8/month. You'll send and receive faxes through e-mail, and cut the cost of a dedicated, traditional fax line. Many other companies sell fax service, too. Check out Mbox, eFax, and MyFax for several options, all priced in a similar range.

Free Yourself From Wireless Phone Service

Customize Fring, and you can swap between outgoing calls through a generic SIP connection, your mobile service, or Skype.

If you like your current handset or smartphone, you might not be able to change wireless providers. Your device is almost certainly locked to your carrier, and worse, there's a chance that differing network technologies mean you can't move your phone to a different network even if it's unlocked.
AT&T and T-Mobile rely on GSM networks; Sprint uses CDMA; and most Verizon handsets use CDMA, but Verizon also offers some dual-mode devices that support both network types. An unlocked iPhone is still single-mode, so it will never work on a Sprint network, for example. Ask a carrier you're considering how they can enable your old phone.

For GSM devices, including Apple's iPhone, your best option could be unlocking the handset, then swapping in a GSM SIM (subscriber identity module) card from the new provider. Even a prepaid card can work, which drains your account only when you use service.

If you want to completely cut wireless phone service, you could try hopping between Wi-Fi hotspots while using a VoIP app. Truphone and Fring work on Android devices, BlackBerrys, iPhones, and even iPod touch media players. (You'll need a headset microphone for any of the players.) It's not the same as real wireless phone service, but it might be enough for some users in some situations.

You can beat text messaging fees by sending texts through an instant messenger app or in e-mail. And instead of paying for your carrier's voice-mail transcription service, you can substitute SpinVox, PhoneTag, YouMail, or Google Voice.

Revise Your Internet Service

Look for a network without a lock icon to try to gain access.

Look for a network without a lock icon to try to gain access.

Did you shop around for your ISP? You might not be getting the best price or service. Check out Broadband Reports for customer reviews. You could find a locally grown alternative to the faceless corporation that you currently use.
You might be able to completely break free from home, wired Internet service. First, walk around your house running inSSIDer. Try to reach a friendly neighbor or café. Or if a neighbor's signal is locked, ask around, and offer to pay part of the fee to join the network and share service.

Wi-Fi service subscriptions from T-Mobile, Boingo, and others can pay off if you frequent airports and other locations with their coverage. But you're almost as likely to find an open, free network. (To be fair, however, if you need an always-on connection wherever you are, nothing beats an EvDO modem stick from Sprint or Verizon.)

Several Web sites map Wi-Fi networks, and are good places to check out before you hit the road. Try Jwire, WeFi, and Hotspotr.

If you require an always-on connection, you might be better off buying short- or long-term service from Sprint or Verizon. You can buy a USB plug that connects a single laptop, or a home desktop for that matter. Many mobile phones can also be tethered to a laptop as part of your service plan, sharing the wireless Internet feed. Or opt for a portable router such as the MiFi, and it'll turn its mobile connection into a Wi-Fi, Internet bubble. The router will work in your car and could be cheaper than a hotel's Internet service.

Break Out of Satellite Radio's Orbit

Tap the thumbs-up or -down icons to train Pandora to your tastes.

Monthly satellite radio service might not be worth what you pay. If your favorite talk show is in an exclusive contract, you could be stuck, but music listeners have alternatives. Try Pandora, Last.fm, and Slacker from a PC or even a smartphone.
Last.fm is free, and the others offer both paid and free versions. All build music programming based on your preferences. If you indicate that you don't like a certain song or musician, they'll adjust your playlist to better match your tastes.

The mobile versions of these services are an especially exciting proposition. They offer the possibility of replacing traditional car radio by streaming music wirelessly to your smartphone in the car. This, of course, is highly dependent on the 3G wireless coverage you're getting as you drive, but that coverage is getting broader and faster all the time. Additionally, Slacker can cache stations to your device so you can play music without any Internet connection. This helps when you're driving across no-coverage zones.

Get a Discount, or Cut Ties

Sometimes you just can't cut the cord. In spite of poor service and price gouging, you might need some of these services. For one last alternative, try calling up and asking for a discount. It's worked for me, especially with TV and Internet service.

Arm yourself with details on your current companies' introductory deals and competitors' rates, and ask for a break. If you don't get a good answer, call back, and ask someone else.

Even if you only cut one of these services, you could save a lot. Pay for what you want--and only what you use--to take back control of your subscriptions.

Love Story author Erich Segal Dead

2010-01-21T11:11:00.000-06:00

Erich Segal died January 17 at the age of 72. While Erich Segal may be best known for his widely popular novel Love Story, he was a well-respected classics scholar. He continued writing scholarly works and teaching as he wrote popular novels and screenplays. Segal's other novels are Oliver's Story, Only Love, Doctors, The Class, Acts of Faith. He wrote several screenplays, including Yellow Submarine, Love Story, Oliver's Story. From the 1960s to the 1980s Segal taught Greek and Latin literature at Yale University. He also held visiting professorships at Princeton University, Oxford University, and University of London. His scholarly works include: The Death of Comedy, Oxford Readings in Menander, Plautus, and Terence, Oxford Readings in Greek Tragedy, Roman Laughter:The Comedy of Plautus. He was a remarkable man. He lived with the debilitating Parkinson's Disease for over 25 years, and he continued writing and teaching. In a eulogy, his daughter Francesca said "That he fought to breathe, fought to live, every second of the last 30 years of illness with such mind-blowing obduracy, is a testament to the core of who he was...he was the most dogged many any of us will ever know."

Author Robert B. Parker Dead at 77

2010-01-20T09:21:00.000-06:00

Robert B. Parker, the best selling author of over 60 books, died yesterday of a heart attack. He wrote 5 pages daily, and he died at his desk working on a book. Best known for his private eye series Spenser, Parker also wrote the Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall series as well as westerns and young adult novels. Parker admired writer Raymond Chandler and completed one of Chandler's unfinished books,Poodle Springs. Many believe that Parker's Spenser is based on Chandler's Marlowe.
Parker's latest Jesse Stone novel, Split Image, will be released next month. Married over 50 years, Parker dedicated every book to his wife Joan.

26th Annual CLC Salute to Gospel Music features Vicki Winans and The Canton Spirituals

2010-01-19T15:19:00.000-06:00

Vicki Winans will perform at the 26th Annual Salute to Gospel Music Concert on Feb. 27, 2010.

Vicki Winans will perform at the 26th Annual Salute to Gospel Music Concert on Feb. 27, 2010.
Two Grammy®- nominated Gospel music acts – singer Vicki Winans and The Canton Spirituals – will headline the 26th Annual College of Lake County Salute to Gospel Music Concert at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 27 at the Genesee Theatre, downtown Waukegan.

In addition, fundraising opportunities for local groups will be offered. For groups of 30 or more, tickets may be purchased at $4 off the general admission price of $19, and the group discount includes a private, pre-show reception. Each group or organization is entitled to reassign the price of tickets and keep all proceeds raised above the discounted price. For groups of 20 or more, tickets may be purchased at $3 off the general admission price of $19. For information on group tickets and discounts, call (847) 543-2112.

Dubbed the “Joy Princess of Gospel,” Winans has six Grammy® Award nominations, eight Stellar Awards and an NAACP Image Award. “Bringing It All Together” debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Gospel Chart in 2003. The Canton Spirituals, an accomplished Grammy® Award-nominated gospel quartet from Canton, Miss., has paved the way for many other gospel groups and has won numerous Dove and Stellar awards.

The concert will also include performances by CLC Gospel Choir, directed by Dr. Charles Clency; Essence of Peace Dance Team and vocalist Adria McNair. The 2010 Harambee Award of Excellence will be presented to Drs. Gary and Patricia Stern, Pastors of the Peace of God Outreach Ministry, Waukegan. The emcee for Salute to Gospel will once again be Chicago gospel radio personality Effie Rolfe.

Regular priced tickets are $19 for general public and $17 for CLC students, staff, alumni and seniors. Tickets available at the CLC Lakeshore Campus, by phone at the CLC Box Office (847) 543-2300 or at the Genesee Theatre's Web site.

A Message From CLC About The Flu

2010-01-19T15:18:00.001-06:00

Fight the Flu. Be Prepared!

With flu season approaching, CLC wants all members of the college community to take proactive steps to prevent the disease from spreading. Here are three steps you can take to protect yourself and others plus important resources to help you learn more about the flu.
Prevent Flu Step 1: Vaccinate
Vaccinate

* Take time to get a flu vaccine.
* CDC recommends a yearly flu vaccine as the first and most important step in protecting against this serious disease.
* While there are many different flu viruses, the flu vaccine protects against the three main flu strains that research indicates will cause the most illness during the flu season.
* The vaccine can protect you from getting sick from these three viruses or it can make your illness milder if you get a different flu virus.
* Getting a vaccine is very important for people at high risk for serious flu complications, including young children, pregnant women, people with chronic health conditions like asthma, diabetes or heart or lung disease, and people 65 years of age and older.
* People who live with or care for those at high risk should also get a flu vaccine to protect their high-risk contact.

Prevent Flu Step 2: Stop Germs
Stop Germs

* Take everyday preventive actions.
* Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.
* Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hand cleaners are also effective.
* Try to avoid close contact with sick people.
* If you get the flu, CDC recommends that you stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.
* Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread this way.

