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Ubuntu lets you drive it before you buy it Vista should too.
2007-05-07 09:48:00
Well with the current media blitz from Microsoft you might be asking what is Ubuntu ? You know what Linux is "Its that hippy operating system" that everyone keeps saying will never amount to anything. The problem is that is not the case. Linux for several years has had a growing foothold in the hard core business community if for no other reason than it comes out quick. It adapts to the times. And it literally has an army of people working on it and tweaking it constantly to look for flaws and fix them before they get exploited or at least have a quick fix as soon as a flaw gets to that point. I recently took the plunge and installed my first linux distro in a long time. Back several years ago when Redhat and SUSE were just starting to gain momentum out there in the world I got ahold of a couple of different Linux versions put it on a test machine and though the look was polished and functional. I have to admit that neglected to pursue trying to use it out of pure lazyness. Well no...
More About: Drive , Vista , Fore

Daily Fun Site: Visited States
2007-04-28 01:50:00
You can personalize your own map of visited states HERE. Only 7 more states I will have Bingo!
More About: Daily , Site , State , Visi , Visit

RSS explained with "hands on" video
2007-04-26 19:42:00
I had to note really quickly this video that I stumbled across at Commoncraft.com. When I first saw the title I thought "Who by now does not know what RSS is and how to use it?" Apparently after reading the posts associated with this fine presentation there are still quite a few people out there who not only don't know what it is they really don't feel comfortable in trying to subscribe to any feeds and would rather just surf around for sites of interest. I hope that this catchy video will help in prompting those folks to jump in and give it a try. RSS is really quite nice. You can skip along thru the web and if you find a site that you enjoy the authors take on life or writing with a quick couple of clicks you can be privy to each and everytime that he posts to that particular site. And the best thing about it much like those annoying info-mercials late at night. All you have to do is "Set it and Forget it" till you want to check in on them.
More About: Video , Hands , Hand , Hands On , Laine

Tech Support Funny
2007-04-25 20:22:00
Don't let the voice at the other end of the phone scare you! Heck for that matter what good is tech service these days? You usually have to pay additionally up front in order to get it and when you do it tends to be sourced outside of this country most often to someone who is not exactly easy to understand or communicate with. My advice to you unless you have paid out some serious money for technical support. Put down that phone and hop online and see what folks are saying about what ever computer problem you are having. Chances are that you are not the only person that has had the same problem. But first checking the vast Webosphere you are liable to save yourself a huge amount of time and frustration. Now thats not to say that you maight not have times when any information concerning your particular issue can be found. Those are the times when you have to dig in deep spread out the word to your like minded friends online and see if they can help you. Sometimes all it takes to fin...
More About: Funny , Tech , Support , Tech Support

I knew comfortable would catch up with correct posture
2007-04-25 09:07:00
Well all along I have been a champion of what is apparently now the most effective seated posture in front of your computer to relieve back strain. Recently a group of Scottish and Canadian researchers conducted a back stress study. And they concluded that the best position in which to sit at your desk is leaning slightly back, at about 135 degrees. I myself have always been a big fan of sitting this way. However, it does not look very professional to be sitting in your cubicle leaned back like you are taking a quick nap. Which means if you are like me then you sit more often than not like the first canidate slouched forward squinting at the screen because those damn overhead lights are causing a terrible glare on your screen. Well keep up hope. Maybe our boses will see this study and hook us up with some comfortalble lounge chairs. Please read the full details of this study HERE.
More About: Tabl , Table , Catch , Fort , Would

Plan on deploying Vista using BDD 2007? Read this first.
2007-04-24 21:39:00
Here is a quick summary of BDD 2007 issues from a very informative article. Number 1 - Partitioning within the Unattend.xml Number 2 - XP disk partitioning Number 3 - Trying to deploy images with WDS Number 4 - Failure to join the domain Number 5 - Drivers Number 6 - Creating custom WIM image without using /flags Number 7 - SQL connectivity Number 8 - Memory requirements for Vista PE Number 9 - Not removing the MININT folder Number 10 - Adding Windows PE to consoleIf you know what BDD 2007 is you probably are already familiar with the above issues in great detail. But for the rest of you who don't know about these shortcomings. If not and you were thinking about using it please take a moment to look at the above list and further reading of the referenced article. BDD 2007 is the recommended best practice methodology for consistent, repeatable and cost-effective deployments. BDD delivers end-to-end guidance to efficiently plan, build, test, and deploy operating sys...
More About: Read , Sing , First , Plan

