Truly Remarkable Links of the 21st Century

What is Zero Cost Commissions:

2010-09-08T10:25:00.000-07:00

Zero Cost Commissions main course is essentially a 100 page affiliate guide plus video tutorials that explain step by step of how to apply different strategies covered. Also they provide a custom made software that will automate most of the work involved in implementing provided strategies.

For an additional fee you will have an option to buy personal email coaching plus video course that shows profitable affiliate marketing campaign. In addition to that you will be able to buy software that automates backlinks generation.

Will be doing an in depth analysis please use caution when purchasing such products:

Click Here!

Remove Viruses Easily and Effectively

2010-09-07T10:45:00.001-07:00

Remove Computer Viruses Instantly

FACT: An Estimated 35 Million Computers get infected Each Month with rouge software, internet, and other security clients.

Malware posing as antivirus software is spreading fast with tens of millions of computers infected each month, according to a report to be released on Wednesday from PandaLabs.

PandaLabs found 1,000 samples of fake antivirus software in the first quarter of 2008. In a year, that number had grown to 111,000. And in the second quarter of 2009, it reached 374,000, Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs said in a recent interview.

"We've created a specific team to deal with this," he said, of the rogue antivirus software that issues false warnings of infections in order to get people to pay for software they don't need. The programs also typically download a Trojan or other malware.

PandaLabs found that 3 percent to 5 percent of all the people who scanned their PCs with Panda antivirus software were infected. Using that and worldwide computer stats from Forrester, PandaLabs estimates there could be as many as 35 million computers infected per month with rogue antivirus programs.

About 3 percent of the people who see the fake warnings fall for it, forking over $50 for an annual license or $80 for a lifetime license, according to Corrons.

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10298253-245.html

FACT: Over $52 Million dollars is being generated each and every month from these fake programs.

Source: http://www.removevirus.org/estimated-35-million-computers-infected-each-month-with-rouge-security-clients-389

FACT:

These programs all operate in a broadly similar way: The program tells users that they are infected and pop-up windows, desktops and screensavers keep appearing, practically preventing the victim from using the computer. The aim is to scare the user into buying the fake antivirus software.

Internet-savvy users will realize quickly that this is a fake antivirus, and will look for a solution. “One of the worst things though, is that these programs are very difficult to disinfect. More advanced users might try to disinfect them manually, but this is no easy task. In general, it can take users up to three days to completely remove this threat from a computer”, adds Corrons.

Source: http://www.pandasecurity.com/homeusers/media/press-releases/viewnews?noticia=9394

Please stay tuned as I will give you two "FREE" tools which will completely remove viruses from your infected computer.

World Clock

2010-01-15T14:12:00.001-08:00

A truly great webpage to visit:

Good article on Torrents on LifeHacker

2010-01-15T13:50:00.001-08:00

http://lifehacker.com/350405/top-10-bittorrent-tools-and-tricks

Wetransfer.com

2010-01-13T10:28:00.001-08:00

It’s simple, it’s easy, go visit: wetransfer.com to send large files to anyone.

Create Great Tutorials- FREE

2009-12-25T19:20:00.001-08:00

Here are few tools which can be used to create tutorials. These screen casting tools are free alternative to some of the higher priced utilities. This list covers both PC and Mac utilities.

1.Wink
This is a Presentation and Tutorial creation software. Wink is an extremely useful tool for creating tutorials on ‘how to use any software’ for e.g. MS-Word/Excel. Wink can capture screenshots and mouse movements. Users can add explanations boxes to specify their own explanations, titles and buttons to generate a very interactive tutorial. It works well with all Windows versions and various versions of Linux.

Users can also record voice as tutorial is created for explaining purpose. Images in BMP/JPG/PNG/TIFF/GIF formats can be used. It has Multilingual support and also supports output formats like Macromedia Flash, PDF, PostScript, HTML. Wink also features some advanced Capture Tools which Capture screenshots automatically based on mouse and keyboard input thereby generating perfect captures in limited time frame.

All these features come in standard Windows-based user interface wherein the user can simply perform drag-and-drop editing to create high quality tutorials. With unrivaled features this is distributed as freeware for business and personal use.

2. iShowU

iShowU is a tool that enables both audio and video capture. This tool is designed to record anything on the screen of the computer. This tool produces no encoding delay as soon as recoding is done the video is available. iShowU has simple settings to control capture from a single-window interface. Users can even capture mouse positions, Pause / Resume recording at any time, automatically feed completed videos.

iShowU features extremely useful, built-in presets . This tool supports any QuickTime compression method. It is one of the easiest tools to create tutorials. All the user needs to do is to drag the capture rectangle to record and enter it.

3. CamStudio

This extremely interactive tool can record all screen and audio activity on the computer. It creates AVI video files of industry-standard and using its built-in SWF Producer converts AVI video files bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos. This can be used to demonstration videos for any software program. CamStudio is the perfect tool for creating video tutorials for school or college class.

4. Screencast-O-Matic

This is free software. Screencast-O-Matic is one of the easiest ways to create a video recording of screen and up loading it from the browser.This is a completely web-based application and allows the user to create video recordings from their browser itself. This simple tool has options for creating titles, descriptions, notes at certain times in the video, and even allowing comments. This also makes the screencast searchable.

This is in its beta version which easily integrates using Java. The process is very simple. The user needs to click ‘Create’ on the website. Screencast-o-Matic starts recording video and audio on hitting the red record icon and it provides a 15 minute window of time

5. Jing

Jing is an interesting project that instantly captures and shares images and video from the computer. This unique tool is a freeware and works well with both Windows & Mac. The procedure is quite simple. Download and Install Jing. Then the user needs to Run Jing and click on the Capture button and next select something.

It can easily grab an image or even record a video. This ready tool also enables editing of the image along with preview option. User can share their creations by uploading the file to Screencast.com, Flickr, or to their own FTP server. The URL will be copied to the computer for later use. Jing is one of the best screencast applications.

Send a Large File…. Over the Net…

2009-12-25T19:16:00.001-08:00

http://www.belugafile.com/

What a great way to do it….

A Very Cool Site

2009-12-25T19:12:00.001-08:00

What a great way to publish software or simply install it.

http://ninite.com/

Truly the Best 99 Freeware

2009-12-25T19:10:00.001-08:00

1. We’ve all heard of 7-zip, WinRAR, and WinZip, but what about other great zipping programs like PeaZip, TugZip, and Jzip?

2. What’s the best Notepad replacement out there? Notepad++ right? We all know that! Ever heard of XML Notepad? It’s a free XML editor and works great! Or what about PSPad? It’s a very nice code and text editor also.

3. If you use Windows, then you know and love the Windows registry! CCleaner may be the most popular system maintenance tool out there, but what about other registry cleaners and tuners, such as Comodo registry cleaner and Eusing registry cleaner?

4. Ever accidentally delete a file that you really needed? You can try a program called Pandora Recovery to recover lost or deleted files or Recuva, a useful file recovery app. But that’s not all! Ever heard of Recover My Files?

5. Speaking of file recovery, ever accidentally delete all the pictures off your memory stick!? It happens more often than you would think. In that case, you can use Art PLus Digital Photo Recovery to get back deleted photos.

6. Ever forget your Outlook password? Or your email password for Eudora, Thunderbird, or some other email program? If so, you can use a cool program called Mail PassView to reveal passwords and account details for many email clients. You can also use PSTPassword to recover a lost PST password.

7. What if you need to get the password for your or someone else’s Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger or MSN Messenger IM client? If you’re looking for a cool instant messenger password recovery tool, check out MessenPass.

8. Since we’re talking about passwords, ever run into the case where you forget a password, but it’s still saved in your application, but it’s hidden? If you even run into that situation, use Asterisk Logger to reveal any password that uses asterisks.

9. Continuing on with passwords, did you know you could password protect EXE files? Yes it’s possible with a program called Empathy! Pretty neat eh?

10. What about password protected Excel files? I’ve definitely run into those and you can use a program called Excel Password Remover to get rid of any password-protected Excel workbook or sheet.

11. With all this password talk, ever thought about using a free password manager? Ever heard of Secure Data Organizer? What about Billeo Password Manager? Or Password Safe? Or KeePass?

12. Enough about passwords, let’s talk media players! We’ve all heard of VLC media player and Windows Media Player, but what about KM Player and GOM player, both are great media players for Windows. What about ALSong?

13. Those media players will take care of just about every codec out there, but if not, you can always use a program called CodecInstaller to help you determine which audio and video codecs are needed to play a video.

14. If you take a lot of home videos, you probably need to edit and stitch them together right? Don’t worry about Adobe Premiere, you can use other free programs like Windows Live Movie Maker, a product from Microsoft. If not that, you can also check out VideoSpin and BrushVideo, two great video editing programs for Windows.

15. Speaking of videos, there are many times when you need to convert from one format to another. You can use Pazera Free Video to convert videos to FLV or SWF format. Or you can convert DVDs to iPod format using Movie2X DVD Ripper or HandBrake.

16. But that’s not all! You can convert movies to MP4 format using ImTOO DVD Ripper or convert Powerpoint presentations to DVD video, flash, or PDF using free tools like authorPoint and CutePDF Writer.

17. Work with PDF files a lot? Ever heard of NovaPDF Pro? It’s a free program for creating encrypted PDF files. Or what about PDF-XChange Viewer? It has a bunch of features and is actually better than Foxit!

18. If you want to create PDFs fast, there are a bunch of programs like CutePDF, PrimoPDF, Bullzip, doPDF, and lots more! Check out this post on seven free PDF writers that you might be interested in. One more is PDFCreator.

19. Switching topics, I’m sure you back up your computer regularly right? If not, you should check out Easeus Todo Backup, a free program that lets you backup and clone your hard drives. Another program is Hinx Backup Easy. Ever heard of AceBackup?

20. If you just want to backup your data and not image your entire hard drive, you can use Karen’s Replicator to backup files and folders to network drives or external drives on a schedule.

21. Whether you know it or not, you probably have a bunch of duplicate files on your computer! It just happens. You can use Duplicate Cleaner to find and remove those duplicate files. You can also use other programs like Easy Duplicate Finder and Duplicate File Finder!

22. If you want to save more hard drive space, you should look into a program that will analyze hard disk space usage, like TreeSize or Space Sniffer. Other programs include FosiX Lite and WinDirStat.

23. Tweaking Windows can get you a decent performance boost if you know what you’re doing. Some programs that make it easy are TweakUI, MZ Vista Force, and Tune-Up Utilities. You can also check out a program called Handy Tweakers.

24. Been looking for a good free photo editor lately? Check out Photoscape, Irfanview, Paint.NET, or Phantasmagoria! If you prefer an online photo editor, checkout PicResize and Picnik.

25. Speaking of photos, you can create some cool photo albums using free software. Check out Jalbum and Vicman, both free tools to create web photo albums. Other programs include Photo! 3D Album and Thumb Studio.

26. If you’ve got a ton of pictures and videos like me, you might want to store your data online. MediaFire is a free online file storage service and so is Drop.io, Windows Live SkyDrive and Dropbox. You can even use Gmail for file storage!

27. Ever had to send a large file to someone, but your email client wouldn’t allow more than 10 to 20 MBs? You can share large files with friends and family using a program called Gbridge. Other programs include Docstoc OneClick, HTTP File Server and Fileai.

28. One really awesome notes application is Evernote. It’s free (there is a paid version too) and syncs with your mobile phone and the web. Never forget anything again.

29. If you have an FTP server or a website, you will probably need a good FTP client program like WinSCP, which supports secure FTP also. Another good program is FileZilla.

30. If you’re paranoid about your data, you might want to encrypt your computer hard drive with a program like AxCrypt or TrueCrypt.

31. If you want to be even more careful, you can actually create secured and locked text files using a program called LockNote.

32. If you want to hide specific folders in Windows, you can use a program called Free Hide Folder, which makes it completely invisible.

33. And if you want to hide just a few files, did you know you can hide files inside pictures using a free zipping program?

34. If you constantly use the same programs over and over, it might be a good idea to download a quick program launcher. You’ve all heard of Launchy, but what about RocketDock, FreeLaunchBar, JetStart, and Executor?

35. One of my favorite file and application launchers, however, is Find and Run Robot, aka FARR. Weird name, but awesome launcher.

36. Ever wanted to automate a certain task in Windows? Maybe you want to have your computer turn off every day at 10pm? Or certain keystrokes you want to record and repeat over and over again? Whatever the case, AutoHotKey is an awesome program for automating many tasks in Windows.

37. I personally don’t mind the Start Menu in Windows, but Vista Start Menu is a program that adds a crapload of features to your Start Menu like the ability to use tabs, resize the menu, and much more.

38. Ever needed to sync one folder with another folder on the same computer? If you need to keep two folders in sync, check out SyncToy.

39. If you need to sync data between two different computers, then you might want to check out a free program called Allway Sync.

40. While on the topic of syncing, sometimes it’s really useful to sync your bookmarks between computers also. You can check out a program called Zinkmo to sync bookmarks between different browsers and across multiple machines.

41. If you have a lot of bookmarks, you might be able to manage them much better by using Tidy Favorites. It’s one of the best bookmark managers out there and it syncs, backups, and helps you search through bookmarks!

42. If you have a lot of music, you might want to consider a music management program like Media Jukebox. Another good program is aTunes.

43. If you’re worried your computer might crash and you’ll lose all your music, you can back it up to an online MP3 file storage service like MP3Tunes. What’s cool about this rather than just backing up music files onto a USB hard drive is that you can access your media files from anywhere via streaming.

44. If you’ve recently bought a new computer, you can use a program called PC Decrapifier to get rid of all those useless programs that can come bundled with the PC and slow everything down.

45. After you have a computer for a while, there are always going to be programs that you don’t use anymore and that can be uninstalled. Revo Uninstaller will get rid of any program whether it likes it or not.

46. Even if you use Google for searching the Internet, there are many times when a site listed in the top 10 results is spammy or contains malware. However, I always like using extra tool such as WOT (Web of Trust) or McAfee SiteAdvisior to protect myself when browsing the Internet.

47. If you have sensitive data on your computer that you want to permanently delete from your hard drive, I would suggest using a program called Eraser.

48. Now if you’ve deleted something and need to get it back, then you need to check out a program like Undelete Plus, which helps you recover accidentally deleted files. (in addition to #4)

49. What’s one thing in Windows that everyone does all the time? Open and save files. FlashFolder is a really cool app that adds a small toolbar to your Open and Save dialogs so that you can quickly access favorite destinations on your hard drive.

50. The other most used feature in Windows is probably Windows Explorer. Direct Folders is a another program that enhances Windows Explorer by adding quick links to favorite folders and also a list of recently open folders.

51. If you’re looking for a straight-up Windows Explorer replacement, check out Q-Dir, which adds some useful features to the basic built-in Windows Explorer.

