IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Feb 9, 2012, 7:59 pm
I’ve openly wondered how long Rogers would take to match Bell in putting an end to throttling their users. Seeing as their traffic management system has been pretty craptastic over the years, it’s long overdue. This week, Rogers announced that throttling was coming to an end via a letter to the ...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Feb 6, 2012, 10:32 pm
One of the things that I said in my review of Rogers LTE network was that the price for their LTE plans was something on the high side. I’m guessing that they got the same feedback from others as well as today they adjusted the prices of their plans. Here’s a snippet from RedBoard: We will also...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Jan 31, 2012, 7:48 pm
pcAnywhere by Symantec has been a preferred product used by people who want remote access to computers. However, it was recently revealed that Symantec had a leak of the source code back in 2006, and to add to the fun there are an undisclosed number of bugs. The combination of the two make pcAnywher...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Jan 30, 2012, 6:43 pm
Samsung’s latest tablet called the Galaxy Note is coming soon to Rogers. Why should you care about this tablet? Here’s a few reasons: 5.3-inch HD Super AMOLED touchscreen display made of Gorilla Glass Android OS 2.3 (What? No Android 3 or 4? What gives?) An “S Pen” stylus pen 1.5GHz dual-co...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Jan 30, 2012, 6:25 pm
If you like Apple products, you have to take a look at this. Mike Daisey who is an Apple fanboi saw pictures from an iPhone of the inside of plant that makes them. This led him to visit China and see how iDevices are made. What follows is something that will make you think twice about buying the nex...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Jan 28, 2012, 2:51 pm
I guess that Twitter really doesn’t care about free speech, human rights, or anything else that really matters. Because the social networking giant has announced the ability to censor tweets by country: As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas abou...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Jan 28, 2012, 2:12 pm
Perhaps RIM finally has a clue that they’re in trouble? I’m saying that because RIM’s new CEO Thorsten Heins admitted in a recent interview that they’re losing the smartphone war to Apple and Google in the US marketplace: “It hurts. It hurts me to see us losing market share in the U.S. Th...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Jan 28, 2012, 2:05 pm
I can’t say that I’m shocked by this, but the news is out that Jon Rubinstein who oversaw the ill fated switch to WebOS for Palm devices is gone from HP: Sources said he hadn’t been seen at HP’s offices following the decision by former CEO Léo Apotheker to get out of the business of making...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Jan 28, 2012, 1:56 pm
To absolutely nobody’s shock, the CRTC  has decided that Rogers is violating net neutrality rules in Canada. I say that because their traffic management system has been absolutely brutal towards users. Just ask anyone playing World of Warcraft on Rogers. Not to mention that I’ve not only been t...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Jan 23, 2012, 7:37 am
Early this morning, it was announced Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis stepped down as the co-CEOs of RIM and were replaced by COO Thorsten Heins. Balsillie and Lazaridis will still be on the board though. A pair of videos from the new CEO then appeared on YouTube. Here they are for your viewing ple...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Jan 20, 2012, 3:34 pm
I guess this week’s blackout on the Internet got the attention of lawmakers in the US. The National Post is reporting that both SOPA and Protect IP have been halted: Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said he would postpone a critical vote that had been scheduled for January 24 “in light of re...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Jan 20, 2012, 3:27 pm
The file sharing site Megaupload was raided by the FBI yesterday and was effectively shut down due to the fact that they facilitated illegal file sharing. Now this angered a lot of Internet users, but the hacker group Anonymous went one step further. They launched an attack on the websites of the De...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Jan 19, 2012, 11:12 am
One of the reasons why I haven’t been updating this blog as frequently as I usually do is that I’ve been traveling on business frequently. Often when I travel I have to rent a car. On my most recent trip I lucked out in terms of getting my hands on a Ford Focus SEL sedan. Now the SEL variant is ...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Jan 17, 2012, 8:30 pm
I haven’t covered this much on this blog, but SOPA or the Stop Online Piracy Act and it’s sister the Protect IP Act have drawn the ire of Internet users in the US. The idea behind these bills is to stop piracy on the Internet. But many argue that it will infringe on First Amendment rights, censo...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Jan 17, 2012, 10:54 am
In this age of identity theft, this is a concern when you go to sell or donate a computer. The fact is that the only way of ensuring that nothing can be read from a hard drive, you have to physically destroy the drive. Otherwise the best you can do is to use a secure erase utility to reduce the numb...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Jan 16, 2012, 10:41 am
Another one of the free apps that RIM gave away to make up for their multi-day outage last year was iSpeech Translator. In short this app allows you to translate speech using your voice, or by translating e-mail or text messages. It works with Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Jan 15, 2012, 8:40 pm
If you’re a Rogers subscriber and you’re totally addicted to sports, Rogers now has your new fix: Just a quick note today to let you know that we have launched Sportsnews, which is a new sports cable service at no additional cost for Rogers digital cable customers. The service gives viewers a r...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Jan 2, 2012, 10:19 am
