MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. It's the computer guys, here to wish you happy New Year. It's the first Tuesday of the new year and you know what that melodious sound means. It's the Computer Guys & Gal. No sooner had she stopped singing "Auld Lang Syne" than Allison Druin began making resolutions.

MR. JOHN GILROYShe needs a lot of them too.

NNAMDICatch up on all those e-mails, start taking advantage of the cloud and all those cool, free apps. John Gilroy and Bill Harlow didn't send us any resolutions, (laugh) which can only mean one of two things: they either think they're perfect...

MR. BILL HARLOWExactly.

NNAMDI...or they missed the memo. (laugh) Maybe they were enjoying New Year's Eve a little too much. Either way, my New Year's resolution is already shattered; they're here, all three of them.

GILROY(unintelligible) bunch?

MS. ALLISON DRUIN(unintelligible)

NNAMDIThey're here to offer predictions for the year ahead. They'll tell us why smartphones will blow past traditional computers, why 2011 will mark the end of the all-you-can-eat Internet buffet and why Internet users in D.C. are stuck in the slow lane on the Internet highway. They are Allison Druin, director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab and associate dean for research, College of Information Studies, University of Maryland. Happy New Year, Allison.

DRUINHappy New Year to you too.

NNAMDIThank you very much. Bill Harlow is the software technician for Macs and PCs at Mid-Atlantic Consulting Incorporated. Happy New Year to you.

HARLOWHappy New Year to you, too, Kojo.

NNAMDIJohn Gilroy is director of business development at SolutionsDevelopers. John Gilroy, happy New Year to you.

GILROYHappy New Year. I'm working on that title. I'll catch up to Allison (laugh) one of these days.

NNAMDIYes, I...

GILROYGot to have more words in my title.

DRUINAnother year or two. (laugh)

NNAMDIAllison, in 2010, we saw the continued growth of smartphones and mobile apps, the first rise of tablet computers, but you have flagged a different text story among your "Best of," a company that is making exoskeletons for paraplegics. Tell us about the Berkeley Bionic.

DRUINYeah. This is amazing. They call these e-legs. And it -- essentially, it's a robotic frame that's controlled with crutches. So you move your -- you move the crutch -- the right crutch forward and then your left leg is actually helped forward. And it's amazing...

NNAMDIOkay.

DRUIN...they basically -- it's based on technology that was created for the military. As many people may know, especially around here, the military have to carry enormously heavy packs, you know, 200 packs. So what they have are these exoskeletons that actually help them carry these packs by strengthening their legs...

NNAMDIOkay.

DRUIN...and giving them more strength. And so what this company is...

NNAMDIThey use them, something like crutches (unintelligible)

DRUINYeah. Basically, you're using crutches. It looks like crutches. But these crutches have sensors in them that tell the exoskeleton to move the leg.

NNAMDIOh, wow.

DRUINAnd it's just incredible. So there's actually some video on the Web where the -- they were users of these exoskeletons and I thought, oh, yeah, how long have they been using it? But basically, these were people that were in wheelchairs. I mean...

HARLOWThat's really cool.

NNAMDIOh.

DRUIN...for years. So just incredible stuff. So they're working on a home version of this and it is just tremendous. It's exactly what technology should be doing.

NNAMDIOh, by the way, if you'd like to join the conversation, do you have any tech predictions for 2011 or resolutions for your tech consumption in the year ahead? Call us at 800-433-8850. Go to our website, make a comment or ask a question there. That's at kojoshow.org. Or you can send us an e-mail to kojo@wamu.org. Bill, you described 2010 as the year of traveling light.

HARLOWYeah. At least for me and a lot of the people I know. Obviously, a laptop, still a great tool to have. You know, it's very flexible. But, you know, there are a lot of cases where you don't need to necessarily bring, you know, five pounds of computer. You know, people are taking their iPads on honeymoons and loading pictures onto that. Some people are finding that, you know, phones like the new droid, the new iPhone 4 takes a great video, great pictures or even leaving their cameras behind.

HARLOWIn my case, you know, I traded in my tech bag in many cases and I just have my iPhone and a camera and a couple of chargers. You know, gone are the days, I think, for a lot of people of carrying around, let's say, you know, a few paperbacks when they have a kindle, you know? You know, or hauling their entire computer around when an iPad does just fine. I mean iPad doesn't do everything, but it's sort of a greatest hits of what you wanna do with the computer. And if that's all you need to do, you know, it's a pound and a half.

NNAMDIAnd for an increasing number of people, you don't need both an iPhone and a camera because they'll just use the iPhone as a camera (unintelligible)

HARLOWExactly. For me, I'm a little pickier. But you know, for a lot of people, it works great.

NNAMDIHow about you, Allison, are you traveling lighter also?

DRUINOh, yeah. Well, I mean, to -- for me, I mean, Apple sort of took over my world this year. I mean, this was -- it was crazy. Between the iPad, the iPhone, the -- I mean, we were -- just a few years ago, we were a mixed family. You know, (laugh) we had PCs and MAC. Now it's just all Apple...

HARLOWAssimilation.

DRUIN...all the time. I mean, it’s amazing, but you know, what, we're not the only people. Because now, Apple is -- I mean, 60 billion...

NNAMDIBut people were predicting that this was -- would be the year of Android.

DRUINI know. Go figure. But, you know, Androids are going to make a real big splash this coming year. I do believe it. Between the lower prices of the hardware and the more wireless access and so on and better software. But this year was Apple, man. Apple (unintelligible)

NNAMDIWell, John Gilroy is traveling lighter too. He's slipping virtual bottles past the TSA.

HARLOWHe sure am.

GILROYYou know, I think the Android story is gonna be a good story this year. I think in the tablet world, it's not gonna be much of a story. But I think in the phone world, they're gonna do some damage there. And where that leads to is it leads to some questions and problems and security issues. But I think they're gonna make a good showing. But I think in the tablet world, or as Microsoft says, the slate world.