52. Vista Breadcrumbs is a cool app that gives you the Windows Vista style breadcrumbs look in Windows XP.

53. Do you have a lot of programs that load when Windows starts? Does it take several minutes for your computer to become useable? If so, check out Startup Delayer, a program that delays the startup of programs so that your computer loads faster.

54. In #27, we talked about how to share files by creating your own file server, but you can also use a cool program called Gbridge to share files between two computers easily.

55. In #39, I mentioned using Allway Sync to keep files on two computer in sync, but you can also use a program called FolderShare from Microsoft.

56. You’ve all probably heard of CrossLoop for remotely sharing your desktop, but you can also use Mikogo or Remobo.

57. Everyone knows that FastStone can be used to capture screenshots of your desktop, but you can also check out Screenshot Captor, Screen Hunter, PicPick, and uTipu.

58. If you think you might have bad memory installed in your computer, you can check for bad memory using memtest86.

59. Ever wish you could rearrange the list of open programs on your taskbar? Using Taskbar Shuffle you can drap and drop buttons on the taskbar to any position.

60. Speaking of the taskbar, you can use a program called TrayIt to minimize any application to the system tray instead of the taskbar, thereby freeing up space.

61. And if you want to spruce up your Windows XP taskbar, you can install Visual Task Tips, which gives you the thumbnail previews for running programs in the taskbar like in Vista.

62. If you’re like me, you probably have an IM account on GTalk, Yahoo, AOL and ICQ. If so, you can use Digsby to chat with all your buddies from all networks in one window!

63. One of the worst things that can happen to your computer is for it to become infected with Spyware. HijackThis is an awesome program that you can use to find and remove spyware, especially really nasty spyware.

64. Everyone has heard of Spybot for removing spyware, but another really good program is SUPERAntiSpyware.

65. In #14, I talked about free video editing programs, but you may also need to use a program like VirtualDub to convert a video to another format or to resize it, etc.

66. If you are one of those people that love to arrange icons all over their desktop in pretty patterns, you may want to use Icon Restore to save your desktop layout.

67. If you ever need a free CD/DVD burner program, check out CDBurnerXP. It also has a portable version you can run off your USB stick.

68. If you ever need to burn an ISO image to a CD or DVD, then you should use a free program like ImgBurn.

69. Burning ISO images is cool, but what if you want to create your own ISO image too? You can use Folder2ISO or LC ISO Creator to create an ISO image from a folder in Windows or from a CD or DVD.

70. Ever run into the problem where you are trying to delete a file in Windows and it says that the file is in use and cannot be deleted? You can use Unlocker to delete any file that is locked by a process.

71. Though you might not have to do this often, there are times when you need to change the file extension of many files at once. You can use Extension Renamer to batch change file extensions easily.

72. Speaking of batching, you can also use a program called ReNamer to batch rename thousands of files at once. Useful for digital photos that all start with the same nonsense text like DSC00203, etc.

73. But let’s not stop there. What if you have thousands of images and you want to perform some kind of change on all of them like resizing or adding a watermark or rotating? Use can use MODI to batch modify images. Cool!

74. In #19 and #20, I talked about software to backup your computer, but forgot to mention DriveImage XML, an awesome program you can use to create an image of your hard drive.

75. Windows Live Writer is a free program from Microsoft that you can use to write blog posts in a Word type of editor. It also has plugins that enhance the functionality.

76. Ever head of Blender? It’s a pretty amazing program and it’s free. It lets you create 3D worlds, 3D animations and 3D games. Check it out.

77. Format Factory is one my favorite programs out there because it’s a universal transcoder that can convert between many videos, audio and graphic formats.

78. Looking for a really good partition manager? Check out Gparted, probably the best not-heard-of partition manager out there.

79. With Windows, you normally have to keep your drivers up to date otherwise the OS can crash or blue screen. Use RadarSync to automatically find the most recent drivers for your system.

80. If you need to reformat your computer, you can use a program called DriverMax to automatically backup all your drivers and then restore them after the install.

81. Looking for a file on your computer? Default Windows search sucks? Well, why don’t you try out Index your Files or Everything, two really awesome Windows file search tools.

82. Wish your clipboard could store more than one item at a time? Well you should check out ClipX and Ditto clipboard extension, two cool clipboard manager programs.

83. Most people who work in offices uses Microsoft Outlook for their main email. If you do, you have to check out Xobni, an awesome program for organizing and searching your Outlook email.

84. Speaking of Outlook, ever heard of AttachmentOptions? It’s sweet. It basically lets you configure the list of “blocked” or “unsafe” attachments so that you can receive EXE files, .reg files, or whatever you want.

85. If you like to listen to Internet radio stations, you can use a program called FreeCorder to record music that you play off the web.

86. Since we’re talking about only Windows freeware programs, you might be interested in Disk2VHD, a program from Sysinternals that will let you convert your current PC into a virtual machine that you can then load into Microsoft Virtual PC.

87. If you do a lot of buying online, such as through Amazon, eBay, etc, or checking of your bank accounts, etc, you might want to check out KeyScrambler, a cool program that protects against keyloggers.

88. Ever had to split a large file into a couple of pieces? If so, check out GSplit, a nitfy utility for splitting and re-joining files.

89. Been in a situation where you needed to compare two files and see the differences? WinMerge is a cool program that will let you compare and merge two files.

90. As for merging, ever had to merge several Powerpoint presentations together? Well you can use PowerPoint Joiner for that.

91. Or what about merging multiple PDF files together? If so, check out pdftk, a toolkit that lets you merge, split, and repair PDF files.

92. Wish you could listen to your home music collection while at the office or away from home? Check out Sockso, a personal home streaming music server.

93. Most browsers will download stuff to a default download folder, after which you have to manually move the files to where you want them. Download Mover is a really nice app that will monitor a folder for new files and automatically move them based on the rules you create.

94. Have you ever wondered if there was a way to password protect EXE files? Let’s say you didn’t want your kids to ever open Yahoo Messenger without typing in a password. You can password protect programs using Empathy.

95. Ever needed to figure out the RGB value or hexadecimal value of a color that is on your computer screen? ColorPic is a nice utility that lets you determine the hexadecimal RGB color for anything on your screen.

96. If you have a lot of MP3 files, you probably need to edit the tags and metadata so that everything shows up properly in iTunes or Winamp. You can use MP3tag or Picard to edit MP3 tags.

97. If you have just one monitor for your computer, you can use a virtual desktop manager like Dexpot to have several desktops on one computer. Another good one is 360 Desktop.

98. Have you ever had to copy a folder in Windows that had a bunch of sub-folders and files? You can use Unstoppable Copier to copy folders without any annoying Windows pop up messages.

99. Ever want ted create your own photo mosaic like they do in TV commericals? AndreaMosaic is cool program that will use your current photo collection to create a great looking photo mosaic.

Do and don’ts for p@$$w0rd$

2009-12-01T11:02:00.001-08:00

A Guide to Strong Passwords

Almost a year ago, we started a project designed to monitor incoming attacks against a normal user on a day-to-day basis. We presented you with details about the geographical area from where the attacks originated and what services were targeted, and we gave you just a hint about FTP dictionary-based attacks. Now we’re going into a bit more detail about the passwords, having so far gathered hundreds of user names and tens of thousands of passwords that have been used in automated attacks in the last couple of months. Most of them were collected by our (fake) FTP server, which is designed to emulate a small part of the FTP protocol and log the information so that it’s easy to process.

As you can see below in the statistics, the length of the passwords is quite interesting, mainly because the average length according to our data is 8 characters and that’s quite close to the length of the passwords that many people use for their Internet accounts.

Statistics about user names and passwords:

Longest user name: 15 chars
Longest password: 29 chars
Average user name length: 6 chars
Average password length: 8 chars

Here is a top 10 list with the most common user names used in automated attacks:

User names
Count

Administrator
136971

Administrateur
107670

admin
8043

andrew
5570

dave
4569

steve
4569

tsinternetuser
4566

tsinternetusers
4566

paul
4276

adam
3287

And a similar list for passwords:

Passwords
Count

password
1188

123456
1137

#!comment:
248

changeme
172

F**kyou (edited)
170

abc123
155

peter
154

Michael
152

andrew
151

matthew
151

Trivia: One attacker tried more than 400,000 user name and password combinations.

Most of the probing is done from compromised systems that are connected to a password-protected IRC channel and are waiting for commands.

As you can see in the image below, one such command is to scan and identify other vulnerable hosts.

We just want to make users aware of the fact that passwords of around 8-10 characters (the average length of passwords that are normally used for Internet accounts) are used in attacks. Even a long password (10 to 15, or even 20 characters) isn’t good enough if it’s dictionary-based. As seen in the table above, there are passwords in dictionaries that are even using special characters (for example #!comment: ), not only numbers and letters.

You should take good care of what user name and password you're choosing. If your account has no limit on the number of login attempts, then knowing the user name is like having half of the job done. Especially for the user names from the top 10 (and mainly for the Administrator/Administrateur accounts), the passwords shouldn’t be picked lightly.

Usually we choose easy to type and/or easy to remember passwords, but please don’t forget that those passwords (for the moment) are the most commonly used or authentication on the Internet so they need to be strong.

The three basic things to remember when creating a strong password are the following:

1. Use a combination of letters, numbers and special characters. Also, remember that some dictionaries used in attacks have a "l33t" mode, which allows common letter/number-to-special character substitutions (like changing a-@, i-1 ,o-0 and s=$, for example, password = p@$$w0rd). Therefore, mix them in different ways so that they are not predictable.

2. Use a combination of upper and lower case letters.

3. Make it lengthy. A longer password does not necessarily mean it is strong but it can help in some cases.

To check if you have a strong password, you can use Microsoft's password checker (http://www.microsoft.com/protect/fraud/passwords/checker.aspx).

Having a super strong password is not enough. From time to time, you need to change it, especially when you feel that your account has been compromised. We also advise you to have several sets of passwords that differ in every account so in case one has been compromised not all your accounts will be affected.

5 Great Posts Of The Week

2009-12-01T09:49:00.001-08:00

5 Great Posts Of The Week

Optimize your Memory

http://greatbookmarks.blogspot.com/2009/12/best-free-memory-optimizer.html

Enhance Your Security

http://greatbookmarks.blogspot.com/2009/04/best-wireless-security-tools-on-net.html

26-Great Web Apps You Should Know

http://greatbookmarks.blogspot.com/2009/04/26-new-and-awesome-web-apps-you.html

53-Great FREE USB Apps You should Have

http://greatbookmarks.blogspot.com/2009/04/53-most-useful-usb-portable-apps-for.html

Best Free Memory Optimizer

2009-12-01T09:02:00.001-08:00

Introduction

Windows (XP and Vista) has excellent memory management and for the most part you don't need a third party memory management product. I've tried a few free memory managers but none has impressed me enough to allow recommendation. Until now that is.

Most people believe that Memory Optimizers are nothing but "Snake Oil". And, that is mostly true. Most memory optimizers simply fill up memory in windows, and force everything to the page file. However, there a couple that seem to actually work.

Discussion

ClearMem I've got to talk about this little program that another category editor told me about. I've been running it now for several months and I've got to say that I almost forgot about it. You never notice it other than you eventually notice that your system is running smoother and faster. After installation, you don't even realize that it is working. The program will install and set it to run every 30 min via the windows task scheduler. You can change this to any amount of time you like by simply going to the task scheduler in windows and changing any of the options you like.
Install it and your done! The program doesn't run in the back ground, once it does its job it closes and doesn't run again until the task scheduler runs it. The program is very simple to operate as it will run and clean the memory out of all processes it can, without any user input.

This doesn't work like other memory cleaners that do nothing but force windows to free up memory by using up all the avail. memory. This old trick then causes your system to lag big time!

CleanMem has just been upgraded to version 1.4.2. Cleanmem now also clears the file cache of the system, the same way CacheSet does ( http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897561.aspx ). So now when Cleanmem runs, both the processes and the file cache are cleaned; recovering even more memory and performance. Again now, you wont see tons of performance on a normally running system, but it does keep things in shape. Just like Cleanmem always has.

FreeRAM XP is a memory manager that not only works but also doesn't seem to cause problems; a rare combination. It ticks away in the background, consumes few resources, and does genuinely free up a bit of memory when you ask it to. It can also be configured to automatically free up memory.

Does freeing up memory improve performance? On both my test system and personal laptop it certainly did release some more memory, but it didn't make much difference to performance. Still, all my systems are XP and have 1GB plus. Maybe on older PCs with less memory, or when using applications like PhotoShop that eat up a lot of memory it may make a difference, I can't say. What I can say is that FreeRAM XP caused no problems other than a 10-30 second freeze of my PC when FreeRAM is in the actual process of releasing memory.

Freeware Software That You Probably Didn’t know about. Very Useful. Thumbs Up.

2009-04-29T13:43:00.001-07:00

New software is being made every day now. Many of them have to be bought, but the others are being freely distributed. Though most people doubt the concept of “freeware”, some of them are really useful. Here are some very good freeware for various purposes.

Free Ringtone Maker

There is no need to listen to those old ringtones now. Create as many ringtones as you want with this software.

Download this software here.

Poladroid

Poladroid software enables you to create high resolution “Polaroid” like photos easily from your digital photos.

Download this software here.

IVE

IVE - Instant Video Everywhere turns your PC into a video phone. You can make unlimited Video and Voice calls to any other IVE user anywhere in the world with no long distance charges or destination fees. There is a Video Call Mailbox to enable anybody trying to reach you can leave you a video or voice message even though your computer is turned off. With IVE Meeting Rooms you can also host a video conference.

Download it here.

Splitcam

Splitcam software enables you connect to several applications at a time. That means after installing this software you can connect to Yahoo Messenger, Skype Video, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Pal Talk, AOL AIM etc., at the same time with single camera. Interesting?

Download it here.

iSpring Free

iSpring Free is useful in converting PowerPoint presentation to Flash movie within few seconds.

Download it here

TrakAxPC

TrakAxPC is the most powerful free multimedia creation tool. With this tool you can create professional music and video mixes in an easy-to-use environment.

Download it here.

TeamViewer

TeamViewer is the one-stop solution for desktop sharing. No installation is required; you can use the web browser based access mode that allows remote access to another computer via a web browser. This is an excellent solution for team work sessions, trainings and sales presentations.

Download it here.

Free Video Converter

Free Video Converter is very useful in converting video files between various formats with excellent quality.

Download it here.

Wise Registry Cleaner

Is your PC running much slower? Are you receiving error message without any reason? Are you getting tired of your PC crashes? Then try Wise Registry Cleaner which is solution for all the above problems. This free registry cleaner increases the speed of your PC by removing the accumulated junk in your Windows Registry. After installing and using this registry cleaner your computer works as efficiently as a new one.

Download it here.

