As you might imagine, it's difficult putting together a column each week. (It's also difficult to remember that there is an apostrophe in "it's", but that is another story.) I usually write about my experiences as a PC or electronics technology user or experiences in my consulting business. The thought occurred to me that perhaps this week I would write about what I DON'T do, and why.
Heading the list is "blogging". For those not in the know, a blog (abbreviation for weB LOG) is basically just a web page that records the continuing thoughts and experiences of a person. It's whatever that person wants to discuss, and generally does not have any feedback or discussion unless the blogger specifically permits or requests it. Now, it's certainly true that the World Wide Web has facilitated blogging, but I don't consider blogging part of the PC hobby. It's basically the same as a radio broadcast, or a diary, or a newspaper column - just accessible to more people and timelier. But, for me, most blogging is just opinionated people blowing off steam or adding their stale views to the deafening roar. Don't get me wrong - there are certainly some good bloggers and good information out there. But the old curmudgeon in me is just not interested in listening. Blog to somebody else…
"Podcasting", to me, is along the same lines. Podcasting is the creation of audio steams (recordings) that can be played on an iPod or similar MP3 player. Some podcasts are music - the podcaster is playing at being a DJ, but others are similar to talk radio. I don't listen to podcasts either.
I don't download lots of utility-type programs from the Internet. In the early, DOS years (DOS preceded Windows, for you newbie's), there was a need for utilities because DOS itself was fairly primitive by today's standards. At IBM, we had a vast internal utility community, and I contributed a few good ones myself. Most of those were never seen outside of IBM, and at one point in time IBM actually attempted to take the best of those utilities and market them on behalf of the employees who wrote them. I, ahem, was actually so honored back in the '80s.
But the problem with free utilities today is that most of them are poorly written, even more poorly documented, and many contain hidden "features", such as spyware components. I don't download anything unless I actually, really need it, and only after I have researched the utility to make sure it is on the level. My favorite utility is probably IrfanView - the best photo file viewing program available. It's free, shows the photos very quickly, and doesn't have feature bloat - it just does what it does and does it very well. If the photos you get in email don't fit your screen properly, IrfanView is for you. I liked IrfanView so much that I contributed to the author. You can get it at www.download.com.
I have covered this before, but I don't use file swapping services to obtain illegal copies of music. It's not that I don't want to acquire more music, but I either buy it on CDs or download it from one of the pay services. Along that line, the music industry has recently announced a much tougher CD copy protection scheme that should be on all CDs by the end of the year - you can copy a CD up to three times, but not after, and you can't copy a copy. The underground broke previous copy protection schemes fairly quickly - let's see how this one fares.
So, that is a few of the things I don't do - please feel free to email me and vent about yours!
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport - Oak Island area. You can visit his Website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail questions or column ideas to him at bsc@bobseidel.com. For specific inquiries, please call Bob Seidel Consulting, LLC at 278-1007.)