HARLOWSlate, yeah. (laugh)

GILROYIn the tablet world, your friend, Steve Jobs, is gonna win.

NNAMDIWait, I think I have an e-mail about that. But -- where is it? Where is it, the Android e-mail? I'll find that in a second. In the mean time, John Gilroy, last year, Twitter went over 100 million accounts, not too bad for a service that one John Gilroy has been somewhat skeptical about, huh?

GILROYNot too shabby.

DRUINA fad. A fad. Wasn’t it?

GILROYIt's not worst to first. It's worst to 100 million. I mean, 100 million of anything is pretty considerable. I think one of these movie stars started it all off and tumbled -- and I think even marketing people now are worried about Twitter and how to use that to bring revenue into their companies. And it's shocking. I just -- I can't believe -- but 100 million, that's a big number.

NNAMDIBut a new report from the folks at McAfee tells us to be careful of a common part of the twitter universe, URL shorteners. Please explain.

GILROYYeah. For example, if you wanna tell people to go to AllisonDruinnetwork.com...

NNAMDIYes.

GILROY...it gets difficult. So what she may do is she may shorten it with something like bit.ly. There's three or four different things out there.

DRUINRight.

GILROYAnd now we have folks like TinyURL, there’s 3000 new TinyURLs a day. And so if I say, "Hey, Bill, go to this website, and I'll give you a shorten form of it," you may click on it. It could be KojoNnamdibadguysite.com.

HARLOWSure, sure.

DRUINYeah.

GILROYAnd so this is one of the risks of the shorteners, and I think this is -- where years ago, we talked about viruses. Now, we're gonna talk more about be wary of shorteners, and they're may be some defenses and (word?) so shorteners are gonna be -- we have to worry about those. We have to worry about things like rogue apps, and nasty apps are getting out there. And attacks via social networks so...

NNAMDIIt's The Computer Guys & Gal. You can join the conversation. 800-433-8850. What are your best and worst of 2010 in terms of tech and tech apps? I did find the e-mail on Android phones. It was a posting by Chris on our website. “I've noticed on my Android that the downloaded apps want access to things like my location, incoming calls and SD card. Is this dangerous? I'm worried about getting a virus and charges that I didn't make for calls or services”, John Gilroy?

GILROYThis is what happens when the Smartphone gets too smart.

GILROYThe apps get too appy. You know, there's really no policy. I mean, over the years, you've listened to us in the show rant and rave about cookies and policies. And I think we have abilities to control what cookies are placed in our desktop machines, our keyboard machines. But with phones, all of a sudden, no policy. And there's a great article on The Wall Street Journal on this. I mean, it's a very thorough in-depth article, and they tested a bunch of apps on what their policies. Now, Apple has a pretty stringent policy...

HARLOWRight.

GILROY...about what the letter of the law is now the actual reality of these situations is much different. I think they took 100 random airports, and 56 of them were transferring information about you, Allison, that you may not know was being transferred, like age, gender, location. I mean, Kojo, can walk...

NNAMDIAnd we don't know what purpose the information will be.

GILROYRight. I mean, Kojo could be walking down the street, near Joe's Pizza, and all of a sudden, he gets an alert. Hey, 5.99, you know, personal pizza. I mean, I wouldn't want to live in that world.

HARLOWI think on the Android, it's actually a bit scarier, because you do have, like, an official, you know, app, marketplace, but there are a lot of ways, because it's, you know, a pretty flexible platform. You know, you can very easily install an app that maybe isn't signed or from reputable source and not necessarily have an idea. I mean, the app store on the iPhone is curated. It's not perfect, but at least, it helps, you know, limit a lot of those factors. You're not gonna see a lot of truly malicious software in the app store.

GILROYAnd everybody who has a phone who's listening has a specific user ID, which can identify them.

HARLOWRight.

GILROYAnd that's transferred a lot -- transferred to where? To marketing organizations that say, Oh, geez, can I sell you X, Y and Z.

NNAMDIOkay. An e-mail from Jessie says, "We use Time Machine as our main backup application at home, and since my husband is nuts about backing things up, I know it's a great solution since he's quite selective. However, when there's something that we want to be doubly safe, we also back it up by sending it via e-mail so it's on our servers at work. It's just a special precaution we take for just a few things. Since our backup drive is in the same place as our computers, generally, it's a good idea to back things up that are really important in another place. You never know when you'll have that earthquake." Allison?

DRUINYup. That's absolutely true. That's exactly -- I have a husband that is completely obsessed with backing things up and...

GILROYAnd is he crazy too?

DRUINYeah. And he's been on the show many times so you know him.

NNAMDIYes. Happy New Year, Ben Bederson.

GILROYCertified crazy.

DRUINAnd actually -- that was one of the reasons that we actually moved completely to Apple at a certain point. It was because of Time Machine, because our backups were not happening, not consistent and so on, and so eventually, we went that way. And so, yeah, Time Machine is -- it's a very good application for backing things up, but, let me just remind you, if your backup is in the same place as your regular computer is, you know, earthquake, hurricane, you know, things can happen, so sending it out on the cloud, backing it up, you know, in a -- just even by sending it to you by e-mail, it can -- that can help.

NNAMDIEarthquakes, hurricanes, on that optimistic note, we turn to Bill Harlow.

HARLOWYeah. I would just take a look at some of the online cloud-based storage solutions too.

DRUINExactly.

HARLOWSome people just dump stuff in Drop Box. Some people use something like CrashPlan or Mozy or Carbonite. I, you know, deal with computers a lot so I put on my tinfoil hat when it comes, you know, when it comes to data, and I back up as much as possible and as many places as possible.

GILROYAnd here's what's going on is there's gonna be a shift to SSD drives, and what happens is one concern is reliability. And so even more reason to take and move your information back to the cloud. My old phrase in the show is if you don't back up, you'll crack up. Well, you definitely will, and I think these solutions like Mozy and Carbonite work really well.