Movie DVD Maker

Movie DVD Maker enables you convert all formats of video files to DVD. With this free software you can burn the downloaded videos or recorded videos to DVD.

Download it here.

Vdownloader

VDownloader is a free powerful tool with which you can search for videos in sites like YouTube, Google, Yahoo, DailyMotion etc. at the same time. This video converter has multilingual support too. Now with RTMP protocol, you can download videos from CBS, MTV, Rtve etc.

Download it here.

LimeWire

LimeWire is the world’s fastest P2P file-sharing application for all types of computer files. Its features include faster network connections, built-in bittorent, proxy support, Universal plug ‘N play, Creative Commons integration and iTunes integration etc. It is guaranteed with no spyware or adware.

Download it here.

A Free Video Converter that Beats Commercial Products!

2009-04-28T14:37:00.001-07:00

MPEG Streamclip is a powerful free video converter, player, editor for Mac and Windows. It can play many movie files, not only MPEGs; it can convert MPEG files between muxed/demuxed formats for authoring; it can encode movies to many formats, including iPod; it can cut, trim and join movies. MPEG Streamclip can also download videos from YouTube and Google by entering the page URL.
You can use MPEG Streamclip to open and play most movie formats including MPEG files or transport streams; edit them with Cut, Copy, Paste, and Trim; set In/Out points and convert them into muxed or demuxed files, or export them to QuickTime, AVI, DV and MPEG-4 files with more than professional quality, so you can easily import them in a DVD authoring tool, and use them with many other applications or devices.
Supported input formats: MPEG, VOB, PS, M2P, MOD, VRO, DAT, MOV, DV, AVI, MP4, TS, M2T, MMV, REC, VID, AVR, M2V, M1V, MPV, AIFF, M1A, MP2, MPA, AC3, ...

Useful, Small, Freeware Utilities That Are A Must For Every PC/Laptop out there.

2009-04-27T12:38:00.001-07:00

I use a lot of little programs to make my day-to-day life easier. This way, when I need a software that could cost $50, I’ll have a free utility which does exactly the same and costs absolutely nothing. Here are a few of them. Most of these programs are small, under a megabyte and don't require an install. I use some of them every day, and others I use only occasionally. Almost all of them are free. I'll be adding to this list as time goes on. I'm sure there are little programs I use that I forgot about, and there are some that are no longer available that I may make available if the license permits me to.

Antivirus & Antispyware

Your computer is physically in front of you, but is it really under your control?

Ad Aware

Want to keep your computer spyware free? Use Ad-Aware.
License: Freeware
Installation: Install
Date Added: December 12, 2005
I use this program: Once a decade (emergencies)

AVG Antivirus

You have to be careful to always select the free option when downloading, but AVG has been free for years & it works great.
License: Freeware
Installation: Install
Date Added: November 10, 2006
I use this program: Daily

FileMon

Another Sysinternals product (now owned by Microsoft), FileMon reports on every time a program accesses your hard drive. The information given is overwhelming, but a bit eye opening too, and could be important in tracking down a piece of malware.
License: Freeware
Installation: Install
Date Added: January 14, 2006
I use this program: Once a decade (emergencies)

HijackThis

HijackThis scans your computer for anything that may have been changed by malware (viruses & spyware) and reports on them. It makes no judgment calls & doesn't try to fix anything, but it does let you go to the internet & get answers to how to fix things when they go horribly, horribly wrong.
License: Freeware
Installation: Install
Date Added: December 12, 2005
Updated: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a decade (emergencies)

ShieldsUP!

Gibson Research Corporation's website that will test you computer to see which ports are open. Thanks to my firewalls, I get a perfect "Stealth" rating. What kind of rating do you get?
License: Freeware
Installation: Browser Based
Date Added: December 12, 2005
I use this program: Once a year

Spybot Search & Destroy

Another excellent tool to help get rid of and prevent spyware from infesting your computer. This one caught some spyware on my friend's computer that Ad-Aware missed.
License: Freeware
Installation: Install
Date Added: December 12, 2005
I use this program: Once a decade (emergencies)

TrustNoEXE

TrustNoEXE solves the problem of "how do I lock down the computer so I can hand it over to someone & expect to get it back in the same condition I gave it to them in?" It prevents any program not in its list of trusted programs from running & the list is only accessible from the Control Panel. For a power user that regularly runs new programs this may be annoying, but for a system administrator, or someone giving a computer to mom (who may open "funnyCatPicures.exe") it's a godsend. It can also be set to allow any program in a certan directory run (such as c:\windows or c:\users\mark\desktop\smallware).
License: Freeware
Installation: Install
Date Added: January 14, 2006
Updated: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a decade (emergencies)

Winpooch

Winpooch is a cool, and only sleightly annoying (compared to Trust No EXE below) anti-spyware & anti-trojan tool that monitors your computer for internet connections, file accesses, etc. and reports them to you, allowing you to approve or deny them. Advanced users only.
License: Open Source
Installation: Install
Date Added: March 12, 2006
I use this program: Once a decade (emergencies)

Audio, Video & Music

Tools for displaying, editing, and creating audio and video, as well as tools for learning music, etc.

Audacity

Free, open source multi-track recorder & editor. Audacity has become my go-to program for simple edits. I have a few gripes (the built in EQ sucks), but it accepts plugins, so maybe I'll find something...
License: Open Source
Installation: Install & Portable
Date Added: January 7, 2006
I use this program: Once a month

CDex

CDex is a fairly simple to use MP3 ripper. For problem discs, try Exact Audio Copy.
License: Open Source
Installation: Install & Portable
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a year

GNU Solfege

GNU Solfege is an ear training program. It has a number of exercises of increasing difficulty. This program really kicks my ass. If I stuck with it more, I'd have better ears than I do.
License: Open Source
Installation: Install
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a month

Jalmus

Works with a USB piano keyboard and teaches you how to read music - notes values & durations are drilled. Great tool for anyone looking to learn piano or learn to read music.
License: Open Source
Installation: Install
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a year

Media Player Classic

Based on an old version of Windows Media Player, Media Player Classic is a great, compact media player that handles some things a bit better than VLC. Unlike VLC, MPC depends on the codecs installed on your computer. Combine it with a media codec pack such as K-Lite & Quictime Alternative, and you should be able to play just about anything.
License: Open Source
Installation: Install & Portable
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Daily

MP3 Merger

Combines multiple MP3s into a single file - good for combining multiple audio-book files into a single file.
License: Freeware
Installation: Portable
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a month

MP3Gain

You know how our MP3s all play at different volumes? MP3Gain analyzes your MP3s and determines which ones are louder/quieter and sets a hidden bit in the MP3 that tells your player how much volume to add or lower. Once you run MP3Gain on your MP3s, each one will sound just as loud/soft as the previous one and you can get back to doing what you were doing instead of constantly adjusting the volume.
For you audio geeks out there, it simply adds an entry to the ID3v2 tag that tells it "play at -6.5 db" so it doesn't compress, clip, or otherwise alter the audio data in any way.
Update March 2009: I still use MP3 gain on my MP3s, but I don't trust it on all of them (I'm not sure how to reversethe process). There are some MP3s where it seemed to set the volume to 0, but this was a very rare edge case & I've never seen it behave like that before, and some MP3s where it didn't get an accurate read of the volume, and those remain much louder than others. Also, there seems to be a bug on the iPod where for the split second after you hit "next" it plays the song at full volume - somewhat annoying but less annoying than constantly changing the volume as each song comes on. There are programs available for Linux & OSX as well based on the same algorithm.
License: Open Source
Installation: Install & Portable
Date Added: November 15, 2006
Updated: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a month

Streaming Download Project

Use this to capture streaming video and audio off the net.
License: Freeware
Installation: Install
Date Added: January 7, 2006
I use this program: Once a year

VLC

VLC is one of the most popular video players in the world. Compact & supports a wide variety of files, VLC is my default video/audio player.
License: Open Source
Installation: Install & Portable
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Daily

Weird Metronome

A very simple & versaile metronome/drum machine that lets you enter in patterns with the keyboard by referencing the number of the track you want to play. Useful for practicing odd times.
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a year

WinABX

ABX is a tool for testing your ears & comparing two audio files. It plays an "A" file, a "B" file and an "X" file and you hav to decide if the X file is A or B. Audiophlies use it to determine if there really is a difference between two sound samples. WinABX seems to be the last of this dying breed of programs.
License: Freeware
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a year

Backup

Backing up your data is essential to being able to keep working after something goe wrong.

12 Ghosts Backup

I've been using 12 Backup on & off for years, depending on my needs at the time. 12 Backup behaves like Time Machine on a Mac (but did it first). The Hyperbackup stores a copy of your file every second for a minute, every minute for an hour, every hour for a day, every day for a week, every week for a month, and every month forever. This way you can retrieve a version from a few moments ago, a few days ago, or a few months ago, or anywhere in between. Good for rapidly changing files.
License: Shareware
Installation: Install
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Daily

SyncBack

I searched high and low for a program that will not only copy my files to another drive or computer on the network for safekeeping, but FTP them to another location entirely. SyncBack does this. Now if the worst happens - a total hard drive failure - my most important documents will be waiting for me on my server (in another city thousands of miles away). Not bad for freeware!
Update March 2009: I've been depending on this software for over 4 years now, and it has performed beautifully. My laptop died last year & I didn't lose any important information. A shared-network drive at work died and I didn't lose any important information. Truly amazing. I've updated to the shareware version & recently went back to look at the freeware version & it was pretty simplistic, but still got the job done. One of the great features of the shareware version is that will keep versions of our file, so that if the file gets corrupted, you don't have to worry about the corrupted version overwriting your good backup, since you can have (for example) 10 versions going back 30 days.
Other Similar Tools: Karen's Replicator is a freeware tool that will copy your fils from one drive to another, but lacks versioning & FTP. Second Copy (shareware) is also consistently highly recommended as an excellent backup utility.
I've written an article called Automated Hands-Free Backups for my search for the ultimate backup tool. I also wrote another article called Recovering from Catastrophic Failure about how SyncBack let me keep working, even though my computer died.
License: Freeware and Shareware
Installation: Install
Date Added: December 12, 2005
Updated: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Daily

Games

Abandoned tinygames. See also A Complete Waste of Time for all sorts of time wasters.

Medwar "Medieval War"

This little wargame is simplistic by modern standards, and the Play By Email function seems quaint in the world of always-on-broadband and Playstation2 or XBox Live, but there's still a soft spot in my heart for this game. It was published in 1993 by Burnham Park Software, Inc. Written by Mark Brownstein.
Declaration of War is a version, which includes modern weapons such as airplaines and aircraft carriers. Search for "dowar11.zip" on Google. Also medoor11.zip, is a BBS door version of the game... I have no idea how this one works, as I never ran a BBS.
I was in contact with the programmer, who was developing a 2.0 version (which I was waiting for before I registered) but it never came out, and the company fell off the face of the Earth. I never did get a registered version (which would allow you to build your own scenarios).
Download directly from my site: Medwar; Declaration of War
License: Freeware and Shareware
Installation: Install & Portable
Date Added: March 21, 2009
Updated: March 21, 2009

The Original Daleks Game - Daleks.exe

Another addictive puzzle game. You play Dr. Who, and you have to avoid the Daleks. They move one space every time you move one space. You kill them by getting them to crash into each other, or destroying them with the one-use sonic screwdriver. You can also teleport, but that's dangerous. While you won't teleport directly onto a dalek, you may teleport next to one, and it can kill you on it's next round.
This DOS game was written by Robert Paauwe in 1985. Again, numerous other versions have been written of this game, including several online versions, but the first remains the best. Though some of the online-only versions have some good features, like, well, not having to install it at all, and you can compete against hundreds of other people for the high score.
Download directly from my site: DALEKS.EXE; see A Complete Waste of Time for online versions.
License: Freeware
Installation: Portable
Date Added: December 5, 2005
Updated: March 21, 2009

The Original SameGame

"The ultimate time waster." In this addictive puzzle game, you have to clear the board of colored blocks. You can only clear 2 or more adjacent blocks, and the more you can clear at once, the more points you get.

SameGame 1.11
The original Windows version was written by Ikuo Hirohata "Grow" in 1993 is available at:
http://www.winsite.com/bin/Info?500000030590
Samegame 1.15
This is basically identical to 1.11 and is available at:
http://www.ryosoft.com/ (note that due to a small glitch on his site that screwed up all his links, you can't download it directly from his site in some browsers, so the direct download link is here:http://www.ryosoft.com/zips/same.zip
Same3 for Windows
This version adds a lot of things like new game modes, undo, save, and choose a game to play (like Freecell). This version is shareware, and the only limitation (besides a mild nag screen on launch) is that your high scores won't be saved between games. It's available at:
http://home.maine.rr.com/sabakker/same3_win.htm
Skinnable SameGame
Finally there's Olof Tjerngren's version, which is skinnable. You can even make your own skins. It also lets you add many more game pieces, making the game much harder. It's available here:
http://www.tjerngren.net/samegame/
Online Versions
See my article A Complete Waste Of Time for some online versions of this game.

Download directly from my site: samegame.exe
License: Freeware
Installation: Portable
Date Added: December 12, 2005
Updated: March 21, 2009

Graphic & Web Design

Small utilities to to make your world a bit more colorful.