I wonder is this the future of pesonal computing?
2007-04-23 20:25:00
it suits me it shows me it knows me it reminds me it goes with me it connects me it speaks to me These are some of the things you see at the end of this video below. I don't know about you but some of these statements scares the heck out of me. Having a device that knows you so well it can do everything for you without you asking is a little much. You tell me.
More About: Future , The Future , Computing , Putin , Wonder

Browsing Tip of the day: Block IntelliTXT
2007-04-22 10:02:00
Ever gone to a site that had those infernal double underlined words that no matter how hard you tried to not hover the mouse pointer over still managed to pop up those annoying IntelliTXT windows with basically useless information? Well I have been seeing them more and more often and I finally got sick and tired of dealing with them. Below you will find three quick fixes for IE7, Opera and Firefox. Sorry I have not found one for Safari yet if you know of one please drop the link in the comment section. Programmer Brian Donovan has written a Greasemonkey script called Uh Oh IntelliTXT to block IntelliTXT popup's for Firefox users. IntelliTXT can also be deactivated with the Adblock plus Firefox extension by using the string *Intellitxt* in your filter list. To block IntelliTXT popup's in Opera browser, simply add the URL http://*.*.intellitxt.com/* into Tools > Advanced > Bloc ked Content. To block IntelliTXT popup's in Internet Explorer 7, simply download and install IE7p...
More About: Browsing , Sing , Block , Lock

Blogging Tip: How to get your image higher Google image search ranking
2007-04-21 09:22:00
Every standards-compliant, Google -sensitive image reference should contain 5 key items: A src attribute specifying the URL of the image A width declaration in which the width of the image is specified in pixels A height declaration in which the height of the image is specified in pixels An alt attribute that describes the content of the image—this is the #1 element of image-oriented SEO A title attribute that contains text to be displayed when the user hovers his/her mouse over the image For this example, we’ll use the image of a yellow hot air balloon at right, which is 220 pixels wide by 212 pixels high. When we apply the five key items from above with the elements from our example image, we end up with an XHTML image reference that looks something like this: <img src="http://www.mysite.com/yellow_hot_air _balloon.jpg" width="220" height="212" alt="Yellow hot air balloon" title="Yellow hot air balloon" /> This advice VIA When I first read the above referenced artic...
More About: Blogging , Search , Image , High

Cool graphical way to test your bandwidth speed
2007-04-21 08:06:00
The site Speed Test .net allows you to select servers to ping from around the country on an interactive map and graphically displays connections as they travel with varying speeds along the way. It also lets you store results of tests for your computer and sort them by date, time, speed and distance. Now what I really like about this site is not only does it do what alot of other bandwidth testing sites do and show you your upload/download speeds it also lists latency numbers between you and the server that you chose. And allows you to play the "I wonder" game. Like are connections from Denmark and the Netherlands faster as you often hear all over the Net. The answer is yes. And will speeds from an island such as Australia and Hawaii be slower? That answer is somewhat strange. Some of the cities on those islands have alot higher latency while others don't. I wondered are the connections traveling via a fiber optic cable along the bottom of the ocean or are they coming back via a sate...
More About: Cool , Graphic , Bandwidth

DoD to create an OUTERNET to connect to the INTERNET
2007-04-16 11:05:00
The Defense Dept. plans to put a router in space by 2009 to allow troops to access voice, data and video over IP. Eventually DoD's Iris project could allow satellites to send data directly between each other, instead of sending it via ground stations. IRIS (Intern et Router Protocol in Space)Representing the next generation of space-based communications, IRIS will serve as a computer processor in the sky, merging communications being received on various frequency bands and transmitting them to multiple users based on data instructions embedded in the uplink.Potential nonmilitary benefits of the IRIS program include the ability to route IP (Internet Protocol) traffic between satellites in space in much the same way packets are moved on the ground, reducing delays, saving on capacity and offering greater networking flexibility, Lloyd Wood, space initiatives manager in the Global Defense, Space & Security division of Cisco, said Thursday.You save on delays and capacity by not having ...
More About: The Internet , Connect , Create

