PC repair firm My Computer Works sends along a list of the five most common computer problems reported by its customers last year:

• Email Issues / Configuration (36%)
• Internet Connectivity Issues (17%)
• Internet Explorer / Windows Misbehaving (trouble accessing certain Web sites, security settings, pop-up blocker malfunction, etc.) (17%)
• Malware Infections (15%)
• Slow-Running PC (usually due to insufficient hardware resources) (15%)

I’ve included the full release after the jump, because it includes several tips on how to do some routine maintenance on your machine to keep it running at top speed.

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Just call me The Punisher.

UPDATE: You can read my print review here.

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I’ve always felt that I sleep better in a cool bedroom than a warm one, but a new gizmo seems to demonstrate something my wife has long known: I’m dead wrong.

A team of Dutch scientists has built what looks to be a wetsuit that’s lined with tiny plastic tubes. Volunteers put on the wet suit and go to bed. The scientists then pump warm water through the tubes and see what happens.

For most subjects, it seems, warmer water yields better slumber, Wired reports.

The suit allowed the Dutch team to fine tune subjects’ skin temperature to 35 or 35.4 degrees Celsius. They found that increasing skin temperature by 0.4 degrees Celsius, “suppresses nocturnal wakefulness … and shifts sleep to deeper stages … in young and, especially, in elderly healthy and insomniac participants.” The suit worked particularly well for the older patients: they were 14 times less likely to be awake at 6 am when the heat was turned up that mere 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

Here’s the full (though very technical) story reported in the journal Brain.

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Proporta, that major mobile accessories company has 2 new casings for HTC Touch Cruise users.

First up we have the infamous Alu-Leather Case (HTC Touch Cruise). One of Proporta’s specialities, this case is precision moulded and therefore fits around your HTC Touch Cruise perfectly; protecting it against anything you wish to throw at it. It also features our trademark ‘Screen Saver System’, which uses a layer of rigid, lightweight aircraft grade aluminium to line the Case protecting it from crushing and impact shocks. So suitably custom made, you’ll never even need to remove the device from its case as it features all the necessary cut outs to give access to all ports and controls.

Next up in the case stakes is the Silicone Case (HTC Touch Cruise). This one is also cleverly precision moulded, but from impact absorbent silicone to provide a thin, yet really tough, protective skin keeping your HTC Touch Cruise safe and sound. It protects against all the effects from everyday use such as scratches and impact damage, aaaaaand the case need never be taken off the device, because in the same way as the Alu-Leather Case, all the necessary cut outs allow access to all ports and controls.

Phew, looks like Proporta has come up with some good looking cases as always.

Tags: HTC Touch Cruise, Proporta

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Are wikis going out of fashion or just being subsumed as an accepted feature of collaborative websites?

Google makes no mention of wikis in its announcement about Google Sites – the fruits of its acquisition of JotSpot, the enterprise-wiki Web 2.0 start-up, in October 2006.

Instead, it describes Google Sites as a “team web site” where users can quickly gather a variety of information and projects in one place, including videos, calendars, presentations, attachments and text.

I tried the new service and found it fairly easy to put together a web site where others could be given rights to comment and add their own elements.

It was intuitive for someone like me who was already using Google Docs or had a personalised iGoogle page – the toolbars are simple and similar and there is the same ability to select widgets and drag them around the page being created.

There were a few rough edges and limitations – I’m still searching for how to delete a page I’d created, for example. Others have been very disappointed with its flaws.

Sites can be integrated with email, calendars, documents and spreadsheets, and in this sense, it is less of a wiki like Wikipedia and more of an online collaboration service that will compete with Microsoft Office and its SharePoint service.

That is why the strategy here is to talk about the range of Google applications, rather than focus on the wiki aspects. Microsoft makes a slicker Office software suite, but Google is challenging it with its cheaper or free browser-based alternatives.

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Sprint announced their new “Simply Everything” cell phone plan today that includes unlimited voice and data for $99 a month.

For just cell service, that’s a big step in the right direction but still more than I’d be willing to pay.

But this could be a really intriguing offering for people who want to use Sprint’s high-speed EVDO data service as their main source of Internet access.

According to Sprint’s Web site, their EVDO service provides download speeds ranging from 600 kbps to 1.4 Mbps, with upload speeds ranging from 350 kbps to 500 kbps.

While that’s not Fios speed, it definitely qualifies as low-end broadband.

So, for $99, you’d get unlimited cell phone service and Internet service, either on your phone or on your laptop/PC if you tether your phone to your computer as a modem.

A flat $99 rate for unlimited phone and high-speed Internet? Now I’m intrigued.

It will be interesting to see if Sprint allows that sort of usage.