ArtRage

My favorite drawing program & the reason (besides Photoshop) I want a tablet. It simulates drawing on paper, painting on a canvas, etc.
License: Freeware and Shareware
Installation: Install
Date Added: December 12, 2005
Updated: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a month

Color Schemer

A simple program that does something unique. You can choose any color and it will tell you what other colors compliment it. The algorithm it uses to do this is fairly straightfoward, but being able to see them all in the same place has it's advantages. It also has an eyedropper for grabbing colors, a sample webpage where you can see how the color schemes you selected will look, and an archive of your favorite colors.
Incidentally, my favorite method for finding color schemes is shrinking photographs to 10 pixels wide using bicubic algorithms & expanding them out using nearest-neighbor.
Try the Online Version
License: Freeware and Shareware
Installation: Install
Date Added: December 12, 2005
I use this program: Once a month

PureJPEG

Dennis Forbes wrote this tiny tool to strip EXIF data from your .jpg images. This is typically stuff like what camera took the picture, what sorts of conditions it took it under, and so forth, but can include large amounts of data, such as thumbnails of the picture. This tool strips all that out. See also jhead, another utility that can edit that data as well as delete it. (Via the Joel on Software forum.)
Admittedly less useful in today's broadband & mega hard drive world, in fact this is the kind of information you often want to keep in your photos (for photo nerds like me), but may be useful to you.
License: Freeware
Installation: Portable
Date Added: December 12, 2005
Updated: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Never

Screen Calipers

A unique tool that measures the number of pixels between two points on your screen. Can also be used as an onscreen ruler for keeping things straight. They also make a Screen Protractor, which does what you would expect it to do.
License: Shareware
Date Added: December 12, 2005
I use this program: Once a month

Weblog Expert Lite

A nice, graphical and GUI based log file reader. I use Google Anlaytics now, but it doesn't tell you everything a good log analyzer may tell you.
License: Freeware and Shareware
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a year

Hard Drive and File Repair, Rename & Recovery

Everything you need to keep your hard drives running efficiently

Contig

Command line tool that lets you defrag a single file or directory. From Microsoft, formerly from SysInternals.
License: Freeware
Installation: Portable
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a decade (emergencies)

DoubleKiller

This file searches your hard drive & finds duplicate files. You can select the paramaters - Name, Filesize, Date or CRC, folders, filetypes, folders, etc. Easy to use, no install. Works great, the UI is excellent and it runs extraordinarily quickly.
Update: They've introduced a "Pro" version of DoubleKiller with a bunch of new features. (Thanks to Robert Bull for the pointer.)
Update 2: I've purchased the Pro version. The advanced options make it well worth it. I've already used it to clean probably several gigabytes of files I had lying around duplicated either due to having several copies from upgrading my computer or due to downloading the same file twice, or retagging MP3s so a less sophisticated program couldn't spot the dups. Well worth it for a digital packrat like myself. Update March 2009: I still use DoubleKiller Pro, though not as much as I used to. Nowadays I just buy another external hard drive. What's really impressive about DoubleKiller Pro is how fast it works (depending somewhat on how you configure it). Highly recommended for anyone that needs this sort of thing.
License: Freeware
Installation: Install & Portable
Date Added: December 12, 2005
Updated: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a year

Folder Size for Windows Explorer

Adds a column to Windows Explorer that tells you the size of your folders. It takes a moment to grab information from your folders (like doing a rightclick/properties), but can replace the "Size" column by including folder size information as well.
Update March, 2009: In my increasingly networked & large-hard-drive filled world, I don't use Folder Size much anymore - it's just too slow.
(via LifeHacker)
License: Open Source
Installation: Install
Date Added: January 7, 2006
Updated: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Never

Oscar's File Renamer

I use this program on a regular basis. I hate getting files with extremely long file names and going to burn them them to CD just to find they don't fit and I have to rename 100 files. Or getting an audio book on mp3 just to find that the filenames are "Author - Book Title - Disc 1 - File 15.mp3" when my mp3 player only shows the first few characters of the file. Well, luckily, there's Oscar's File Renamer to the rescue. It's extremely simple interface lets you search & replace or record keystroke macro's. What really sets this apart is that it opens a directory like a text file, moving the cursor up and down doesn't just select a different file, it keeps the same character spacing as before, and you don't commit your changes until you're happy with them so you can experiment without fear of screwing up. When you use a program like this, you have to balance the time & effort you spend learning it/using it with the time it would take to rename all the files by hand. That said, here are a few other renamers you might be interested in.
I've also used BKRenamer, which is a great regular expression, command-line no-install tool. BKRenamer is great when you have to do a change all the file names in several directories because it can search through subdirectories as well.
I've also used the Bulk Rename Utilitiy, which is quite complex, but useful when you need to do more than simple renaming, such as renaming and moving only files that have been renamed, etc.
License: Freeware
Installation: Install
Date Added: March 21, 2009
Updated: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a month

PC Inspector File Recovery

When I needed to undelete a file that I'd erased, I googled for a program that would work for me. Out of all the programs I tried, PC Inspector was the best. It works with NTFS and FAT32, and it's extremely thorough. It may take a while to scan your hard drive, but it's well worth it if you can get your precious data back.
License: Freeware
Installation: Install
Date Added: January 6, 2006
I use this program: Once a decade (emergencies)

SpaceMonger

This program shows you visually how much space is taken up by what folders/files on your hard drive. Think of it as a sort of square pie chart that allows you to zoom in to a folder. This is a very powerful program that allows you to literally see where all of your space is going. Not as popular as SequoiaView, but I think it's better because SpaceMonger shows you directories and allows you to zoom in on them.
WinDirStat is a free, open source program that does many of the things SpaceMonger does, and more. (Thanks to Robert Bull for pointing me to this one.) Folder Size (see above) is an excellent plugin for Windows Explorer that will show you the size of each folder. Update March 2009: There is a powerful shareware version of this software now, which you may be interested in if the freeware version doesn't do enough for you.
License: Freeware and Shareware
Installation: Portable
Date Added: March 21, 2009
Updated: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a decade (emergencies)

Spinrite 6

Hard drives go bad, it's a fact of life. Spinrite can help. By booting into Spinrite, it can analyze your hard drive (sort of like chkdsk), and even try to recover bad sectors. It's a real last-ditch drive saving tool, but can be the difference between recovered data & unrecovered data.
I list this as being "Portable" but you have to burn it to a CD andn run it as a boot disk since it has to bypass the OS for direct access to the disk.
License: Shareware
Installation: Portable
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a decade (emergencies)

Information Managers

See Comparison of Outliners for a comprehensive overview of my favorite information managers.

Treeline

More of a database than an outliner, Treeline is a great tool for keeping structured information. It stores files in an XML structure & exports nicely to HTML. I maintain this smallware list in Treeline.
License: Freeware
Installation: Install
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Daily

TreePad Lite

I've been using this program to organize information for as long as I can remember, certainly for the past decade (it being 2009 now). Combined with TrueCrypt to keep the data secure & Syncback to back up my files, TreePad has been the single place I store all my most important data. Thanks to this setup, I've never lost old passwords, can use very complex passwords that even I can't remember, and so on.
There are shareware versions, which I own, but Treepad Free remains the best.
License: Freeware
Installation: Install & Portable
Date Added: December 12, 2005
Updated: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Daily

Internet - email, chat, browsing, networking

Small alternatives to the major programs, as well as some interesting things you may not have known existed.

FeedReader

An RSS aggregator that's fairly lightweight (though the database can get huge if you have a lot of feeds in it). If you prefer an offline reader, Feedreader is probbaly the way to go. I was able to browse thousands (yes, thousands) of job ads a day using Feedreader to quickly scan the headline & just look at the ones that were most intersting to me.
License: Freeware
Installation: Install
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a month

Filezilla

Open source FTP program. portable version
License: Open Source
Installation: Install & Portable
Date Added: April 4, 2009
I use this program: Daily

Free Download Manager

This program sits in your system tray & lets you add files to be downloaded. It can beak a large file up into smaller parts to speed up the download, or resume a download once it has been stopped (depending on the configuration of the web server you're downloading from). I haven't used it in a whlie, but it was very handy for a while.
License: Open Source
Installation: Install
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a year

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a somewhat lightweight browser that has some interesting features. It's based on the Safari rendering engine, and launches each tab in a separate process, so if a webpage has something on it that causes that tab to crash, you can to into the task manager, kill that process, and keep on browsing without losing any of the data in your other tabs. While this means greater overhead per-tab, it also means as you close tabs, memory is reclaimed and given back to your OS. It also has an "incognito" mode that keeps no cookies or history of what you're doing. All in all, I recommend it for lightweight or private browsing. Works on a computer I have at home that could never easily run Firefox.
License: Freeware
Installation: Install
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Daily

HTTrack

HTTrack will browse a website & make an offline copy of it for you to browse at your leisure. It's the kind of thing you'd only need occasionally, but you're glad to have when you do need it.
License: Open Source
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a decade (emergencies)

Jabber

Jabber is a server + client protocol that allows you to set up your own instant messenger. Used mostly at companies that want to enable chat, but don't want their chat shared with AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo or Google or to go unencrypted over the internet. Since you control the server, you can enable things like encryption & chat logging on the server. Google Talk/Gchat is based on Jabber. You can also enable communication between server, so you can connect different branches of your organization with Jabber, each controlling their own version.
License: Open Source
Installation: Install
Date Added: December 12, 2005
Updated: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Never

Mailwasher

Using Mailwasher, you can log in to your email account & delete and bounce spam mails before they hit your inbox. Why is this cool? Because by sending a bounced email, you're telling the spammer "return to sender, address unknown" and spam bots will remove your email address from their list of valid email addresses. It won't solve your spam problems, but if used diligently, it should be a great way to cut down on the amount of spam that gets sent to you.
Update March 2009: I used this program to delete over 4,000 spam messages in someone's inbox. Yes, that's 4,000 spam messages. (Or maybe it was 40,000, I forget). Any email client that downloaded the email first to analyze it would have died. Mailtrust too wasn't rock-solid and I had to keep stopping the download process, otherwise Mailtrust would peg the CPU and churn for hours, but it was the only tool I could think of that would get the job done, nevermind the bounce features, it's a great tool for cleaning your inbox if there's so many spam emails your mail client chokes on them.
License: Freeware and Shareware
Installation: Install
Date Added: December 3, 2006
Updated: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a decade (emergencies)

MoonEdit

MoonEdit is a great collaborative text editing tool. It allows two people to edit the same document simultaneously. I've never found a use for this, but it's just simply awesome in concept.
License: Freeware
Installation: Install
Date Added: January 21, 2005
Updated: March 21, 2009
I use this program: #####

Off By One

This is a great tiny (1.2MB) web browser that only supports old-school website layouts (HTML 3.2 - no CSS, no Javascript), but could get you out of a jam on a computer with absolutely no spare RAM. It claims to erase your tracks after you use it, but I find that they persist.
License: Freeware
Installation: Portable
Date Added: March 12, 2006
Updated: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a year

Pidgin

Pidgin is an open source instant messaging client that works with all the major protocols, including IRC and Jabber. It's the only instant messaging client I use.
A portable version is available at PortableApps.com. One of the benefits of having a portable version is that all your passwords & chat logs are stored in the same folder as the application, making Pidgin that much easier to secure. Pidgin Portable even supports encrypted chat sessions with portable versions of Pidgin Encrption and Pidgin OTR.
I DO NOT recommend Trillian. When dealing with tech support, the tech support guy emailed me a portion of my password hoping to jog my memory (thinking that my problems were an inability to remember my Trillian password & not their confusing licensing scheme). The fact that my password was stored in plaintext is a HUGE red flag that they don't take security seriously.
License: Open Source
Installation: Install
Date Added: March 21, 2009
Updated: April 10, 2009
I use this program: Daily

VNC (Virtual Network Computing)

VNC allows you to take control of another computer. It's cross platform (and comes pre-installed on Macs where they call it "Screen Sharing"). It does this by sending a highly compressed video of your computer to the other computer. Created by a compan that was acquired by AT&T, VNC has been long trusted in the computing world. VNC can also be configured to act as a web server, so you can allow someone to take control of your computer via a web browser alone without having them install the software, in which case it uses a Java client. One of the cons of VNC is that it doesn't work if the client is behind a firewall (such as on an internal network). Obviously, this is recommended only for highly technically proficient people.
Real VNC: Freeware & Shareware versions (I've only ever used the freeware version). I believe Real VNC is based most closely on the original. I've found RealVNC to be the least resource intensive VNC, which is great for older computers.
UltraVNC: Open Source, this version allows you to create an .EXE file that you can send to someone else and they can connect to you rather than you connecting to them. In this case, you have to not be behind a firewall (or at least open certain ports to the public). UltraVNC is frequently used by tech support personnel that need to control your computer to fix something (Verizon, for example, used it to help me troubleshoot a problem DSL connection).
TightVNC: Open Source, this version places an emphasis on how highly it compresses the video stream for slow internet connections, but I found it to be very CPU intensive, so it may not work so well on older computers.
Fog Creek CoPilot: Shareware/Subscription Service, this is a pay-per-use VNC based on Ultra VNC, meaning the other person downloads a program & runs it and automatically connects to you - they don't have to configur anything. The major benefit over Ultra VNC is that it takes care of configuration for you (you don't need to email/upload the configured file anywhere) & uses a 3rd party server to "punch through" firewalls, allowing it to work even if both computers are behind a firewall. There are many services like this (I believe "GoToMyPC" is another), but I happen to be familiar with CoPilot & like that you can pay for only 24 hours, which in most cases, long enough.
License: Freeware and Shareware
Installation: Install
Date Added: December 12, 2005
Updated: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a decade (emergencies)

WASTE

WASTE is a program with an interesting history. Written by the guy who wrote Gnutella after his company (which also makes WinAmp) was bought out by AOL as a competitor to AOL Instant Messenger and released controversially on to the web for just a few hours before being pulled by AOL executives, it's a purely peer-to-peer chat & file sharing app that operates similar to AIM/Yahoo/MSN/ICQ etc. Without a central network to connect to, you have to rely on your peers to keep their client open (and unfirewalled) for the network to stay alive.
WASTE is part of a burgeoning "darknet" community, but I find it very poor as a file-sharing tool, unless you're specifically sending a file to someone. Everything that happens within the network is encrypted to outside eyes, but the chain is only as stron as its weakest link.
The latest active version is Waste Again, which adds some nice features.
I wrote a version of the Wikipedia article.
I use it mostly to share files between home & work - it opens some files on my home network that only I can access. Recommended only for advanced users.
License: Open Source
Installation: Install & Portable
Date Added: December 12, 2005
Updated: March 21, 2009
I use this program: #####

WireShark

You won't need this program a lot, but it can be used to analyze network traffic going into & out of your computer... for example I was able to configure it to create a chat log of a flash-based chat. It can be useful in finding spyware as it tries to phone home & see exactly what is being sent.
License: Open Source
Installation: Install
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a decade (emergencies)

Macro

Allchars

This program is great. A few simple keystrokes and you can type any unicode character, like ¼ or û. Plus you can use it to playback certain keystrokes in Macro mode.
Update March 2009: I don't really use this program, but leave it here because it's still pretty neat.
License: Freeware
Installation: Install & Portable
Date Added: December 12, 2005
Updated: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Never

MacroMaker

Very robust macro program that can be programed to do just about anything you can do. I use it to automate tedious tasks, and create quick-launch keys to launch certain applications. Straightforward keyboard interface is easy to learn, though tedious to use. I don't use this nearly as much anymore now that I discovered than any shortcut on your desktop can have a shortcut key. Just right click on it and go to properties and choose a Shortcut Key in the appropriate box. Not as robust as other macro programs out there (like Maco Express), but this one has the advantage of being free.
License: Freeware
Installation: Install
Date Added: December 12, 2005
I use this program: Once a decade (emergencies)

RoboType

This is a great time saving macro. Any text you type can be replaced with any text in the robotype database. For example, any time I type ?latin, it's replaced with the Lorem Ipsum Dolor blurb text. This is great for sig files, or standardized bits of text you use all the time (like bits of code).
Version 3 adds a lot of great features, such as categorization, getting rid of the extra space after the replace text, merging two .rtl files, a "launch when windows opens" option (before I had to add my .rtl file to the Startup group), and the ability to prompt for input.
Note: RoboType is no longer free, it's now part of the PC Magazine Utilities, which are available inexpensively on the Ziff Davis website.
Update March 2009: I still use this program from time to time when I have a lot of repetitive text to copy/paste, but need to maintain several copy/paste sources.
License: Shareware
Installation: Install & Portable
Date Added: December 12, 2005
I use this program: Once a year

Office Tools

Gnumeric

I love Excel. I think Excel is one of the greatest pieces of software known to man. (a quick browse through the rest of my blog should show you that - charts galore).
Now that Excel, and all of Microsoft Office has gone & changed the file format and the interface (and even introduced a carry-over bug) it's time to move on. Excel 2003 was the pinnacle - subtle improvements on an already excellent peice of software, but it's not available for sale anymore & it's as good a time as any to start evaluating other software packages.
Enter Gnumeric. I've tried Open Office Calc & I can't figure out how to get it to make charts and we all know I love charts). Gnumeric seems to do it all. Not as nicely, but it does it all, and it doesn't ask you to install the statistics plugin before it'll do statistics (like Excel). At home, for spreadsheets, all I use is Gnumeric. (At work I use Office 2003.)
License: Open Source
Installation: Install & Portable
Date Added: April 8, 2009
I use this program: Daily

Open Office Writer

I've been following Open Office for years (since Star Office 5.2 back in 2001 or so) and recently I was looking for a word processor to replace Word. I tried AbiWord but found it to be a little buggy - when I corrected a misspelled word the underline would stay there, and when I deleted a paragraph of text, the screen wouldn't refresh so I wouldn't be able to view everything I that was on the page unless I scrolle away & back again.
Open Office Writer is great, though. I almost feel like I'm using another version of Word. I highly recommend it as an alternative to Microsoft Word.
License: Open Source
Installation: Install & Portable
Date Added: April 8, 2009
I use this program: Daily

Operating System Tools

All the tools I use to keep my computer humming along & for moving around massive amounts of files.

