brijmin on Tech

“Under the table” pools may be the catalyst of the next technology revolution in government. During last February’s economic collapse in Greece, the normally technophobic Greek government used Google Maps and Google Earth to find people who had craftily evaded taxes by failing to declare a pool.

With a proliferation of logins and forms to fill – and with the information you need to accomplish tasks scattered across many websites – interacting with the web is more complicated than it needs to be.

[[HOAX]]  A Great Idea!!! Not so much… When doing your Christmas cards, address one to : A Recovering American Soldier c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center 6900 Georgia Avenue NW; Washington, D.C. 20307. If we pass this on, think of how many cards these wonderful special people would get.

You can ignore that e-mail that looks like it comes from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about creating a profile for an H1N1 vaccination program. It’s a malware scam, according to security provider AppRiver.

In rather shocking news, The Pirate Bay (TPB) has shut down its torrent tracker. The search engine remains, but instead of dishing up torrents it will instead serve as a magnet-link repository.

Technorati released the first installment of its 2009 State of the Blogosphere report.

Checkout woot.com daily, but today is a woot-off day. I could not pass up a couple of them.

We all know Microsoft is working on the successor to OneCare — Security Essentials is currently in beta testing and should be ready for public consumption any time now. It’s a decent protection package, and should help protect users from things like nefarious fake antivirus apps and other “scareware.”

I just saw this trailer at the movies… Looks kick ass. The story’s protagonist, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), is a former Marine who was wounded and paralyzed from the waist down in combat on Earth. Jake is selected to participate in the Avatar program, which will enable him to walk. Jake travels to Pandora, a [...]

Can Microsoft’s latest Zune, the Zune HD, take down the king? It depends on which king you’re talking about. As it stands, the iPod Touch is a whole different beast because of the App Store. What Microsoft has done with the Zune HD is nothing short of spectacular, but who is it really competing with?