Peter Norris

glennwolsey.com is the blog of 15 year old New Zealander Glenn Wolsey. After only one year of blogging, Glenn has created a popular blog with more than 1000 RSS subscribers all about Apple, How-To’s, and previews and reviews of the latest software and hardware. There is a new post almost every day.Glenn is also an amazing photographer and every Friday he releases a one of his photos as a desktop wallpaper, suitable for monitors up to 30 inches.

Glenn is also actives on several other sites inlcuding Digg, Pownce, and Twitter. Despite being active so much, he has recently started a video show called “The Glenn Wolsey Show” where he answers user questions and provides tips. You can find the show on Blip.tv, Youtube, and can subscribe to it on iTunes.

All around, Glenn is a great guy with a great blog. If you have any questions he’ll do his best to answer you, and will always return your emails. You can check him out here.

Blogs I Read | 3 Comments »

Oh no!!! Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in on the internet before the book is released!! Oh no!! The world is over!!At least thats what some fans of the ever popular wizard think. On Tuesday (or late Monday), images of every single page of the 7th and final book in the series began making their way onto BitTorrent sites. Someone, likely a book store or publisher employee, managed to steal a copy and then proceeded to take pictures and upload them. While the pictures weren’t 100% readable, they were still fairly understandable. Of course some people would argue that this probably isn’t the real thing, but it appears to be legit. Fans say that the writing style fits author J.K. Rowling, and I don’t think someone would go through the trouble of writing something near 700 pages and make up a fake book to trick a bunch of teenagers, kids, and even adults. In case you can’t wait until 12:01 am on Saturday to get the real thing, and you don’t want to kill your eyes reading blurry images, Potter fans have joined together to transpose the pictures into a readable pdf.

The (not so?) weird thing is, some fans are all upset, saying this is going to ruin the surprise. If you don’t want to know, don’t download it! Most sites won’t put the big secrets about who dies and who lives on the front page. They likely won’t even publish it, and if they do they’ll warn you first. So stop crying. This isn’t going to ruin the surprise if you don’t want it to.

I’m not going to say where you can find the files, but I’m sure if you look hard enough you can find them.  

News, Tech Stuff, Uncategorized | No Comments »

I can never seem to find time to blog. I am on summer vacation but with the whole family home I can’t just sit down and work. I’ve decided to allocate myself 1 hour a day to devote solely to this blog. Let’s see how long that lasts. I’m also going to be starting a new series of posts called Blogs I Read. I’ll be starting with Glenn Wolsey, then moving on to other blogs. This series of posts will be starting soon.

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As more and more of our lives move online, it’s important to practice keeping your personal information safe. Here are a few simple tips to help you do this.

Don’t use the same password for everything.

This one is pretty simple. If you use the same password for everything, and one account if compromised, they all are. You can use different passwords for different groups of services (like one for Facebook and Youtube where your personal information is already visible, and one for email and IM accounts). Of course, no matter how many passwords you use, you’ll never be safe unless they are strong passwords. 

Use strong, complex passwords. 

A strong password is a good password. But what makes a strong password? The best passwords are a mix of both upper- and lower-case letters and numbers. It is important not to use regular words as these are easy to crack using dictionary attacks. And simply adding a number to the beginning or end of a word won’t work either. These are susceptible to the same attack. A good password would be pAs5w0rd. But it’s important to remember, there is no such thing as a fully uncrackable password. That’s why it’s important to use several different passwords.

Make sure web pages are secure.

When using banking sites and and e-commerce sites make sure they are secure before entering sensitive information. Secure sites have URLs that start with https:// and often display a padlock either in the address bar or one of the corners of the browser window. This icon shows that the site and their database have been certifies as secure. 

 For extra security, use pre-paid credit cards.

Without a credit card, you can’t join the millions of people shopping online. And even though a site may appear to be secure, this security can often be compromised. If you want to be able to shop online, and have an extra layer of security, consider using prepaid credit cards. When you buy the credit card you load it with a certain sum of money, and then use it like any regular credit card. If the number somehow gets stolen, you’re not at risk of losing thousands of dollars.

 There is much more you need to do to stay safe online, but these tips should help you get started. 

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