PowerMenu

This program adds Always On Top, Minimize to Tray, Priority and Transparency menus to your taskbar rightclick. Sometimes I wonder how I've managed to live without it. Setting priority on the fly and minimizing to the tray (freeing space in the precious taskbar, and effectively allowing me to rearrange the order of my taskbar) are must-have tools for me.
Update March 2009: I rarely use this program - probably because more & more programs feature "minimize to tray", but it is still part of my "bag of tricks" and I use it from time to time.
License: Freeware
Installation: Install
Date Added: December 12, 2005
Updated: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a year

Ultimate Boot CD

We recently lost a domain controller at work & when I switched some users from the domain to "workgroup" I lost the ability to access their files, including all their outlook emails, etc. Luckily, I had a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD (a 4 year old one at that), and I was able to boot up the machine & change some of the NTFS passwords (pretty scary that you can do that, but if you're not encrypting you're not really securing anyway) to regain access to those files. Then all I had to do was point outlook to those archive files & they had access again. The Ultimate Boot CD rocks!
License: Freeware
Installation: Portable
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a decade (emergencies)

WhoLockMe

Don't you hate it when you're trying to move a folder, or delete a file and Windows won't let you because it's "In use?" Well WhoLockMe will tell you what programs are using that file or folder, so you can shut them down and move on with your life.
License: Freeware
Installation: Install
Date Added: December 12, 2005
I use this program: Never

Project Management / Getting Things Done

Allnetic Working Time Tracker

A simple tool that's part clock, part spreadsheet. By clicking on it you can start tracking the time you spend on any task. If you're idle, or come back from idle, it will ask you whether or not you want to end/resume a task. At the end of the day, week, month, or year, you will know exactly how much time you spent doing what. The only drawback is that you have to be near a computer to use it.
Update September 2004: Unfortunately, this program is now shareware. The new shareware version adds a number of new features, but you will have to pay for it from now on.
License: Shareware
Installation: Install
Date Added: December 12, 2005
I use this program: #####

GanttProject

Open source alternative to MS Project. I found it to be a little buggy as of last year, but still very good overall.
License: Open Source
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a month

Sciral Consistency

This program, which I didn't fully understand until I used it, tracks tasks that you have to do "every 3-4 days" or "about once a month." You input them and it shows you around when you need to do it using a color coded grid. It's shareware, but the freeware version lets you have up to 4 tasks per instance, and you can have 2 instances on your desktop.
License: Shareware
Date Added: December 12, 2005
I use this program: #####

Reading & Writing

Tools used for writing & analyzing text, behaviors, etc.

Readability Plus

From 1990, this DOS program analyzes your writing style for style & content. I haven't come across anything like it since & I'm now making it available to you!
download Readability Plus.
License: Shareware
Installation: Portable
Date Added: April 4, 2009
I use this program: Once a year

TextSTAT

Textstat analyzes word frequencies in text documents. Useful for keyword analysis, or my favorite use, inferring pseudo-pop-psychology/linguistic concepts from word usage.
Textanz and Concordance are both shareware tools that do this too, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
License: Freeware
Installation: Install
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a year

yWriter

I have very little experience so far with yWriter, but it seems like a great tool for fiction (and other) writers. Importantly, the features are robust & it does a lot to ensure your data is there no matter what happens to the program.
License: Freeware
Installation: Install
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: #####

Search & Replace

Agent Ransack

Agent Ransack is a great search utility that will search through folders and files based on regular expression searches. It also has a handy regular expression builder, though I find it only gets you about halfway to where you want to go.
I don't use this program anymore, I think because I've become more organized. Google has a similar program called Google Desktop Search, which I haven't used.
License: Freeware
Installation: Install
Date Added: December 12, 2005
I use this program: Never

ReplaceText (forrerly BK ReplaceEm)

This is a great regular expression based search & replace utility that will search through the text of multiple files & performer multiple search & replaces on them. One of the great things about this software is that you can save your search & replace strings for later use. Very handy for repetitive editing tasks, like cleaning up documents you get from someone else. The "Advanced Edit" tool also makes more complex search & replace tasks easier.
License: Freeware
Installation: Install
Date Added: December 12, 2005
Updated: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Once a month

WinMerge

This is a diff program - it will detect changes between two text documents or between two directories. I used this recently when migrating between two computers to ensure a lot of my important files made the transition smoothly without some random Windows copy error preventing me from getting something I needed.
License: Open Source
Installation: Install & Portable
Date Added: November 15, 2006
I use this program: Once a year

Security & Encryption

If you lost your laptop, what would the thiefs be able to find & do to you?

Off The Record

OTR is a plugin that will encrypt your chat sessions. I use the

Password Safe

Portable Pidgin OTR plugin.License: Open SourceInstallation: Install & PortableDate Added: April 10, 2009I use this program: Once a yearAfter a bug that caused the last letter of every username & password my girlfriend generated to not appear in Password Safe after upgrading from 1.7 to 3.0, I no longer recommend Password Safe. Rather, I recommend using an Outliner and Truecrypt. (We were eventually able to recover her passwords by using a backed-up version of her file & running Password Safe 1.7.)
License: Open Source
Installation: Install & Portable
Date Added: December 12, 2005
Updated: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Never

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)

PGP is the grandaddy of all modern encryption. Using the same sort of technology that your browser uses to secure your credit card transactions (only much more powerful) it can encrypt your files & text so that only you, or only someone (who also has PGP) that you designate can open it. It also allows you to prove you are who you say you are or that you wrote something by digitally signing it.
PGP is for the somewhat advanced user - you have to be able to keep & protect a private key file that is essential for everything - encrypting, decrypting, and signing all of your files & messages (a truecrypt volume would be a prime candidate for this).

PGPi.org maintains a list of freely available PGP downloads. The latest version available through the site is PGP 7.03. (link: Freeware versions for Windows 95/98/NT)
PGPdisk PGPdisk will encrypt a disk partition for you. While I prefer TrueCrypt for this (you can create small portable files that act like encrypted disks, and TrueCrypt is in active development) some of you may prefer PGP disk. The last freeware version is version 6 and is available from PGPi.org.
The latest version of PGP available from PGP Corporation is version 9, technically "trial software" which, after 30 days reverts to PGP freeware (PGPdisk will not work after 30 days). You must register with a valid email address to download it & you get a PDF with a license key and a download link. This download is also about 10 times bigger than the last PGP freeware version. (around 80mb vs. 8mb) I would rather stick to PGP 7.
GnuPG is an open soure alternative, but only operates from the command line, so there are front-ends available that simplify running the program, but these mainly seem to be to interface to email clients. GPG is completely compatible with PGP protocols. Notably, there is a version of GPG that will run in conjunctin with a portable Thunderbird installation.
PortablePGP is a Java based program that performs the basic PGP functions (encrypting, decrypting & signing), and even runs on a USB stick (by bundling the Java runtime environment), unfortunately this makes the program rather large, but it will run on a USB stick. Some people have reported that it will not load perfectly good PGP keys from PGP version 7, but will work perfectly good with keys created in PortablePGP.

License: Freeware and Shareware
Installation: Install & Portable
Date Added: December 12, 2005
Updated: April 5, 2009
I use this program: Once a decade (emergencies)

TrueCrypt

TrueCrypt allows you to create encrypted files that act like drives, allowing you to store many file within them. I use TrueCrypt all the time at home and at work to store my most important documents (such as tax documents, password lists, etc.). It also has a "plausible deniability" feature that allows you to create hidden volumes - one password accesses one portion of the TrueCrypt volume, another password accesses another, hidden portion, so that if pressed for the password, you can give them a password. I use TrueCrypt every day to protecy my most important documents.
License: Open Source
Installation: Install
Date Added: March 21, 2009
I use this program: Daily

Links

Want more? Here are a collection of links (last checked 4/4/2009 - it's amazing how many years some of these sites have been around) to places to find sofware with a similar philosophy.

AnalogX
Some of what you'll find inside: audio tools, internet utilities, articles, web tools, DirectX plugins, original MP3 music, MIDI software, and much more, all available to download for free!

CleanSoftware.org
"This software is believed to be free from nasties: adware, spyware, harmful/intrusive components, and threats to privacy. There are no sponsored entries."

CMD Tools
For everyone serious about the command line. (site seems down as of 4/4/2009)

DonationCoder.com
Lots of "freeware" and "donationware" software with revews and an active community.

Freeware Guide
Lots of good stuff here, and even have archives of abandonware that's no longer available.

FreewareFind
(currently closed)

gHacks Technology News
Tips & software for technology lovers.

Gizmo's Freeware Reviews
(formerly "The 46 Best-ever freeware utilities")

I want to: Web 2.0 applications, utilitie and resources
Web 2.0 applications and resources to help collaborate, communicate, discover, email, laugh, generate images, podcast, use multimedia, store photographs, use RSS, internet search, shop, create start pages, store information, time management, train, teach and do things with webpages and websites.

Jeffrey Vanneste's My list of useful tools/services

Karen's Power Tools
has a lot of cool stuff.

LOOP List
List Of Open-source Programs (LOOP) for Microsoft Windows Operating Systems. Maintained, interestingly, by the Ubuntu community to show the quality of open source products.

NirSoft
a unique collection of small and useful freeware utilities, all of them developed by Nir Sofer.

Nonags
"is the safest place on the Internet to download free software from. Before we list anything here we check for viruses, trojans, spyware etc. And even if we find something clean, it still has to pass our special "cheesetest" which for obvious reasons we do not publish exact specs."

Ohloh
A community for open-source projects & their fans. A good way to find the most popular open-source projects.

OldVersion.com
"because newer is not always better"

OpenDisc
(Formerly the Open CD) Similar to the LOOP list, the OpenDisc is a collection of free, open source programs for Windows - apparently with the intent of being downloaded, burned to CD and given to someone (or used for yourself) to replace a number of commercial software programs. There is an educational variant.

PortableApps.com
An excellent collection of "portable" apps (no intall, will run from a thumb drive). They come with an (optional) "Start Menu" style launcher & the list of apps covers most basic computing needs. I may consider going here first next time I find myself starting over from scratch - a bit of a return to the glory days of programs that install into a single folder & don't hook themselves into other parts of your operating system, or check for updates non-stop.

Pricelessware Freeware
The best of the best in Windows Freeware, as determined by the readers of alt.comp.freeware

Scott Hanselman's Ten Tools in Ten Minutes
"a quick list of the tools I use to be productive"

SnapFiles
My go-to site for lots & lots of freeware & shareware.

Software hall of fame
An excellent list that I think compliments mine very well.

The "neat application I stumbled across on the web" thread (Ars Technica)

The Portable Freeware Collection
A massive collection of portable freeware programs

TinyApps.org
An aging catalog of tiny, well-made software primarily for the Windows platform (though Palm and OS X pages also exist) - very similar to my smallware list.

Top 100 Network Security Tools
(formerly the "Top 75 Network Security Tools", the name change is no doubt a sign of the changing times)

UtilityGeek
Diagnostic tools and utilities for your PC

page first created a very, very long time ago.

How To Disappear, Protect Your Privacy, and Eliminate Spam

2009-04-27T12:28:00.001-07:00

A handful of suggestions on how to live with less spam, with less fear of identity theft, and a little more anonymously.

It seems everyone is concerned with privacy lately. While some of us just want to stop the unsolicited phone calls, mail and e-mail, others genuinely want to remove all trace of them from the world's databases. Here are some techniques for both reducing the junk and disappearing, while still living an ordinary life - internet, credit card and all.

There is no such thing as complete security or complete privacy. On TV today I saw that the US tracked down Saddam Hussein. While you'll probably never have the full resources of the United States trying to find you, you may want to retain a greater degree of privacy than you currently do. Here are some tips and tricks to make finding you and sending you spam more time consuming and difficult.

