Rick Broida, PCWorld

For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow.
More by Rick Broida

Earlier this year I extolled the business benefits of a second monitor. I still think there’s no better way to amp up your computing productivity.

That said, a second monitor requires a sizable chunk of desk space, which isn’t always practical. Maybe you’d be better off with a single, larger monitor?

With that in mind, I’ve been road-testing (make that desk-testing) an AOC I2757Fh, a desktop LCD with a whopping 27-inch diagonal size.

That’s one big honkin’ monitor.

But isn’t bigger always better? To answer the question, I spent a couple weeks using the AOC alongside my laptop, a desktop replacement with an 18.4-inch LCD.

Verdict: the AOC wins in almost every way. It has a brighter overall picture, better contrast, and, to my eyes, better color accuracy. Plus, it’s crazy-big, which I’ll expand on in a minute.

The monitor features two HDMI inputs, built-in speakers, and an ultra-slim design (just 10.6mm thick). It doesn’t pivot, which would have been icing on the cake, but at this price point I wouldn’t expect it to.

The only real downside is that it has a maximum display resolution of 1,920 by 1,080. A monitor of this size could easily handle a higher pixel count, though other monitors that do cost considerably more. The reason that’s a downside is that you can’t fit as much stuff (windows, data, etc.) on the screen as the physical size would suggest.

On the other hand, I keep Microsoft Word open on one half and my Web browser on the other, and although I had to fiddle with the zoom on both, they’re both so big that the arrangement just works. On smaller monitors, I don’t like this side-by-side windowing because text gets too small for comfortable reading.

I will admit that the AOC sort of overwhelms my desk, making me think I’d be a little happier with a 24-inch screen. But, boy, once you get accustomed to the side-by-side windows and the productivity boost that affords you, it’s hard to go back.

The I2757Fh has a list price of $349, but you can score one at Best Buy for $299.99 shipped (plus sales tax in most states).

What are your thoughts on big monitors? What size have you found works best on your desk? And are you satisfied with one, or do you prefer at least two?

Jared Newman @onejarednewman

Jared Newman, TechHive

Jared writes for PCWorld and TechHive from his remote outpost in Cincinnati.
More by Jared Newman

Yet another month has passed with little good news for the video game industry.

Retail video game sales in the United States fell by 25 percent to $755.5 million in October, making it the 11th straight month of year-over-year decline.

Hardware sales fell by 37 percent, and software sales fell by 25 percent, despite the launch of big-name games like NBA 2K13, Resident Evil 6, and Medal of Honor: Warfighter. The only growth category was accessories, whose sales increased by 5 percent year-over-year.

Console gloom?

As always, declining sales bring prognostications of imminent death for game consoles. Those claims, while hyperbolic, do have some truth to them. Game consoles as we know it are changing into broader entertainment devices, with new apps for streaming video and music.

Even Nintendo, a company that’s always been about games above all else, is making a big TV push with the Wii U console, which can act as a universal remote, channel guide, and TiVo programmer.

The Wii U may give hardware sales a boost when it launches on November 18. Keep in mind, however, that last November was also a bright spot for the industry, which continued to plunge downward immediately after. Meanwhile, smartphones, tablets and devices like Ouya offer alternatives to traditional gaming and its $60, 20-hour adventures.

The games industry may be in for a better November, with this week’s release of Halo 4 for the Xbox 360, and Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 set to launch on November 13.

The rise of mobile

In fairness, NPD’s figures don’t tell the whole story. The research firm only counts physical retail sales, which means that downloadable games and content aren’t factored in, and neither are app sales on mobile devices.

Publishers are showing greater interest in phones and tablets—2K Games’ recent release of Borderlands Legends for iOSis just one recent example—and console makers are warming to downloads as well.

In late September, Sony introduced day-one downloads for blockbuster games like Assassin’s Creed III, Dishonored, and Need for Speed: Most Wanted—a first for home video-game consoles. There’s also some evidence of a PC gaming resurgence, which is typical as home consoles near the end of their life spans.

Personally, I’ve played a lot of amazing games lately, both large and small, on consoles, tablets and the PC. While NPD’s figures suggest that the industry is suffering, it’s hard to square that with how many choices are available to gamers right now.

The industry is going through some big changes, and some of them will be painful—recent game studio layoffs and closures are a recent example—but the good news is that gaming is very much alive.

Related Stories

Apple told the world it had “a little more to show you” last week, when the company announced an October 23 media event. Whatever a little more entails, we’ll be on hand at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET on Tuesday to provide details on Apple’s latest unveiling.

Rumors leading up to Tuesday’s event suggest that Apple is going to unveil a smaller, 7-inch version of its iPad tablet. While we’re waiting for Tim Cook and company to take the stage in San Jose, Calif., Dan Moren and Lex Friedman discuss the possibility of an iPad mini.

Spammers have found a way to abuse a URL shortener service destined for U.S. government social media activities in order to craft rogue .gov URLs for work-at-home scams.

Security researchers from Symantec have detected a new email spam campaign that tries to trick users into visiting URLs with the 1.usa.gov domain name. This domain was created as the result of a partnership between the USA.gov, the U.S. government’s official Web portal, and the Bitly URL shortener service.

According to a how-to page on USA.gov, when anyone uses Bitly.com to shorten URLs that end in .gov or .mil, the service will generate shorts URL under the 1.usa.gov domain.

“A short URL could take a user to a trustworthy site or a spam site, but a user would have no way of knowing before he or she clicks. That’s why USA.gov has made it easy for people to create short, trustworthy .gov URLs that only point to official U.S. government information,” the Web page explains.

However, it seems that spammers have figured out a way to abuse the service and the inherent trust associated with .gov URLs by exploiting open redirect scripts found on some .gov websites.

Redirect scripts are used by website owners to track clicks to third-party URLs listed on their websites, to display warnings to users that they are leaving the website or for other purposes. However, these scripts are often left unprotected and open to any destination, which results in so-called open redirect vulnerabilities.

“By using an open-redirect vulnerability, spammers were able to set up a 1.usa.gov URL that leads to a spam website,” Symantec researcher Eric Park said Friday in a blog post. In particular, the spammers used an open redirect script from the State of Vermont’s Department of Labor website—labor.vermont.gov, he said.

First, the spammers behind this campaign created scam websites masquerading as financial news sites that contain articles about work-at-home opportunities. This type of scam has been around for years and its goal is to convince users to pay for starter kits or service subscriptions that would allegedly allow them to start making money on the Internet by working from their home computer.

The scam websites used in this campaign were hosted on domains like consumeroption.net, consumerbiz.net, workforprofit.net, consumerneeds.net, consumerbailout.net and others.

The spammers exploited the open redirect vulnerability on the labor.vermont.gov website to create URLs of the form labor.vermont.gov/LinkClick.aspx?link=[scam website]. These URLs were then passed through Bitly in order to generate 1.usa.gov short URLs, therefore creating a two-step redirect chain.

“While taking advantage of URL shorteners or an open-redirect vulnerability is not a new tactic, the fact that spammers can utilize a .gov service to make their own links is worrisome,” Park said.

Public statistics provided by the Bitly for the rogue 1.usa.gov URLs used in this spam campaign showed that the links had been clicked 43,049 times between Oct. 12 and Oct. 18, with a significant spike in click volume on Oct. 18.

“The top four countries on a daily basis were the United States, Canada, Australia, and Great Britain,” Park said. “In aggregate, the United States made up the biggest slice with 61.7 percent of the clicks.”

Gov URLs might inspire a higher degree of trust. However, users should always exercise caution when opening links, regardless of where they appear to be pointing to, Park said.