ClutterFreePC and the Case of the Overworked Blogger

It was about 2:45 a.m. when I got the call from our publicist. Another 23-year–old starlet became a mother in a hush-hush clinic in West Hollywood. We needed a story immediately and as soon as I put the phone down, I realized my laptop was at my office. I quickly got dressed and ran downstairs to our family computer. I hit the power button and ran to the kitchen to get coffee going. I went back to my seat a few moments later and to my surprise, the computer was still booting up. In fact, it was showing the start-up screen while the tower made very strange noises. Finally it came up and without hesitation, I opened the browser to get the specs from my work email. Nothing happened. Then finally a window popped open, but not the web browser. It was a warning box telling me that there were fatal computer errors and without warning, the screen went blank. The story was going to be late and heads were going to roll at the office.

I became a “mommy blogger” kind of late in the game. I never imagined that the sex advice website where I was a staff writer would branch off into this particular category. It came as an even greater surprise when I was announced to be the managing editor of this new site. I was a bit hesitant when my editor-in-chief offered me the position. I had written about both my pregnancies back when the magazine was still just print media. But my kids were in their early teens and I didn’t feel terribly relevant to new Moms. Despite my trepidation, I took the job and started a few months later.

What was interesting about this particular variety of mommy blog not only offered advice to new moms, it also reported the lives of celebrity moms. Since Hollywood is still considered to be in a “baby boom”, we tend to more heavily focus on these stories. Getting stories about young Hollywood noticed is primarily based on getting the word out before anyone else. I never missed a story’s timing until that night the computer wouldn’t boot up. It was practically a new machine and was hardly ever used. The kids only used it to check their Facebook pages and emails and both my husband and I have our own laptops. I decided to bring the tower with me into work to have IT check it out.

After two days, one of the IT guys came into my office carrying the tower. It turned out that a virus had swept through the computer and corrupted the hard drive. He then explained that the browser was full of junk from spam-filled sites and it probably went un-noticed since there was no software protecting the computer. He proceeded to lecture me about Internet safety and how malware was everywhere. How all someone needed to do was click a bad link on Facebook and your hard drive becomes a time bomb.  Once he left, I started doing some research. I found an article about ClutterFreePC software by Ascentive, LLC.

After some further reading on their website, I decided that this software was worth giving a shot. I purchased ClutterFreePC and and installed it on all my computers. A few weeks later I noticed that the family computer was beginning to act funny so I scanned the hard drive. Sure enough, it had quarantined some troubling files. I couldn’t believe this happened again, however, I was glad I caught it in time. I decided now would be a good time to see if the monitoring software was doing its job.

When the list of sites that had been visited on the computer came up, I was taken aback. It seemed that someone was frequenting adult sites that offered free movies and free downloads every other day. I was ready to write the whole thing off as mere spam that makes its way into all our inboxes. The other day I deleted six emails offering discounted male enhancement drugs.  Then it occurred to me that I was the mother of two teenage boys and my stomach began to sink. One very awkward family talk later, we covered what was and was not to be viewed on our family computer. The following morning my lead story was titled, “Help! My Kids Are Watching Internet Porn.” 

Pend Oreille County receives $27 million for broadband boost

Pend Oreille County, Washington recently received more than $27 million from the stimulus funds generated through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to improve broadband speed and access in the Northeast corner of the state. The largely rural segment of the state has only eight people per square mile, according to the United States Census Bureau.The improvements to Pend Oreille's broadband infrastructure will improve access throughout the county, and provide broadband to 3,200 of its 12,000 residents for the first time. Improving access to schools is another goal of the grant. In rural communities, the demand is not as high as it is in suburban and urban communities, but it is the policy of the Obama administration that all schools in the U.S. have reliable broadband access."This investment will connect Pend Oreille families and small business owners to the critical broadband services already available in cities and towns across the country," Senator Patty Murray said.Washington's state government received funding from the ARRA earlier this month, but the improvement efforts in more rural parts of the state require further funding and infrastructure development to bring adequate broadband speed to the entire population.

