Every Office Should Be Open

If you used a computer for any form of word processing you most likely used Microsoft Word.  Microsoft Word came to be in 1983 and has dominated the business of word processing for countless years.  The only real competitor it had was Corel's Word Perfect which was a worthy opponent up until the Nineties when Microsoft was able to pull ahead in the race.  Today Microsoft Word is part of Microsoft's Office suite and is pre-installed on many Windows machines and the standard for most businesses.  However, it does not have to be that way.  There are many freeware options available for the consumer willing to break away from the sheep.

Android Disguised as Windows Phone 7

If you have seen even a commercial for Windows Phone 7 or some of the news coverage regarding Windows 8 then this user interface will definitely look familiar.  This user interface is known as Metro UI.  It was designed to set Microsoft's new smartphone operating system apart from the rest and to give consumers something fresh.  It has also most likely helped Microsoft avoid the lawsuits that many other hardware manufacturers have become involved in with Apple.  Nonetheless the operating system does stand out from the crowd and gives users a much easier way to interact with their phone without being sucked in to it like many iOS and Android users have been.  This idea is really driven home by the tagline at the end of many Windows Phone 7 commercials: "It's time for a phone to save us from our phones."  However this is where the user interface truly shines.  However, today's smartphone consumers crave applications, something that Microsoft has quite few of.  Plus until the release of the next iteration of its operating system called Mango, Microsoft is still missing a few features its competitors have making Windows Phone 7 an unlikely choice for most consumers.

The Beauty of Ad-Hoc Networks

While wifi internet is easy to set up, cheap, and reliable, there are times when having a wireless network might not be an option.  The first example that comes to mind is inside of a college dorm room.  Many college dorms only provide you with an Ethernet cable on either side of the room, one being for yourself and the other being for your roommate.  I struggled with this limitation myself during college being as I was one of the only people I knew with multiple computers.  Sadly I was unable to find the answer then and suffered through it until my last year when I was able to get an apartment.  I thought my days of dealing with such a closed network were over but then I moved to Korea.  In Korean dorm room style apartments, the internet is set up in the exact same way as in most colleges.  The difference is that it is much easier to stop by your IT department and have a word with someone than it is to even attempt communicating with your Korean landlord.  I bought a wireless router and learned the hard way that I was not going to get wireless internet without buying an additional router from my service provider and paying extra.  After many long nights and endless frustration, a friend suggested this quick fix.

The Ins and Outs of XBMC

My XBMC dashboard with one of many custom backrounds

XBMC is a program that originated on the original Xbox.  It gave users with a modded Xbox the ability to turn a mere video game console into something along the lines of a real computer.  With the death of the original Xbox, its developers quickly regrouped and released it as a media center which branches across Windows, OSX, Linux, and can even be run live off of a USB flash drive.  I was lucky enough to experience XBMC during its first incarnation being as I was one of the lucky few with a modded Xbox at the time (I tried to mod my own, failed miserably, and ended up buying one from a friend).  I quickly grew accustomed to its easy to use interface and even scoffed at the features included in it that were absent from the original release of the Xbox 360.  Having recently re-downloaded XBMC and installed it on my windows machine  I can say that I am quite impressed with the way the software carries over to one of the many new platforms it is now available on.