Stories by Robert Strohmeyer

New MacBook Pro can boot from an SD card

In the wake of this week's WWDC keynote, in which Apple announced that new MacBook Pro laptops will finally include an SD card slot, the tech press is all aflutter about what they seem to think is a new possibility: booting from SD. Sorry to break it...

Safari 4 download stat is pure hype

I know I'm cruisin' for some abusin' at the hands of the Mac fanatics today, because twice in one morning I've felt compelled to bring a little skepticism to the exuberant reporting surrounding the latest developments from Apple. This time, all the m...

New iPhones, new MacBook Pros, Snow Leopard, iPhone 3.0

Today at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco, the Cupertino computer maker announced a host of new products before an audience of developers and media. Among other announcements, the company has updated its MacBook Pro product l...

Are baby boomers killing Facebook and Twitter?

The story is as old as the Web: A social network born among twenty-something college kids and young wired professionals sprouts up, apparently out of nowhere, and grows into a cultural phenomenon. Eventually, it reaches critical mass and explodes, it...

Beware the social media charlatans

Lately it seems I can't go anywhere without running into a gaggle of social media consultants bloviating about the wonders of social network marketing. Sure, you've seen 'em, too. Slick shake-and-bake "experts" promising to help you leverage the powe...

Expand a small network with an Ethernet switch

Most home-office networks start with a PC, a router, and a modem. But when a small single-user network grows into a larger multiuser network, your original Wi-Fi router can run out of free ethernet ports to connect various PCs, networkable printers, ...

Twitter quitters just don't get it

A Nielsen report this week revealed that Twitter has an uncanny knack for hemorrhaging users. In fact, some 60 percent of new users bail on the service within a month. For those of us who've been tweeting for a couple of years, this isn't exactly a s...

Google Latitude: An In-Depth Look

Google's location-tracking service, [[xref:http://www.google.com/latitude|Latitude|Google Latitude]], uses the GPS hardware found in smart phones (such as Google Android phones and BlackBerry and Windows Mobile handsets) to pinpoint your position on ...

10 business lessons from 'Battlestar Galactica'

You think your business has it rough? The people of Battlestar Galactica have lived through a recession you wouldn't believe. With dwindling resources, a skeleton crew, enemies constantly lurking out of view, and a pervasive threat of annihilation, A...

Google Latitude: everything you need to know

Google's much-anticipated location-tracking service, Google Latitude, uses the GPS hardware found in smartphones (such as Google Android phones and BlackBerry and Windows Mobile handsets) to pinpoint your position on a map and share that information ...

Windows 7 public beta: first impressions

On Thursday at CES, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the public availability of the Windows 7 beta release. At PC World we've been running our own evaluations of the forthcoming replacement to Microsoft's much-derided Windows Vista for some time...

The 7 worst tech predictions of all time

Predicting the future ain't easy. That's why astrologers and fortune tellers tend to keep their forecasts as vague as possible. But in the high-stakes world of high technology, the future belongs to those who see it coming well in advance.

10 invincible gifts for the cubicle warrior

If your workplace is like a war zone, add these combative time wasters to your arsenal so you can dominate the office battlefield.

Apple MobileMe Syncing Service

To coincide with the release of the company's iPhone 3G, Apple overhauled its Mac-centric .Mac service and renamed it--seemingly without irony--MobileMe. In addition to the new name and the vaguely Windows ME-esque logo, the new service introduces on...

Desktop Linux face-off: Ubuntu 8.04 vs. Fedora 9

Over the past decade, Linux has emerged from a herd of obscure and nerdy operating systems to warrant a place in even the most technologically unsophisticated business environments. And in the past three years, a few distributions have made stupendou...