Thanks to the latest failed terrorist attack, it may be best for you to leave as many electronics at home as possible.

While there is no doubt we love gadgets around here, with the increase in travel regulations due to the failed terrorist attack on Christmas Day by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab are making us all rethink what we take on a flight with us.

While the rules for travel inside the United States seem unchanged at this time, the amount of security checking at the security checkpoints is definitely up.  The amount of electronics you have with you is going to definitely increase that time even more, and putting gadgets in your checked luggage is never desirable.

Those of you going on international trips will be fine leaving the United States, but your return trip will be a different matter all together.  While the Transportation Security Authority (TSA) has yet to make a formal announcement, some international airlines have posted comments on their sites.  This one come from Air Canada:

New rules imposed by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration also limit on-board activities by customers and crew in U.S. airspace that may adversely impact on-board service. Among other things, during the final hour of flight customers must remain seated, will not be allowed to access carry-on baggage, or have personal belongings or other items on their laps.

There is also a statement from British Airways you can read, but it says essentially the same thing.

If you are traveling outside of the U.S. any time in the near future, you need plan ahead for your return trip, or if you are a resident of another country coming to the United States, plan for your arrival.

Hopefully these rules will get more formalized soon, and perhaps they won’t sound quite so scary, but for now you need to reduce how much you are carrying with you period.

Evidence is mounting that not only is the Apple Tablet real, but that it will be named the iSlate.

Christmas has been a busy time for those in the Apple rumor game.  First, MacRumors did some digging and discovered that Apple owns a site domain name called “iSlate.com”.  (which currently does not point to a page)  This was followed up by TechCrunch doing some massive trademark digging, and finding overwhelming evidence that Apple does indeed own the iSlate trademark, albeit through a shell company.  This was followed up by even more digging by MacRumors and … yeah … Apple is totally behind the iSlate name.

Then comes this juicy news that Apple has booked the  Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in San Francisco for several days in late January.  Why is this exciting?  This is the venue Apple usually uses to make its annual iPod announcements every September.

You add up the domain name, the trademarks and the booking of the YBCA, and it looks like the iSlate (still not liking this name), and it looks like we will find out around Jan. 26th (it’s a Tuesday … Apple loves Tuesday announcements) if this thing is real.  Our money is on “yes”, and also on the tablet costing far more than we can afford.

Did you remember to fill out the warranty for your new gadget?

Yesterday we reminded you to be careful about throwing out your packaging after unwrapping gifts.  Part of the reason for this is you don’t want to throw out vital information you need for filling out your warranty cards.

A lot of companies now let you do the warranty information online, but you still need information that sometimes appears only on the box.  Model numbers, serial numbers, part numbers, etc are quite often printed on a label that is only found on the outside of the box.  Did you remember to keep it all?

Companies are actually hoping you will forget to fill this stuff out so that when you need service you won’t be able to claim it.  Also, if sending in by postcard, they can conveniently say they never got it, as happened to me once.  Always make sure the warranty information gets registered before you need it unless you want to go through a ton of hassles.

While warranties can be a pain, they are well worth registering, and we highly recommend it.  Just make sure you do it as soon as possible and don’t hold off as some companies have a time limit on how long after you receive the item for registering.  Get on it tonight if at all possible … you know, while not enjoying your new gadgets.

Got that new gadget you wanted for Christmas? GREAT! … don’t throw out the packaging too quickly!

I remember when I was younger my family always wanted the living room cleaned out of the wrapping paper, boxes and so on as soon as were done opening gifts.  Inevitably there was always a toy piece  or some little part of an item tossed out that we would then have to go dig through the trash for.  Good times …

So as you are opening up all your iPods, smart phones, video game systems and so on, just make sure you keep all the packaging for at least a few days.  Sure you can throw out the wrapping paper, just make sure to shake it out before you put it int he trash bag so you can be certain no little pieces got caught up in it.

This is also a good plan as you never know when a gadget may fail and you want to return it.  I always keep all of the packaging for my gadgets for at least a few months with all of the corresponding backup discs, cables I don’t necessarily need to use and so on.  I store them all in the garage and after about six months or so I toss them out.  I then take all of the extra items stored in them, put it in a zip lock baggie, label the bag as to which item it came from and keep them in a filing drawer.  Overly anal retentive?  Probably, but having lost cables before that I thought, “Oh, I’ll never need this one …”, you know exactly what I ended up needing down the road.

