Welcome and Happy New Year!

2008 was a great year in many ways. The tech world is always moving and always changing. I’m excited to see what will come out of the next couple years. With the world’s economies struggling, how will thing move forward? It should be fun to watch.

Here are my tips to kick-off 2009.

Be careful out there. I’ve seen an uprising of viruses and spyware (they’re practically the same these days). I’ve cleaned a lot of systems, made a lot of recommendations, and read lots of reports. The “bad guys” keep working on new ways to trick you, so you must try harder to keep yourself safe online. Your first defense is NOT your anti-virus program. Your first defense is YOU. Be careful. Don’t click on links in emails ever. Don’t forward emails that are forwarded to you. If you aren’t using an anti-virus program or you’ve let your subscription expire (which is the same as not using one) please consider using AVG Free. It will stay up to date and you never have to worry about forgetting to renew your subscription. You may also consider setting up a network gateway UTM (Unified Threat Management). I’ve used both Untangle and Astaro. Both are free for home users and Untangle is free for businesses. Both are great quality and very effective. If you are interested in either of them, email me and I can help you.

Use Firefox (version 3), it’s much much safer than Internet Explorer. Remember that Internet Explorer version 6 is not safe to use. Today you can get a virus just by simply going to a website. That’s all you need to do. That’s why you should take steps to make yourself safer. Also, Firefox version 2 will soon be unsupported so if you haven’t yet upgraded, now is the time.

Switch to Linux. I did! It’s great. I love it. I’m using Ubuntu 8.10 right now. Windows isn’t safe. Sorry, it’s not. Macs are becoming less safe as they grow in popularity. Linux is safe for two reasons. One is simply because it’s not worth the time of the “hacker” to write a virus for an operating system that is used by so few people. The second is because Linux is written in a way that makes it safer by default. When a user logs in to use Linux, they don’t automatically have “administrator authority” like most Windows users do.

I don’t really have any goals set for this site in 2009. I do still plan on writing some reviews on Android applications. I just haven’t had time and I don’t know when I will. I have a few things in the works that will be taking up a lot of my time. Also, sometime in the next month I plan to migrate my main desktop computer from XP to Ubuntu. I can still run XP in VirtualBox when I need it. I’m also thinking (if money allows, which it probably never will) about building a Mythbuntu box, which is an OS that combines MythTV and Ubuntu.

Happy New Year (yeah I know I’m a few days late). I hope it’s a good one for all of you. Hey, if you like anything you read here or have something to add, please feel free to leave a comment.