webspeaker

RSS Feed Homepage

Articles: 1, 2, 3

Weekend On Wireless In New York City
2006-12-27 08:00:01
Wow, I lost two readers over the weekend! Just to let everyone know, I'm not abandoning this blog! :) My wife and I spent the weekend in New York City. For me it was the first time there and I have to say it was great. We had a blast, did lots of walking, saw many sites, made many pictures, also went to the Blue Man Group show, and I was basically way too tired to read anything in the evening, let alone post anything. I did try to check in though and then saw that there were 9 wireless networks available in my hotel room on the 9th floor. NONE of them were secured. Hence my post about wireless network security. This top 10 is taken from the linked article.1) Change Default Administrator Passwords (and Usernames)2) Turn on (Compatible) WPA / WEP Encryption3) Change the Default SSID4) Enable MAC Address Filtering5) Disable SSID Broadcast6) Do Not Auto-Connect to Open Wi-Fi Networks7) Assign Static IP Addresses to Devices8) Enable Firewalls On Each Computer and the Router9) Position t...
More About: Wireless , New York City , Weekend

Math Trick Video: Multiplying Made Easy
2006-12-23 13:57:02
The Best Multi plication Method! - video powered by MetacafeSome kids, and probably adults too, have problems with math. This video will show you how to multiply two numbers by drawing it out on paper. You can't get the answer wrong again if you remember this trick. Even if you're good at math, you will probably appreciate the way it's done.
More About: Video , Rick , Trick , Math

NVIDIA Graphics Relieve Burn Victims From Pain
2006-12-22 19:55:01
VR pain distraction through SnowWorld, a game in which patients get a floating feeling and can throw snowballs at penguins, snowmen, etc. Their studies show 40-50% lower pain ratings as a result. Patients wear a helmet to hook up to the virtual world. Read more in the article. Good to see them involved in this stuff. Gaming sure is good for something :-PSevere burns are some of the most painful injuries imaginable. Patients require daily care to clean the wound and daily physical therapy to stretch the newly healed skin. Despite aggressive use of medication, the majority of burn patients report severe to excruciating pain during wound care.
More About: Graphics , Pain , Graphic , Graph , Victims

AMD beating Intel by taking a different route
2006-12-22 07:54:04
Intel wants to race for number of cores, but AMD has a different plan. We already know about the upcoming Fusion. This article shows a little more about the plans they have and to what level they plan to take it. APU's are Accelerated Processing Units. They are integrated chips that work together with CPU cores, but are specialized to do one thing such as video processing. It looks exciting, and we'll start seeing some things in mid-2007. Read the article for more info on this interesting race!
More About: Intel , King , Route , Beat , Rent

Google CSE suffer from SrS
2006-12-22 07:54:04
SrS is Supplemental Results Syndrome. It is a Custom Search Engine disease that Googl e is going to fix eventually. We don't know when though.Say you have a blog like mine, and you're not up there with the big boys yet, then you probably suffer from SrS. No page rank, no backlinks, not enough search results.This is really putting a domper on the excitement of having a CSE. Many thousands of people have created Custom Search Engines already and find out that certain sites don't show up in the results. We are anxiously waiting for Google to fix it, and release Co-op out of Beta.When that day comes, my CSE will work too. You can still add yourself to the sites-list, so you will be searched when we have the cure for SrS.Click here for my CSE, which searches all Tech Blogs!

Destruction! So much fun... (blush)
2006-12-22 07:54:04
My job as a tech gives me the opportunity to declare hardware as obsolete or uneconomical to repair. In the last week or two we've had a good cleaning around the work place and that turned out to be loads of fun. How often do you get to throw monitors, about 200 old hard disk drives, printers, scanners, and other stuff as hard as you can into a big container? I should have made some pictures to post, man! Anyway, today my coworker and I had a load of cables, an old phone, mice, keyboards, external modems, and other stuff to throw and tear apart. Even a couple of old servers! I guess the lesson is: How much fun it is to be destructive when you can!! By the way, if you haven't seen the movie Office Space, you have got to get/rent/borrow it!! A classic must see.
More About: Fun , Destruction , Lush , Much , Blush