Most of all have fun with your gifts, but try to control your excitement long enough that you don’t end up losing that all important sync cable!

For all of the talking all of the tech bloggers have done about the Nexus One phone from Google, we were severely lacking in technical details. At long last, we have them.

Thanks to Engadget, the technical specifications for the Nexus One phone from Google have finally surfaced.

• Android 2.1
• 11.5mm thick
• 512MB RAM, 512MB ROM, 4GB microSD in-box expandable to 32GB
• 5 megapixel camera with mechanical AF and LED flash
• HSPA 900 / 1700 / 2100, 7.2Mbps down and 2Mbps up (this means it will work with T-Mobile’s 3G network, but not AT&T’s)
• 1GHz Qualcomm chip
• Wi-Fi A/B//G/N
• Bluetooth 2.1
• GPS
• Cell tower & Wi-Fi positioning
• Accelerometer
• 3.7-inch diagonal widescreen

Simply put, this sounds like it is going to be a great phone, but we still haven’t heard anything about pricing, release date, how it will be sold, will it be offered with a subsidy … in short, we are still missing a huge portion of the puzzle pieces.  It is believed a formal announcement will be made at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas during the first week of January, but even that is just speculation at this time.

It isn’t just computers any more that is leading to children being molested by strangers they meet online.

Edward Stout, a 27-year-old man from Richmond Heights, Missouri, has been sentenced to ten years in prison for engaging in sexual relations with an underage California girl.

Mr. Stout and the underage girl met on X-box Live in April 2008, and in Jan. 2009 he drove non-stop for 30-hours to California to meet the girl.  Upon meeting they engaged in a sexual encounter.  There is no indication of how the relationship was discovered, but Mr. Stout plead guilty to an “illicit relationship” and will now spend ten years in prison.

We have said many times here on StarterTech that you need to keep computers where they can be monitored for usage by your children, but that goes for any device that allows them to communicate with the world.  We’re all for them being online, but would you let them hang out with adult strangers in person?  Then why should you let them do it online?

Ford Motor Company has announced that it is adding Wi-Fi networks to some of its models in 2010. We’re just curious when the first accident will be caused by this.

It was announced today that Ford will be adding the ability to plug a mobile broadband modem into some of its cars next year, and that this will create an in-car Wi-Fi hotspot.  “While you’re driving to grandma’s house, your spouse can be finishing the holiday shopping and the kids can be chatting with friends and updating their Facebook profiles,” said Mark Fields, Ford president of The Americas. “And you’re not paying for yet another mobile subscription or piece of hardware because Ford will let you use technology you already have.”

While Ford is promoting this as others in the car beyond the driver using it, you know perfectly well what is going to happen.  Some idiot is going to set up his laptop in his passenger seat and go on a site like Facebook or Twitter while trying to drive at the same time.  They’re going to try to read the screen and drive at the same time.  And, in short, someone is going to end up dead.

According to a new study reported by MSNBC, people who send text messages while driving are six times more likely to have an accident.  What will the number be while sending a message to Twitter via a laptop?

This certainly won’t be Ford’s fault as they have no control over what a person does with a car once they buy it, but it is something I wonder if we really need.  There are already ways to have Wi-Fi in your car and no accidents have been caused by it that I know, but once you build something into a vehicle and make it easier to use, all bets are off.

All this being said, I would love to have a car with Wi-Fi in it, but I also know I would be smart enough not to use it while I was behind the wheel.  Can you say the same for other people on the road?

I never knew a laptop could get so dusty.

The past few nights my laptop fan had been running a lot more than usual, and it was also running at the faster speeds meaning that the system was getting way hotter than it should.  I took a look at the bottom side vent holes on Friday night and saw some dust build-up, but nothing horrible.  I decided I would take canned air to it on Saturday before I turned it on.

… yikes.

I was right, it was dust, but the amount of dust was staggering.  I blew on to the actual fan and dust came shooting out of the side vent holes.  I blew out the side vent, and dust came out the fan.  It took several rounds before no dust was coming out, and then I opened my laptop lid and discovered dust had shot up through the keyboard onto the screen.