Prevent Flu Step 3: Antiviral Drugs
Antiviral Drugs

* Take flu antiviral drugs if your doctor recommends them.
* If you do get the flu, antiviral drugs are an important treatment option. (They are not a substitute for vaccination.)
* Antiviral drugs are prescription medicines (pills, liquid or an inhaler) that fight against the flu by keeping flu viruses from reproducing in your body.
* Antiviral drugs can make your illness milder and make you feel better faster. They may also prevent serious flu complications. This could be especially important for people at high risk.
* For treatment, antiviral drugs work best if started soon after getting sick (within 2 days of symptoms).
* Flu-like symptoms include fever (usually high), headache, extreme tiredness, dry cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose and muscle aches.

Snow Ordinances To Remember

2010-01-19T14:52:00.000-06:00

IMPORTANT WINTER SNOW ORDINANCES
1) Do not block sidewalks with snow - Section 9.40.035 of the Mundelein Municipal Code states: “No
person shall shovel, plow or otherwise place snow/ice or cause or permit shoveling, plowing, or placing
of snow/ice from a private driveway, parking lot, or other private property upon any highway, street or
public sidewalk so as to hinder, obstruct, impede or otherwise interfere in any way with movement of
traffic upon said street, highway or sidewalk.”
The ordinance addresses obstructions to pedestrians when snow is removed from private driveways and
parking lots and creates a mound of snow across a sidewalk. During periods of heavy snow these
mounds make sidewalks impassable. Violators are subject to fines up to $750. Please be sure to inform
snowplow contractors and employees of this ordinance requirement.
2) Parking restrictions during snowstorms - Village ordinance requires that all parked vehicles be
removed from the public streets after 2" of snowfall, and for the 24 hour period after the snowfall has
stopped.

Mundelein Community Connection

2010-01-19T14:50:00.000-06:00

MUNDELEIN COMMUNITY CONNECTION
(formerly Mundelein MainStreet)
Invites you to our first
FREE - OPEN HOUSE - FREE
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
5:30-7:30 p.m.
National City Bank - Lower Level
469 N. Seymour Avenue, Mundelein
INTRODUCING OUR NEW ORGANIZATION
& A SAMPLE OF OUR COMMUNITY EVENTS, SUCH AS:
“Tax Tips” Presentation by Gerry Brin of Weltman Bernfield LLC
Please come and enjoy free networking, food, drinks & prizes!
R.S.V.P.
847-970-9235
Fax: 847-970-9282
email: mundeleincc@tds.net
Accepting food donations for “The Pooch Pantry” (29278 N. Highway 83, Mundelein

Local Blood Drive

2010-01-19T14:48:00.000-06:00

Blood Drive

The Lake County Fire Chiefs is sponsoring a blood drive all year long. The Mundelein Fire Department will be hosting a blood drive on January 22, 2010. The drive will take place at Mundelein Fire Station 1 from 1:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. To schedule your appointment please contact LifeSource at (877) 543-3768 or go to www.lifesource.org and use sponsor code MN10. Appointments are encouraged but, walk-ins are welcome.

The purpose of this event is to raise awareness of the shortage of blood during the summer months when we see the greatest amount of trauma. Please spread the word to anyone and everyone you know. Please make this a great success.

Donating blood is safe and simple. The entire process, from registration to refreshments, takes approximately one hour. Strict procedures for every step of the process ensure the safety of the donor and of the blood supply. Every measure is taken so that the donation is safe for the donor and the blood recipient.

DONOR REQUIREMENTS

You will need to bring ID with you on the day of the blood drive. Proper ID is required to donate blood. A lifeSource or military ID, drivers license, or employee badge with a picture and full name are all approved forms of ID. Birth certificate along with a picture ID that includes the donor's full name will also be accepted.

You are eligible to donate blood if you ....

*

Weigh at least 110 pounds.
*

Are in good physical health.
*

Are at least 17 years old (there is no upper age limit).
*

Have not given blood in the past eight weeks (56 days).

You are not eligible to donate blood if you ....

*

Have had hepatitis (not including childhood exposure).
*

Are pregnant.
*

Have ever tested positive for HIV, have engaged in high risk behavior, or have had intimate contact with anyone at risk for AIDS.
*

Have Babesiosis or Chagas Disease.

You may be temporarily ineligible to donate if you ...

*

Have the flu, a sore throat or fever.
*

Are taking antibiotics for an infection.
*

Received a tattoo, had your ears or another body part pierced, or experienced an accidental "needle stick" injury in the past 12 months.
*

Have had heart problems.
*

Received a blood transfusion in the past 12 months.
*

Have been recently vaccinated (time of deferral varies). Flu shots do not disqualify you from donating.
*

Have had a history of cancer (other than skin cancer).
*

Lived in or traveled to a malaria area.
*

Have recently had a sexually transmitted disease or mononucleosis.

New Illinois Law on Text Messaging

2010-01-19T14:47:00.000-06:00

The Illinois Text Messaging Ban
According to the new law:
“A person may not operate a motor vehicle on a roadway while using an electronic
communication device to compose, send or read an electronic message.”
The law defines an electronic message as:
“Electronic message” includes, but is not limited to electronic mail, a text message, an
instant message, or a command or request to access an Internet site.”
ON JANUARY 1, 2010, IT WILL BE ILLEGAL (in the State of Illinois) to
• Send or read a text message while your car is in traffic, unless fully stopped due
to a blocked roadway (such as a train crossing). A stop sign or stop light does
NOT waive this restriction. You must place the car in park or neutral gear, or pull
over to the side of the road and stop.
• Send or read an email message while your car is in traffic, unless fully stopped
due to a blocked roadway (such as a train crossing). A stop sign or stop light
does NOT waive this restriction. You must place the car in park or neutral gear
or pull over to the side of the road and stop.
• Use a cell phone in a SCHOOL or CONSTRUCTION zone without the use of a
hands-free device. In other words, you cannot HOLD the cell phone while using
it. You must use a device (such as a Bluetooth headset or ear bud) which allows
you to keep both hands on the wheel. To use such a device you must have a
compatible phone and must purchase and install the hands-free device itself.
Contact your cellular provider for specific information about products and
services available for your cell phone.
Fines for violation of these laws will start at $75.00, with higher fines expected for the
most serious infractions. Obviously, no fine can ever compensate for injuries or loss of
life.
The law does NOT apply to use of a navigation device, such as a GPS system. You
can get more information on Illinois Driving Laws.

Windows Difference Between Files and Folders

2010-01-19T14:27:00.000-06:00

Raise Your Windows IQ: The Difference Between Files and Folders

Rick Broida

Jan 19, 2010 1:16 pm

Knowing how to use Windows is only half the battle; the other half is knowing its language.

For example, I regularly encounter users who don't know the difference between a file and a folder. That makes for a bit of confusion when someone tells me, "I just downloaded some photos, but I can't find the file they're in."

Uh, what? Actually, what you mean is you can't find the folder they're in. This may seem like a minor distinction, and obvious to anyone with intermediate-or-better computer skills, but it's important. You can't get help with a problem if you don't know the proper terminology. (Just try calling a tech-support line and explaining that you "looked inside the file but couldn't find the spreadsheet." You won't get far, I promise.)

Let's start with files. A file is any individual item on your PC, be it a photo, a Word document, a Quicken database, or an e-mail attachment (which may actually consist of multiple files). A Zip file, FYI, which is commonly used for attachments, is a single compressed file that contains one or more other files. Pretty simple, right?

Folders (pictured) are containers for these files. Windows starts you out with a handful of folders (Documents, Music, Pictures, etc.) you can use to store common file types, but it's a simple matter to create new folders (and/or sub-folders: folders within other folders) and name them what you please.

The smartest Windows users are those who understand and make good use of folders and folder hierarchies. Want to become one of those users? A great place to start is Managing Files and Folders in Windows 7, a free chapter excerpted from the book, Microsoft Windows 7 On Demand. (Note that much of the material applies to earlier versions of Windows as well.)

Oh, one more thing: That Web browser you're using is called Firefox, not Mozilla. Mozilla is the company that makes Firefox. (Yeah, it peeves me when people use the wrong names for things. Get it right!)

Four Windows Icons You Need To Know

2010-01-19T09:57:00.000-06:00

Raise Your Windows IQ: Four Icons You Need to Know

Rick Broida

Jan 18, 2010 7:05 pm

See these four icons, the ones in the red box?

They're downright ubiquitous in Windows programs, but I'll wager there are plenty of users who don't know what the icons do or when and why to use them. In this post and the next few, I'm going to help novices "raise their Windows IQ," to learn some operating-system basics many of us take for granted.

You've probably seen these four icons a thousand times. They appear in the Open and Save boxes for countless programs, right alongside the Look In field that designates where on your PC you're going to open or save something.

From left to right, the icons function as follows:

Go To Last Folder Visited: If you've been hopping around from one folder to another in search of, say, a particular document, clicking this takes you back to the folder you viewed most recently--not the one that's one up in the folder hierarchy. This icon will appear grayed out if you haven't yet switched to a different folder.

Up One Level: Clicking this takes you "up" a folder in whatever set of sub-folders you happen to be viewing. (If you're not familiar with how folder hierarchies work, don't worry: I'll cover that in an upcoming post.)

Create New Folder: Used primarily when you're saving a file, this creates a new folder--a sub-folder, really--within the current folder. Upon clicking, you'll immediately need to type a name for the new folder. Press Enter when you're done. You'll then need to double-click that new folder to open it and save your file there.

View Menu: Clicking this produces a drop-down menu with various choices for how you want to view the various files and folders you're seeing. I'm not going to explain them all--your best bet is to experiment and see which view you like best. Don't worry: You're not modifying or rearranging anything, only changing the presentation.

Guess what? You're now officially a smarter Windows user. Tune in tomorrow for more IQ-raising info.

