Bob Caswell

Digg founder Kevin Rose announced that Digg buttons will now be available on the Wall Street Journal website (WSJ.com). Not only that, but anyone will have free access to any WSJ articles visited via Digg. Coincidentally, this news comes around the same time Rupert Murdoch suggested that he might take down the Wall Street Journal’s online subscription pay wall. Whatever the circumstances, I’m a daily user of both sites and welcome the collaboration.

In fact, here’s a walk through of how the integration looks and works:

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Anyone familiar with digg, Netflix, del.icio.us, flickr, Picasa, LinkedIn, Last.fm, StumbleUpon, reddit, etc. knows that any sort of social networking at any of these sites (that is, sharing / commenting / befriending) happens in isolation. Want to see what your friends are up to in terms of music listening, picture uploading, movie watching, career changing, or Internet bookmarking? Well, clear your schedule because you’ll need the time to log in to your dozen or so favorite social networks. Being social has never been so fragmented and time consuming.

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So everyone and their dog is talking about Amazon’s announcement today to offer MP3 downloads. In brief, Amazon MP3 songs are DRM-free and start at $0.89/track with the top 100 best-selling albums priced no higher than $8.99. The store opened with 2 million songs from 80,000 artists. EMI and Universal are the two big labels on board. Song quality is even very high – 256 kbps. All of this, of course, is available via iTunes for $1.29/track or $9.99/album.

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Switching from one search engine to another is simple, right?

Well, I thought I’d try a couple new options, but it was difficult. I had to consciously remind myself that I was going to use new (for me) search engines. If I didn’t think about it, Google is always where I ended up.

First on the list, the other two of the big three: Yahoo and Microsoft / MSN / Live (come on, Microsoft, I still don’t know what you want to be called here).

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Back in December 2006, I did a review of Norton 360 (the beta version) and pointed out a bunch of minor annoyances with the product. Since then, it has been met with glowing reviews by the big boys at CNET and PC Magazine. Interestingly enough, my 360 review is often the most popular article at Computers.net any given week.

I found that it shows up on the first page of Google results for “Norton 360″ and is the only site on that first page that has anything really bad to say let alone a place to leave anonymous comments. And there seem to be plenty of people frustrated, looking for some way to be heard.

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Backing up your computer is never something you want to worry about it; you wish it would just happen. With that perspective, I previously reviewed two online backup services: Mozy and Carbonite. Mozy had more customization options while Carbonite had a slicker interface and offered unlimited backups.

But Mozy’s back with the release of Mozy Unlimited, and the company today has impressed even Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal. It’s the little things that seem to make the difference, such as the option to have all your files sent to you on DVD or Mozy keeping multiple versions of your files for 30 days (Carbonite doesn’t have the DVD option and only keeps the latest version of any file).

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Symantec recently released the beta version of its new security suite: Norton 360. The question is whether the 360 part of the name refers to what Symantec would have you believe: “Norton gives you a full circle of protection.” Or could it refer to Symantec doing a 360 and being right back where it started with a bloated, buggy, and overpriced product?

When I covered the Norton AntiVirus 2006 release last year, the thread turned into a place for consumers to vent on how the product caused more problems than fixes. Some were even wishing for a class-action lawsuit. Well, I’ve been playing with the latest iteration for a few days now to see which implication of using the term 360 is true. Here’s what I found:

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So I recently reviewed Carbonite, a $5 per month online backup service for unlimited data backups from one computer. But the last few days I’ve been playing with Mozy, another online backup service with a different offering. In a nutshell, Mozy offers more control, more features, and is completely free for two gigabytes of online storage. The down side is that for $5 per month, you only get a maximum of 30 gigs (see update at end of article). And though the interface gives power users more control, it may be less inviting to the average user. But free is free. There is no reason why any of us shouldn’t take advantage of backing up our most important two gigabytes of data.

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