2011 was a very interesting year for the tech industry. But a handful of things stood out for me last year: Biggest fall from grace: This one goes to RIM. They put out a tablet that nobody wants to buy without a deep discount. Their profits nosedived along with their stock value. Not to mention tha...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Dec 22, 2011, 12:58 pm
If you’ve got Bell as your Internet provider, here’s an early Christmas present for you. Throttling of your Internet connection is about to come to an end: Bell Canada and Bell Aliant will stop using equipment to selectively slow down file sharing applications on their networks starting March 1...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Dec 22, 2011, 9:28 am
RIM may be down in the dumps at the moment, but their stock took a 10% bump yesterday on news that several companies might be after them: Microsoft and Nokia have been named as potential buyers of Research In Motion by The Wall Street Journal, which on Wednesday reported that the two companies had ...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Dec 22, 2011, 9:19 am
I’ve got not one, but two announcements from Rogers. Here’s the first one: We have great SMS news that will now help you manage your Premium SMS messages easier. We provide a $40 monthly subscription cap for premium SMS programs, so when your subscription to a premium SMS program reaches $40 ...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Dec 16, 2011, 7:54 am
I got some news yesterday from my “best friends at Rogers” about watching TV on something other than your TV: We’ve had some great TV viewing news launch this morning that I thought you and your readers would be interested in knowing about. Rogers has launched the Rogers Live TV app, current...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 31, 2011, 9:53 pm
I got a message from my “new best friends at Sony” who let me know that the Xperia Ray which I’ve previously written about is going to hit the streets on November 2nd via Telus. A few new details about this smartphone have appeared: Camera enhancements –Sony’s 3D Sweep Panorama lets you c...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 30, 2011, 5:46 pm
RIM has been giving away free apps to make up for the fact that their network kept Blackberry users offline for days. One of the apps in question is DriveSafe.ly Pro which speaks text and email messages aloud so you can concentrate on the road. A great idea on the surface as I sometimes find it real...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 27, 2011, 9:38 pm
If you get your Internet from Rogers, this will not come as any great shock to you. According to the CRTC, Rogers violates federal rules because of the way it slows traffic and has decided to look into the matter further: The probe stems from a complaint by the Canadian Gamers Organization, an advo...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 27, 2011, 9:00 pm
For those of you who wanted a smartphone on Rogers LTE network, Rogers has some news for you: Just a quick note this afternoon to let you know we now have another smartphone to add to our growing LTE device lineup. HTC announced today the launch of the newest LTE smartphone, the HTC Raider.  Roger...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 27, 2011, 8:51 pm
The new regime over at HP is clearly in charge as it’s reversed one of the big decisions of the old regime. Apparently the PC division which was up for sale is now no longer on the chopping block: “HP objectively evaluated the strategic, financial and operational impact of spinning off PSG,” ...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 26, 2011, 8:30 pm
If you didn’t think things could get worse with RIM, it has. First, there’s a delay in for the update for the Blackberry Playbook: PlayBook users will now have to wait until February for a piece of software that brings e-mail, calendar and other capabilities to the tablet. Since its launch in ...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 22, 2011, 12:53 pm
In terms of performance, don’t expect any massive speed boosts. From what I can tell, OS X Lion runs at about the same speed as OS X Snow Leopard. One thing that I did notice is that when I was running graphics intensive applications (read: video games), my MacBook Pro didn’t as hot with Lion. I...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 20, 2011, 10:07 pm
Several websites are reporting that Bell is about to stop DSL resellers starting November 2011. Needless to say, Canadian Internet users are rejoicing. Why is Bell doing this now? On one hand, who cares? But DSL Reports offers one reason: With Bell never able to adequately prove the throttling was ...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 20, 2011, 8:34 pm
Samsung are quickly replacing Rogers as being my best friends as I got a second announcement from them in as many days. This time it’s about the Galaxy Nexus smartphone with the new Google Android 4.0 OS: “Samsung and Google have closely collaborated to push the mobile experience forward. We ar...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 19, 2011, 9:13 pm
Samsung sent me an e-mail today announcing that a new Android based tablet is about to hit the streets: Samsung will soon be redefining tablet speeds with the introduction of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 LTE. The latest member of Samsung’s tablet family sports an 8.9” screen and promises better m...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 19, 2011, 8:21 pm
The Lion OS brings a number of heavily revised built in applications. I’ll start with Mail. On the left side of the screen is a list of messages with two-line previews, while the right the emails themselves are grouped together in conversations. The search function in Mail has been improved as it ...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 18, 2011, 11:24 pm