More Twitter than I know what to do with
2007-04-12 11:07:00
Twitter’s rising popularity and the huge number of Twitter-related tools and mashups has been impossible to ignore. Instead of writing a new entry every time a new one appears, it’s much more convenient for the readers it they’re all in one big categorized list. *note: this list will be constantly updated as new Twitter tools are found Desktop clients Triqqr - a simple, early beta Windows application for posting tweets from your desktop.TwitBox - a Windows Vista based desktop client for viewing and updating tweets.Twitteroo Windows Desktop client, with several advanced features, that enables you to post to Twitter from the desktop.Twitterific - a Mac desktop client, minimal but beautifully designed and not without optionsTwitterlicious - a Windows application that makes using Twitter easier.TwitterPost - simplistic Mac desktop client for updating Twitter, coming from Apple. Mashups FlickrMixr - An odd Flickr/Twitter mashup that can be painfully slow at times.Flussgeist - an un...
More About: Now What , Twitter , Know , More , To Do

Download of the day: GreaseMonkey
2007-04-09 19:34:00
Well if you are using Firefox. And seems like alot of folks are then a must have download is Grease Monkey. It is a great little Firefox add-on that allows you to load a multitude of scripts that affect how a webpage acts. You can use a script from Greasemonkey to make your Gmail experience much easier to marking which RSS feeds on specific webpages you have already subscribed to. More on that tomorrow. In the meantime take a look at the GreaseMonkey SCRIPTS site and see if any of these scripts would benifit you. I know that I have found several that I have to use on a daily basis to help streamline my online experience.
More About: Download , Down , Load

Vista Tweak of the day: assign shortcut key to snipping tool
2007-04-09 18:25:00
Windows Vista includes a screen capture/screenshot tool that is actually pretty decent. You can take region captures or full screenshots and easily save them using this tool. The only problem with this tool is that there’s no hotkey to bring up the window. But we’ll fix that… Bring up the Start Menu, and then click on All Programs. Click the Accessories folder, and you’ll see the Snipping Tool . If you don’t see it, it’s probably because it’s not installed or didn’t come with the version of Vista that you have. There’s like 83 different versions of Vista, from what I understand. Right click it and go to the Properties screen. You’ll see a Short cut key text box: The only annoying thing with this trick is that you can’t use the PrintScreen key… but no big deal. I assigned Ctrl + F12 because that’s something easy to remember that I don’t use for anything else.   Technorati tags: Vista, Windows, Snipping Tool del.icio.us tags: Vista, Windows, S...
More About: Sign , Ping

What every Blogger needs
2007-04-09 17:28:00
Well its no secret that the one thing that every Blogg er needs no matter what is. Yes you guessed it subscribers. Without at least a few your post become nothing more than a overly complicated diary. I am relatively new to this whole Blogging thing. And was never much of a writer. But I have always liked Technology and especially computers. So when the Internet just sort of exploded these last 10 years I knew that I would have to try my hand at writing to a Blog. Its still a work in process but it sure has evolved into something much nicer than my first webpage/blog that I tried my hand at many years ago. I made this site many years ago. Before Ebay had even become a household name believe it or not. Well I would like to think that I have come a long way from that mashed up mess that I used to run a book selling business to doing something alot more rewarding for myself which is talk about tech. Talk about the problems I encounter with it and the solutions that I find thru the j...
More About: Ever , Need , Logger

What if Firefox crashes?
2007-04-08 11:33:00
So what do you do if you have Fire fox installed and you have it setup just the way you think you want it with all the best extensions and all the most usefull GreaseMonkey Scripts and then it crashes? I had this happen to me for the first time this past week and needless to say I was a little miffed. I tried to use Windows XP's system restore to fix what ever it was that I had done to crash things. But that did not help. I tried to uninstall Firefox. Then to reinstall it. I even tried to unistall it, go to the Registry and take out all mention of Mozilla or Firefox and then reinstall just version 1.5 and try to work my way back up to the 2.0.3 version that I had been using just prior and liked so much. Nothing seemed to work. Each time that I did one of the prior mentioned failed fixes I would get Firefox to work for the first time after install but then as soon as I closed it and tried to re-start it I would get the following error message. I was not sure what was going on but I...
More About: Ashes , What , Hat

RSS feeds that stand out
2007-04-05 20:30:00
So have you ever wondered what is up with all these small pictures leading a blog post these days? Much like the one that I am using here to the left. Well if you look at the RSS example from IE7 below you will see why. The small pictures when chosen properly and in a sharp crisp format really set off a RSS entry and make you stop just for that split second and that sometimes is the difference between whether you post gets read or scrolled past. Technorati tags: RSS reader, IE7, Internet Explorer 7
More About: Hat , Feed , That , Stand Out , Stand