Broadband in Brazil still slow and expensive

When compared to other developing countries like Turkey and Mexico, broadband access in Brazil is among the slowest and most expensive in the world, according to Bernama.com. Brazilians with internet access spent nine times as much as people in developed countries for their connection.In countries like the United States, households spend roughly 0.5 percent of their yearly income on broadband speed. Meanwhile, Brazilians spend 4.6 percent of their income on a connection that is far slower and less reliable. In other developing countries, there are widespread initiatives underway to improve access, while there is nothing in place or planned to improve speed.Poor broadband speed is one thing, but worse access has compounded problems in Brazil. The news provider reports that 21 percent of households, or roughly 12 million people, have access to reliable broadband. Income gaps demonstrate that broadband access is still a luxury in the nation. In households that make at least 20 times the minimum wage, or $5,862 per month, 83.5 percent have reliable broadband speed.While numbers are still low in Brazil, the South American continent has experienced massive growth in the last 10 years. According to World Internet Stats, internet access on the continent has grown 935 percent since 2000.

Feds planning to shift telephone tax to broadband

Part of the Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Plan, which chairman Julius Genachowski announced on March 17, calls for a 15 percent tax currently levied on telephone service to be shifted to broadband, according to KATU.com. The move is reportedly to encourage broadband access in rural areas.Opponents of the tax worry that the federal government would use the funds raised by the taxes on programs other than providing rural Americans with access to reliable broadband speed. However, those who support the tax point to the telephone tax, which was used to help bring service to rural Americans in the 20th century."I think it's part of a greater cause," Monmouth, Oregon city manager Scott McClure told the news provider. "That's how we did phone service. That's how phone service was taken care of in this country - through the universal service fund: People pay a little bit more to help the rural areas."The original purpose of the Federal Excise Tax on telephone service was to fund the Spanish-American War in 1898. However, as the telephone became a vital part of the American personal and enterprise culture, the government redirected the funds to improve access throughout the country, according to the New York Times.

Net neutrality debate heating up after Supreme Court ruling

When the Supreme Court ruled early last week that Comcast was within its legal rights when it banned BitTorrent from its network, proponents of net neutrality claimed that internet service providers would exploit the ruling to block any website they wanted from their network.

The Wall Street Journal wrote in an editorial last week that it does not expect ISPs to block websites for any reason other speed limitation - the reason Comcast banned BitTorrent. Federal Communications Chairman Julies Genachowski disagrees and believes that the FFC has the right to enforce its policy of net neutrality.

GiGi Sohn, co-founder of net neutrality advocate organization Public Knowledge, recently told PBS that the decision is worrisome because it allows ISPs to ban any website from its network under the guise of excessive bandwidth occupation.

"Peer-to-peer BitTorrent is a high-bandwidth application, without a doubt, but there are others bandwidth applications that Comcast chose not to block," Sohn told PBS.

IDG News recently reported that the European Union will meet to discuss similar policies. The leader of the group researching net neutrality, Neelie Kroes, reports that the body will only apply any new regulations when it is "justified by the need to tackle specific problems."

GoDaddy, Network Solutions following Google from China

Tightening domain name registration rules appear to be behind the exit from China of registrars GoDaddy and Network Solutions, according to the Washington Post.

The Post says that "the decisions come amid a showdown between China and Google, which recently announced it will no longer censor search results on its site in the country. Analysts and human rights advocates have warned that China's insistence on censorship and control over information is becoming a serious barrier to trade."

However, although the timing of the moves suggests otherwise, neither GoDaddy nor Network Solutions has directly cited the Google controversy as a reason for their pullouts from the Chinese marketplace.

U.S. Representative Christopher Smith told the Post that "GoDaddy and Google deserve more than praise for doing the right thing in China - they deserve our government's support."