RIM has a lot of problems at the moment. A tablet that doesn’t sell, a smartphone that isn’t considered cool, and there was that global outage that they had last week. In an attempt to change their fortunes, RIM announced their next generation OS called BBX: Research In Motion Ltd. founder and ...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 17, 2011, 10:43 pm
If you were wondering how RIM was going to make it up to customers for the four day Blackberry outage last week, wait no longer. RIM posted some news about that topic on the Blackberry website today: Research In Motion (RIM) announced today that a selection of premium apps worth a total value of mo...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 17, 2011, 10:38 pm
I got some interesting news from Samsung today: With temperatures falling across the country, it may seem like an odd time to be talking about an Ice Cream Sandwich. But as all first-to-knowers are aware, the classic snack is trending on Twitter because Samsung and Google are about to serve up what...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 17, 2011, 10:35 pm
My “best friends at Rogers” sent me news that will be of interest to Toronto Maple Leafs fans who get their TV service from Rogers. They can now watch games on Rogers On Demand Online. Plus there’s more: Beginning today, Rogers On Demand Online will be live streaming Sportsnet and Leafs TV ga...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 17, 2011, 10:30 am
The first thing that you’re thinking is that this review is a few months late. After all, OS X Lion came out back in July. So why am I only reviewing it now? Simple, I tend to wait until an OS has had a few updates to make it stable enough for me to use. Call it paranoia. In any case, now that we�...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 16, 2011, 12:56 pm
What is Windows 8 you ask? It’s Microsoft’s next generation OS that will run on Intel and ARM processors. It also combines desktop, laptop and tablet OSes into one package. It has a new user interface called Metro. If you’ve seen a Windows Phone 7 recently, it will look familiar. The Start men...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 15, 2011, 6:50 pm
Frequent readers of this blog know that my choice in terms of visualization products is Parallels Desktop. The software tends to work well and I will be the first to admit that. But I will also be the first to admit that I’ve had problems with them when trying to buy their products using PayPal th...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 13, 2011, 9:28 pm
I don’t get it. After my last rants about not being able to buy Parallels Desktop using PayPal, you’d think that Parallels would make sure that their launch of Parallels Desktop would include a check to see that purchasing via PayPal works. I suspect that they didn’t and as a result I’m runn...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 13, 2011, 8:09 pm
Apple today won a patent infringement lawsuit it brought against Samsung in Australia. The net result is that Samsung can’t sell the Galaxy Tab tablets in the country: Justice Annabelle Bennett today said Apple had a prima facie case that Samsung had infringed two of its patents relating to touch...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 13, 2011, 7:58 pm
At a news conference today, the two headed CEO combo over at RIM declared the global Blackberry outage over: Co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie informed investors and reporters on a conference call that the service to all BlackBerry customers in all regions of the world had been restored as o...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 13, 2011, 8:12 am
So, things seem to be improving with Blackberry service worldwide. But things are not back to normal yet. Having said that, we have one major development. Mike Lazaridis who is the co-CEO of RIM posted a statement on the Blackberry website via YouTube. I’ve posted the YouTube version below: This ...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 12, 2011, 9:07 am
We’re now into day three of this Blackberry outage and it is getting worse for RIM. The outage has now gone world wide. As I type this, the e-mails on my Blackberry are about 5 to 6 hours behind what is actually in my Outlook inbox. Also, the apps on my Blackberry that rely on Blackberry data serv...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 11, 2011, 9:23 pm
RIM goes from bad to worse today with the news that they haven’t resolved that outage in Europe, Middle East And Africa. But added to that is the fact that the outage has now spread to South America and India. It now turns out that the issue is with the Blackberry infrastructure: Research in Moti...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 11, 2011, 8:28 pm
You might recall that Apple “lost” a prototype phone which set off a bit of a circus that included police raids. Now the people who sold the phone to Gizmodo got their day in court: The men, who were accused of selling the device to gadget blog Gizmodo last year, were sentenced to one year of p...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 10, 2011, 9:26 pm
... as email. A RIM spokesman was not immediately available for comment. Users who are served by a corporate server appeared to be unaffected Charming. This is the last thing that RIM needs at the moment. I hate to say it, but this might be a reason for Blackberry users to switch to something el...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 9, 2011, 3:17 pm
Samsung sent me an e-mail to mention that a white version of their Galaxy S II 4G smart version is now available at Bell: Equipped with a powerful 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, this ultra thin device is designed to run at incredible maximum speeds of 21 Mbps on the Bell network. The brilliant 4.3″...
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IT N. posted an article on The IT Nerd - Oct 6, 2011, 9:29 pm
The big question that I’m being asked is what does LTE go for on the Rogers network. Let me start with their current “must have” plan. A 10GB data plan for $52.93 per month on a 3 year plan. That’s a limited time offer, although I have no word on when this offer ends. Other plans include: $...
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