Guerrilla Mail: Free yourself from spam
2007-04-05 17:42:00
Guerrilla Mail provides you with disposable e-mail addresses which expire after 15 minutes. You can read and reply to e-mails that are sent to the temporary e-mail address within the given time frame. Every one of us has been in that bind where a site or service will ask you for your e-mail address and you just don’t want them to have it cause you’re tired of junk mail. Guerrilla Mail is free service that will answer your calls; it will create a timed 15 minute temporary e-mail account for you to use including a temporary mailbox that only requires a refresh to check it. Once you get your e-mail from the site you have signed up for, save the information and let your account time out. No more spam :) If you need a little more time to wait you can click a link for an additional 15 minutes added onto your timer.
More About: Spam , Guerrilla , Free , Yourself

Test Tube: Finally something from Google and YouTube
2007-03-31 02:19:00
YouTube has just made a new site available called Test Tube this is the first of what I am sure will be more to come. New things that they have been working on over at YouTube. To start with there are two choice's at the site for you to try. AudioSwap and Streams.         ; I gave both of them a quick try. And I am sure that I will go back and fiddle with them a little more. Especially since I have a couple of videos loaded on YouTube that does not have any audio currently. What's that have to do with anything you say? Well AudioSwap can fix this problem. Once logged into it you can pick from a granted small list of musicians and there music that YouTube has negotiated deals with to allow on their site and you can add one of those songs to your video clip to spice it up some. A couple of things that I notice right away is as is to be expected there are not that many artists or tracks yet. I am sure that YouTube will court more by the time this go...
More About: Google , Youtube , Methi , Final

Pingoat intergrated into Blogger
2007-03-29 21:22:00
This may have been a part of Blog ger for awhile but I just noticed it today for the first time. It is a handy little way to promote your blog after you load it.
More About: Inter , Goa , Logger

Wepage of the day: Mail-2-Web makes checking email easy
2007-03-29 19:13:00
The website for today is mail2web.com a website that allows you to check your email account from any computer or wap-enabled mobile phone, anywhere in the world. Type in your email address and your password and mail2web displays the contents of your inbox. del.icio.us tags: Internet Mail , E-Mail, Freeware Technorati tags: Internet Mail, E-Mail, Freeware
More About: Email , Page , Check , King

Denmark tops US in technology
2007-03-29 01:28:00
The US has lost its position as the world's primary engine of technology innovation, according to a report by the World Economic Forum. For the first time, Denmark tops the rankings of The Global Information Tech no logy Report 2006-2007’s "Networked Readiness Index", as a culmination of an upward trend since 2003. Denmark’s outstanding levels of networked readiness have to do with the country’s excellent regulatory environment, coupled with a clear government leadership and vision in leveraging ICT for growth and promoting ICT penetration and usage. Irene Mia, Senior Economist and Co-Editor of the Report, explains the results. Soumitra Dutta, Dean of External Relations, Insead, and Co-Editor of the Report, explains the results. Sacha Wunsch-Vincent, OECD, and author of the "Made in China" chapter, explains the findings of the chapter. 
More About: Tops

Use Linux lose your warranty
2007-03-28 19:15:00
Laura Breeden bought a new Compaq Presario C304NR notebook in January. She bought it because she wanted to get rid of Windows and all the malware that surrounds it and move to Linux , and her old laptop lacked the memory and power to run Ubuntu Edgy. The salespeople assured her that the C304NR was "Linux ready." But they didn't tell her that running Linux would void her warranty. Until recently, she's been happy with it, and with Ubuntu Edgy. But a couple of weeks ago she began having keyboard problems. The keyboard is misbehaving when she begins to type quickly: keys are sticking and the space bar does not always respond when pressed. When she called Compaq -- the unit comes with a one-year warranty on the hardware -- they asked what operating system she was running. When she told them Linux, they said, "Sorry, we do not honor our hardware warranty when you run Linux." In order to get warranty service, she was told, she would have to remove Linux and reinstall the original OS. VIA...
More About: War , Rant , Your , Warranty

PDASmart to offer 100GB iPod upgrade
2007-03-28 01:18:00
If you’re running out of available disk space in your iPod , then you’ll be happy to know that a company called PDASmart will upgrade any fifth generation iPod to 100GB for the measly quantity of $275 (or $299 in case you have the 30GB model). The upgrade comes two warranties: a 1 year one from the manufacturer (of the Hard Drive), and a 90 days one from PDASmart.Considering that this voids your iPod’s warranty, and that the original hardrive only costs around $100, I recommend that you either upgrade it yourself, if you don’t mind taking the risk, or realize that you don’t really have a need to carry your entire music collection around with you at all times.[Via Forever Geek]
More About: Ipod , Mart , Offer