How To Migrate To a New Computer

2010-01-19T09:55:00.000-06:00

Migrate to a New PC

Jan 11, 2010 9:39 am

Gerald Slane wants to know how to move data and settings to his new, Windows 7-based PC.

Windows 7 comes with a pretty good migration tool--certainly better than the XP or Vista versions--but it's not perfect. I won't give you step-by-step instructions (it's very intuitive and you don't need them), but I'll help you through the major decisions and pitfalls.

But first, you must make your hidden files and folders visible on the old PC (I'll tell you why in a little while). Open Windows Explorer and, if you're using XP, select Tools, then Folder Options. If you're using Vista, select Organize, then Folder and search options. In either OS, click the View tab, select Show hidden files and folders (or Show hidden files, folders, and drives), and click OK.

Now you're ready to get started.

On the new PC, select Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and Windows Easy Transfer. Or you can simply select Start, type easy transfer, then press ENTER to launch the program.

The program will ask how you want to transfer items, and offer three options. Here's what you need to know about them:

Network: This is by far the easiest option, provided you've got both computers on a network and that they're able to access each other. If not, forget it.

Easy Transfer cable: Several companies make USB cables specifically for Windows Easy Transfer. I tried StarTech.com's USB 2.0 Data File Transfer Cable for Windows, and despite packaging that referred only to the Vista version, it worked just fine with Window 7. I assume other companies' cables will, too. The main problem: You have to buy one. I've seen them on sale for about $10.

External hard drive or flash drive: This sneakernet solution is the slowest option, because you have to copy everything twice. But if you don't have a network, don't want to buy a cable, and have an external hard drive handy with plenty of free space (forget the flash drive; it won't be big enough), it's still pretty simple.

When you get passed this decision, the version of Easy Transfer running on your new PC will help you get another instance of it up on the old one. Then it will scan the old PC and decide what needs transferring.

And that's where the program doesn't quite work as it should. It selects all the obvious files and folders (documents, music, and so on) for copying, but it misses almost everything in the appdata folders. Here's what to do:

After scanning your old PC for files to transfer, the program will ask you to "Choose what to transfer." For each user listed, click Customize. Everything in the resulting pop-up menu will be checked, but not everything that should be checked is in that pop-up. So click Advanced.

You'll need to check a folder or two in the resulting dialog box. If your old PC is running XP, check the two Application Data folders; the second one is inside the Local Settings folder. If you're graduating from Vista, you only need to check one: AppData. (This, by the way, is why you need to make your hidden files and folders visible. If you didn't, these folders wouldn't be listed for you to check.)

Click Save and continue with the wizard. When the transfer is done, the program will give you a list of the files transferred, and another of the programs installed on the old machine but not on the new one. You'll want to install at least some of these programs. You can return to these lists by launching the program Windows Easy Transfer Reports.

How To Clear Your Hard Drive Fast

2010-01-19T09:54:00.000-06:00

Free Up Hard-Drive Space, Fast
Need to clear some storage space on your hard drive? Here's how to put it through a crash diet and free up a few gigs right now.
Patrick Miller, PCWorld
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 12:35 PM PST

Your hard drive is full. Normally that isn't such a big deal, but what if you need to grab a coworker's files before she leaves for a vacation, or what if you want your massive overnight file download to go off without a hitch? Here are some short-term tips for clearing space on your hard drive until you have the time to do a proper cleanup.
Hard-Drive Spring Cleaning

Microsoft's Disk Cleanup tool takes out the trash.

Average hard-drive capacities are growing every year, so most people don't practice the same miserly storage habits that they did when megabytes (or even kilobytes) were scarce. But it's still a good idea to give your drive a fast sweep from time to time to reduce clutter and avoid filling it up prematurely. Follow these steps to eliminate junk and reclaim wasted storage quickly.

Before you do anything else, empty your Recycle Bin by right-clicking on it and choosing Empty Recycle Bin. Even the most hardened Windows veteran can occasionally forget that they left a few DVD images in there.

Clear your Google Chrome cache.

Open the Disk Cleanup tool; typing Disk Cleanup in the Start menu box should bring it up, or else you can find it under Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup. Select the volume to clean. After it's done scanning your drive, it should tell you how much space you can free up by deleting different kinds of files, including cached Web pages, temporary application files, reports from Windows Error Reporting, and so on. Check and uncheck items at your pleasure, but keep in mind that the space you reclaim by clearing your temporary files or Web browser caches will fill right up as you start browsing again and using applications; if you need that space to store something else, you'll need to clean even more.

In Firefox, you can clear the cache and specify how much space it uses.

Disk Cleanup doesn't cover all of your PC's caches, either--especially if you're using a browser other than Internet Explorer. Here's how you can clear your cache with different browsers:

Firefox: Go to Tools, Advanced, Network. Click the Clear Now button to clear the cache, and adjust the amount of space that the cache uses down to what you can spare.

Safari: Enable the menu bar (click the gear in the upper-right corner and choose Show Menu Bar) if you haven't already. Then choose Edit, Empty Cache.

Google Chrome: Click the wrench icon in the upper-right corner, and go to Options, Personal Stuff, Clear Browsing Data. Here you can check what kinds of data to delete; check Empty the Cache and select Everything from the drop-down menu.
Find More Disks

Even if your hard drive is full, you probably have a handful of other disks that you can temporarily draft into extra storage duty. Obviously, other computers on your network can pull their weight, too; but if you're in an office or school environment, you might have access to a network drive for storing some stuff. Just check with a system admin to make sure it's okay before you start any file transfers.

Also, you likely own a handful of other devices that could help: A portable media player, a flash memory card, a USB thumb drive, or even the internal memory of a camera or phone can mount via Bluetooth or USB and act as a removable hard drive. Keep note of where you're storing your files, though, or you might find yourself missing something important later on.

Don't overlook your humble optical drive, either--any remotely recent computer should be able to burn CDs and DVDs, and even when most stores are closed you can still find blank optical media at an all-night pharmacy or convenience store.

If you don't have enough local storage, you can try to keep files on the Internet. Online storage services such as Box.net can provide you with an extra gig or two of storage space if you're willing to put up with the hassle of uploading and downloading your files. Also, Google recently expanded its Google Docs app to allow users to store any file up to 250MB, with 1GB of total file storage for free.
Manage Your Media

No matter how clean you try to keep your PC or how many extra disks you can bring to bear, you still can't clear away enough space without deleting something significant. Here's how you can minimize the painful choices.

For most home PCs, the only way you can possibly fill up a modern hard drive is to keep an archive of movies, music, and pictures, all of which you might have copies of elsewhere. Raw video and image files can take extraordinary amounts of space: A standard JPEG image captured with a 12-megapixel camera, for example, could consume about 6MB. Multiply that by the couple hundred pictures you take on a vacation, and you're looking at a pretty sizable chunk.

This is probably what your hard drive looks like.

If you've already put those photos on Facebook or Flickr, however, you could clear them off your hard drive and redownload them later with Fotobounce, an app that lets you upload and download whole albums with ease. Likewise, if you have videos on YouTube and you don't need the uncompressed video files any longer, you can always get rid of them and redownload YouTube's compressed versions later.

The same goes for music files. If you keep most of your music files on your iPod as well as on your PC, delete them from the PC temporarily and get them back later with any iPod manager utility (see "Back Up Your iPod to Your PC" for more details).

Finally, delete all of the old episodes of Law and Order you have lying around your hard drive. If you haven't caught up on last year's TV viewing yet, you probably won't miss them--and chances are, you can stream the DVD on Netflix Instant Play.

If you've done all that and you still can't clear out space, you likely need to buy a new hard drive. Have any other space-saving tricks? Share them--and your bloated-hard-drive stories--in the comments.

1998-2010, PC World Communications, Inc.

Top Ten Netbooks

2010-01-19T09:52:00.000-06:00

Top 10 Netbooks
Netbooks (aka mini-notebooks, mini-notes...."laptots"....take your pick) are perfect travel companions and meet basic computing needs, including e-mailing, Web surfing, and document creation. Best of all, these low-powered machines cost less than the standard-issue laptop.

1. Toshiba NB205-310
CPU: Intel Atom N280; CPU speed: 1660MHz; Display size: 10.1 inches; Hard drive size: 160GB; WorldBench 6 rating: Very Good

Bottom Line: Toshiba's NB205 is a great value, packed with a collection of fantastic features and a marathon-ready battery life.
Full Review • Test Report • Specs
Check Latest Prices

2. Samsung Go
CPU: Intel Atom N270; CPU speed: 1600MHz; Display size: 10.1 inches; Hard drive size: 160GB; WorldBench 6 rating: Very Good

Bottom Line: The Samsung Go is certainly not subtle, but this netbook is a stylish--and potentially kid-friendly--computer.
Full Review • Video Review • Test Report • Specs
Check Latest Prices

3. Samsung N120
CPU: Intel Atom N270; CPU speed: 1600MHz; Display size: 10.1 inches; Hard drive size: 160GB; WorldBench 6 rating: Good

Bottom Line: This is a good alternative to Samsung's N110 if you're willing to trade battery power for bigger keys and better performance.
Full Review • Video Review • Test Report • Specs
Check Latest Prices

4. ASUS Eee PC 1005HA
CPU: Intel Atom N280; CPU speed: 1660MHz; Display size: 10.1 inches; Hard drive size: 160GB; WorldBench 6 rating: Very Good

Bottom Line: This netbook is a slim, smart collection of compromises that'll give you what you need for a good price.
Full Review • Test Report • Specs
Check Latest Prices