NNAMDIJohn Gilroy who apparently stopped backing up a long time ago.

DRUINBut he's still cracking up, yeah.

NNAMDIHere's Darryl in Greenbelt, Md. Darryl, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

DARRYLHi, Kojo. Thanks for taking my call. I will tell you my question as I'm a converter. I fell in love with the MacBook. I got one at work, and I use it extensively, but I used to be a Windows guy. But I've heard all the rage about the iPad, and I've used a couple that friends have had. We're looking for gifts for the kids, though, and we ended up settling on a netbook, specifically one that we found where the screen is flipped around and became a pad that you could use with your finger or your stylus kinda on the order of how the net -- the iPad works. But then you turn it back around, and it's a laptop. The kids can do their homework on Word and PowerPoint and things like that. It has the capabilities of the computer, and I'm surprised that there aren't more of those on the market. If the Mac Air flipped around and did that, I think we would have bought one, hands down.

NNAMDIAllison, sounds like a question for you.

DRUINYeah. Actually, it's interesting because there have been tablets like that from, you know, Microsoft tablets for quite a while...

HARLOWYeah.

DRUIN...and in fact...

HARLOWToshiba made a bunch of them.

DRUINYeah. Toshiba. In fact, I had some, and I love them to pieces. They were awesome. You know what the problem is? Is that when you have moving parts, things break. And so you just have to be careful. And so those things can break. You also can have keyboards that are not optimal because they're being hidden, so they're being made slightly differently. So -- hence the reason it didn't take off as much. So people are finding that, you know, sort of, you know, appliance computing. One thing for one object is usually what people are trying to do.

NNAMDIDarryl, thank you very much for your call. We've got to take a short break. When we come back, we'll continue our conversation with The Computer Guys & Gal and take your calls at 800-433-8850. What are your resolutions for your tech consumption in the year 2011? 800-433-8850. I’m Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWith The Computer Guys & Gal. Allison Druin, director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab and associate dean for research at the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. John Gilroy, director of business development at SolutionsDevelopers.

DRUINI know you want the title.

NNAMDIAnd Bill Harlow, hardware and software technician for Macs & PCs at Mid-Atlantic Consulting, Inc. He is a Mac-Genius. You, too, can call 800-433-8850. We consider everyone who calls a genius. So let's go to...

NNAMDILet's go to Chris in Mt. Airy, Md. Chris, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

CHRISHi, thank you for taking my call. Our family seems to have a gigantic Mac-PC war going on, and I don't know what it is. I'm a graphic artist, and I, of course, love Mac. But we're gonna be traveling overseas next year, and I'm -- well, actually this year. But I'm trying to find the best solution. All these networks say that they cover, and they don't cover. AT&T says this, and Verizon says that. And I don't know what kind of software to get. It's -- I mean, what kind of phone or what to get as far as taking photographs that are reliable over there and traveling the lightest way possible, you know? But anyway, I love your show too.

HARLOWWell, as far as, you know, cameras go, it doesn't really matter. I think the only thing you have to worry about there is making sure you have the appropriate power adapter for your charger, for the battery. When you're talking about AT&T and such, that's really, I think, more for a computer that might be using a wireless modem or for a smartphone. In which case, going with something that uses GSM, which is what AT&T uses, is probably the safer bet for a lot of places you're going to travel to, although it will cost you an arm and a leg. So I'd say probably the safest bet if you wanna travel light, don't worry about it. It's so cost prohibitive. You're only gonna want to use a phone in an emergency. I'd say stick to WiFi in which case really anything is gonna work. It doesn't matter if it's a Mac or PC or…

GILROYSkype is your friend.

HARLOWExactly. Skype is your friend. And there's...

DRUINOh, so true.

HARLOW...added video chat for the iPhone as well. So I would look into that.

CHRISOkay. Well, thank you very much.

NNAMDIYou're more than welcome, Chris. You too can call us, 800-433-8850. All the smartphone platforms seem to have big opportunities, but also big challenges facing them. For one thing, we know that hackers and developers of malicious code are trying to figure out how to attack mobile devices. John Gilroy, this sounds like a science fiction novel. An army of bad guys developing Trojan programs to attack our Android devices and launch botnet attacks according to International Business Times?

HARLOWThat's gonna be a great movie. I'm wanna see that.

GILROYIt's a great movie. I must -- buy your tickets now. Maybe it's in 3D, huh? (laugh) Well, you know, it's interesting. We talked to about 100 million people on Twitter. Sixteen percent of those 100 million were from their handheld devices, and this seems to be a trend. And I know Allison didn't predict this or anything, but...

GILROY...it seems to be a trend what you see here. And this is just an example, a proof of concept in China. And this is not gonna affect folks in Ohio or Massachusetts, but in China, they had some success. At least the bad guys had some success with some malicious software that showed up on your phone. And if it's a Trojan, if you think of the Trojan as something that appears to be something that it's not, you can apply it for desktop computers, you can apply it for handheld device. And we don't know much about this. We just know it's operating only in China. But I think this is proof of concept where people with malicious intent are gonna say, well, Jesus, 500 people now -- 500 million people on Facebook, maybe a billion this year, let's direct our attacks toward social networking or everyone's walking around with an iPhone. Let's direct our attack towards the iPhone or the Android.

NNAMDIThe much anticipated smartphone virus.

GILROYIt's gonna happen. And we've dodged the bullet here for a while, but just a short while, I'm afraid.

NNAMDIBill, you called the year 2010 the year of technology for the rest of us.

HARLOWYeah. Allison touched on this a little bit, I think, in the case of accessibility with the really cool bionic crutches for lack of a better name there. (laugh) But I just like, you know, seeing things like the iPad come out and motion gaming continuing to evolve with Sony and Microsoft throwing their hats into the ring. Just because, you know, as geeks on the show, we play with a lot of stuff that's really cool, sometimes cutting edge, but maybe not the most accessible, easiest thing to learn. So it's nice to see stuff that's actually made for non-geeks to use and appreciate and get some enjoyment out of it. So...

