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Saying Good-Bye to Technologies [Searcher](Searcher Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) I am in awe of "big picture" technical journalism. Tales of global paradigm shifts and pending new resource streams that will soon fill that vast void I never realized existed fascinate me. Highly skilled deep thinkers with highly developed language skills fill the pages of this and other respected journals with fascinating, deeply penetrating takes on the current state of the datadrome. If I pay careful attention, I can maintain that feeling of keeping up with the winds of change - eyes on the horizon. Talk of clouds and globe spanning this and that remind me that there is a bigger connected world out there that is forging ahead with all those - well - forging ahead things. When it's truly personal computing, it's more about keeping things running than where they are going. Personally, the little things keep me busy these days, the little things that people run into just trying to keep up. The questions are more along the line of, "How do I live with this gadget?" or, "How do I get rid of these little clingy bits?" So for those of us trench workers, I thought I would offer up a couple of classics. People want to know what to buy and why, but, more and more, they also want to know how to get rid of the stuff they don't need anymore. At the top of this list is "How do I get rid of this damn, useless old computer?" The Hardware Dump I threw an entire computer in the trash once without any notion of how guilty I should have felt. It was long ago and the vast majority of people would have been hard-pressed to identify the remains. The idea of a personal computer was still strange and slightly amusing. Burning the small stack of 8" floppy disks (yes that was 8 inches; ask your elders) took care of the data problem. The concept of recycling had not yet made inroads into the mound builder mindset of the day. I'm fond of the planet and am willing to make an effort to make it more livable. Recycling electronics in a proper fashion is important for all the usual warm fuzzy reasons, but that's not the real payoff. It's the thought that in my current computer, there are probably a few bits of my old Commodore 64, as well as traces of pirate gold, space shuttles, and Inca gods. The fact that a lot of nasty stuff couldn't reenter the environment intact is a nice bonus. A modest-sized library that does a great job of running on funding fumes lies just down the road from me. Once a month, it puts out a sign bearing a picture of the Grim Reaper leaning on a stack of old computers and other electronic jetsam with a banner reading, "Bring out your dead." The library serves as a collection point for the disposal of anything electronic and works with area recycling companies. There are any number of worthy causes with programs like this. Find a good one and support it. By the way, this "pull the plug on pollution" drive has helped my local library to keep the doors open and even provided a couple of bucks for the careful acquisition of a few new treasures. This is the same library that offered rock-tourstyled T-shirts with a wharf rat silhouette and "Black Death European Tour 1350" in psychedelic script on the back for 20 bucks a pop during a recent fundraising drive. It claimed a tiein with an alleged "European History Appreciation Month." I love these people. Not all of the donations are DOA In the case of a microwave oven or last year's flat panel Ty this can be a good thing. In the case of a personal computer, it can raise some real concerns. Potential donors have some real questions. How do you safely dump a machine that has been absorbing everything you've done since you first plugged it in however many years ago? A machine that seems to have developed a personality. A machine that just seems to know things. You have to ask yourself this question: "Is it truly dead? Hardware dead?" If the answer is "Yes," the next step is to ascertain your current paranoia level. If "they" are after you, you may need to do a hard disk-ectomy. Think of this as potential fun. Pull the case (desktop), unscrew the panel (laptop), find the square thing with one plug and no doors. Undo a couple of screws, and pull it out. Next, find some appropriate weapons of destruction and some goggles. I find a small hammer and an electric drill work well. Drill some holes in the drive case and smash the connector. Be creative. Large rocks from the garden make a nice change. Put the drive pieces back where you found them and send it off to the meltdown. Determined master hardware hackers could probably make a run at it, but the odds are in your favor. They would probably be hit by a meteorite before they could do any real damage. A significant percentage of orphaned computers are simply pushed out by that whiz-bang upgrade box that seemed so important at the time. These machines are perfectly capable, in a lot of cases, of second-wind duty. But if you're planning to head your machine toward new owners, you really have a case of cleaning house. Everything that you are concerned about is on that drive. The simplest approach is to format the drive using the built-in format option from your operating system. There is something a little weird about watching a computer delete its operating system from inside and then flicker out of existence. Formatting your drive does not erase the disk. It just removes all the little head and tail pointers on clusters of data so that the individual clusters have no way of knowing where the rest of the file is. It can be reconstructed, painfully, but, in most cases, the effort is not worth it unless your reputation for fabulous wealth or a scandalous secret life proceeds you. There are a lot of applications available that do a thorough job of erasing a drive. One of the best is White Canyon's WipeDrive [http://www.whitecanyon.com]. WipeDrive features a number of options. Everything from writing zeros in every sector of the drive to erasing data completely, but leaving the operating system intact. It also addresses external devices such as thumb drives. In fact, it will wipe out anything you point it at. The personal edition allows you to wipe three hard drives for $19.95; the pro edition allows you to wipe 20 hard drives for $99.95. And it's approved by the Department of Defense. Be aware that if you purchase it as a download, you will have to burn it to disc as an ISO file. If that means nothing to you, you might want to kick in an extra 10 bucks and have them send you a pre-burned disc. Wikipedia has a good list of ISO burner applications on its ISO page. The ability to burn this type of file is not native to Windows. Once wiped, you are home free. You may feel secure