5. Lenovo IdeaPad S12
CPU: Intel Atom N270; CPU speed: 1600MHz; Display size: 12.1 inches; Hard drive size: 160GB; Weight (min): 3.42 pounds; WorldBench 6 rating: Very Good

Bottom Line: Larger than your average netbook, the S12 provides average performance at a fairly high netbook price.
Full Review • Test Report • Specs • Buy now direct from Lenovo
Check Latest Prices Buy now direct from Lenovo
Sponsored Links

* Be Smart & Save! On All Laptops! 100% Satisfaction! Order Now & Save!www.tigerdirect.com
* Free US LaptopAs Heard on Radio. Get a Free Laptop Today! Limited Time Offer!ComputerLCS.com/Free-US-Laptops
* Buy laptopBuy Buy laptop. www.eBay.com

6. HP Mini 5101
CPU: Intel Atom N280; CPU speed: 1660MHz; Display size: 10.1 inches; Hard drive size: 160GB; WorldBench 6 rating: Good

Bottom Line: HP's Business-netbook grows up -- and gets better -- by making some long-overdue changes. But it needs a better battery.
Full Review • Video Review • Test Report • Specs
Check Latest Prices

7. ASUS Eee PC 1008HA
CPU: Intel Atom N280; CPU speed: 1660MHz; Display size: 10.1 inches; Hard drive size: 160GB; WorldBench 6 rating: Very Good

Bottom Line: Asus keeps iterating Eee PC netbooks, but at least the 1008HA comes with smart design choices (plus a great battery life.)
Full Review • Test Report • Specs
Check Latest Prices

8. Acer Aspire One 751h
CPU: Atom Z520; CPU speed: 1330MHz; Display size: 11.6 inches; Hard drive size: 160GB; WorldBench 6 rating: Fair

Bottom Line: Acer's 751h is a good-sized netbook that gets marred by a miserable mouse button.
Full Review • Test Report • Specs
Check Latest Prices

9. Samsung NP-NC20
CPU speed: 1000MHz; Display size: 12.1 inches; Hard drive size: 160GB; WorldBench 6 rating: Superior

Bottom Line: This lumpy netbook's biggest selling points: It's screen and good battery life. But you could buy a full laptop for less.
Full Review • Test Report • Specs
Check Latest Prices

10. Dell Inspiron Mini 10
CPU: Atom Z530; CPU speed: 1600MHz; Display size: 10.1 inches; Hard drive size: 160GB; WorldBench 6 rating: Good

Bottom Line: Despite a decent design, this netbook's screen and limited storage don't make it the ideal platform for a TV tuner.
Full Review • Test Report • Specs

Film Lovely Bones Opens Today

2010-01-15T11:23:00.000-06:00

The film Lovely Bones based on the critically acclaimed book by Alice Sebold opens today, Friday, January 15. Directed by Oscar winner Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings)from a screenplay by Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson, the story centers on a young girl who recently was murdered. She looks down from heaven, watching her family and killer. She is torn between her desire for vengeance and her wish that her family heal. Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz and Susan Sarandon star along with Stanley Tucci, Michael Imperioli and Oscar nominee Sooirse Ronan (as young girl) Our library has multiple copies of Sebold's book.

More 2009 Dagger Winners

2010-01-14T14:19:00.000-06:00

The Crime Writers' Association, CWA, has announced the following 2009 Dagger winners:
William Brodrick, CWA Gold Dagger for A Whispered Name;
John Hart CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for The Last Child;
Johan Theorin CWA John Creasey (New Blood)Dagger for Echoes from the Dead;
Philip Kerr Ellis Peters Historical Award for If the Dead Rise Not.
The CWA Dagger Awards are the oldest literary awards in the United Kingdom and are internationally recognized as a mark of achievement
and excellence.

Mystery Writer Val McDermid Awarded CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger Award

2010-01-13T14:24:00.000-06:00

Crime Writers Association, CWA, has awarded popular author Val McDermid the 2009 CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger Award, which honours outstanding achievement in the field of crime writing. Margaret Murphy, chair of the CWA, said: “The CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger award acknowledges the work of an author who has made an outstanding contribution to the genre. Val McDermid is a worthy winner whose work has entertained and thrilled millions of readers as well as many more who have enjoyed the TV adaptations her books have inspired.” In 1995 McDermid won the CWA Gold Dagger for The Mermaids Singing, which first introduced her characters Tony Hill and Carol Jordan. Fever of the Bone is the sixth novel of this series which inspired the popular ITV series Wire in the Blood. McDermid's books have sold more than 10 million worldwide. She has written 23 bestselling novels.

Facebook Offers Free Security Software

2010-01-13T13:55:00.000-06:00

Facebook Offers Free McAfee Software To Users

By Jennifer Bosavage, ChannelWeb

1:27 PM EST Wed. Jan. 13, 2010
Facebook is offering a free, six-month, McAfee security software subscription to the 350 million users of the social networking site in an effort to reduce exposure to security threats.

The partnership with McAfee is for one year. The first six months of use will be free, followed by a special discount following the trial period. Members need to visit the Protect Your PC tab on the McAfee Page on Facebook.

In a post on the Facebook blog, the site detailed its history in trying to protect users' accounts: "We invest in dedicated teams and advanced technical systems that detect and block suspicious behavior. When we find a message with a link to a fake login page or other malicious Web site, we prevent it from being sent and delete all instances of it from the site. We also work with third parties to get malicious sites added to browser blacklists or removed completely."

When an account is compromised, the owner of the account often learns of it by logging into Facebook and finding that unauthorized messages -- including perhaps spam -- have been sent from his/her account. The account owner must take proscribed steps to secure the account and learn security best practices. The site has now also incorporated custom McAfee software into this process for people identified as having infected computers. In addition, if a computer is found to be infected, the user must run a scan and clean the machine before accessing Facebook.

Facebook and McAfee will also jointly develop and update content for the Facebook Security Page.

The Dawn of The Tablet PC

2010-01-08T15:13:00.000-06:00

The Dawn of the Tablet PC: CES 2010 Roundup
Tablet PCs are the big thing at CES 2010. Here's a look at what HP, Lenovo, and Sony have lined up--as well as at some of the challengers aiming to knock them down.
Patrick Miller, PCWorld
Thursday, January 07, 2010 07:45 PM PST

If this year's CES is any indication, 2010 is the Year of the Tablet PC. Practically every major consumer tech company is coming out with something thin, touchable, and Twitter-friendly.

The evolution of the tablet PC is similar to that of the laptop computer, the netbook, and the smartphone: Companies aren't so much selling us a better computer as they are selling us new ways to use computers.

However, consumers want something more portable than a laptop, more powerful than a netbook, and more comfortable than a smartphone--and a new tablet PC could very well fill all of those needs, in many different ways. People who love their e-readers but want something a little more versatile would likely love the Adam by Notion Ink, for example, while fans of touchscreen smartphones should pay close attention to Dell's concept Android tablet, which could offer similar Internet functions with a much more comfortable user experience.

(To view a slideshow summary of the tablet PCs included here see: Tablets Steal the Show at CES)

To see what the burgeoning tablet PC market might be able to offer you in the near future, read on for a comparison of the newly announced tablets from HP, Lenovo, and Sony, as well as a look at some of the almost-announced tablets on the horizon. Most likely, none of these products will be able to replace your main PC--but one of them just might scratch an itch you didn't realize you had.
HP Multitouch Tablet

The HP tablet PC or 'Slate,' demoed at CES 2010.

HP's as-yet-unnamed tablet is undoubtedly the star so far, considering that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer demoed it at the CES 2010 keynote.

Some tablet enthusiasts were disappointed because it wasn't the rumored Microsoft "Courier" dual-screen tablet prototype that leaked in September 2009, and in Ballmer's brief demo we didn't see any game-changing features. At this point, though, HP's tablet seems poised to define the standard tablet PC experience. We do know that the HP tablet runs Windows 7, supports multitouch gestures, has an accelerometer to change the display's orientation automatically, and is due out in mid-2010 for under $500.

More info: Read our coverage of the HP tablet demo at the CES keynote, or check out one writer's take on the HP tablet announcement.
Lenovo Ideapad U1 Hybrid Notebook/Tablet

The Lenovo Ideapad U1 hybrid laptop/tablet PC.

Lenovo's Ideapad U1 touchscreen laptop/tablet has been turning heads at CES--probably because it can take its own head off. The Ideapad U1 starts out as a 3.8-pound laptop that runs Windows 7 on a Core 2 Duo CULV processor and a 128GB solid-state drive, but removing the 11.6-inch display lets you use it as a stand-alone Linux tablet PC, powered by a 1GHz Snapdragon ARM processor with 16GB of flash memory.

Once detached, the base of the PC becomes a 3G wireless hub for the tablet, ensuring that you keep your Internet connection. Lenovo's Hybrid Switch software handles the move between the main processor and the tablet processor, so users should be able to start browsing a Website in laptop mode and continue where they left off after they detach the tablet. Lenovo's Ideapad U1 hybrid PC is due out on June 1 for less than $1000.

More info: Watch a video of the Ideapad U1 in action, or read about Lenovo's announcement.
Sony Dash Mobile Internet Device

The Sony Dash Mobile Internet Device.

While HP's unnamed tablet and Lenovo's Ideapad U1 are headed in a general-computing direction, Sony's Dash is taking a different tack. Sony is calling the Dash a "portable Internet device," and the product takes more inspiration from the Chumby Internet appliance (in fact, Sony collaborated with Chumby in developing the Dash) than it does from any previous tablet PC.

