A friend was offered to pay for antivirus software on her new computer and I wondered why when there are plenty of good products available for free. This week, Microsoft unveiled their own tool, called Microsoft Security Essentials. I’ve replaced my copy of FreeAV with it to test it out for a while. So far, it works quite well but has about 50 MB memory footprint. Still, I’ve decided to keep it.

Two wines were featured in the LCBO release today:

• Pelissero Augenta Dolcetto D’Alba 2007, Piedmont, Italy $20.00
• Quinta Do Portal Grande Reserva 2006, Douro, Portugal $49.00

Google has provided a mechanism for iPhone users to get Push Email functionality. Apple is still dragging it’s feet for allowing the iPhone to support it natively, so Google has enabled mail to be synced via the ActiveSync mechanism that is available on the iPhone.

However, there is one limitation. iPhone users that already have an ActiveSync account enabled (e.g. for work email) will not be able to use this option. This is because Apple only allows a single ActiveSync account on the iPhone. This is an Apple limitation, not Microsoft or Google.

I was at the PAT Korean market last weekend and saw these all prepped and ready to go. With some rice and seaweed these can be made into rolls in minutes! Very good idea.

There’s no such thing as an LED TV, at least not a mainstream TV you and I would buy at the store. However, Samsung has been advertising their new line of TV’s as “LED TV” and confusing many customers. Flat panel displays are either plasma and LCD. There are more fringe technologies like OLED but in reality at your local electronics store only those two are offered. The reason “LED” is used is because LCD TV’s can be backlit with either CCFL or LED technology.

CCFL, cold cathode fluorescent lamps, are your basic fluorescent lightbulb. They have been used as a LCD backlight for decades. Arriving on the scene two years ago, LED’s are used instead of a CCFL to light up an LCD TV. These LED-backlit TV’s have many advantages, including a bright, consistent backlight, low power consumption and the ability to make LCD’s even thinner than they are.

Causing more confusion are the two LED backlight configurations. Traditionally the LED backlight is behind the screen, lighting the screen from behind also allows a new technique called local dimming. This shuts of LED’s that are behind the black areas of the image, leading to “blacker blacks” which have always been a weak spot for all LCD TV’s. However, a cheaper version of LED backlights have been introduced called “edge lit”. Picture quality is not as good as backlit LED, but edgelit LED TV’s can be made remarkably thin.

Be on the lookout for these types of technologies when buying your new TV. The best LCD picture quality will be from an LED backlit LCD with local dimming.

LIGHTS was at MuchMusic yesterday performing and getting the word out about her new album. Two of the performances were on TV and a third one published online only:

Saviour

Drive My Soul

River (online)

There’s this great sidedish at Korean Grill House that I always end up hoarding. After a quick trip to P.A.T. didn’t show any sources for this spicy and savoury dish. So I headed to Maangchi for a recipe and cooked up my first batch. It needs some tweaking but I was satisfied with my first attempt. Recipe from Maagnchi is below:

Ingredients:

2-3 medium sized potatoes

onion

2 cloves garlic

soy sauce

1 tbs corn syrup

1 tbs sugar

half cup of water.

Recipe:

1. Peel the potatoes, wash, and cut them into 1 inch dice and make 2 cups.

2. Rinse the potato using colander in running water to remove starch.

3. Cut half onion into bite sized pieces.

4. Heat the pan and add 1-2 tbs olive oil and pour the potato into the pan.

5. Add 2 cloves of minced garlic and sauté it until the potato look a little translucent, then add the onion and keep stirring it.

6. Add half cup of water into the pan, 2 tbs – 2½ tbs soy sauce (depends on your taste), 1 tbs of sugar, 1 tbs of corn syrup and mix it and simmer it over medium heat for about 10 minutes until the liquid is evaporated.Tip: Keep checking and stirring not to burn it and to cook evenly, if it needs more water, add some.

7. When the potato is cooked, turn off the stove and add 1 tbs of sesame oil and sprinkle a pinch of sesame seeds.

LIGHTS released her new album today, The Listening, which is available on iTunes. It’s her first full album, which includes many of the songs previously released and quite a few new ones.

Sadly the acoustic version of The Listening is not on the CD.

Boy Genius Report posted a great overview of the upcoming Blackberry 9700. This device will come to Rogers and AT&T in October or November so if you can wait, definitely do so. This model gets rid of the failure-prone trackball and replaces it with a touchpad. It’s smaller, lighter and thinner and will be the next “it” device from RIM. Expect the existing Bold device to be lowered in price, and this device to fill it’s pricing void.

Rogers has a huge problem, they’re running out of adjectives to brand their internet services. They have SIX cable internet offerings right now with their newest service called UltraHeavyExpressExtremePlusHighSpeed. It’s true, check their website.

The new UltraHeavyExpressExtremePlusHighSpeed service allows a theoretical 50mbps download and 2mbps upload speed.