Learn About Telemarketing Laws
Junkbusters.com - Learn what laws telemarketers and companies that have your information live by, and take advantage of it. They have a great guide to reducing junk.
Added April 30, 2003: How to Make a Telemarketer Cry (or, Suing Bozos for Fun and Profit).
Added May 28, 2003: anti-telemarketing EGBG counterscript. I don't know that I would actually give these people my informaiton... especially considering they're not in my country and all, but it seems like a fun way to mess with telemarketers.
Added June 28, 2003: The National Do Not Call Registry .
Get a Disposable e-Mail Address
Mailshell.com - Instead of you@hotmail.com, you get anything@you.mailshell.com. This allows you to set up an e-mail address for every aspect of your life. If amazon@me.mailshell.com starts to get spam, I just tell mailshell to send everything that goes there to my junk folder. Since you only use that address with amazon.com, you don't worry that your friends can't get in touch with you.
I used to have dozens of e-mail accounts, but I've narrowed it down to just the one with the added benefit that it's dozens of addresses I can check from one place.
SpamGourmet.com - is another way to create disposable e-mail addresses that foward to your main account. You can specify how many times an e-mail address is valid before any e-mail that goes there is gobbled up.
DodgeIt.com - Completely disposable e-mail addresses for those one time only registrations. These addresses aren't password protected so anyone can check them once they know it, but who cares? You only use it for those one time registration sites anyway. Plus each address has an RSS feed, so you can keep an eye on it.
What About Spam Filters?
Spam is serious business, and so is spam prevention. Some spam guards will simply reject all mail not sent from someone you've approved. Others require the sender to verify they exist by sending them an e-mail and asking them to click a link. Both of these make it difficult to get on with day to day e-mailing. Some of the best Spam Filters today are based on Bayesian networks. By telling it what e-mail that arrives for you is spam and what isn't, these programs can determine what elements are common to your spam, and what elements are common to your regular mail.SpamBayes is an open source program that works with Outlook (and other programs, even on Linux and OSX). It's been tweaked, so it's probably the best Bayesian spam filter on the planet. Mozilla Thunderbird is an open source e-mail client that also supports this style of spam filtering. Now when a piece of spam passes through my filter, I just look at it as another opportunity to train my e-mail program to recognize spam.
Bounce Your Spam
You know that "TeleZapper" program on TV that tells telemarketers that your phone number has been disconnected? Well you can do the same thing for your e-mail spam with MailWasher. It allows you to "bounce" an e-mail, telling the sender that your email address does not exist. Once the spammers remove you from their lists, the amount of spam you receive should be reduced.
Dynamic IP Address?
Find out if you have a static or dynamic IP address. Your IP address is the address on the internet of your computer, typically given to you by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). If you have a static IP address, it never changes and every website you go to will be able to track you through it. If you have a dynamic IP address, then it will change from time to time, and you'll leave fewer tracks around the Internet. Though if you do anything illegal, your ISP will cough up who was using that IP address at that time when the court comes knocking.
Speaking of IP addresses, Surf the Web Via Proxy
Surf the Web via a Proxy so that they can't track you down by your IP address. This is especially true if your IP address is the same every time you go online, as it is with Cable Internet access. All they get is the IP address of the proxy server. Some Proxy servers offer ad and cookie blocking as well. One company,JohnDoeWho.com even provide secure ordering - they order something on their credit card and then charge you seperately. This way the company you're ordering from never gets your contact information. They'll even accept the package for you and then mail it to you.
Want to know just how much information you reveal every time you visit a website? Check this out. It's also easy to reveal the browser you're using, your operating system, what plugins you have for the browser, and even your monitor resolution.
Do You Own a Domain Name?
www.domainsbyproxy.com - If you must have a website why not buy it through a company that buys the domain for you. They'll buy the domain and own it, but you retain full control over it. The e-mail address associated with the website will be fowarded to you, and can even be spam filtered first. In case of some sort of dispute, (like if you manage to buy somebigmajorcorporation.com), they will reveal your identity, but on a day-to-day basis, it helps seperate you from the very public business of owning a website. (added feb 08, 2003)
Get To Know Your Web Browser
Get to know your web browser and it's security settings. Some browsers have very low security settings and allow other people to install files on your computer, or even read information off of your computer. Even if you're up to date on all of your security patches, holes that the company has not yet fixed may exist.
1. My rule of thumb is the smaller and more unknown the better. Since Internet Explorer is the most used browser on the Internet, hackers turn their attention towards it. I'd much prefer to use something like Opera or Mozilla, which have less than 1% market share, and are much less likely to be hacked. I reserve IE for sites I trust that don't work in Opera or Mozilla. These are well respected browsers with a lot of users, but not enough to warrant hackers targeting them.
2. Clear your cookies after every browser session (you can set up your browser to do this for you), and don't transmit personal information online. Some companies track your surfing habits just waiting for you to sign in to a web site and give out personal information. Once you do they can sell everything they've learned about you when you were surfing - what you typed into search engines, what web pages you visited, etc.
3. Restart your browser and clear your cookies any time you're about to log in to or out of a website if you've been surfing for a while, or do it in a different browser (Mozilla, IE, and Opera, for example). This should help alleviate the aforementioned problem of tracking you around and learning about you waiting for you to sign in to a website.
Get To Know Your Computer
Most computers are insecure "out of the box" and hackers know how to exploit most of these vulnerabilities. Many viruses & a lot of spyware is installed because you don't know how to secure your computer in the first place. Locking down your OS (Operating System) is outside of the scope of this document, but it is something you should look into, or have someone you trust do for you.
Anti Virus & Anti Spyware Software
Now that I've made you paranoid, here are some simple steps you can take to help reduce the chances of viruses & spyware making it on to your computer and to help you detect and remove them if they're already there. AVG is an excellent and free Anti Virus package. Ad Aware is a well known, trusted, and free program to help remove spyware from your computer. Another, excellent and perhaps even more comprehensive program is Spybot Search & Destroy. You can learn more about these programs on their homepages, or on c|net's download.com.
Hardware and Software Firewalls
A firewall sits between you and the internet and monitors traffic. You can decide what kind of traffic is good, and what kind is bad. A hardware firewall may make your computer invisible to outside attackers, while a software firewall could prevent some spyware or a virus on your computer from leaking information about you to the hackers. Think I'm being paranoid? Check out Steve Gibson's website and then decide whether or not you want a firewall.
1. Black Ice and Zone Alarm are well respected software firewalls, and Zone Alarm is free.
2. Linksys makes some good home routers with built in firewalls. This is great if you plan on having more than one computer access the internet at once, or if you plan on getting your Playstation, X-Box or Game Cube online.
Don't Give Out Your Home Address or Phone Number
Radio Shack has a bad habit of asking for your home phone number and pestering you until you give it to them. Either make something up, or even better, give them the number for their own store or corporate heaquarters. If you really want to disappear, never give out your home address or phone number.
Don't sign up for frequent buyer cards
The only purpose of these cards is to gather information about your shopping habits to sell to other companies. You might think that they give it to you as an incentive to buy with them rather than someone else, but that's largely untrue. In NYC you can't spit without hitting a Barnes & Noble and they've all but killed off all the independant booksellers, yet they offer a frequent buyer's card. Why?
Toll Plaza Blues
Speaking of cards that make your life easier, what about those boxes you get to go through the toll plaza easier, or get onto public transportation? Did you know that some highways have scanners on the highway that will read your information to collect data about traffic speeds? They say they scramble the identification so nobody is personally identifiable, but who knows. I've already heard of cases where these are used to track down "deadbeat dads" and it seems like it would be easy to issue a warrant for someone to be tracked through their box.
Also, what about those cards you use to ride public transportation? The transit authority must be collecting information on who travels where to help them improve service and determine what the most common travel routes are. But what happens when you buy this card with your credit card or through the mail. Then this card can be tracked back to whoever purchased it. I'm just offering food for thought.
Speaking of buying online, just don't do it
I order my books to my local Barnes And Noble and pick them up in person. Anyone who's surfed Amazon.com for even a few minutes knows that the internet has a very good memory, especially about what you say and buy.
Sign up with a re-mailer or other similar agency
They will accept your mail and hold on to it for you to pick up or bulk mail it once or twice a week to you. A lot of people who travel a lot use this type of service because they need a permenant address that can forward mail to them on the road. You can even have multiple mailing addresses in different states this way. This is better than a PO Box because they're designed to look like a real address so companies that won't ship to PO Boxes will deal with you. Of course, the re-mailer may require you to give them some information such as drivers license, home address, etc. so be sure to know their privacy policy before you sign up.
Similarly, get voice mail or a cell phone
Give one of those out as your phone number. Since these won't reveal your home address as easily or quickly as your home phone, they can be safely given out without fear of revealing where you live. You also don't have to worry about telemarketers pestering you all day long, you can just punch a few keys and skip to the next voice mail message.
The FCC has mandated that all cell phones be identifiable to within 50 - 150 feet by 2005. This deadline is rapidly approaching and many companies are beginning to implement tracking systems. Read your contract carefully. Some will automatically turn on if you dial 911, others require you to push a button. There are two current methods of doing this.
1. Your Phone has a GPS chip. Your phone will transmit your location when it tells you to. This can be turned on and off.
2. The company triangulates your position based on the time it takes for your signal to reach 3 different towers. This cannot be turned on and off, and is independant of the phone you use.
While your phone company may say they will only use this feature in an emergency, they're vague about what an emergency is. And of course, they could always be ordered to give out this information.
Some phone companies are piloting a program that allows parents to track their children's location based on the GPS in their cell phone. Corporations will probably do the same for their executives, and of course, a hacker may be able to turn on this feature without you knowing it.
The Onstar system and similar systems are basically cell phones in your car with GPS. These too might give out your location without you knowing it. This is what allows them to give you directions to the nearest restaurant, or tell emergency services where you are in case of an accident.
Don't call 1-800 numbers
Especially from your home phone. Since the company who owns the 800 number pays for the call, they can always get your phone number, even if you have the "private" caller ID feature (which you should also turn on). If you must, dial through a 10-10 style number. You'll have to check, but you probably won't get charged, and you'll probably get mail from the 10-10 company, but the 1-800 number you dialed won't know who you are.
Unlisted Number
Pay the extra money to get an unlisted number. Not only will it be available in local phone directories, but with the internet, it will be available in online directories as well. The Internet directories should eventually drop your number and home address once the phone company does, but don't count on it.
Recently I saw a special on ABC about Bjork's stalker. To reveal how easy it is to get information on someone, they had a specialist on the how dig up, within minutes, the home addresses of crime author Patricial Cornwell, who has an unlisted number, and the show's host. Dan Akroyd had this advice: "First of all, your driver's license should never have your real address on it; same with credit cards," he said. "Be careful about access on the computer. Use a pseudonym, for instance." Aykroyd also follows the cardinal rule about answering mail sent to his home address: He burns, shreds or simply discards everything.
Corporations
Buy your major purchase via a corporation. Your car, home, etc. can all be traced back to you, and if you're wealthy, they can be taken away from you through lawsuits and other such fun things. If your car is owned by a corporation it won't be traced (easily) back to you, and if your house is owned by a different corporation, driving over someone with your car won't lead to a lawsuit that causes your house to be confiscated. For extra protection, be sure to buy your cell phone, internet access, etc. through a corporation.
Encrypt Sensitive Documents and Communications
If you don't already have it, download PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), here's a link to some free versions, and if you don't trust that one, here's another one to MIT's website. You can encrypt some files or text and ensure only the recipient can decrypt them. By sharing your Public Key, you can sign documents, allowing anyone to ensure that you're the person they came from, or allow someone to send you a message or file only you can decrypt. The exact process is rather complex, but the implications are pretty big. If you're technically astute, GnuPG (GPG) is a good open source alternative.
See My Favorite Smallware post for more.
Instant Messaging Client
If you're especially paranoid, you can move to one of the alternative Instant Messaging clients that supports secure/encrypted messaging, though there are some drawbacks - i.e. authentication, which are outlined here and here. If you're communicating from behind a corporate firewall, you should be especially paranoid. Most packet sniffers (such as etherial) have a setting to track IM conversations. There are even many stand-alone products that do this (like AIM Sniff), and I believe AOL, when introducing their corporate Instant Messaging client, said that they would release a product designed to track conversations across a network.
Following is a brief list of instant messaging clients that support encrypted messaging. Of course, these only work if the people you're communicating with also have software that supports encrypted messaging.
1. Pidgin
  Gaim is a popular open-source instant messaging client that supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, etc. Pidgin-Encryption is a plugin that supports encryption.
2. Miranda
  Miranda is another open-source instant messaging client that connects to all the popular services. Miranda is also fairly open in it's architecture and supports many plugins, including a number of security related plugins.
3. Waste
  Waste made big news when it was released & then revoked after a couple of hours on Nullsoft's (makers of Winamp, owned by AOL) website. The guy that wrote this also wrote Winamp and Gnutella.
  Waste:
4. - Does not work with most of the popular services. In fact, your information never travels over AIM, ICQ, MSN or Yahoo's networks, it travels directly to the people on your Waste network. This means you have to share your IP address in order to communicate with other peope on Waste
  - Encrypted. You have to share your public key in order to communicate with other people on Waste.
  - The upside to this is that nobody outside of your network can spy on what's being said.
  - The downside is that everyone you communicate with must be technically savvy, and have Waste.
  There are many mirrors of the original site, I suggest waste.sourceforge.netwhich is a sleightly modified version of the original. This one logs your chats in the install folder in plaintext... Good if you like to log your chats, bad if you think someone else might be snooping on your computer. You can Google around to find one of the unaltered originals.

The Best Wireless Security Tools On The NET.

2009-04-27T12:21:00.001-07:00

Useful Wireless and General IT Security Site Links

Wireless (General):

http://www.willhackforsushi.com/papers/80211_Pocket_Reference_Guide.pdf (SANS 802.11 Pocket Reference)

http://www.wi-foo.com (WI-FOO The Secrets of Wireless Hacking Homepage)

http://www.wirelessve.org/ (Wireless Vulnerabilities and Exposures)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/mobile/wlan/ (Latest WIFI News)

http://www.wi-fitechnology.com/

http://www.pauldotcom.com/ (Weekly IT Security Pod casts)

http://www.wigle.net/ (Wireless Mapping)

http://www.networkworld.com/ (Bi-monthly wireless articles)

Wireless Tools:

http://www.aircrack-ng.org/index.php?title=Main_Page (Aircrack-ng)

http://www.wirelessdefence.org/Contents/AircrackORIGINAL.html (Original Aircrack)

http://www.cdc.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/aircrack-ptw/ (Aircrack-ptw)

http://www.wildpackets.com/products/airopeek/overview (Airopeek)

http://airsnort.shmoo.com/ (Airsnort)

http://asleap.sourceforge.net/ (asleap)

http://www.remote-exploit.org/ (BackTrack and Auditor)

http://darkircop.org/barbelo/ (Barbelo - Symbian wireless scanner)

http://www.willhackforsushi.com/Cowpatty.html (coWPAtty)

http://www.blackalchemy.to/project/fakeap/ (FakeAP)

http://theta44.org/karma/index.html (Karma)

http://www.kismetwireless.net/ (Kismet)

http://www.rjpi.com/knsgem.htm (Knsgem - Windows mapping software)

http://www.codeproject.com/tools/MacIdChanger.asp (MAC Address Changer - Free)

http://www.netstumbler.com/ (Netstumbler)

http://www.russix.com/ (RUSSIX - Wireless Auditing Live Linux)

http://www.thc.org/home.php (THC-LEAPcracker and THC-WarDrive)

http://tmac.technitium.com (TMAC - Another free MAC Address Changer)

http://www.wlsec.net/void11 (Void11)

http://wellenreiter.sourceforge.net/ (Wellenreiter)

http://wepattack.sourceforge.net/ (WepAttack)

http://wepcrack.sourceforge.net/ (WEPCrack)

http://wifihopper.com/overview.html (Wifihopper)

http://sid.rstack.org/index.php/Wifitap_EN#Wifitap_source_code (Wifitap)

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wpa_supplicant (WPA Supplicant)

TOP 22+ Security Related Sites You Must Bookmark.