when you donate your machine. If you are passing it along, you may want to consider one of the free Linux-based operating system distributions such as Ubuntu [http:/ /www. ubuntu. com] or Fedora [http://fedoraproject.org]. These OS run very well on older hardware and are rock-solid performers with large installed bases. You have solved your problem. Passing along a viable tool may solve somebody else's problem. Removing Apps (Android/iPad) Tablets are becoming a lot more popular and usable. The various operating systems are maturing well. Syncing and cloud-based archiving concepts are making us rethink our approaches to navigating multiple devices using common data. Still, the most-asked question so far is howto get rid of all those apps you have no use for but which came with your new toy. My wife wanted a tablet. We got her an Acer Iconia A500 Android tablet [http://acer.us/ac/en/US/content/iconiatab-a500]. She has had it for about 2 months now. I was excited when we ordered it and had planned on putting together a couple of columns based on discovering the wonders of an Android Honeycomb OS-based tablet. When it arrived, she insisted on setting it up herself. "What if you are not around when I get the next one? I will need to know how to set it up by myself," she said. Not having any immediate or even distant departure plans, I'm still mulling that one over. On went the Kindle App and the Weather bug thing. Pretty soon the sounds of Angry Birds issued out of the tinny but adequate on-board speakers. It was on. She will not admit, it but she is turning into a full- on gamer - Mah Iongg, Solitaire, bubble busting, and other things that blip and gurgle. I still plan on exploring this fascinating piece of hardware, but so far all I've been asked to do is remove a few apps and set up the email client. Let me pass on the sum total of my Android tablet, handson experience so far in disposing of unwanted apps: Settings > Applications > Manage Applications > Pick one > uninstall I may have to buy a tablet in self-defense. Tablet and smartphone questions are starting to crop up, and I can only bluff my way so far down that road. Just a little heads up on removing a stubborn Android app. Let's say you would like to dump the standard browser and replace it with something more to your taste. If the browser won't leave, it may be part of the ROM (read only memory) that contains the basic operating system. If your research leads you to a solution that involves "rooting" your device, proceed with caution. Rooting is the process by which you gain administrative access to your smartphone or tablet. Even though Android is an open source operating system, you still don't have full "root access" to do what you please. Back when the iPhone launched in 2007, techies realized the true potential of that device and the software limitations with which Apple had sealed it. What became "Jailbreaking" on the iPhone was quickly translated to other platforms as well. And when the world saw the first Android iteration back in 2008, the term "Rooting" was born. The process gives you a lot of power over everything your hardware can do. It also removes a lot of checks and protections that can keep you from cratering the entire device. Proceed with extreme caution. I have avoided Apple products and services as a personal preference. Apple builds great stuffand its apps are wellvetted and solid performers. I am just not comfortable with the amount of control Apple exercises over every aspect of everything. No disrespect, just disinterest. Apple offers a quality tablet and a clear and concise online and on-board support system. When it comes to the inner workings of Apple products, I differ and refer. Sometimes you have to figure out why a question is being asked. The Playlist One of the most knowledgeable, world-class information professionals I know has been dancing around a problem for years. The ongoing question is, "How do I make a playlist for my music on my PC?" This is a person who can hone in on some of the most sophisticated databases in the world armed only with a browser and a sharp wit and come back with jewels and riches. It baffled me. What was it that was holding up progress on the music front? I think the real question is how much effort is it worth to impose order and control on a collection of about 2,000 CDs and how hard it is to take that first step. It's the conversion to digital from a physical medium that is the hump, not the follow-up organization. It's the sheer grind of a time-consuming process. First You Need a Bucket You have to feed the physical disc to the beast, after you rip it to a digital file using a media player, such as the cleverly named Windows Media Player. The original disc becomes its own backup, and then it can retire to that box in you closet that you will probably not open again until the contents become quaint. A playlist is just that, a list. In the case of .asx, .wax, .wvx, or .wmx files (default file extensions for Microsoft-style applications), it is a consistently structured text file based on JXML syntax. Wonky stuff aside, it tells the music player application to first play this - and you'll find it here - and then play that. Any decent music management software will have a facility for creating playlists. Some of the playlist formats travel well to other applications and some do not. As long as the physical storage location of the music file remains unchanged and the moon is in the right phase, you should get reliable results. Every Windows Media Player-type program looks first in the My Music subdirectory for audio files. The most common type is the MP3 format. There are also .wav and .wma formats and a few others. There is a small header section on each file that contains the name of the song, the artist, the track number from the album, and other optional items. The media player parses these header files and creates and manages an internal database. The journey of a thousand miles begins with ... The Little Picture So, yes, I read all the big concept articles and dream of sweeping future innovations, but it's the little nagging problems that occupy my time. I am starting to get a little crustier these days about researching the obvious. Almost everything has a manual and, almost without exception, that manual is available online. Companies supply support forums and, if those aren't deep enough, there are always the fan boy types who run fan boy forums. I'm finding less and less to know more about than the average user. Maybe I will have a little more time to cultivate the big picture, to let my thoughts soar. Yeah, that's the ticket, just as soon as I can figure out how to get this stupid phone to stop ringing. by Dave Rensberger The P.N. Gwenne Company (c) 2011 Information Today, Inc. |