GILROYYou know, what's amazing about this motion gaming is that CES is gonna start in a couple days and about 140,000 people, whatever. And one of the keynote speakers is gonna be Ballmer from Microsoft. I mean, this is completely upside down from five years. They would never think he'd lower himself to the tawdry consumers. But he's looking at motion gaming, and he's appealing to the CES folks.

NNAMDIWell, speaking of motion gaming, Allison, it brings us to one of your predictions. Most of us think of Microsoft as a software company that happens to make a successful game system called the Xbox 360. You say the company would do well to apply its cool new tech from the gaming world...

GILROYHmm.

NNAMDI...to the rest of its business.

DRUINYeah, I know. I mean -- if they -- I mean, they're so out in front in terms of ubiquitous, large scale multi-surface computing, okay? They are -- Microsoft research is, got some of the best brains in the world there doing research. And if, you know, instead of trying to be a Me-Too with tablets or search, I mean, go after what you're so far ahead on. And, you know, imagine if, you know, they could become the company that defines, you know, the next generation of computing there. And I think it's a big win, a real big win.

GILROYSo on Wall Street, it's known as MSFT. So we're just trying to say it should be make some fine toys instead of (laugh) Microsoft technology.

HARLOWWell, how long did that take?

NNAMDIHere's Gary in Bowie, Md. Hi, Gary.

GARYGood afternoon, Kojo. I love your show.

NNAMDIThank you.

GARYAnd I like to say hello to your team of guests today. My question is -- well, I'm a penny stock investor. And yes, yes, I happen to listen with your show today, the available, you know, stay tuned to your show today. And just yesterday I began inquiring about penny stock companies that are publicly traded and in the lead as far as apps development is concerned. So I wanted to find out if your guests know of any companies that are at the penny stock level and are in the lead of developing apps for mobile services.

NNAMDIDo you have $500 million or more?

NNAMDII know of one company, but, no. Let the computer guys and gal deal with it.

GILROYStock tips -- wrong show for stock tips. There's a million out there.

DRUINWell, I mean, there are so many companies coming aboard, big and small. You can take a look at -- in fact, some of the advertising companies these days are looking at mobile as the best way of going after advertising, viral advertising. So it's an enormous area that so many people are in. What I would suggest is go mess around on the -- in the apps area, in the iTunes area and just take a look at the things you like the best and then follow the -- follow your sense there.

GILROYThere's one company called M-O-B, mobile, M-O-B, clix, C-L-I-X, Mobclix, and what they try to do is they get all this information from mobile users and sell that. And that maybe a way to generate a lot of revenue, be the intermediary and all the snooping that goes around with your phones.

DRUINWell, there's a lot out there or -- essentially applying what we know about computing to the mobile area enormous, absolutely enormous. So I -- you're in the right area, but you just have to do some research because there's just so many things out there.

NNAMDIBill Harlow, have you yet calculated how much the computer guys and gal charge for giving this kind of advice in the...

GILROYHot tips.

NNAMDIIt's the events that Gary makes a big deal -- great deal of money.

HARLOWJust a small percentage of any successes.

GILROYYeah, successes only.

HARLOWExactly.

NNAMDINo failures. Gary, thank you very much for your call. Last month the FCC passed new rules on so-called net neutrality. Their plan, which would create two sets of rules, falls into both of your worst-of categories, Bill and Allison. First, you, Bill.

HARLOWYeah. So I mean the reason why a lot of us want net neutrality, you know, just focusing on me, me, me, the consumer, not necessarily, you know, any reality and, you know, more detailed nuances. We like the idea of a lot of us geeks like the idea of having the Internet broadband access being just -- almost like a utility -- just a dumb pipe just connected to my home and I have data, and I'll decide what to do with it. Thank you very much -- versus any sort of identification of the data going back and forth and maybe tiered-pricing. And, you know, we've gotten used to paying a set amount of money per month for so-called unlimited Internet access at -- up to the full speeds they provide. And I like that, I like to continue using that and I fear that this may not have much of a future if things keep going down of the net neutrality light path.

DRUINYeah.

NNAMDIHow about you, Allison?

DRUINI -- it’s a little scary.

NNAMDIYou call it semi-net neutrality.

DRUINYeah. It really is. It is net semi-neutrality. Essentially, you know, according to net neutrality, you're supposed to treat all of the sources of data equal, okay? That's what our Internet providers are supposed to do. But, you know, on Dec. 21, they approved -- the FCC approved a compromise. And, you know, they did say they still ban any outright, in quotes, "blocking" and any, in quotes, "unreasonable" discrimination of websites or applications. But the wiggle room in there is enormous, okay? And then, of course, you know, there's this big difference between what is wired and then what is not.

NNAMDIOh, yeah.

HARLOWThe wireless is pretty wide open.

DRUINThe wireless area is so wide open. And the real thing is, it's gonna impact us. The first time everything slows down to a grinding halt in your house and you don't understand why, you're gonna end up finding out you're not in the fast lane because you didn't pay for it. You didn't pay to play. You know, they're blocking back and it's not good. So we could go on for three shows about this, but this is gonna be a big, big thing.

HARLOWWireless is gonna be the most interesting thing, I think, because...

DRUINYup.

HARLOW...it's gonna be the most restricted, but potentially, the biggest battlefield. And I'm curious, you know, as time goes on, how many people might rely solely on their wireless devices for Internet access.

DRUINAbsolutely. Absolutely. Well, and, you know what, the courts are gonna get involved in this very quickly. And it's between FCC and the courts and all of the lobbying. It's gonna be fascinating this year.

GILROYYou see, the problem, instead of driving to a store, you have to go on a toll road. And everything is gonna be a toll road. And, I think, consumers like listeners to this show, are gonna get a pitchfork and gonna go down to Congress and start yelling and screaming, you know, like in Frankenstein...

