Andy Taylor2 CommentsEntertainment, TechtalkRadio, TTR Website, video games, , , , ,

Call to Service – Call of Duty Black Ops

It would appear that the long awaited title Call of Duty Black Ops is exceeding sales figures of the last year sequel release to Call Of Duty Modern Warfare. COD Black Ops, I will call it that because something seem wrong about calling it COD BO. It’s far from Stinky and the sales of the game released this week have exceeded about 5.6 million copies. With a little under a couple of months left for the holidays to wrap up, Call Of Duty Black Ops will no doubt be a continued Best Seller of both Concole and PC titles. Even with strong competition from Fable III and Fallout New Vegas as well as a variety of Bond titles, the first week indications have been tremendous.

At the launch party for Call of Duty Black Ops, the CEO of Activision Blizzard Bobby Kotick announced the donation of One Million dollars, a portion of the sales from the new title, to go to the Call of Duty Endowment which provides job training and placement for returning veterans of any branch of military service. While the estimates of joblessness for the Veterans is bleak, this endowment continues to educate and inform the American people on efforts within thier own communities and globaly to help our servicement.

The Star studded launch party included Scrubs star Zack Braff and Basketball legend Kobe Bryant who was featured in one of the most creative commercials for a Video Game title to ever air. The Call of Duty Black Ops TV Spot also features an appearance by talk show host Jimmy Kimmel. Activision Blizzard has shared some of the footage from the Launch party which was help November 4th in Santa Monica California, although we didn’t get to see any of the concert footage from Metallica! Check the video out and find how you can help spread the word about the Endowment and learn of ways you can help out from your very home!

–Andy

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Congratulations to our Winners of System Mechanic 10

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TechtalkRadio is back with some great Contest! Congrat s to our Winner Stuart W of Tucson who won a copy of the System Mechanic 10 Software and to Rey in Phoenix who won while listening to the show. We also gave away a copy of the Software on Wednesday to a follower on Twitter, Leonard L in New Jersey!

The Software for the PC is designed to speed up and correst issue in your system that can slow down start up time and cause problems with programs to run. Both Slick and Andy Taylor recommended this program for optimizing your computer system, especially for those that aren’t familiar with the inner workings of the System Registry, Startup and File Fragmentation. Let System Mechanic 10 do it for you.

Andy Taylor talked with System Specialist Abbas Mehdi about the Program and some of the features that can be found in this new release of the software as well as those that can be found in System Mechanic Pro 10. Both Andy and Slick agree with the idea that households are continuing to add PC’s in the home and the new Licensing scheme for System Mechanic 10 allow the program to be installed on as many computers that are available in the home. You Can listen to that interview on the TechtalkRadio Site.

We have more Contest Coming to TechtalkRadio, Be sure to Visit http://www.techtalkradio.com/contest.htm TechtalkRadio hopes to continue to have Downloads, Services and even Hardware and DVD’s  for visitors to the site to Win. Be sure to follow us on Twitter as well for a chance through the week to also Win.  Good Luck and we promise to look into some cool programs we can make available for our Mac Friends!

Rayven5 CommentsComputers, Entertainment, Online Safety, TechtalkRadio, TTR Website, , ,

I Spy Something That Begins With “W”

Unlike many of my Disneyland Blogs, this is NOT one of them . BUT, read on and find out what I have been pondering….

So, I was searching the Internet reading Disney Blogs, Disneyland Twitter, looking for TRON exclusive updates  and playing with my boyfriend’s new Daft Punk  inspired Android App when I came across something interesting. A website proclaiming it can track and monitor your child’s internet use including screen caps of their web pages, content filters, keystroke loggers  records of IM conversations and even live viewing of their current business on the Internet.  This website sounds pretty user friendly and parent kind.  So I begin to think to myself, ” Self,” I ask ” What would keep a spouse from using the software for purposes of catching a cheater in the relationship?” And this is when I visited the website.

I’d like to start by adding a disclaimer: I have not experienced this web program which proclaims the services to be top notch and  have viewed only the content on the website for the product.

Upon clicking the link to the site, I noticed that it proposes many uses other than the advertised version I previously explained. In fact, it seems more like a “spying” software program which is being marketed to government agencies to record and log information from workers, at Schools to record information about teachers and student’s use of the Internet, and low and behold ” Catch a Cheating Spouse” software. Now, I am sure all of these uses  are part of the same program, but how funny was it that I thought of this after looking into the program that was being marketed to parents to spy on their kids? HA!

So, the reason I chose to write this blog was simple. I , like many  in my close inner circle of Geeks and Freaks, have a moral dilemma on my hands. IF I had children, which “technically” I do not, and IF they were using the Internet would I choose to monitor them digitally without their knowledge using this program? Likewise, IF you thought you had a cheating significant other, would you do the same? I don’t think I would. So I leave you with this to ponder and respond as you have free will. Maybe someone is watching you? Makes you wonder doesn’t it?