Analysts say that the recent incidents involving U.S. companies and the Chinese government could be the catalysts for the wide-ranging debate over internet regulation, privacy, and censorship that has been brewing for some time. The issue is already more in the public eye than ever before.

Municipalities up the ante for Google fiber project as clock ticks down

Search giant Google announced today that more than 600 cities across America have applied to be test sites for the company's fiber-optic high-speed internet plan, and the deadline for such applications is rapidly approaching.

Search giant Google announced today that more than 600 cities across America have applied to be test sites for the company's fiber-optic high-speed internet plan, and the deadline for such applications is rapidly approaching.

Product manager James Kelly wrote in a post on the company blog that "we're thrilled to see this kind of excitement, and we want to humbly thank each and every community and individual for taking the time to participate. This enthusiasm is much bigger than Google and our experimental network. If one message has come through loud and clear, it's this: (P)eople across the country are hungry for better and faster internet access."

Experts say that the type of fiber-optic connection that Google's test will provide is orders of magnitude faster than standard commercial broadband connection, and this PC performance improvement should make a number of new internet uses possible.

Hospitals, for example, could use the increased bandwidth to remotely transmit real-time scan data from MRIs and CAT scans, enabling distant doctors to diagnose patients in far-flung areas.

FCC discusses emergency responder broadband plan

Part of the funding proposed in the National Broadband Plan, announced on Wednesday by the Federal Communications Commission, is for a $16 billion network that would provide broadband service to emergency responders. A day after the plan's announcement, the FCC launched a webpage to explain the network. Prior to the announcement, the organization discussed aspects of the plan at various conferences and in front of different bodies throughout the U.S. The webpage contains video clips of these discussions and a statement from FCC chairman Julius Genachowski about the first responder network. However, people want to know exactly how the government plans to fund the endeavor and at what cost to citizens. The organization did announce that any fee will be less than $1. The FCC also expects to seek $6.5 billion from Congress for the project in the near future, according to Computer World. The endorsement of high-speed internet by the federal government represents a major cultural shift in thinking. Eighty percent of 27,000 people polled throughout the world by GlobeScan believes that web access has become a basic human right. Those who do not use the internet in the U.S. may soon struggle to adjust.

Alaska receives ARRA funds for broadband, Anchorage tries to attract Google

Google has stated that it plans to provide its 1 gigabyte per second high-speed internet connection to a place that really needs it to prove how valuable internet access is to modern education and economic success.

Anchorage, Alaska has made the latest push to become the first city to be selected by the search engine giant for its service. Anchorage's efforts comes on the same day that the state nearly $90 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to improve broadband access throughout the stay.

"This is a wonderful opportunity to bring broadband services to that region of the state," Bruce Broquet of GCI, the company installing the broadband, told the Alaska Journal of Commerce. "Once you've decided you're going to do it, the wheels have to start turning immediately."

Despite the often slow speeds, a higher percentage of people in Alaska report using the internet on a daily basis than any other state in the country. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, an October 2009 survey revealed that 79 percent of the population uses the internet at least once per day.

California man arrested for spam threat to New York Life

A man dissatisfied with the return on his investment in a variable life insurance policy allegedly threatened the policy's issuer, New York Life, with a spam email campaign, which resulted in his arrest over the weekend.

Anthony Digati, a 52-year-old from Chino, California, allegedly claimed on a website that he would send six million emails to potential New York Life customers if they did not pay him nearly $200,000 - which the Wall Street Journal reports is four times as much as he paid to the company in premiums.

Digati was charged with one count of extortion by Manhattan prosecutors and could face two years in prison if convicted. The New York Daily News reported that "Digati may have realized that might happen because in one of his emails, he boasted, 'no judge in the world is going to rule for a 200 billion-dollar company when there is a lonely customer that you stole from.'"

The Journal noted that Digati originally contacted the insurance company over his claims in February.

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