NNAMDII'm mad as hell and I can't take it anymore. (laugh)

GILROYAnd they're gonna -- and it still happens just like Allison -- one day, you know, it's gonna dawn on them that it's gonna cost them $2 to read a 25-cent newspaper. And they're gonna say, well, wait a minute, this doesn't -- and then (sounds like) ad ad ad ad and ad. And the cable companies are just gonna hire smart people to figure out how to weasel out more money from you.

NNAMDIBill, you're predicting the 2011 will be the end of the all-you-can-eat Internet buffet.

HARLOWYeah. And this sort of goes hand in hand with the net neutrality debate. But just -- you know, when I look at some broadband providers like Comcast, and they're starting to cap their - the unlimited Internet access, which right now, most people aren't running into, but, you know, again, more people are doing more stuff on the cloud. And that's everything from, you know, apps that live on the cloud to streaming videos, streaming audio, backing up, that, you know, you may run into that cap, and find that, you know, it's not working out for you. It's even more severe with wireless devices. I think -- my iPhone, I'm still on unlimited plan. But if I were to modify my contract or go to the tethering, then I'm capped at two gigs. And right now, that's enough. But, what if I shoot a lot of HD video? I wanna put it on YouTube. You know, it all adds up.

GILROYIt's like boiling a frog. (laugh) It gets hotter and hotter and hotter.

NNAMDIWe'll see. Speaking of contempt here...

HARLOWThe buffet is over. It's closed.

NNAMDI...a new study by the Communication Workers of America tells us a little something about how well connected our local neighborhoods are. According to the CWA, Maryland ranks fourth in the nation for fastest Internet speeds, Virginia ranks 17th, the District of Columbia, 42nd. In D.C., 57 percent of residents have connections slower than four megabits per second. And that's the standard set as acceptable by the FCC. And the D.C. report drills even farther down. Foggy Bottom and Dupont Circle enjoy the fastest speeds in the city. The lowest speeds reside in the 20019 zip code in the greater Deanwood and Fort Dupont areas. What am I to make of this? Why is Allison getting more speed than I am?

DRUINNo. Wow. It's very sad, because it's complex. It's not just a straightforward answer. It can be a combination of infrastructure in terms of just the wiring to the actual providers that are providing in those areas.

GILROYIt's factored into all of my moves. That's for sure. (laugh)

DRUINYeah. Yeah. No, it is absolutely. I think, you know, there's no -- it's no coincidence that if you look at the zip codes as to where -- what's faster and what's not.

NNAMDII would like to think that I'm more likable than John Gilroy...

NNAMDI...why is he getting faster speeds than I am? Who is he bribing? Let's go...

GILROYI wanna know the speeds are in Korea. That's the question. Are they couple of...

NNAMDIOh, yeah.

GILROY...hundred times, this...

HARLOWOh, yeah. It's ridiculous.

NNAMDIOh, it's way faster than we are. Let us go now to George in Silver Spring, Md. George, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

GEORGEYes. Thanks for taking my call. My questions really back to what the gentleman mentioned a few minutes ago about trying to find the true value in the iPad, when I'm looking for functions that take it beyond just the gaming that you tend to see people doing. I'm really looking for something that I can use for document management and, you know, helping in meetings. Well, I've got a ton of documents. I don't wanna put them off. I wanna be able to flip through on, like on an iPad, but I also wanna able to work them and work some word processing. Is there anything out there?

HARLOWI mean, it depends. I mean, if you're talking about the iPad, there are couple of things Apple makes...

NNAMDIThere's a Pages app that I know of.

HARLOW...well, Pages from Apple...

NNAMDIYeah.

HARLOW...which is you know word processing and layout, and it's very good. And there's also Documents To Go from Dataviz, which is sort of like an office suite for iPad that is compatible with Word, Excel and PowerPoint, let's you install little app on your computer as well as you can sync data back and forth through certain folders. So something like that might work out for you.

DRUINYeah. You may also wanna hook up a mobile keyboard though, because some people are finding that it is really sort of hard to have these meetings and be trying to type on that screen at the same time...

HARLOWRight.

DRUIN...because you don't feel, you know, if you're touch typist, you're really not feeling what you...

HARLOWAnd if you're doing all that, then you have to decide, is, you know, the price and lightweight of the iPad worth the trade off of not having a keyboard or are you more of a power user and you want just a netbook or a full size computer?

DRUINRight.

NNAMDIThank you, George...

GEORGEYeah. But I like the size of that. I like the, you know, the -- it's just much more mobile. And I don't think about my space sitting at a table. But I like that idea of also attaching a keyboard. Are they functioning pretty well? I've seen some of the cases actually come with keyboards built in.

HARLOWI haven't tried those. The ones that I have seen are kind of rubberize. I imagined those won't be the greatest to type on. And actually, I find the iPad in landscape mode pretty nice to type on. The Apple wireless or the keyboard dock, I think, feel the nicest from the ones I've played with.

DRUINYeah. Yeah, I agree. But they get -- they work pretty well. And I'm one of these people that has a hard time typing on that screen, if I'm doing a lot of typing. So that's why I'm -- oh, he's laughing at me. Bill is going, oh, my goodness. (laugh) You're so old. Anyways, so I actually...

NNAMDINow, that's a change. It's not John laughing. (laugh)

DRUINI know. It's so true.

GILROYIt's contagious.

DRUINIt's contagious. Anyway, I'm an old lady, what can I tell you. But...

NNAMDIOkay. Thank you very much, George. And good luck to you. Okay. Let's move on to Steven in Fairfax, Va. Steven, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

STEVENYes, guys. Good afternoon, guys, and Happy New Year.

NNAMDIHappy New Year to you.

GEORGEI was -- to wanna curveball, the other day, I had contended on getting iMac with Final Cut Pro program for editing HD video, more specifically the mov H.264. And someone suggested that I should consider the Adobe Production Premium and a PC. So now, I'm back, like, where I started.

