advisor

Gone in 30 minutes

William is philosophizing to his toothbrush one minute and contemplating practicing shot put with his computer the next. What burst his bubble?

William blames a virus, and in his tussle with the malignant malware, he learns a few lessons about the risks of sharing a computer with family and friends. But was it actually a virus that got him, and are the lessons he learned the right ones?

After the frustrations of dealing with damaged data, it's easy to generalize about past and future behavior. Set the record straight in a thrilling malware true-and-false in this week's Spyware … Read more

The Advisor by SkyKap

SkyKap ADVISOR Golf caps and Visors.

Now this sounds to good to be true, imagine wearing a hat that gives you feedback on your golf game and the ability to tell you the yardages to the flag stick.

Advisor golf caps and visors have built in to the brim of a standard golf cap or visor a sophisticated set of electronics, allowing what appears to be an ordinary cap to function as a complete Golf information system. Controlled completely by Speaker Independent Voice Recognition, this cap allows the golfer to get yardage data, enter and track scores, pace of play … Read more

TripAdvisor trots out social network

TripAdvisor, that sea of au courant and sometimes complaint-driven posts about hotels, is making it easier to find like-minded travelers. The subsidiary of Expedia plans to roll out a social-networking component Friday that should help you avoid those less-than-helpful "no ice in the water" comments about foreign hotels.

While you may roll your eyes at the idea of yet another social-networking site, keep in mind that TripAdvisor, which claims 10 million unique users, has cultural custom on its side.

For example, calling a person four degrees removed for advice on where to stay in Uppsala or asking for a dinner invitation when visiting someone's home city of Novosibirsk, is already socially accepted behavior for travelers.

TripAdvisor has made it painless to register your network of travelers, the point at which many sites often lose people. It imports contacts from Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, MSN, Outlook and Outlook Express. Check off who you want to invite, and who you don't want to bother asking, but who you will preaccept if they invite you. Click Submit and you're done.

You can view your friends' networks and invite their friends to join. And here's where TripAdvisor can't lose when it comes to building community. Why wouldn't you just invite everyone on everyone's list? You're only sharing travel advice and chances are you'll have more in common with someone you tangentially know than a random poster.

Reviews from travelers within your network float above the general population whenever you do a site search. You can also view their reviews, photos and lists of favorites and exchange messages from one central location. You can also view their maps.

Google's malware witch hunt

Ten percent of the 4.5 million URLs Google researchers analyzed for a malware expos? harbored malicious code. The code executes through widgets, ads, compromised downloads, server vulnerabilities, browser holes, phishing lures, and links, making infection possible for even ordinarily safe users.

CNET.com's Robert Vamosi has the full story, and CNET Download.com has programs to add muscle to your antivirus armor. Netcraft Toolbar (for Internet Explorer and Firefox), is an antiphishing browser extension that sniffs out suspicious hosting locations common in spoofed sites.… Read more

StreetAdvisor: The social network for the street where you live

An interesting new community site launched this morning. And by community, I mean real community: the street you live on. StreetAdvisor is a place to rate your block and meet your neighbors.

The rating system lets you review your street on five main scales (vibe, wired, health, value, essentials), each of which has subscores (for example, the wired scale includes a cellular coverage score). That's a lot of ratings to give, but you can, if you want, just give the main overview scores.

You can also upload video tours of your street, which could be a great resource for people looking to move on to a particular street. It's usefulness, however, depends on people reviewing and rating their streets honestly. It also assumes that real estate pros don't try to game the system by artificially inflating streets on which they have houses for sale (or dragging down scores on streets where they don't). The co-founders told me that have measures in place are in place to help prevent that.

For residents of a particular street, the system's "StreetBoard" also serves as a local resource. It's a social network with an open message board ("StreetShout") for street-related discussion with your neighbors. It also has a wiki-like element: You can find the numbers of local services (police, doctors, post offices) or enter them yourself for others to see.