Cookies you don't like
2006-12-22 07:54:04
Meh, I don't really know which ones you don't like. But now that I have your attention to cookies, let me brief you on this article.These digital cookies are little text files that are automatically stored on your hard disk drive when you visit websites. This good read shows the danger of poorly designed cookies (those are the ones you don't like). The Restaurant.com experience described here is definitely worth reading if you have questions about cookies. It clearly shows that the security level with cookies greatly depends on the builder.Also, you can keep an eye on the cookies being used by getting an extension for your browser. The writer mentions AnEC (add n edit cookies), but the version I was able to find doesn't work with FireFox 2. You can easily go to Tools > Add-ons > Extensions > Get Extensions to find other ones. If you don't use FireFox... well, then you're on your own."In addition, the attacker would be able to see the target?s password, which is probably used ...
More About: Cookies , Cook , Like , Cookie

Great Speed Hack For Firefox And IE
2006-12-22 07:54:04
Browsers are apparently configured for dial-up users. This video shows in just a few steps how you can make some hacky changes to speed up your browsing. Effects will differ between computers and connections, but it works on Fire fox 2.0 for me. Pages load lightning fast now, as if they are pulled out of cache. I'm a little amazed. This shows that there is more potential than we may think in the setup you currently have.You'll want to try this for sure. Just pause the video after each step to keep up with it. First it shows the FF hack, then the one for IE. FF is much easier to do.Lightning Fast Browsing Trick For Internet Explorer And Firefox - video powered by Metacafe
More About: Hack , Great , Speed

Default Password Lookup
2006-12-22 07:54:04
You know, I wonder how many people will decide to get a wireless router during this holiday season, and then forget to change the default password. That calls for a lot of wardriving, don't you think? In case you forget what a default password is, you can likely find it here. Just make sure you set a secure password afterwards. This is worth being added to the bookmarks!
More About: Word , Password , Pass , Lookup , Fault

Picture of a 5MB Hard Disk in 1956
2006-12-22 07:54:04
You may think floppy disks are outdated. They are. Look where it started though! Not exactly a pocket size USB memory stick now, is it?
More About: Disk , Picture , Hard , Hard Disk

Google Co-op
2006-12-22 07:54:04
Talk about custom. Can't be made easier than this to include a Search Engine for just your website, or many websites, or the entire web, in your web presence! You'll want to check into Googl e Co-op. Get your own CSE [custom search engine].Another plus is that you can use this in conjunction with AdSense. In other words, it can help you monatize your website. Along with search results you can choose for ads to be displayed [just like in Gmail, regular Google result pages] that will generate revenue if they are clicked on. I think that's worth a "Thank you, Google!".Click the title to see my CSE, and volunteer to help customize it. In case you're wondering, Google provides the code that allows you to put a search box on your site, like you see at the top of my sidebar. You can even define a custom results page. I think this is worthy of webspeaker-space ;-)
More About: Co-Op

Tweak with Process Explorer
2006-12-22 07:54:04
Most of us have at some point used the Windows Task Manager. Maybe it was to end a hung application or to see how much CPU time a process was gobbling up. Proc esses are usually listed by executable name. Often these names make no sense to an average user.Process Explore r from Sysinternals is a free helpful utility to find out what is running on your computer, and which process is what. Handy for troubleshooters, you won't have to hit up a search engine. Also handy for the average interested user.If you care about what is active in your computer, try this utility. It can help you identify the good and the malicious. You can learn what is not required to run, and then disable these items to free up resources. Learn and tweak. :-) No need to be a geek.
More About: With

Sound check, one, two , three.
2006-12-22 07:54:04
Just created this blog, and have to test it. The name comes from an old idea to start a web design business with a friend, long ago. Plans fell in the water but the name I still like. What do you think?The main focus will be on tech stuff, though I'll make sure to break that rule here and there. Roll with my feed to stay updated on what's blasting through webspeaker :-)You're welcome to leave comments... and visit my mybloglog.com profile! Networking helps all involved.
More About: Sound , Check , Three

Time Travel With Google Patents
2006-12-22 07:54:04
Google Patents is not crawling much in Beta, yet searching over 7 million Patents to start with. Results ranging from long ago till this year. Type in the keyword "paperclip" and you'll find many paperclip designs since the early 1900s. The earliest one I've seen is from 1901, and doesn't look like the conventional clip.You can bend a paperclip and use it to open your CD-ROM drive. You can bend it and shoot it across the room with a rubber band. You can think of other uses for this old and simple, yet brilliant idea. The smartest part of it, is the fact it was patented.Having the ability to search so many patents may inspire others to new ideas. I think it's cool. Just make sure you patent your invention when you slip, fall, hit your head, and get a vision of the flux-capacitor, making time travel possible! We can only imagine what would be possible with a time machine!
More About: Google , Travel , Time , With , Rave