HARLOW(laugh) Well, you know, it's been a while since I’ve used the Adobe Creative Suite, specifically the video tools, have used the design and illustration tools. But the PC is gonna do a great job with that video. And the Premier is a good editor. So if you're going that way, that's the way to go. I think a lot of it may depend on what the video sources are. I know some people have gone to Macs for editing, specifically because of people who are bringing video, they are all in formats that are just way easier to work on on the Mac, and that may factor in more than anything else.

STEVENOkay. So should be the codec which is easier. So Final Cut Pro is not going anywhere? It's not disappearing?

HARLOWNo, it's not. And, supposedly, they're -- the next version of the Final Cut Studio is coming out some time between now and midyear.

STEVENMm-hmm. Okay. So I hold tight. (laugh)

NNAMDIOkay. Steven, thank you very much for your call.

STEVENThank you.

NNAMDIWe're gonna take a short break. When we come back, we'll continue this first of the year conversation with the computer guys and gal. If the phone lines are busy, go to our website kojoshow.org or send us an e-mail to kojo@wamu.org or a tweet @kojoshow. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIIt's The Computer Guys & Gal, John Gilroy, Allison Druin and Bill Harlow. John, the security company McAfee has come out with its list of top threats for the year 2011. What should we be looking out for?

GILROYYeah, we test on these earlier. It's always interesting, where if you see Kojo down the street, you say, should I contribute to WAMU, he's gonna say, of course. If you call up McAfee and you say, what about -- well, there's a lot of threats. You should buy our security software. And they talk about primarily about apps that are out there, that was mentioned earlier, shorteners and social networks. And I seem to see if you're gonna have maybe 100, you know, millions and millions of people every day going on Facebook, the bad guys are gonna look at this as an opportunity and go after social networking. So if you're checking up analysis test on Facebook and she happens to go to this website, you may have to be more weary than you would be six or eight months ago because I think the places where attack gonna be, so the bad neighborhoods are now gonna be social network neighborhoods. (laugh)

HARLOWWhat is great about that too is, you know, it's a place where you're more likely to share...

GILROYRight.

HARLOW...and you trust the sources, so. Exactly

GILROYMore trusting. Well, this is from Allison, so -- and it turns out...

HARLOWWell, I don't trust her anyway.

GILROY...someone might stole her identity and...

DRUINYea, yeah. Give it a break. (laugh)

NNAMDIAllison, tell us a little bit more about your resolutions for the year 2011.

DRUINOkay. So I am...

NNAMDIA drum roll please, John.

DRUINOkay.

GILROYUh.

DRUIN(makes noise) All right. And so I'm finally gonna get on the cloud, I've decided, when it comes to my e-mail. I've been slow in using Gmail. And I like the idea that there's some really good things on there that I don't get in my regular e-mail with the university, unnamed. And it's really -- actually Gmail has this really cool area called Gmail Labs and it gives you all these little sort of extra tools that they're still working on. So my favorite above all is the undo send. It's totally good because you can set how much time before you really want to send this thing to go. (laugh)

HARLOWOoh.

DRUINOkay. So you can wait up to 30 seconds before that thing is gonna send. And I have to tell you...

HARLOWIt's great for those accidental reply alls.

GILROYYeah.

DRUINOh, that accidental reply, man, oh, I can't tell you. I'm an adult and I have managed to do that so many times...

HARLOWSee, I want a version of that that extends the time as the day goes on...

NNAMDII was about to say, yeah.

HARLOW...by 2:00 in the morning...

DRUINTotally.

HARLOW...gives you like an hour and a half to undo it.

GILROYYeah. I like that.

DRUINAnd if I'm on my cell phone then it's two hours, oh, it's just bad if I'd send an e-mail from my cell phone.

GILROYEvery listener has wanted to pull an e-mail back, I'm sure.

DRUINOh, my goodness. And then the other thing about Gmail that I'm just getting to know is this thing called tags versus folders. And I don't most people understand this, but if, you know, you know when you put your different e-mails in folders and you say, okay, this one is in the Bill folder or the John folder and this is in the Kojo folder. Well, imagine if it has to do with all three of them so I wanna tag it multiple ways so it's almost like having being able to put things in multiple folders at the same time. And it's just -- it's a really powerful mechanism that actually might finally organize me in a little better way. So I'm slowly moving to the cloud. So that is my first resolution.

NNAMDIWe will be checking up on that next month to see if you're still keeping that resolution. Could 2011 actually bring an end to one of the most annoying will they or won't they questions of the last few years? Will Verizon finally get the iPhone, Bill?

HARLOWWhy not? (laugh) I don't have any insider information, but I just have a feeling based on the consistent buzz that's been going on from some credible sources that this could be the year that will have an iPhone on the Verizon network. I mean, they already sold the iPad so, I mean, they're teaming up somehow and Verizon has been expanding their 4G network. We'll see. I just have a feeling.

NNAMDIHere's another comment posted on our website by Don B. "When are they going to come out with a version of Microsoft Access that runs on a Mac? I'm a frustrated Mac convert who doesn't want to run Windows but needs an easy database capability."

HARLOWWell, don't hold your breath for Access.

NNAMDIUh-oh.

HARLOWIf you really want to run that, you can use something like Parallels or VMware Fusion to run Windows concurrently with Mac OS, or look at another product like FileMaker, which you can get for Windows and for Mac OS and it's totally cross-platform and pretty easy to get started.

GILROYIt's more stable than Access as well.

NNAMDIBack to the telephones, here is Doug in Falls Church, Va. Doug, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

DOUGOkay. Good. Good afternoon, Derek, and good afternoon, Allison, and then John and Bill. Here's my question. My wife is in the dining room working on her computer. I'm in the kitchen cooking dinner. And every time I put something in the microwave, I push her off of the Internet.

GILROYWow.