With a Dash, you can stream media from Sony's Bravia content networks or attached USB devices onto its 7-inch, 800-by-480-pixel touchscreen, and listen to it through the built-in speaker or the standard 3.5mm headphone jack. You can also access the Internet over the Dash's Wi-Fi 802.11b/g connection using the included apps, or you can grab your own choices from among its library of over 1000 existing Chumby apps. The unit has no built-in storage space--the Dash is meant only for accessing the Internet. It supports multitasking, however, so you should be able to listen to Pandora while updating Facebook (or reading PCWorld). It will be available for $200 in April.

More info: Check out our coverage of Sony's announcement or stop by the Sony Dash product page.
Notion Ink Adam Smartpad

The Notion Ink Adam Tablet.

The Android-based Adam, created by India-based startup Notion Ink, is a tablet PC that blurs the line between e-reader and full-fledged PC. First announced in December 2009, the Adam carries the nVidia Tegra chip, weighs 1.7 pounds, supports wireless Internet via Wi-Fi and 3G (Engadget reports that the current 3G chip is compatible with AT&T), and can charge via USB.

Of particular note is the 10.1-inch Pixel Qi display, which could potentially stretch the Adam's battery life far beyond that of other tablet PCs, especially when combined with the power-efficient nVidia Tegra chip. No news yet on a shipping date, but the price is expected to be less than $400.

More info: Read about the original Notion Ink Adam announcement.
Archos 9 PCTablet

The Archos 9 PCTablet.

Despite appearing at Steve Ballmer's CES 2010 keynote, the Archos 9 PCTablet didn't get any love. That's probably because it actually debuted in mid-2009, and a few preorders have already shipped, though it's not expected to hit general retail channels until the first quarter of 2010.

Unlike the rest of the tablets at CES, the Archos 9 PCTablet is more like a 9-inch, 1024-by-600-pixel touchscreen UMPC that runs Windows 7 Starter Edition; it's powered by a 1.1GHz Intel Atom Z510 processor. The PCTablet also packs a 60GB hard drive and 1GB of RAM, offers networking via 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and 100-mbps ethernet, and has USB 2.0, microphone, and 3.5mm audio ports, as well as a 1.3-megapixel Webcam.

Considering that the Archos 9 was first announced in June 2009, specs-wise it doesn't seem capable of hanging with all the new CES-announced tablets when it finally ships in early 2010. Preorders cost around $750, but retail pricing is still undetermined for its release.

More info: See the Archos 9 PCtablet product page.
Innovative Converged Devices Vega and Ultra Tablets

The Innovative Converged Devices Ultra Tablet.

ICD has announced a pair of Android 2.0 tablets, one of which--the Ultra--has been popping up at nVidia's CES booth, at Verizon's booth, and on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon in mid-December 2009.

According to ICD's Ultra product page, the Ultra tablet has a 7-inch touchscreen and is powered by a 1GHz nVidia Tegra T20 processor, which lets you watch smooth 1080p video; the device also includes 4GB of on-board storage space, as well as a MicroSD card slot for further expansion. The ICD Vega, the Ultra's bigger cousin, has a 15.6-inch, 1366-by-768-pixel touchscreen and a 32GB solid-state drive.

Both tablets give you a full spread of connectivity options, ranging from USB 2.0 and Bluetooth to 2G/3G data networks (optional) and Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, though the demo at Verizon's booth reportedly had the unit using a Motorola 4G modem on a precommercial network. Other specs include a 1.3-megapixel Webcam, an accelerometer, dual digital microphones, an FM radio, and an ambient-light sensor.

While the tablets look promising, our brief early look at the ICD Ultra suggests that they have a ways to go before they hit the market. No release date has been announced.

More info: Check out our sneak peek at the ICD Ultra or read more preliminary details about the whole ICD tablet family.
Freescale Semiconductors Tablet

The Freescale smartbook tablet.

Freescale made waves by announcing the $199 "smartbook" tablet early on in CES, but the company hasn't pulled the veil off quite yet. Equipped with a 1GHz ARM processor, some sort of on-board graphics hardware for HD video, and wireless connectivity via 802.11b/g/n or (optional) 3G modem, the device is intended to run general applications such as a Web browser (with Flash support), social networking tools, and an office suite.

The tablet is slated to have a 7-inch 1024-by-600-pixel touchscreen, a 3-megapixel Webcam, 4GB to 64GB of internal storage, and a MicroSD slot; it will also weigh less than a pound. So far, Freescale's design appears more conceptual than concrete--no manufacturers or vendors have been named as yet, though Freescale is aiming for a summer release. Stay tuned for more details as CES progresses.

More info: Read our coverage of the Freescale i.MX515 processor, and look at the Freescale tablet prototype from September 2009.
Pegatron Tablet

The other mysterious tablet from Steve Ballmer's CES keynote was a tablet by Pegatron (which was spun off from Taiwan-based AsusTek Computer in December 2009). Details are scarce, except that the device is significantly larger than the Archos 9 and HP tablets. According to Neowin, the unit has an 11.6-inch touchscreen display, 1GB of RAM, 32GB of on-board storage, a Webcam, and HDMI-out.

More info: Read Neowin's hands-on with the Pegatron tablet.
Dell 'Streak' Android Tablet Concept

The Dell 'Streak' Mobile Internet Device.

Rumors of Dell's entry into the tablet market have been floating around for a while, starting with the Android-powered mobile Internet device rumors from mid-2009 and continuing into December, when the unit picked up the Dell "Streak" moniker. Though this device has finally surfaced as an unnamed concept product at CES 2010, we have few details aside from confirmation that it uses Google's Android OS and has a 5-inch touchscreen with a 5-megapixel camera on the back. Pocket-lint reports that it has an option for a built-in SIM card.

More info: Read our article on some of the pre-CES Dell Streak speculation.
Apple 'iSlate' Tablet

A concept sketch of the rumored Apple tablet PC.

Even though Apple never attends CES, people have been buzzing about an upcoming Apple tablet for months now. As of this writing, all signs point to a January 26 announcement at a special Apple media event, and a March ship date. The tablet is expected to be named the iSlate. Specs are still unknown, of course, but a blog post by former Google China exec (and former Apple employee) Kai-Fu Lee suggests a 10.1-inch touchscreen with 3D graphics hardware, 3G Internet support (and a possible price subsidy from wireless carriers), and a price tag under $1000.

More info: See one PCW blogger's take on the many possible uses of the Apple tablet.

For more up-to-the-minute blogs, stories, photos, and video from the nation's largest consumer electronics show, check out PCWorld's complete coverage of CES 2010.

Patrick Miller is a staff editor for PCWorld. Find him off-duty @pattheflip.

3G vs. DSL, Cable

2010-01-05T11:01:00.000-06:00

3G vs. Terrestrial Broadband
Lincoln Spector
Jan 4, 2010 10:16 am
Phil Kunde wants to know if the 3G Internet access available through his cell phone provider makes a viable alternative to conventional broadband such as cable or DSL.

Not in my book. While cell-based Internet access has one big advantage--you can access the Internet on your PC anywhere you can use your cell phone--it contains some very serious negatives.

For one thing, it's slow. Cell carriers like Sprint and Verizon promise download speeds that top out at only about 1.4Mbps--and can drop as low as .6Mbps. "Wireless signal, by its nature, is extremely variable; that is, many things, such as obstruction by fixed objects (buildings, trees, etc.), weather, network load, cell tower locations, and time of day, can affect the quality of the signal," says Mark Sullivan in A Day in the Life of 3G. (I'm sticking to 3G numbers here because, as I write this, the much faster 4G is still relatively rare in the United States.)

By comparison, 6Mbps DSL and 16Mbps cable connections are readily available.

The difference gets more extreme when you take price into consideration. AT&T charges the same $35 a month for 6Mbps DSL and 1.4Mbps (if you're lucky) 3G. But the $35 3G plan sticks you with a 200MB monthly allowance; I've downloaded individual files bigger than that. For $60 a month, you get 5GB, which is more reasonable but still wouldn't cover my family's Internet habits.

Speaking of families, a 3G connection can be shared in a way similar to broadband--one point in its favor. You do this with a small, router-like MiFi device that you purchase from your carrier. It's small, portable, and can connect up to five WiFi-enabled devices to your 3G Internet signal. Using one regularly with several people, of course, pretty much guarantees that you'll hit that 5GB limit early each month.

Depending on your lifestyle or working conditions, cell-based Internet access may very well be invaluable. But unless you're like George Clooney's character in Up in the Air--constantly traveling, never at home, and with no family--it's not a valid replacement for DSL or cable.

At least not yet.

Add your comments to this article below. If you have other tech questions, email them to me at answer@pcworld.com, or post them to a community of helpful folks on the PCW Answer Line forum.