2009-04-27T12:16:00.001-07:00

http://www.securityfocus.org
The Leading Provider Of Security Intelligence

http://www.cert.org
Center Of Internet Security Expertise

http://www.packetstormsecurity.org
Security Tools Resource

http://www.securiteam.com
Computer Security News And Utilities

http://www.cryptome.org
General Security Information

http://www.eeye.com
Digital Security Software

http://www.foundstone.com
Commercial Hacking Courses

http://www.cirt.net
Security Information

http://www.net-security.org
Help Net Security

http://www.schneier.com
Bruce Schneier

http://www.honeynet.org
Security Research Project

http://www.all.net
Fred Cohen & Associates

http://grc.com
GRC - Port Scan

http://www.malware.com
Malicious Software Security

http://www.eyeonsecurity.net
Eye On Security News

http://www.k-otik.com
K-OTik Security News

http://www.securitydocs.com
Security Docs Directory of White Papers

http://www.17799.com
ISO 17799 Community Forum

http://www.security-forums.com
Security Forums Portal

http://www.windowsecurity.com
Windows Security Site

http://www.heise-security.co.uk
heise Security

http://insecure.org

Top Security site with tools and great articles.

A FREE Strong Password Generator You Must Know……

2009-04-27T12:05:00.001-07:00

Every major, reputable company adheres to a strong password policy. Every company and every computer user should have a strong, random password. This strong password generator will generate secure, random password examples for you to use.

Select the password length, uncheck the checkbox if you do not want symbols in your password, and then use the button to generate a strong, random password.

A strong password is a password that meets the following guidelines:

Be seven or fourteen characters long, due to the way in which encryption works. For obvious reasons, fourteen characters are preferable.
Contain both uppercase and lowercase letters.
Contain numbers.
Contain symbols, such as ` ! " ? $ ? % ^ & * ( ) _ - + = { [ } ] : ; @ ' ~ # | \ < , > . ? /
Contain a symbol in the second, third, fourth, fifth or sixth position (due to the way in which encryption works).
Not resemble any of your previous passwords.
Not be your name, your friend's or family member's name, or your login.
Not be a dictionary word or common name.

Now what this generator does differently is it also shows you an easy phrase to remember which is linked to your password, so if you remember the phrase, you’ll in turn remember your password.

Review of Cracking WEP and WPA Wireless Networks- Best Sites- Free Tools - Downloads

2009-04-27T11:51:00.001-07:00

There are many sites which state different ways to crack WEP related wireless security. And you might be wondering why this should have any thing worth reading, think twice. The only way you can secure you home network is by making sure you can quickly deploy the latest security technology has to offer. For that very reason I today present to you a great article on ways to crack WEP security. Read the article in detail on Alkaloid Docupedia.

Free Alternative Software? Look No Further

2009-04-23T12:58:00.001-07:00

I found a very interesting page today that I want to share with my little group of readers, it’s called, alernativeto.net. The great feature about this web site is that it gives a you a commercial software and then the alternatives to that software, which obviously are free.

Please as always if you like my posts, give them THUMBS UP in StumbleUpon. Thanks.

Reviewing FSPRO And VirtualWin

2009-04-20T14:37:00.001-07:00

VirtuaWin is a virtual desktop manager for the Windows operating system (Win9x/ME/NT/Win2K/XP/Win2003/Vista). A virtual desktop manager lets you organize applications over several virtual desktops (also called 'workspaces'). Virtual desktops are very common in Unix/Linux, and once you get accustomed to using them, they become an essential part of a productive workflow.

VirtuaWin is designed to be simple and elegant to use yet still be highly configurable and extensible.

Have as many as 9 virtual desktops on Windows with VirtuaWin!

I have personally tried VirtualWin v4.0.1. It’s size is 385K but does wonders! If you have a cluttered desktop, you can now add another for personal email, or other purposes. This is truly a great product. Use your Windows Key and Left OR Right arrow to navigate between spaces.

Download Here

If You are a Windows Administrator and need an excellent free utility to organize search, filter thru a very powerful yet small utility, it’s called EventLog Explorer. It’s a small little utility which takes your server logs and displays them in any shape way or form. It’s a great utility because you can filter out bad events to research them without the clutter of other events. And it’s free for personal use so you don’t have to pay a dime. I have started using these tools and it’s made my life very easy.

Multiple-document or tabbed-document user interface depending on user preferences

Event Log Explorer provides you with 2 user interface types. Multiple-document interface (MDI) allows you to open unlimited number of event logs and place them all inside the main window of Event Log Explorer. Tabbed-document interface (TDI) allows you to open unlimited number of event logs and features the best way of navigation between logs.

Favorites computers and their logs are grouped into a tree

With Event Log Explorer you can view event logs on different computers. For your convenience you can group your computers in a tree. Then you can simply select the desired event log from the desired computer , and it will be opened immediately.

Viewing event logs and event logs files

With Event Log Explorer you can open event logs as event log files. To open an event log file, just select File -> Open Log File.

Archiving event logs

Archiving event logs is very important task. Very large event logs affect system performance, but administrators must be ale to analyze past events. The appropriate solution is to limit the size of event logs, and backup event logs on regular basis. Event Log Explorer allows you to save opened event log as an event log file manually or automatically.

Event descriptions and binary data are in the log window

Unlike standard Event Viewer, Event Log Explorer allows you to view the description and binary data of each event without additional commands. All descriptions are displayed in the Event Description box of log window. You can close this box if you don't need to read event descriptions. You can also display event descriptions in the event list as a column.

Event list can be sorted by any column and in any direction

Event Log Explorer allows you to sort event list by any column - just click on the column header, and event list will be re-sorted immediately. If you click on the column twice - the event list will be resorted in the backward direction.

Advanced filtering by any criteria including event description text

You can easily filters events in the list by any criteria. The criteria are reusable - you can save them as a file and apply for another event logs.

Quick Filter feature allows you to filter event log in a couple of mouse clicks

It is very easy to filter event log by a single column value. Simply click right mouse button on a cell that will be considered as a filter criteria and you will be prompted to filter on this criteria. E.g. if you click in column "Type" on a cell "Information", you can set a quick filter on Type="Information" criteria.

Log loading options to pre-filter event logs

You can pre-filter event log when it's opening. This will reduce memory consumption, increase performance and make log view clear.

Fast search by any criteria

With Event Log Explorer you can easily search for event that meets a certain criteria. Just use View ->Find command to start search. To find a next event that meets this criteria, please use View ->Find Next command.

Fast navigation with bookmarks

Modern broadband internet browsers allow you to save favorites URLs as bookmarks, that can be easily restored. Similarly Event Log Explorer allows you to mark any events in the as bookmarked and then you can easily return to these events.

Compatibility with well-known event knowledgebases

You can get more information about event in the public event knowledgebases. Event Log Explorer supports EventID.net and Microsoft knowlegebases.

Color coding by Event ID

Color coding allows you to easily distinguish between different events.

Sending Event Log to printer

Unlike standard Windows Event Viewer, Event Log Explorer can print event logs. Print options let you select from several styles of print.

Export log to different formats

You can export your event logs to other formats. At the time, Event Log Explorer supports export to HTML, tab-separated and Excel documents.

Read damaged EVT files and generate EVT files from event views.

Event Log Explorer can access EVT files directly (without Event Log API). This allows you to read damaged event logs, read event logs when Event Log service is not available (e.g. in BartPE or other preinstalled environment), or generate your own EVT files.

EventLog Explorer

Review – Website Cometdocs

2009-04-17T11:51:00.001-07:00

Cometdocs is a one of its kinds free online document conversion interface that offers a large set of document conversions that can't be found anywhere else online. Its unique features include on the fly OCR conversion capabilities, over 50 different conversion options and proprietary XPS and PDF conversion abilities that retains formatting, images and text in the selected output format. And best of all for users -> it is available free of charge.

In all my tests the service worked very well.

You Pay Taxes, Where Do They End Up?

2009-04-15T08:34:00.001-07:00

http://thetoiletpaper.com/blog/2009/the-average-mans-tax-dollars/

15 Essential Checks Before Launching Your Website

2009-04-14T13:47:00.001-07:00

Link of the Day! Comes from Smashing Magazine:

Your website is designed, the CMS works, content has been added and the client is happy. It’s time to take the website live. Or is it? When launching a website, you can often forget a number of things in your eagerness to make it live, so it’s useful to have a checklist to look through as you make your final touches and before you announce your website to the world.

This article reviews some important and necessary checks that web-sites should be checked against before the official launch — little details are often forgotten or ignored, but – if done in time – may sum up to an overall greater user experience and avoid unnecessary costs after the official site release.

Great New Popular Torrent Software Xtorrent

2009-04-14T13:41:00.001-07:00

Search Everywhere, Easily
Xtorrent is all about search. Type keywords in and the results show up right in Xtorrent. One click later and you're downloading your content. It's ridiculously easy... and it's only in Xtorrent.

Get Exactly What You Want
You can browse the files and folders of a torrent before downloading and see its real-time swarm status. Easily narrow your search results using the straightforward media type and keyword filters.

DOWNLOAD 1.1 (v53)

Hardcore Technology, Mac Simplicity
Xtorrent has the svelte body of a supermodel and the brute strength of an ironman. In true Mac form, it successfully marries high-performance technology with a truly easy to use interface. Mac users deserve nothing less.

Advanced Features
Xtorrent does a lot more... iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV support. Time and user-activity sensitive bandwidth limits. Custom download folders. Search suggestions. Watch-folder auto-download. Automatic port configuration (UPNP & Airport NAT-PMP). Seeding ratio controls. Innovative fragment status view. Growl support. The list goes on... download Xtorrent and see for yourself!

How to get your hands on a FREE copy of Windows 7

2009-04-14T13:35:00.001-07:00

Windows7 is getting close, beta’s have been flying out the door and it’s nearing Release Candidate status. However, pricing information has yet to be released. What is known is that if you are a student there are some ways you can get Windows 7 at a pretty deep discount or even for free when the final version is ready later this year.

1. Any new computer sold between June 26, 2009 and January 31, 2010 that comes installed with Vista will qualify for a free upgrade to Windows 7. So if you’ve got your sites on a new PC, you should hold off just a little while longer (this applies to everybody, not just students).

2. Many schools belong to the MSDNAA or Microsoft Developers Network Academic Alliance. If your school is one of them, check with their MSDNAA site (each school has their own) when the Windows 7 is released and see if your MSDNAA site offers it.

3. There is also a a special site from Microsoft which provides free software to people with a valid e-mail address from any of the qualifying schools listed. It’s called Microsoft DreamSpark and it’s possible Windows7 will be released there as well.

4. If you’re in the US, Canada or Europe, and are in school, there’s a site called Journey Ed that gives out software and other kinds of products at a discount. All you need is some kind of proof.Or just download a beta release of Windows 7 and be happy with it :-)

namechk – A very useful neat site worth visiting

2009-04-14T13:31:00.001-07:00

Check to see if your desired username or vanity url is still available at dozens of popular Social Networking and Social Bookmarking websites. Promote your brand consistently by registering a username that is still available on the majority of the most popular sites. Find the best username with namechk.

26 New And Awesome Web Apps You Probably Don’t Know About

2009-04-08T18:36:00.001-07:00

Ten years ago, who would have thought that most of our work would depend on the internet? The internet allows us to have easy access to our files, anywhere, anytime. We chat face to face with friends, meet clients virtually, process payments in a flash and much more. The internet is huge and you can’t get enough of it. It has no end.

While on the topic of the internet, you can call the current scenario, the Web 2.0 revolution, the next dot com boom. Web apps are torrenting the internet with their numbers and new ones pop-up everyday.

Today, I will talk about the latest additions to the pool, of course; the ones you probably don’t know about.

So, without further ado…

TinyChat

With TinyChat you can create your own chatroom and invite people through one simple link. Chat rooms are disposable and can be created within seconds.

KeepHD

With KeepHD, you can download the high defintion version of youtube videos and also fetch the FLVs and 3GPs for your mobiles.

Prezi

With the help of Prezi you can create maps of texts, images, videos, PDFs, drawings and present in a nonlinear way. Move beyond the slide, it only takes 5 minutes to learn how to use Prezi.

Wix

With Wix, you can create stunning flash websites for free, all from your internet browser! It offers you a simple powerful online platform to make flash websites, MySpace layouts and more. No downloads or programming needed.

Nice Translator

NiceTranslator is a fast, easy to use online translator designed with simplicity and functionality in mind. It is ajax powered, so you get the translations on the fly!

Task Five

A to-do list with a twist. It streamlines tasks in an elegant calendar view

Pizap

Pizap is a fun free photo editor that lets people easily create wacky images with their digital pictures. You get a very easy to use photo editor that lets you add photo effects, custom text or speech bubbles and much more.

whspr!

Need to receive a message by email, but can’t (or don’t want to) give out your email address? whspr! gives you a URL to share instead.

WobZip

WobZip is an online tool which lets you uncompress compressed files online. It supports many formats including the major ones as Zip, RAR, 7Z, Gzip, TAR, ISO etc…

Anyvite

Create an invitation in seconds, add entries from mobile, twitter, email, iCal, gCal or Outlooks. And of course, send them with ease from withing the app.

Fliggo

Fliggo is an out-of-the-box, all-in-one, solution for creating your own video website. It can be a video blog, a YouTube-like community or a private site for your company or family.

Yidio

Yidio combines over 200 million videos and offers one of the largest video search engines on the Web.

SlideRocket

SlideRocket is an online, flash based tool for creating slides and presentations. It brings together a complete package of online slide making with features such as an intuitive interface, themes, flickr integration and much more

Ziddu

Ziddu is a new free file hosting solution with features such as unlimited storage space, fast uploads and downloads, file management, a sharing community a referral program and the ability to earn money with your downloads.

Mufin

Mufin is your music discovery engine, that will let you easily discover new music among millions of tracks. With the sound that you dig!

YouTube Reloaded

YoutubeReloaded creates an embeddable playlist of YouTube videos that can be added to any website. Simply choose a playlist type to create your free youtube playlist.

FriendPaste

FriendPaste is a an online tool where you can paste code snippets of many different languages to share with friends. It sports and intuitive interface with support for syntax highlighting.

Survs

Survs is a collaborative tool that allows you to build, deploy and analyze online surveys. With a great user interface, Survs is currently in private beta, though a single request fetched us an invitation.

SendPhotos

With SendPhotos Mobile, Web and PC you can upload photos, edit them, create photos albums and share them online with whoever you want. Also available for Android, iPhone and BlackBerry.

BackupURL

BackupURL creates instant cached copies of web pages. The content of a web page stays the same while you share the link provided. The cached page can also be used for referencing or even mirroring data. The cached page will always be online (html,css,images) no matter whether the original site is up or down.