DRUINWell, that's a good one. I like that one. (laugh)

HARLOWWell, that's called interference, Doug, and I've experienced that, to some degree, with microwave from the past. And actually, I was at a client's office and I helped him to find that problem, too. Pretty much all the routers out there let you go in and tweak the wireless setting so you can pick different channels. You have 11 to choose from.

HARLOWSo what you wanna do is, you know, crack open that manual, pop into the setup screen for your current wireless router and look at what it's currently using. Let's say it's using number 11. You know, just try it all the way down to one, see if that works, and go and, you know, make some popcorn, see what happens. And, you know, lather, rinse and repeat. It's just a time-consuming process, but you have to try it and experiment.

DOUGExcellent.

NNAMDIDoug, thank...

DOUGThanks a lot.

NNAMDI...thank you very much for your call. For those of you who are wondering who the Derek is to whom Doug referred, the previous host of this broadcast up until 1997…

HARLOWThe evil twin.

GILROY(laugh) Yeah.

HARLOWThe evil twin, Derek Nnamdi.

GILROYDerek Nnamdi.

NNAMDIDerek McGinty was the host of this program 13 years ago. Allison, Yahoo! had a rough end-of-the-year with layoffs and unflattering headlines, but it still owns at least two online applications that remain very popular, especially among tech-savvy users. Flickr is one -- I've been using more and more these days -- and Delicious. Tells us about those.

DRUINWell, Delicious -- there was just an outrage, especially on the tweet sphere, about that. Essentially, it is -- it's social bookmarking, okay? What it does is it lets you save all your bookmarks online. You can get them from any computer, lets you tag things, lets you share them with other people and, most interestingly, it lets you see what other people are tagging and sharing. And so it's, essentially, social bookmarking, social way of seeing, you know, seeing what's going on.

DRUINNow, all of a sudden, you know, something got leaked to the press that said, it's going down. And essentially, Yahoo! is gonna be cutting investments in, and quotes, "underperforming or off-strategy products," okay? And people just went nuts because they, you know, have an enormous collection of online bookmarks. And so, suddenly, people are trying to figure out, what do I do? Do I trust Yahoo!?

DRUINI mean, Yahoo! did, you know, 360. It backed off the next day and said, oh, no, no. We're -- it's not that we're going to just stop it. We're gonna sell it. It's just not quite the same thing. But there's a lot of people trying to figure out, hey, where should I export my bookmarks to? And I actually found a few places. If you're a little worried about your Delicious bookmarks, you can go to an...

GILROYSounds like a cooking show, doesn't it?

HARLOWIt really does, with these bookmarks.

DRUINOh, they are very tasty bookmarks. But -- okay. So you could go to Scuttle, okay, which is an open-source software that does similar things to Delicious. You could go to FaveBot, which is actually an automatic bookmarker. And you can go to Symbaloo -- S-Y-M-B-A-L-O-O -- which is actually -- it has a really nice visual interface for bookmarking.

DRUINAnd so all of them were very happy to let you know that you can export your bookmarks from Delicious. But it does point to a larger thing with Yahoo!, is if they're trying to keep their customer base, they're so not doing it. And that's, like, not good, and that's not what we should be looking forward to, to 2011.

NNAMDIAs always, you can find links at our website to just about everything that Allison recommended and everybody else at kojoshow.org. Bill Harlow, we asked you guys to send us your best and worst of 2010 as a sort of preview for 2011. But little did we know that we would already have a worst for the year 2011.

HARLOWStarting the year off right.

GILROYJust four days in, huh?

NNAMDIWhich would be?

HARLOWThe iPhone. So the -- for the New Year, the...

GILROYWhoa, shocking.

HARLOW...the -- well, specifically, the clock app on the iPhone, which does not -- decided, you know what? I partied hard on New Year's Eve. It was rough.

GILROYYeah, tough night.

HARLOWI'm just gonna sleep in, man. So the alarms do not go off. Apparently, on the first and second of the year, if you had a non-recurring alarm set in your iPhone, you are not gonna hear it. You're gonna sleep in. The phone was gonna take a nap and recover. So, you know, let's just say it might have affected me, which is why it's on my worst list. But it worked today, so.

NNAMDIAnd...

DRUINOh, it did work today, yes.

HARLOWYeah.

DRUINYeah. Okay.

HARLOWAlthough I heard it's -- for some people, it still didn't work for at least as late as Monday, so we'll see. They haven't made an official statement on it.

NNAMDIIf you're still sleeping in, waiting for...

HARLOWThe buzzer.

NNAMDI...you know what the problem is. We got this e-mail from Nick in Reston. "I would like to find a kit or instructional materials on how to design and build one's own computer. Do you have any suggestions on this? And thank you for your help, John Gilroy."

GILROYIt's almost like designing your own internal combustion engine. It's just not worth it. Years ago, back in the '60s, people hate kits and build radios. That was fun and it saved money. Even eight, seven years ago, seven or eight years ago, people would put components together and save money. We can't save money. The only people now who are building their own computers are obsessive-compulsive game freaks that just wanna wring every single possible amount of power out of their video card and CPU, including water cooling. I -- the extents they go are just crazy in order to get just one little advantage over their opponent. So...

HARLOWThat's like hot-rodding your car.

GILROYIt's hot-rodding your car, so it's not worth it. It's not financially -- and if you don't know about these compulsive gamers, then you're, you know, you should just go to store and buy something. I mean, build your own doesn't work in this particular -- that dog don't hunt, I say.

NNAMDIWhat would you -- go ahead, Allison.

DRUINBut, you know, there are a few researchers trying to build their own to try and change the world of computing. So I -- they're not all hot-rodders, okay? But I do, sadly enough, I do agree with you, John, okay, that...

NNAMDIThat is sad.

DRUINI know, I know. I do think that if you're doing this for a hobby, you know, this might be a fun thing, but it's not gonna get you a whole lot of, you know?

GILROYI work with guys that wanna write their own drivers. And I would -- just download them, they wanna write their own. I mean, it's -- it gets crazy.

NNAMDIBill Harlow.