Again … yikes.

So, just because a laptop fan doesn’t look bad from the outside doesn’t mean it isn’t dusty where it counts on the inside.  Always make sure the computer is off before you do this so the fan is not running at all as it will move with the compressed air hitting it and you don’t want to fight the motor.  After I did this last night, my laptop ran smoothly all night and I didn’t hear the fan kick into high even once, so it was definitely all of the dust that had built up inside of it.

Keeping your computer physically clean is monumentally important for the longevity of your system.  Don’t neglect it, and if you hear it doing something unusual, investigate it!

The OnlineFamily.Norton site has published the results of what children searched for online this year, and it is sobering to say the least.

OnlineFamily.Norton’s list of searches by children is disturbing and only goes to prove that computers should always be in a communal space where parents can monitor the computer usage.  First, the top 100 searches combines for all age groups under 18 years of age:

1. YouTube
2. Google
3. Facebook
4. Sex
5. Porn
6. YouTube.com
7. Yahoo
8. MySpace
9. eBay
10. You Tube
11. Wikipedia
12. Michael Jackson
13. Taylor Swift
14. Gmail
15. Party in the USA
16. Miley Cyrus
17. Club Penguin
18. Miniclip
19. Fred
20. Games
21. Facebook login
22. Google.com
23. Hotmail
24. Lady Gaga
25. Amazon
26. Yahoo Mail
27. Justin Bieber
28. Addicting games
29. Facebook.com
30. Webkinz
31. Yahoo.com
32. Boobs
33. MSN
34. Hannah Montana
35. Dictionary
36. Walmart
37. Selena Gomez
38. Dictionary.com
39. MySpace.com
40. New Moon
41. Runescape
42. Lil Wayne
43. Google Maps
44. Down
45. Google Earth
46. Norton Safety Minder
47. Mapquest
48. Boom Boom Pow
49. Craigslist
50. Twilight
51. Megan Fox
52. Sesame Street
53. Poptropica
54. Target
55. Eminem
56. Music
57. Fireflies
58. Disney Channel
59. You Belong With Me
60. Utube
61. Weather
62. iTunes
63. Beyonce
64. Pokemon
65. Britney Spears
66. Twitter
67. Hotmail.com
68. Demi Lovato
69. Funny
70. Black Eyed Peas
71. One time
72. Cartoon Network
73. Jonas Brothers
74. Halo
75. www.youtube.com
76. Watcha Say
77. Family Guy
78. Taylor Swift You Belong With Me
79. Best Buy
80. Taylor Lautner
81. Rihanna
82. Pussy
83. Gmail.com
84. Lego
85. Gummy Bear Song
86. Thriller
87. You’re a jerk
88. Nigahiga
89. Girls
90. Free online games
91. New Moon trailer
92. Translator
93. Disney
94. Ask.com
95. Paparazzi Lady Gaga
96. Poker Face
97. Chris Brown
98. iPod Touch
99. Photbucket
100. Bing

Sex being in the fourth slot isn’t too surprising with teenagers in the mix, but lets take a look at the top 25 broken down by age group:

Porn was in the fourth position for children under the age of seven, and sex was in the same position for the 8 – 12 age group.  Both terms are in the top 25 for all age groups.  The chart for gender had “sex” as the fourth term for boys and the fifth spot for girls.

I have talked many times on many different blogs about how children should not be allowed to have computers in their bedrooms, and these search statistics just go to prove that fact.  When you have 7-year-olds and younger searching for porn, you know you have a problem.

WordPress, the software that powers the vast majority of blogs in the world, has released version 2.9 of its software.

It’s been six months since WordPress 2.8 was officially released, and now the crew is back with 2.9.  Why is this new version exciting?

• Trash – Deleted posts now go to the “Trash”, meaning you can recover them if you delete one accidentally.
• Image Editing – You can edit images inside of your blog.  Sure it isn’t as fancy as say Photoshop, but it gets the job done.
• Batch Plug-in Updates – YES!  So much nicer than select-update-return to the plugin page-repeat.
• Built-in Video Embeds – Just copy the address of the video, WordPress will handle the rest.
• Many more things!

If you’re using WordPress, get the to the updates!