Twitter do you have the bug
2007-03-21 21:08:00
Twitter is an online service that enables you to broadcast short messages to your friends or "followers." It also lets you specify which Twitter users you want to follow so you can read their messages in one place. Twitter is designed to work on a mobile phone as well as on a computer. All Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters, so each message can be sent as a single SMS alert. You can't say much in 140 characters. That's part of Twitter's charm. This is like blogging. But the real challenge is the 140 characters limit per post. You need to be "short and sweet" and still engaging enough for folks to want to follow along. Of course for me this will be a real challenge. Since I already have a hard time writing to my blog in a consistent manner. Keeping up with my "Tweets" (short name for twitter posts). Will be easier for me at least at work. I have just found a add-on for Firefox called “Post to Twitter”. With this easy add-on all you have to do is a quick install ...
More About: Twit , Twitter , Have

Google TV watch it online
2007-03-21 00:40:00
I am always amazed at what Googl e has in the works. Like this cool little widget to the left. You can now go to HERE and either add this to your Google Homepage or you can add it to your webpage and folks can watch TV from it. I opted to only add a still image to my site since I didn't want it to be to disruptive but I think I will add it officially to my Google Homepage so that when I go there I can check out the latest news.     There are several different channels and I am sure that they will be adding to it as it comes along. But as usual Google has come thru again. I can hop to my Homepage and check out the latest movie trailers, news, catch a cartoon or even some movies are on here espicially those from India seem to be on here. Quite an entertaining little widget Technorati Tags: Google - TV - Online - Gadget - Widget
More About: Watch , Line

Disable USB with registry hack
2007-03-19 23:37:00
A common security concern at organizations is allowing users to plug in a usb flash drive,because they could so easily copy corporate data. Since Windows XP SP2, you can disable writing to USB devices altogether using a simple registry hack. See below:[HKEY LOCAL MACHINESYSTEMCURRENTCONTROLSETCONTROLSTOR AGEDEVICEPOICIES] "WriteProtect"=dword:00000001You can also just download one of the following registry tweaks to enable or disable writing to USB drives. Please see the widget box below for these files. Once you use the registry hack, you will have to reboot for the changes to take effect. One should also note that if you are using this trick, you should make sure that the users are not administrators on the computer, because they could easily change this setting back.This works on Windows Vista as well. Here’s the window you’ll get when you try and write to a USB drive:Technorati Tags: USB - Hack - Vista - Windows XP
More About: Registry , Usb , With , Regis

Tech Weekly won't be seen in China
2007-03-19 22:55:00
Apparently my site won't be seen in China anytime soon. When I ran my URL thru this online site Greatwallofchina.org it kicked it out. Funny thing is though my site is hosted by Google and when you check them they are not blocked at all.
More About: Tech , Week , Weekly

Montage-a-Google
2007-03-19 22:17:00
Montage-a-google is a simple web-based app that uses Googl e 's image search to generate a large gridded montage of images based on keywords (search terms) entered by the user. Not only an interesting way of browsing the net, it can also be used to create desktop pictures or even posters. This is a really easy to use web-site that is kind of fun to play around with and see what kind of montage's you can make. As you can see on theire website some folks have used this to make posters for their children's room. I was able to use it to pull together quite a few pictures from my previously favorite show "The Screen Savers" from TechTV. Technorati Tags: Google - Montage - Photo Tweaks - Fun With Photo's
More About: Montag , Montage , Mont

Copy-as-HTML blogging tool
2007-03-19 19:30:00
You’ve just stumbled upon the best quote on some blog that’s like totally supportive of whatever you’re blogging about. So you copy the URL and flip back to your post, only to experience this unsettling cognitive race condition. Enter the Firefox ExtensionCopy -as-HTML. Found here --> (link) Since I am new to blogging and I am always seeing interesting information on the various websites that I surf that I would like to reference. This is a great extension for me. Thankfully Firefox has an amazing amount of extensions available and more being created each day that can be used not just for blogging but also for a variety of other things. I will try to list at least the Firefox extensions that I come across that I have tried and find really useful on a weekly basis. Another handy and similar Firefox extension is Image tag. Which does much the same thing as Copy-as-HTML only it is for images instead. Technorati Tags: Firefox - Extensions - Blog ging Tool s - Blogging
More About: Html