HARLOWWell, I would say that for those hot-rodders who are out there, and, you know, there are fair amount of them. Let's be honest.

HARLOWYou've got the sites like anandtech, tomshardware and jonnyguru, where they do things like discuss building these computers...

DRUINYes, they do. Yeah.

HARLOW...the components that work best together, the highest quality ones and which ones you can over clock from when you do wanna hot rod.

NNAMDIOnto the telephones again. Here is Mike on the Baltimore Beltway. I've been waiting to talk to Mike. (laugh) Mike, I've been looking forward to this.

MIKEGood afternoon.

NNAMDIYou're on the air, Mike. Go ahead, please.

MIKEWell, good afternoon, everyone.

NNAMDIGood afternoon.

MIKEI -- in this age of simplification and, you know, there's just not enough space out there for doing everything and we have, you know, dots and dashes and ones and zeroes to take the place of real things, I have a suggestion for you, Kojo, that instead of calling the show The Computer Guys & Computer Gal, which is very cumbersome, takes up a lot of space for those of us who are recording things...

NNAMDIYes.

MIKE...you should just call it the Computer Gang. Lot simpler, more space.

DRUINOh, interesting.

NNAMDIHow about the...

GILROYNot in my lifetime. (laugh)

HARLOWWe're getting matching jackets too. It settled.

DRUINThe computer gang.

NNAMDIMike, how about the computer crew? (laugh)

GILROYNo, no, no, no. We're not gonna ever do that, buddy.

DRUINBut, you know what, oh, you're so last century. I mean, come on. Soon it's not gonna be computers, it's gonna be the smart phone gang or smart phone guys and gal. I mean, I'm telling you, it's...

MIKEStill too many letters. There's still way too many letters.

NNAMDIComputer posse.

MIKESomething important to ponder as we bring in the new year.

DRUINThank you, Mike. All right.

GILROYI ain't gonna ponder that one there, Mike (unintelligible).

DRUINOh...

MIKEYeah, yeah, probably not gonna talk about that very well.

NNAMDIMike, we will take under advisement, as they say. Thank you very much for your call.

MIKEThanks, guys.

NNAMDIIf there are others of you who would like to suggest new names for the Computer Guys & Gal, feel free to do so at our website, kojoshow.org. This e-mail we got from David, who says, "Kojo, I live in Western Loudoun County, and rather than Internet, we rely on carrier pigeon to deliver our mail."

NNAMDI"Forty miles from Washington, D.C. and we really we have no choice for broadband connectivity. Verizon, ATT, Comcast, nada, DSL, files, cable, nada." Is that really possible just 40 miles from D.C.?

DRUINWow.

GILROYI think Bill has examined this. Haven't you looked on different areas here where the -- you fall off the cliff and you don't get broadband.

DRUINBut, you know...

HARLOWI just crossed them off the list, said I’m never going there.

HARLOWAnd that's about it.

DRUINOh, wow. I mean, I guess, you know, you could get the -- the AT&T microchip, right?

HARLOWOr just -- well, yeah. What about those wireless transmitters? Sometimes...

DRUINRight.

HARLOW...you know, a 3G or a 4G router for your home. If you're in that area where you can't get wireless coverage, that may be your only option.

DRUINRight, right.

GILROYWe have a listener who lives in Philomont and he has e-mailed me many times over the years. And I'm pretty sure he has high-speed access. I don't know if he considers that Western part of the county. There's a demarcation line, usually it's Snickers Gap lane out there where you -- I don't wanna get into that. But anyway, I think they have it out there, maybe not as far west as this gentleman is talking about.

NNAMDIWe got an e-mail from Jay, which we are filing under whatever happened to wanting to get away? "My wife and I are planning on traveling in India and Southeast Asia for the next couple of years and have researched the many options that exist. To go as light as possible, we've decided to take a Kindle with 3G and Wi-Fi, since cell phone service is not available everywhere, in order to have access to both books and news magazines. And a laptop primarily to have Skype capacity to talk with friends and family and to avoid having to take expensive U.S. phones with expensive international service. We're also considering getting a Google phone number with a U.S. area code that can forward calls to an inexpensive cell in country, which would allow friends, family to call us in an emergency. Comments, suggestion, welcome." Whatever happened to wanting to get away? (laugh)

HARLOWExactly.

NNAMDIAnything else that you put on this...

GILROYHe doesn't really wanna get away. (laugh)

HARLOWI think...

NNAMDI...in this backpack?

HARLOWI think he's covered all the basics.

DRUINOh, I think it's great.

HARLOWDo not forget your power. Make sure that you've got the appropriate converters for your power (unintelligible) chargers.

DRUINYeah.

GILROYHe's not getting away. He's not leaving anything, you know?

HARLOWGoing away to unplug, exactly.

DRUINYeah, but multiple battery would be the one thing I would think about. But otherwise, that's fabulous. Fabulous.

NNAMDIAnd finally this by posting by dcveggiegirl on our website. "I just got my first laptop and a snazzy new TV that will make it easy to stream from Netflix and other online videos. However, I don't have any kind of wireless setup. I have a DSL modem. I connect my computer to it with an Ethernet cable. Could you please tell me the easiest and most cost effective way to go wireless? Do I need a router, a wireless access point, a new Internet service? All advice is welcome." You have 20 seconds. (laugh)

HARLOWWow, in 20 seconds, yes, you do need a wireless router, you know, get one of the newer ones that also support draft-N because, you know, with streaming high-def, you want something that can have enough bandwidth for that.

NNAMDIThat's why he is a Mac genius.

NNAMDIBill Harlow is a hardware and software technician for Macs and PCs at Mid-Atlantic Consulting Incorporated. Allison Druin is director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab and associate dean for research, College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. John Gilroy is director of business development at SolutionsDevelopers. He's a man about town and know everything. He wants a much longer title so that's why I'm trying to stretch this out.

HARLOWThank you, guys.

GILROYWe're working on it.

NNAMDIThank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.