See more like this: internet, broadband, mobile broadband, networks, routers

Lenovo Unveils New Hybrid Tablet/Laptop and Smartbook

2010-01-05T10:58:00.000-06:00

Lenovo Unveils New Hybrid Tablet/Laptop and Smartbook
Agam Shah, IDG News Service
Jan 4, 2010 11:20 pm
Lenovo on Tuesday made a splash in the mobile market with the launch of its first smartbook, a mini-laptop called Skylight that the company says combines the best features of netbooks and smartphones, albeit without telephone functions.The lightweight device weighs 1.95 pounds (0.88 kilograms) and resembles a netbook, with a 10.1-inch screen and compact keyboard.
Lenovo Skylight
The low-cost device is designed for customers who want Internet on the go without PC functionality, said Ninis Samuel, marketing director at Lenovo.
Powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm Arm-based Snapdragon processor, the device offers 10 hours of battery life and includes integrated 3G mobile broadband and Wi-Fi connectivity.
Lenovo is one of the early PC makers to offer Arm-based mini-laptops, which have been called "smartbooks" by some chip makers. Smartbooks could fill a big void for consumers who need the simplicity of smartphone usage in a PC-like device, Samuel said.
Lenovo Skylight
"To match that demand and growth, the consumers want innovative devices that can connect to the Internet and multimedia on the go," Samuel said. The device is expected to be on display at the Consumer Electronics Show, which will be held in Las Vegas from Jan. 7 to 10. (All the latest CES news and gadgets here).
Skylight could emerge as an alternative in the low-cost laptop space to netbooks, which are mostly powered by Intel's Atom chips. Atom-based netbooks have a leg up because of support for both Microsoft's popular Windows operating systems and Linux. Arm-based chips do not support a full Windows OS, so smartbooks usually come with the Linux OS.
Lenovo already offers netbooks with multiple screen sizes, and on Tuesday added new models with the Windows OS. The IdeaPad S10-3 and the IdeaPad S10-3T, which includes a touchscreen, will be powered by the latest Atom processors, which should provide better battery life and performance than earlier chips.

Smartbooks mainly come in devices with smaller screens, like Sharp's NetWalker PC-Z1, which has a 5-inch screen. Though many Arm-based Internet devices with PC functionality are expected to be announced this year, one major PC maker has already questioned the viability of such products.

Asustek Computer CEO Jerry Shen has said he saw no "clear market" for smartbooks and that the company had no immediate plans to ship them. However, Asus, which was a pioneer of netbooks, demonstrated a mini-laptop with Qualcomm's Snapdragon platform running Google's Android open-source operating system at the Computex trade show in June.

But smartbooks could offer advantages over netbooks including longer battery life and quicker startup. Arm processors usually draw less power than Atom chips, and the quick boot capabilities of Linux help provide instant access to the Web.

Skylight's Linux OS includes a custom software user interface called Live Web Gadgets for users to access multiple Web applications at the same time. Users can receive notifications of new e-mail on Gmail, or write Facebook or Twitter updates in a split window interface.

The smartbook will be available for US$499 in the U.S. starting in April. It will also be available at a subsidized price through AT&T with the purchase of a 3G data plan. Shortly after, it will become available in Asia and Europe, Lenovo officials said.

Lenovo is launching a total of 10 PCs at CES, including the IdeaPad S10-3T netbook, which comes with 10.1-inch screen that supports multiple finger touch input. Users can place fingers on the screen to manipulate images, scroll down documents or zoom into maps. Prices for the device start at US$499. It weighs about 2.76 pounds, and runs for about four hours with a four-cell battery.

Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t

The IdeaPad S10-3 netbook, which also includes a 10.1-inch screen is priced starting at $349. The device weighs about 2.43 pounds, and runs for about 3.5 hours with a four-cell battery. The netbooks will support up to 320GB and 2GB of memory.

Meanwhile, the IdeaPad U1 is a combo multi-touch tablet/laptop that will cost around $1000 in June.

Lenovo IdeaPad U1

When the two pieces are connected together in notebook form, the U1 runs Windows 7 using an Intel Core 2 Duo SU processor. When seperated and used as a tablet, the screen is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and a custom Linux OS.

Lenovo IdeaPad U1

Microsoft Announces Pricing for Office 2010

2010-01-05T10:57:00.000-06:00

Microsoft has announced pricing for Office 2010, with the biggest change being the fact that buyers can pay less by forgoing the full boxed copy in favor of a card with only a product key code.
Office 2010, which is now in public beta testing and due in final form later this year, will come in four retail versions--Home and Student, Home and Business, Professional, and an academic version of Office Professional. Of note, the product key cards are good for only one PC, while the boxed copies are good for installation on two PCs, with the exception of Home and Student, which is licensed for use on up to three machines.

Office Professional, which includes Word 2010, Excel 2010, PowerPoint 2010, OneNote 2010, Outlook 2010, Publisher 2010, Access 2010, premium technical support, and the browser-based Office Web Apps, is priced at $499 for the full boxed copy or $349 for the product key card. The academic version of Office Professional for students and educators will sell for $99 and will be available at campus bookstores and through certain retailers.
Office Home and Student is priced at $149 for the boxed version and $119 for the product key card and includes Word 2010, Excel 2010, PowerPoint 2010, OneNote 2010, and the Office Web Apps. It is available in a Family Pack, allowing use on three PCs in one home.
The new home option, Office Home and Business, which adds Outlook to the mix and is licensed for business use, is offered at $279 for the boxed form or $199 for the product key card.
Microsoft also noted that it has now reached more than 2 million downloads of the beta version of Office 2010.
"To get a better appreciation for that number, it's a rate of more than 40,000 downloads per day," Office General Manager Rachel Bondi said Tuesday in a blog posting. "That's approximately twice the number of people who run the Boston Marathon each year, or the entire population of Olympia, WA, or Annapolis, MD, downloading the Office 2010 beta every day!"
Originally posted at Beyond Binary

What's The Best E-Book Reader Available?

2009-12-29T12:24:00.000-06:00

If you are thinking of buying an ebook reader, then it makes sense to compare the 3 big boys on the market, the Barnes and Noble Nook, Amazon Kindle 2 and the new Sony Reader Touch Edition. Here's a detailed comparison of all three to help you choose.

Firstly, let's examine the similarities in all 3 ebook readers.

Display Screen- The Nook, Kindle 2, and Reader all take advantage of the cutting edge display technology called "E-Ink". This isn't your run-of-the-mill computer screen with pixels. This screen displays the text and pictures (gray-scale) right up against the bottom of the display glass. This allows you to see the crystal clear text even at extreme angles and lighting situations.

Text can be changed to different sizes for all 3 models as well.

Audio Support- All 3 devices allow you to download and listen to mp3 songs while reading.

Pricing- Pricing is comparable between the 3 devices.

Differences between the 3 devices.

Wireless and 3G- The Nook and Kindle 2 allows you to access the web to download new titles and publications. The Sony Touch does not, instead you need to hook up the reader to the computer via USB and download the books. It should be mentioned the Sony Reader Daily Edition will have Wireless and 3G when it is released. This model will be more expensive than the Nook and Kindle 2 by quite a lot, so that is why this model was not included in this comparison!

Color Navigation Screen- The color navigation below the display screen on the Nook sets it apart from the other ebook readers. You can peruse color pictures of book covers. This has been reported by many to be slightly slow, definitely slower than, say, the iPhone in responsiveness.

Sony Touch Screen- The Sony has a touch screen (hence the name!). Page turning is done by swiping the finger across the screen, whereas page turning is by the push of a button for the Nook and Kindle 2. The Nook's color screen doubles as a touch screen, but again, only on the navigation screen, not the display screen.

Memory For the Devices- The Nook and Kindle 2 both have a default memory of 2 GB of memory. This allows up to 1,500 books to be added to the device. The Sony has 512 MB of memory that allows up to 350 books.

International Capabilities- The Kindle 2 is the only device that provides International service with 3G and wireless downloads of books and publications. Amazon says the Kindle 2 will work in over 100 countries.

Lending Feature for the Nook- The Nook allows you to lend out books for 14 days to others that have the Nook, or Nook compatible device.

The Bottom Line- There are numerous differences in these 3 most popular ebook reader devices. We are in a stage right now where each device is trying to differentiate itself with different features. They will definitely start stepping more in-line with each other as time goes on.

For instance, as the EPUB file becomes more popular with public libraries across the nation and world, each ebook reader will support the use of these no doubt.

And the Winner Is?

Popular consensus among critics and customers alike is that the Amazon Kindle 2 is the winner for now. Other flashy features can't out weigh the standard features that come with the Kindle 2 and the International Compatibility.

What Is The Kindle

2009-12-29T12:20:00.000-06:00

Everyone loves to read books, magazines, newspapers in their spare time and more importantly, these stuffs are the common hobbies between each and everyone living in this world, with that in mind, A new revolutionary product is created which is changing the world known as " Amazon Kindle ", This amazing device is portable and with it's portability it is really compact and one can take this machine to anywhere and everywhere.

Amazon Kindle is a portable ebook, magazines and newspapers reader, a device which will never fail to impress you and you won't be getting bored of it as usually others do get bored by reading books for a long time and they feel really stress then, but with Amazon Kindle you will be amazed and most importantly, you will actually find this portable ebook reader really special as it consists over 200 book titles.

Some of it's important key features are:

* Electronic-Paper display which provides sharp and high-resolution display.
* Buy a book and it will be delivered in just one minute.
* Very easy to use, no need of attaching wires, cables and etc.
* Long-Lasting battery life, usually recharges with-in 2 hours.
* You're able to e-mail your word documents and images.
* Free book samples also available, you can download first chapters and read it for free.
* Comes with WI-FI capability.

And the list moves on and on ...

Amazon Kindle is a jam-packed portable ebook reader device which have more than 110,000 books available. With it's amazing features, excellent stand-by time and friendly user-interface, this product is changing the life-style of everyone.

Furthermore, it has a very unique ergonomic design with a very easy to use special keyboard and this product makes you search almost any book very easily, just type in a word or phrase which you are looking for and you will instantly receive the results. You even have wireless access to Wikipedia, the most up-to-date encyclopedia on the whole internet.

