Personal Computer sales taking a dive

Posted by David Bernstein

Just recently people would be talking about how many computers they had in their house and how they could not live without them. Well today that doesn’t appear to be the case since PC sales are on a downward spiral which is not good for PC manufacturers and this is because of the growing popularity of smartphones and tablets but more recently by government budget cuts in China.

Market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) has been keeping an eye on this trend and is reporting that global personal computer shipments may decline even more than the 7.7% that was predicted before for the first quarter.  China is responsible for more than one fifth of the world’s PC shipments but these budget cuts and anti-corruption measures are having an effect on shipments and sales. Even Intel who makes a large majority of PC processors is feeling the pinch with sales down 6% from last December.

So if this trend continues it could either mean higher prices because of less supply or lower prices because of less demand. Then again you might be one of those people who gave up their PC in favor of your smartphone or tablet and don’t care either way!

Evernote is the latest victim of hackers

Posted by David Bernstein

Evernote is an online or cloud based personal organizer that allows you to set reminders and notes for whatever you like and sync the information between your computer, smartphone and tablet. So you can set a note on your phone and when you get to work the reminder will be there waiting for you.

This attack on Evernote has resulted in users having their usernames, emails and passwords stolen from a database that was accessed by the hackers. So if you are an Evernote user you should change your password right away. They are saying that users passwords are encrypted so the attackers would have to do some extra work to actually get to the stolen passwords but it’s still recommended that you change your password just to be safe. Evernote says that credit card information was not stolen because it’s not stored on their servers.

It’s estimated that Evernote has around 50 million users storing things such as notes, lists, reminders, web pages and itineraries in its cloud based system. Facebook was just attacked a week ago and other companies such as Apple, Microsoft and the New York Times have been victims of hackers recently as well.

Facebook News Feed update on the way

 Posted by David Bernstein

Facebook has many features that you may or may not use or even know about… or care about. But one of their more popular features called News Feed is getting a face lift. Facebook will be unveiling their new News Feed look on March 7th at their Menlo Park campus.

News Feed is the Facebook feature that updates stories and posts from your friends such as status updates, links, photos, videos and so on. It’s the feature that is most used and the first thing you see when you log in.

Facebook had originally been talking about new designs for the Timeline features but now it appears that they are focusing on their News Feed for now. These new changes will be taking place in the mobile versions of Facebook as well.

Part of the reason may be because they have just acquired Atlas from Microsoft which is a digital advertising company and now will be better suited to target advertising to Facebook users while using the News Feed feature. News Feed is where Facebook makes most of its money so it makes sense to update this before any other feature.