TechByter Worldwide (formerly Technology Corner) with Bill Blinn

The Logitech Bluetooth headphones I said were so great turned out not to be such a good deal when the broke in half after 3 weeks. A new thumb drive comes with some unwelcome software. In Nerdly News, Apple talks about the 60-hour work week and Dell gets its battery recall rolling.

Microsoft, the Department of Homeland Security, and others are warning about a new worm. AOL has released not-so-anonymous information about half a million subscribers, and the Wayback Machine takes us to a 1997 view of the Y2K problem.

The Internet Wayback Machine stores old Web content nearly all the way back to the beginning of the Web. Technology Corner showed up on the Web in 1994 or 1995 and the first entries in the Wayback machine are from 1996. Sometimes I was right.

Xandros, a Linux variant, is challenging Microsoft in the marketplace with an attempt to grab some of the 50 million people who are still using Windows 95, 98, and Me. Eweek magazine this week looked back at 25 years of personal computing. Nerdly News considers annoyances in the latest patch for Firefox and looks into the spambox.

Phantom Fiber is a company that develops applications that content providers use to make information available on mobile devices. We talk with the CEO, Jeff Halloran.

Corel Graphics Suite X3 looks like a winner, even though some long-standing bugs still haven't been resolved. Is any amount of disk space too much? The people who want to steal your financial information are trying a new trick.

A new beta version of the Windows Media Player is available. This version has an attractive look and a nice feel, but Itunes is still my primary music player. We'll also look at some oddities in technology news and a fake postcard that's a Trojan Horse. In Nerdly News, we see the end of support for Windows 9x.

This week's program is short because I'm taking some time off for the Independence Day weekend, but I wanted to pay tribute to Knight-Ridder and the San Jose Mercury News. Also this week I replaced the battery in my aging Ipod.

I've been using a high-priced FTP application for several years, but the best FTP program today is free. Updating a Microsoft application failed because Microsoft couldn't vouch for its own software. Higher speeds mean hotter laptop computers, but Apple's latest crop is hotter than ever. (Listen for the cat at 9 minutes 18 seconds.)

Nero's latest version has enough new features and improvements to get anyone's attention. It certainly got mine. We'll take a look at some of the reasons I like Itunes and at the world's largest Ipod.

Ever find yourself at a premium-content portal after starting a Google search? Now you can get the information for free! After grumbling about poor customer service recently, I had the opportunity to see customer service done well.

One of the main reasons I like the Firefox browser is all the plug-ins (extension) that are available. I'll take a look at a few of the nearly 1600 that are available. And then I'll cast a surly eye (can eyes be surly?) toward customer service. And, of course, there's Nerdly News.

Juice is a free open-source podcast receiver that you should try.

Reading your e-mail with a healthy dose of suspicion is a good thing.

Technology Corner 2006.05.21: Podcasting 101 (a how-to)