Make Web Pages Print Properly

2009-12-28T15:23:00.000-06:00

Make Web Pages Print Properly

Rick Broida

Dec 23, 2009 7:44 am

Shrink to Fit: Click to view larger imageA few days ago, the missus shoved some sheets of paper in my face and demanded, "Why are Web pages printing big all of a sudden?"

Sure enough, all the print on all the pages was comically oversize--and largely useless, as much of the actual Web page was cut off on the right side.

Not good. My wife frequently prints recipes, and all this enlarged output was threatening our culinary happiness.

So I fired up Firefox (her browser of choice), loaded up a recipe page, and clicked File, Print Preview. Basically, I wanted to see if the preview matched the actual output. Sure enough, it did, and here's why: The Scale setting had somehow gotten bumped to 150%.

I changed it back to the almost-always-preferable setting Shrink to Fit, and presto: Normal print size restored.

There's a very similar setting in Internet Explorer, so if you're encountering weirdly sized text on your printed Web pages, make sure your "scales" are set properly.

Master Google Android: 40 Tips and Tricks - PCWorld Business Center

2009-12-28T14:45:00.000-06:00

Master Google Android: 40 Tips and Tricks - PCWorld Business Center

Posted using ShareThis

Ten Printer Problems and Solutions

2009-12-28T14:38:00.000-06:00

Jeff Bertolucci, PC World
Friday, December 18, 2009 03:06 PM PST

Printers: Can't live with them, can't nuke them. You could always toss a misbehaving inkjet or laser out the window, but where would that leave you? Truth be told, we need our printers, despite their maddening quirks. Here's a saner idea: Take a deep breath, channel your inner tech support rep, and repair that which has failed you. (Cue sitar.)

We've listed the 10 biggest printer annoyances -- of course, your Top 10 list may vary -- and ways to fix them.

Problem: Printing is too slow.

Solution: Rev up printer performance--and save ink in the process--by reducing print quality for everyday output. While printer settings vary by model, here's how to switch to draft-printing mode in most Windows apps. Select Print and Properties, and then look for a setting that reduces print quality. With the HP Photosmart 8450, for instance, change the default print quality setting from Normal to Fast Draft (click screen-shot at right). Other speedup suggestions: Print pages from websites without graphics, and add RAM to your printer, if possible. Read "Speed Up Everything" for more tips.

Problem: Ink and/or toner costs too much.

Solution: PC World has written a lot about the printing industry's sneaky practices over the years. To wit: They snare you with dirt-cheap printers sold at or below cost, and then stick it to you later with ultra-pricey consumables.

Based on our tests, we can't recommend third party vendors' remanufactured or refilled ink cartridges, which may not give you your money's worth. One cost-saving solution is to buy higher-capacity cartridges. If you print a lot, try an ink cartridge with a 250-plus page yield, or a toner cartridge with a 2,000-plus page yield.

Problem: Windows is sending print jobs to the wrong printer.

Solution: For some mysterious reason, Windows may select a new default printer--the one it automatically sends print jobs to. (This happened to me when I upgraded from Vista to Windows 7.) To fix this glitch in Windows 7, click Start (the Windows icon in the lower-left corner of the screen) and select Devices and Printers. Under Printers and Faxes, right-click the printer you want to make the default, and select Set as default printer.

If you're using earlier versions of Windows, these steps vary a bit. Here are instructions for Windows XP and Vista users.

Problem: My prints are too light, too spotty, or have horizontal lines.

Solution: You may have a clogged print head, a problem that can occur if you use an inkjet printer infrequently. Your printer's utility program can clean out the dried ink, and print a test page for inspection. The step-by-step instructions on how to do this vary by printer. From the Windows 7 Start menu, click Devices and Printers or Control Panel, and look for your printer's utility app. For additional details, read "Solve Inkjet Printer Problems." For more tips on unclogging ink nozzles, go here. (Again, these steps may vary slightly for Vista and XP users.)

Problem: My printer says my ink cartridge is empty. I think it's lying.

Solution: You may be right. Printer out-of-ink messages are notoriously unreliable. The good news: You can try various hacks to get around those ink cartridge controls. We're not suggesting that all, or even some, of these reader tips will work with your printer, but they're worth a try. One tip reveals how to reset ink cartridges for various HP printers. And a video on this page shows how to revive an "out of ink" Epson cartridge. If you're feeling adventurous, check them out.

Problem: My wireless printer is too slow.

Solution: To get the best performance from a network printer, it's hard to beat a wired, Ethernet-cable-to-router connection. Wireless printing may be more convenient in many homes and offices, but it has its limitations. Since Wi-Fi speeds slow down with distance, you'll want to place your wireless printer as close as possible to the router. Also, make sure your Wi-Fi printer or any wireless print server it connects to supports the 802.11n spec, which can rival the performance of 100-mbps Ethernet.

Problem: I use remanufactured or refilled ink cartridges, and my prints look awful.

Solution: We recommend sticking with the manufacturer's ink. Third-party products may save you money up front, but the consequences can get ugly--literally--if the cheaper inks produce lower-quality prints.

Here's another reason: wasted ink. The PC World Test Center has found that some cartridges leave more than 40 percent of their ink unused. The worst offenders, unfortunately, are third-party brands. Printer manufacturers may overcharge shamelessly for ink, but at least you know what you're getting.

Problem: I don't know how to fit more text on one page. How do I do it?

Solution: Shrinking text to fit two pages on one sheet saves money (you'll buy less paper) and speeds up printing (fewer pages to print). This two-for-one approach is best for spreadsheets, receipts, and other documents that are still legible once shrunken.

In any Windows program, select Print and Properties, and then look for a printer setting that lets you increase the number of pages per sheet.

Problem: Grandma called and wants me to fix her "broken" printer. I'm no tech guru. What should I do?

Solution: You could always pretend you're not home, but that might lead to bigger problems down the line. We recommend you help Grandma out, because printer problems encountered by the, um, technically challenged are often easy to fix.

First, have her see if the printer is plugged into a wall outlet. (Don't laugh. It's fairly common.) Second, she should make sure there's paper in the tray. And third, have her check the cable (probably USB or Ethernet) that connects the printer to the PC or router. This troubleshooting basics article has more advice.

Problem: My paper tray is flimsy.

Solution: To cut costs on some printers, vendors often include low-capacity or flimsy trays. In her article "Is Your Printer Stealing From You?", PC World's Melissa Riofrio lists seven printers with notoriously cheap paper trays--each from major vendors such as Brother, Dell, Epson, HP, Ricoh, and Xerox. Shame on you guys.

So what can you do? Before buying a printer, examine the paper tray carefully. If it looks like it'll break after the first sideswipe, it's probably wise to get another model. If the tray is too small for your printing needs, see if there's a higher-capacity option. Or you could try this guy's approach to fixing a busted printer.

1998-2009, PC World Communications, Inc.

Chicago Tribune Printers Row Favorite Fiction 2009

2009-12-19T10:33:00.000-06:00

Favorite Fiction 2009 from Chicago Tribune Printers Row
The Believers by Zoe Heller. "From the author of What Was She Thinking: Notes on a Scandal comes this wry tale of a rather unlikeable family of Manhattan liberals for whom things go greatly amiss when their patriarch falls into a coma."
Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips. "Years after their father disappears in the Korean War, a young woman and her disabled brother scramble to make their way in a hard world. Phillips, whose prose is sumptuous, gracefully weaves together the father's desperate last moments with his children's present struggles."
Homer and Langley: A Novel by E.L.Doctorow. "In 1947, the well-healed Collyer brothers made headlines when they were found dead in their trash-heaped Manhattan brownstone."
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn. "The lone survivor of a massacre that decimated her mother and sisters grows up and is forced to consider whether her childhood testimony, which landed her brother in prison for life for the brutal crime, was accurate. A deliciously gory thriller with a bang of a climax."
Blame by Michelle Huneven. "Ouch, what a hangover. Following a drunken bender, a young college professor wakes up from her blackout in jail; she has been arrested for running over and killing a mother and daughter."
Big Machine by Victor LaValle. "An African American man formerly addled by heroin ends up in Vermont researching 'the Voice' behind an isolated religious sect. This tale is peculiar, magnificent and-- as books about cults often are--quite funny."
The Vagrants by Yiyun Li. "A riveting debut about the social decay of a small town in China during the Cultural Revolution."
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. "After a nine year hiatus from the world of novels, Kingsolver is back with this beauty that delves into Mexico history. This is perhaps her paramount work yet."
Little Bee by Chris Cleave. "A Nigerian refugee and a fashion editor forge an unlikely bond in this engrossing novel."
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore. "When a small town girl heads to a Midwestern town, she gets more education than she bargained for in this winning coming-of-age novel."
Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard Powers. "In this clever tale, a bitter writing professor in Chicago finds himself drawn happy student who appears to have a euphoric genetic glitch."
Await Your Family by Dan Chaon. "Three lives collide and test the boundaries and definitions of identity. From the author of Among the Missing."
American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell. "A harrowing set of tales set in rural working-class class Michigan, where emotions run as hot as the neighbor's crystal meth cooker."
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin. Pakistani author Mueenuddin links eight character-rich stories of his homeland."
Too Much Happiness: Stories by Alice Munro. "Man Booker International Prize-winner Munro captivates again with richly drawn characters aching for a smooth passage in life."
Remember that all these titles, some in different formats (e.g., CD book, downloadable audiobook) are available at the Fremont Public Library. If the title you wish to read is checked out, staff can place a hold for you--or you can place the hold.