IF you want to check out the site or test the software out for yourself the Program is called Web Watcher and it’s located at

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Andy Taylor posts an article on Web Planning

After talking with a few customers that have been contemplating websites, I decided to share with some of you in that same thought process where you really should be approaching the idea of having a site built. My article can be found at the TechtalkRadio website in our Articles section. http://www.techtalkradio.com/articles/newsite.html

I laugh when I see those commercials for Intuit which helps customers get on the web as well as manage the many facets of the business. The sad thing about that commercial is the complaints that many of the businesses portrayed. actually mirror what many Small Business Owners feel. Either a website was started months ago and no real development was seen, a friend of a friends kid was building the site or for the most frustrating,  they themselves were trying to build the site.

Getting a website built doesn’t have to be that difficult and with the right information, you not only could have a site built for you that can drive new customers into your business but also have returning customers increase loyalty by visiting often and sharing thiers and your site with others. It’s a Win Win for both the Web Builder and for the business. The article shares some of the finer points of getting started but I’ll reiterate here, it is communication. Talk with your web builder but remember, you own the product. It should be 100% your vision with the function defined between you and the person or company undertaking the project. Enjoy the Reading, I plan on posting more articles on tips for getting a website built from picking the service plan, deciding on a monthly updating fee and other considerations for your overall site.

Thanks for checking it out, also – if you are looking for tip and solutions for problems encountered when working on a site – check out our forums, Register and Post there and we should be able to help you. Forum=http://www.techtalkradio.com/forum

— Andy

Admin Note: Andy also shared a link in the article for the Archive.org site where the TechtalkRadio.Com site from 1999 can be viewed.

Take a look!

Andy Taylor1 Commentsoftware, TechtalkRadio, TTR Website

Free Email Programs

Had a Radio Listener Instant Message me today on Facebook wondering if I could recommend a Free Email program. She stated that she had previously used MSN but had been hacked into and got rid of the program. At the top of my mind, I recommended Gmail. The program comes from Google which offers a wide range of tools that you may or may not use from Google Voice, Talk to Picasa to email with Gmail just to name a few.

As soon as I had typed my suggestion for Gmail I received a response right back, “Can’t use that – friend had hers hacked..” I was beginning to see a pattern here. The thought came to mind about delivering a smart alec answer of “Maybe you should use the postal service” but then thought, she might come back with “somebody stole the mail out of the box!”

This of course for those of you looking for a free email program or using any type of service on the web brings the reminder to make sure your passwords are difficult to crack. Using words like password, dog, admin or pass are easily guessed and could open up your Email or any kind of program requiring a login to problems.

Another reminder is to not use the same password for multiple services. While this can be more difficult as more services require user names and passwords, this can help protect you in the case a system is compromised with personal information and associated passwords.  There are some programs and even hardware on the market to help not only create passwords that would be very difficult to crack but also store passwords for multiple sites. One of those companies is ID Vault found at http://www.idvault.com/ 

If you are looking for some ideas on how to create a viable password, a good rule of thumb is make the password more then 8 characters. There are some password cracking programs that can quickly uncover a password in less then an hour when the password is less then 5 characters. Using Lower and Upper Case along with punctuation and numbers is also a great way to make the password more difficult. Many will recommend using a favorite term or saying to help deliver a strong password. Maybe you enjoy eating at Five Guy Burgers (Plug Bell Please). How about taking the term “I Love Eating at 5 Guys Burgers!”  This could be translated to Ilea5GB! – We have upper Case, a Number and  Punctuation mark in the password.

It’s also good to remember safe computing as well. If you get email from unknown users asking you to click on something, do you really have to? Do you have to open a file from a known user that you haven’t talked with in awhile? Do you have a good anti-virus program? There are some free ones that are quite good on the market however, having the security of a program that is constantly testing and delivering solutions to its users with a paid subscription to updates will provide more protection again new viruses. Isn’t it worth the 30 or 40 bucks a year?

So please remember, in most cases – if your Email was hacked – there was probably a step here and there that was missed. Clicking a link, no protection on your system, using a public computer and not logging out or a system already infected with a keylogger or a password that can be guessed at or easily figured out. Also, don’t write your password under your keyboard or on a post it note attached to the monitor. Yes, I’ve seen that before.  For more information on Virus Protection take a look at http://www.symantec.com The Makers of the popular Norton Anti-Virus or http://www.eset.comthe makers of one of my favorites Eset Nod32.  More tips on Password Creation can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/protect/fraud/passwords/create.aspx