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The iPhone is to get more enterprise features, what ever for ? Well, in the first case Apple wants more chunk out of the business people since they have big pockets. And most execs and managers have iPhones in their pocket. So companies will need some sort of iPhones action plan to make sure there are not security issues. Apple is also launching their iPhone SDK next week.

Here is what Tim Cook from Apple cooked up at the Goldman Sachs technology conference earlier:

* Apple is on track to ship 10 million iPhones in calendar 2008. “We are on the right track for where we want to be,” said Cook, adding that he wanted to be very clear that Apple will hit its 10 million unit target.
* Apple is open “not weeded” to any one business model for iPhone and Apple could take the phone to new carriers. “Are we married to this model? We’re not married to any business model. We’re married to shipping the best phone and in the world and moving it from a device to a platform,” said Cook.
* The SDK will broaden the iPhone further and address enterprise concerns.

via

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Internet enthusiasts or seat fillers for hire? Photo: Free Press

The question has nothing to do with Comcast putting the brakes on customers who use BitTorrent to share files. No, it arises from allegations that Comcast tried to keep opponents out of an FCC hearing by paying random people to arrive early and fill seats.

The Web site SavetheInternet.com, which has been asking the FCC to stop Comcast from blocking files, accuses the cable giant of seat stuffing in an indignant post here.

The story was picked up online by Portfolio, a new business magazine that called Comcast to comment for its story.

Comcast spokeswoman Jennifer Khoury said that the company paid some people to arrive early and hold places in the queue for local Comcast employees who wanted to attend the hearing.

Some of those placeholders, however, did more than wait in line: They filled many of the seats at the meeting, according to eyewitnesses. As a result, scores of Comcast critics and other members of the public were denied entry because the room filled up well before the beginning of the hearing.

Comcast says it never wanted to prevent anyone from attending the hearing, but the pictures on SavetheInternet suggest otherwise.

If Comcast did hire seat-fillers, the FCC should slap it with a big fine. It’s hard to imagine an act that does more to undermine the legitimacy of public hearings than packing the hall with people who could care less about the topic under discussion.

Yes, I know that big organizations often assign employees to attend hearings in order to provide the illusion of support, and I think that, too, should probably be banned. Excepting people who are testifying, you shouldn’t be able to pay anyone to attend a hearing.

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The downbeat report on click-through rates that sent Google’s shares down 4.6 per cent on Tuesday is sure to rub salt in the wounds of shareholders who were already stinging from a sharp drop in the search group’s share price this year. Many will be anxious to determine whether the data from ComScore, which showed flat growth in the rate at which web surfers click on Google’s ads in January, is merely a blip or a sign of something more ominous.

Setting aside the very real possibility that ComScore’s report was a statistical anomaly, there are two scenarios that might explain a fall-off in the click-through rate for Google ads. Neither of them is encouraging.

The first scenario is that the apparent drop in click-through rate is due to Google’s recent attempts to boost ad quality by cutting down on the number of ‘accidental’ clicks made by users. Google said earlier this month that its crackdown on unintentional clicks had contributed to its disappointing results last quarter. But the magnitude of the drop reported by ComScore - from 27 per cent growth in November to 13 per cent growth in December to decline of 0.3 per cent in January - suggests that the trend could be more severe than previously thought.

A second - and probably less likely - scenario is that the decline was caused by a change in the shopping habits of online consumers. The reasoning is that consumers who are worried about a recession might be less inclined to click on Google’s ads because they have decided to delay online purchases. If this were the reason behind the flat click through rates, it would suggest that Google is more vulnerable to a recession than some have predicted.

With Google’s shares already off almost $300 per share from their November highs, investors are surely hoping there is another explanation for the ComScore numbers - one that leaves them a little more room for optimism.

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Around 10 per cent of Xbox 360s have been suffering from that irretrievable breakdown known as the “Red Ring of Death”, according to the warranty company SquareTrade, although the figure could be much higher.

The problem forced Microsoft to take a charge of more than $1bn for the cost of repairs in its last financial year, but the company refused to reveal what percentage of its consoles were suffering from the failure.

In a blog note, SquareTrade reports a 16.4 per cent failure rate for 360s based on 171 claims made on a sample group of 1040 Xbox warranties that it sold between April and July last year.

There were 102 Red Ring of Death hardware failures among these, with overheating thought to be the main cause.

SquareTrade notes its report only tracks its test group for six to 10 months and “once this same test group is tracked for 24 or 36 months, the fail rate is certain to go up.”

However, Microsoft extended its own warranty to three years for red-ring failures at the time of its writedown last year, so SquareTrade may not be seeing many of the breakdowns that are continuing to occur.

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