Dorothy Gilman's Mystery's Grand Master 2010

2009-12-16T13:50:00.000-06:00

Dorothy Gilman,author of the Mrs. Pollifax series, has been chosen as this year's Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America (MWA). MWA's Grand Master Award represents the highest achievement in mystery writing and was established to acknowledge important contributions to this genre, as well as significant output of consistently high-quality material. Gilman, a New Jersey native, has written and contributed to over 30 books.

Grand Master Award Given Joe Haldeman

2009-12-15T13:48:00.000-06:00

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America will award author Joe Haldeman its Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master for 2010. The award "recognizes excellence for a lifetime of contributions to the genres of science fiction and fantasy."
Haldeman is the author of 20 novels and five collections. The Forever War won the Nebula, Hugo and Ditmar Awards for best science fiction novel in 1975. Other notable titles include Camouflage, The Accidental Time Machine and Marsbound as well as the short works "Graves," "Tricentennial" and "The Hemingway Hoax." Starbound is scheduled for a January release. Haldeman officially receives the award at the Nebula Awards Weekend in May in Hollywood, Fla.

New York Times 10 Best Books of 2009

2009-12-13T12:53:00.000-06:00

At the end of the year, it's always a joy to see the best book lists, especially to see if you agree with them. Books are a wonderful gift, and it's fun to find the book you want to give to a friend and relative. From today's New York Times, here is a list of its editors' top 10 books of 2009. The Fremont Public Library has all the books except one which currently is on order. You may place the titles on hold, or call us. We are happy to place your selections on hold for you. Remember,too, that the library also has the New York Times on its shelves.
Fiction
Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Melody. F Melody
"In an exceptionally strong year for short fiction, Meloy's concise yet fine-grained narratives....shout out with quiet restraint and calm precision...."
Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem, F Lethem
Lethem's eighth novel unfolds in an alternative-reality Manhattan. The crowded canvas includes a wantonly destructive escaped tiger....prowling the streets...."
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore F Moore, Book CD Moore
"Moore's captivating novel....is set in 2001 and narrated by a Wisconsin college student who hungers for worldly experience and finds it when she takes a job baby sitting for a bohemian couple who are trying to adopt a mixed raced child...."
Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls F Walls, Lg Print F Walls
"In her luminous memoir, The Glass Castle, Walls told of being raised by eccentric and unfit parents. Now, in a novel based on family lore, she has adopted the voice of her maternal grandmother, Lily Casey Smith--mustang breaker, schoolteacher, ranch wife, bootlegger, poker player, racehorse rider and bush pilot...."
A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert F Walbert, Lg Print F Walbert
"The 15 lean, concentrated chapters in this exquisitely written novel alternate among the lives of a British suffragist and a handful of her Anglo-American descendants. The theme is feminism, but Walbert is keenly alert to male preoccupations and the impressions they leave on the lives of her female cast...."
NonFiction
The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes, 509 HOL
"Holmes harnesses the twin energies of scientific curiosity and poetic invention in this superb intellectual history, which recreates a glorious period, some 200 years ago, when figures like William Herschel, Humphry Davy, and Joseph Banks brought 'a new imaginative intensity and excitement to scientific work,'and literary giants like Coleridge and Keats responded giddily to these breakthroughs...."
The Good Soldiers by David Finkel 956.704434 FIN
"Finkel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and editor at the Washington Post, gives full voice to his subjects, infantry soldiers from Fort Riley, KS...posted in the lethal reaches of Baghdad at the height of the 'surge'...."
Lit by Mary Karr B Karr
"This sequel to The Liars Club and Cherry is also a master class on the art of the memoir...."
Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed 332.1092 AHA, Downloadable Audiobook
"The parallels with our own moment are impossible to miss in Ahamed's narrative about 4 members of the 'most exclusive club in the world', central bankers who dominated global finance in the post World War I era...."
Raymond Carver by Carol Sklenicka, on order
"Ten years in the making, this prodigiously researched and meticulous biography sympathetically and adroitly integrates its subject's work with the turbulent life--marred by alcoholism, financial turmoil and family discord--that brought it into being...."
The library staff offers their suggestions on the libray website, the Book Advisor.
It is updated monthly.

Film Lovely Bones Opens

2009-12-11T15:14:00.000-06:00

The film Lovely Bones based on the best selling novel by Alice Sebold opens this weekend. Peter Jackson, who directed the popular film Lord of the Rings,is the director.
Filmed in New Zealand,Lovely Bones stars Saoirse Ronan as the narrator Susie along with Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz as her parents.

Author Wally Lamb at Stevenson High School

2009-11-22T16:14:00.000-06:00

Best Selling author Wally Lamb will be at Stevenson High School on Wednesday December 2 from 7-9 pm. His most recent book is Wishin' and Hopin'. Lamb's three previous novels are The Hour I First Believed, She’s Come Undone,and I Know This Much Is True. The Vernon Area Public Library is sponsoring Lamb's visit. You may register at www.vapld.info,in person, or by calling 847-634-3650.

2009 National Book Awards

2009-11-21T10:41:00.000-06:00

The winners are:
Fiction: Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
Nonfiction: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles
Young People's Literature: Caludette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Philip Hoose
Poetry: Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy by Keith Waldrop

Gore Vidal was honored with the award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, Letters, and Dave Eggers received the 2009 Literarian Award for Oustanding Service to the American Literary Community.

New Book on Mundelein

2009-11-19T11:23:00.000-06:00

Mundelein resident Shawn Killackey has written Mundelein which is part of Arcadia Publishing's Images of America series. Killackey will have a book signing at the Barnes & Noble bookstore at Westfield Hawthorn Mall in Vernon Hills from 6 to 8 pm on Friday, November 20. He served on Mundelein's Centennial Committee. Seeing that Arcadia's series did not include a book on Mundelein, Killackey contacted the publisher, suggesting that he write one. His book contains many historical photographs showing the development of the village.

Mystery Author J A Jance In Chicago Next Month

2009-11-11T13:41:00.000-06:00

Mystery author J.A. Jance will be in Chicago next month. Jance will be at the Morton Grove Public Library on Saturday, December 5, beginning at 2:00 p.m. The library is located at 6140 Lincoln Avenue. Seating is limited; registration is required. Call 847-929-5101 or register online Jance is promoting her new book Trial by Fire. The book will be released December 1; it is the latest in Jance's Ali Reynolds series. Jance also writes the J.P. Beaumont series, the Joanna Brady series, and the Walker series. Jance also will be signing books at the Border's in Oak Brook, at 7 pm the evening of December 5.

Film The Box Based on a Richard Matheson short story opens

2009-11-06T12:20:00.000-06:00

The Box, a thriller based on a short story by Richard Matheson, opens today Friday November 6th. In The Box, a mysterious man (played by Frank Langella) presents a wooden box with a button to a couple (Cameron Diaz, James Marsden) which, when pressed, does two things: the couple will receive $1 million and someone, somewhere in the world will be killed. The couple has 24 hours to decide whether or not to push the button. Button, Button was first published in Playboy in 1970, and later adapted as an episode for the television series The Twilight Zone in 1986.

2009 World Fantasy Awards

2009-11-03T12:41:00.000-06:00

Winners of the 2009 World Fantasy Awards:

Life Achievement: Ellen Asher and Jane Yolen
Novel: The Shadow Year by Jeffrey Ford and Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan
Novella: "If Angels Fight" by Richard Bowes
Short Story: "26 Monkeys, also the Abyss" by Kij Johnson
Anthology: Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy, edited by Ekaterina Sedia
Collection: The Drowned Life by Jeffrey Ford
Artist: Shaun Tan

2009 Anthony Awards

2009-10-24T14:15:00.000-05:00

The winners of the 2009 Anthony Awards are:
Best novel: The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly
Best first novel: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Best paperback original: State of the Onion by Julie Hyzy
Best short story: "A Sleep Not Unlike Death" by Sean Chercover
Best critical nonfiction work: Anthony Boucher: A Biobibliography by Jeffrey Marks
Best cover art: The Girl with the Drago Tattoo designed by Peter Mendelsund

Chicago Tribune's Printers Row

2009-10-22T16:40:00.000-05:00

The books section of the Tribune has been recreated as Printers' Row. There is an online blog version, Printers' Row, on the Chicago Tribune website. It's great, too, for its listing of local literary events. Twitter fans can find it at ChiTribBooks.

Author Kate Jacobs at Warren Newport Public Library November 7

2009-10-20T14:28:00.000-05:00

Kate Jacobs is the author of the bestsellers The Friday Night Knitting Club, Knit Two, and Comfort Food. With more than one million copies in print, and a movie starring and produced by actress (and knitter) Julia Roberts in the works, The Friday Night Knitting Club has become a phenomenon. Now, in her new book Knit The Season, her fans are invited to spend the holidays with the Friday night knitting club at the cozy Walker & Daughter yarn shop on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
Kate Jacobs will be at the Warren Newport Public Library in Gurnee, Illinois on Saturday, November 7 at 2:00pm. Books will be available for purchase and signing.
This is a free program, please call 847/244-5150 (press 7) to register.

2009 Shamus Awards

2009-10-19T16:48:00.000-05:00

The Private Eye Writers of America give out Shamus Awards yearly to honor excellent work in books featuring private eyes. And the winners are (series private eye in parentheses):
◊ Best PI Hardcover: Empty Ever After by Reed Farrel Coleman (Moe Prager)
◊ Best First PI Novel: In the Heat by Ian Vasquez (Miles Young)
◊ Best PI Paperback Original: Snow Blind by Lori Armstrong (Julie Collins)
◊ Best Short Story: "Family Values" by Mitch Alderman (Bubba Simms)
◊ Hammer Award for Character Longevity: Lawrence Block (Matthew Scudder)