RapidStack

Rapidstack is a realtime Rapidshare link searcher. It scans the links before they are displayed as results and only working links are displayed.

CC:Betty

CC Betty organizes your message and its contents - photos, addresses, documents, links - and create a mailspace where everyone can track replies, view and add content. You just CC your messages to her!

Sigpad

Make your emails pop with signatures that reflect your personality and change with every email you send! Create signatures with your twitter status, flickr photos, blog entries, youtube stream and much more, all realtime.

FeedWeaver

Create your own RSS feed by combiningRSS feeds from your favorite websites, and use filters to choose what you want in it!

Twe2

Twe2 is a service which sends you your twitter replies, direct messages and custom searches that you specify free to your mobile as SMS. Available in more than 230 countries.

Markkit

Markkit is a web2.0 text highlighter. Drag’n’Drop the markkit yellow pen into your browser toolbar. Whenever you want to highlight text in a web page, click on the markkit bookmarklet.

Best Portable Games- Courtesy – Portableapps.com

2009-04-08T13:44:00.001-07:00

Games

DOSBox Portable - classic DOS games to go
Frets on Fire Portable - rock out anywhere with this Guitar Hero™-style game
Jooleem Portable - simple and addictive puzzle game with great music and visuals
LBreakout2 Portable - breakout-style arcade game similar to Arkanoid
Mines-Perfect Portable - a classic hunt-for-mines game with advanced features
PokerTH Portable - classic Texas Hold Em style poker at its best
Sudoku Portable - the wildly popular and addictive puzzle game

53 Most Useful USB Portable Apps for USB Drives

2009-04-08T13:42:00.001-07:00

Archiver and Extractor

7-Zip Portable - An open source file archiver that supports 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, RAR as well as others.

Auditing

SIW - A system analysis tool that gathers detailed information about your hardware and software.

WinAudit - Audits all of your hardware, software, licenses, and network settings.

CPU-Z - Gathers detailed information about your processor, motherboard, and memory.

Burning

Infra Recorder Portable - Portable CD/DVD burning software.

Disk Utilities

JkDefrag - Disk optimizer and defragmenter.

Document Viewers

OpenOffice.org Portable - A portable version of OpenOffice.org which includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing package and database. Can also open most Microsoft Office documents.

Foxit Reader - A portable PDF reader.

Internet

FileZilla Portable - One of the best open source FTP programs available.

Firefox Portable - A portable version of Firefox. Very useful when working on a computer that has been overwhelmed with spyware.

portaPuTTY - An open source Telnet/SSH client.

Launcher

PStart - A launcher utility that allows you to organize and launch all of your portable applications.

Malware Removal

ClamWin Portable - One of the best free antivius programs as a portable version.

Avast! Virus Cleaner - Scans the computer for a specific set of viruses and worms.

RootkitRevealer - An advanced rootkit detection utility.

HiJackThis - A hijacker detector and remover. Outputs information to a log file so you can share the results with others when needing help.

McAfee Stinger - A stand-alone utility that scans for and removes specific viruses.

Networking

Angry IP Scanner - Scans a range of IP addresses so you can see which ones are in use. Also tells you hostname, MAC address, open ports, computer name, workgroup, and logged in Windows users.

CurrPorts - Allows you to see detailed information about all of the TCP/IP and UDP ports being used on the computer including which program is using them. Also allows you to close out the port and kill the process that opened it.

Optimization

CCleaner Portable - An optimization utility that cleans the registry and removes unwanted files from the computer.

PC Decrapifier - Uninstalls trialware and annoyances from new computers. Makes cleaning up a new computer much easier and saves a lot of time.

Organization

TiddlyWiki - A self-contained wiki that is great for storing a lot of information in one place.

Recovery

Restoration - Scans any drive for items that have been deleted and allows you to restore them. Can also wipe files beyond simple recovery. Learn more by viewing How To Restore Deleted Files After Emptying The Recycle Bin.

Unstoppable Copier - Copies files from disks that have physical damage.

TestDisk - Data recovery software that can recover lost partitions or make drives bootable again.

Remote Control

PcHelpware - Remote support software that lets you control remote computers. Learn more by viewing How To Remote Control Computers Using PCHelpWare.

Security

LockNote - A simple text file that allows you to store whatever you like using a password and 256bit encryption.

KeePass - Securely store all of your passwords in one place and access them with one master password.

TrueCrypt - Disk encrypting utility that can encrypt hard drives and storage devices including your flash drive.

System

Process Explorer - View detailed information about the processes running on a computer.

WinKeyLite - Easily view and change Windows Product Keys without having to edit the registry. Learn more by viewing How To Find And Change A Windows Vista, XP, And 2003 Product Key.

Unknown Devices - Helps you find out what the unknown devices in your device manager are.

AutoRuns - Comprehensive information about all of the programs and processes that start up when you boot up the computer or log into Windows.

DriverBackup - Backs up all of your drivers. Most useful when needing to reload a computer or when needing to copy a driver from one computer to another.

Testing

Stress Prime 2004 - A stress test for CPUs and Memory.

What portable apps do you like that aren’t on the list? Please feel free to share.

Angry IP Scanner - Scan a range of IP addresses to see which ones are in use. Also tells you hostname, MAC address, open ports, computer name, workgroup, and logged in Windows users.

Follow-Me IP - Utility for finding your external IP address quickly.

Restoration - Allows you to undelete files that have been accidentally deleted from the computer.

ClamWin Portable - One of the best free antivirus utilities and it is available in portable format.

LockNote - A simple text file that allows you to store usernames, passwords, phone numbers, and more with 256bit password encryption.

Portable OpenOffice - An open source office suite that is compatible with Microsoft Office, Word Perfect, Lotus, and more in portable format.

SIW - A system analysis tool that tells you almost everything you need to know about a computer. Useful for finding information about your hardware, Windows configuration, and settings.

WinAudit - Another analysis tool that is useful for finding out information about a computer.

RockXP - View and change product keys for installed Microsoft products including Windows very quickly.

Server2Go - Allows you to install an apache webserver right on to your flash drive with no configuration.

FileZilla Portable - I have always been a big fan of the FileZilla ftp client. Now FileZilla is in portable format.

HFS - An http file server that allows you to easily share files right from your USB drive.

Firefox Portable - Bypass those spyware-infested browsers and use Firefox straight off of your USB drive.

Portable Opera - Or if you would rather use Opera it is also available in portable format.

uTorrent - A very powerful standalone BitTorrent client.

Wiki on a Stick - Useful for storing product keys, configurations notes and more.

CPU-Z - Very detailed information about your processor and other components.

PStart - A Start Menu like program that allows you to organize and quickly run your portable programs.

2009-04-08T08:56:00.001-07:00

How To Use BitTorrent Like a Pro!

No matter how long you have been Torrenting, BitTorrent tools are evolving and getting better all the time. I have brought for you here a simple guide for getting the most out of what is changing forever how people acquire consumer entertainments.

The purpose of this simple guide is to educate people who may know the basics, but may have only just started to scratch the surface of what BitTorrent clients are truly capable of.

I will be using two of the most popular multi-platform BitTorrent clients; Vuze (previously known as Azureus) and µTorrent. Both of these applications work on two fundamentally different approaches: Vuze is packed with pretty much every feature you could imagine, including a search tool, social networking style file sharing among friends, a content guide and a whole lot more. µTorrent on the other hand is totally opposite: sleek, simple and straightforward.

Most of what I tell you here will be using Vuze’s newest features, but won’t ignore µTorrent either. Where applicable, I’ll highlight standalone applications that can bring some of Vuze’s integrated functions to the µTorrent platform. So let’s begin.

Xobni –A Must For Microsoft Outlook

2009-04-06T15:08:00.001-07:00

Lightning-Fast Email Search

Search email & people faster than you can type. Learn more

Stay in Touch

Contact info, profile pictures, company info, job titles. All organized. Automatically. Learn more

Discover Connections

Xobni searches the web for information about your contacts. Facebook, LinkedIn, Hoovers information & more, brought into Outlook. Learn more

Threaded Conversations

Email how it was meant to be read, with conversations in context. Learn more

Find Attachments

Historical attachments available instantly without searching. Learn more

Free Download

Free Partition Manager For Windows XP, Vista

2009-04-06T09:45:00.001-07:00

EASEUS Partition Manager Home Edition

Version: 3.0

Downloads Count: 50,863

License Type: Free

Price: Free

Date Added: Dec 1, 2008

Operating Systems: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Probably the best Free partition manager out there. Best of all, it’s free to use.

File Size: 8130 KB

Author: EASEUS

The Best Free Screen Capture Utility Review

2009-03-23T11:23:00.001-07:00

S c r e e n R i p 3 2 . . .

The software on this page is more or less for (freeware) programs/tools that have been put on hold (in terms of further development), or will not be continued at all.

Download Now

This program is a freeware screen capture utility that let's you capture areas of the screen with a variety of methods
Win95/98/NT compatible
Supports different image formats such as ICO, BMP, JPG, and GIF support (animated or standard)
View and/or create animated GIF's with many options
Convert or capture images as different color depths
Hot key configuration
Capture mouse cursor
Insert cursor images... and much more!
Keep in mind that ScreenRip32 is a beta version. Some options (such as printing) may be nonfunctional or buggy. As of now, further development on this program has been discontinued due to time constraints other priorities.
Thanks to Thomas Aciukewicz, Dennis Burnside and Jared Crawford for the documentation.
Download the ReadMe file (if you need help unzipping, installing, etc)
Download ScreenRip32 v1.0 (beta) here (367 KB)

New Powerful Features in Gmail.

2009-03-23T10:42:00.001-07:00

What's new in Gmail?

New in Labs: Photo previews, offline access, and more

Try out these and other experimental features from the Labs tab under Gmail Settings:

YouTube, Picasa, Flickr, and Yelp previews
Instead of just links, see previews of photos, videos, and reviews right in your email.

Undo send
Oops, hit "Send" too soon? Give yourself a grace period of a few seconds to cancel sending, then edit your message before sending again.

Tasks mobile
Take your to-do list everywhere you go. Just go to gmail.com/tasks from your mobile browser.

Offline
Make Gmail work even when you're not connected to the internet.

What's been keeping us busy...

Labels: auto-complete and "move to"
The buttons and menus at the top of your inbox look a bit different: there's a new "Labels" button that makes labeling messages even easier. Turn on keyboard shortcuts and hit "L" to bring up your labels, and auto-complete will take it from there. Use the "Move to" button to label and archive in just one step -- just like you would with a folder. Learn more

Gmail stickers
Send in a self-addressed stamped envelope, get back some free Gmail stickers. We may be all about speedy electronic communication, but this time we're going old school with snail mail.

Fast PDF previews
Now you can preview PDFs right in your browser without waiting for them to download and open in another application. Just click the "View" link next to any .pdf attachments you receive.

New in Labs: Tasks
Keep track of what you need to do with a lightweight task list right inside of Gmail. Just click and type to add new tasks, convert emails into tasks, and (most satisfyingly) check them off as you're done. Once you turn on this Labs feature, look for the Tasks link to the left of your inbox under Contacts. Turn on tasks and more from the Labs tab under Settings. Learn more

New in Labs: Text Messaging in Chat
Send SMS text messages right from Gmail. You chat from your comfy computer and reach your friends on the go; they get your messages as texts and can peck out replies on their little keyboards. Turn on SMS text messaging and more from the Labs tab under Settings. Learn more

Spice up your inbox with Gmail Themes
From minimalist grays to dynamic mountain landscapes, choose from over 30 options to personalize the look and feel of your Gmail account. To get started, check out the Themes tab under Settings. Learn more

Talk face to face with Gmail voice and video chat
See and hear friends and family right from within Gmail. All you need is a webcam and a small download that takes seconds to install. Learn more

15 new Labs features to try out
There's a whole lot more to play with in Gmail Labs, our testing ground for experimental features. Google Calendar and Docs gadgets, a forgotten attachment detector, advanced IMAP controls, and canned responses are just a taste. Turn on these and more from the Labs tab under Settings. Learn more

Gmail on Android
Gmail is now available on the world's first Android-powered phone, the T-Mobile G1. All of the features you love about Gmail on your computer, plus real time push email so you never need to refresh your inbox. Learn more

Emoticons – they're not just for chat anymore
Express yourself with emoticons from to or even . Click the button when composing a message in "Rich formatting" mode, or choose the new emoticons tab in chat, and express yourself to your 's desire. Learn more

Gmail for mobile 2.0
Save multiple mobile drafts, compose and read recent email offline, use new shortcut keys and more. Download Gmail for mobile 2.0 for your BlackBerry or J2ME phone by going to m.google.com/mail in your mobile browser.

Gmail Labs: A testing ground for experimental new features
Try out features in development and let us know what you think. To get started with Labs, click the Labs tab under Settings. Learn more

Gmail has a new look on the iPhone browser
Now with auto-complete when composing, automatic refreshing, and faster load times when viewing email. Learn more

More friends are more fun. Gmail welcomes your AIM® friends.
Now you can talk to your AIM® friends using an integrated chat list right inside Gmail. Learn more
AOL and AIM are trademarks of AOL LLC

Colored labels
Better organize your email with new colored labels. Just click the color swatch next to each label to assign a color. Learn more

Group chat
Chat with multiple people without multiple windows. Invite your friends to a group discussion. To start a group chat, click 'Group chat' from the 'Options' menu when chatting. Learn more

New emoticons
Start sending richer expressions to your friends. Learn more

Free IMAP
Sync your inbox across devices instantly and automatically. Whether you read or write your email on your phone or on your desktop, changes you make to Gmail will be seen from anywhere you access your inbox. Another way to use Gmail on your iPhone is through the browser. By going to m.gmail.com you get the full Gmail experience including conversation view, search, and more. Learn how to set up IMAP on other devices.
Set up IMAP on your iPhone. Watch the video

View as slideshow
Now you can open PowerPoint attachments as slideshows, without having to download anything. Just click "View as slideshow" next to the .ppt attachment you want to preview. Since you can open .doc and .xls attachments with Google Docs and Spreadsheets too, there's no need to leave your web browser to check out your Gmail attachments. Learn more
Increased attachment limit-- 20 MB!
Now you can start sharing more of those home videos, large presentations and files you just can't seem to get smaller. We have doubled the allowable attachment size to 20 MB to make your Gmail space even more useful. Learn more
It's a Gmail party and everyone is invited!
You can still invite your friends to enjoy Gmail's spam protection, 5GB free storage and other great features, but now you can also just tell them to visit www.gmail.com and sign up without an invitation.
Get mail from other accounts
Now Gmail can check for the mail you receive at your other email accounts. You can retrieve your mail (new and old) from up to five other email accounts and have them all in Gmail. Then you can even create a customized 'From:' address, which lets you send messages from Gmail, but have them look like they were sent from another one of your email accounts. Please note that you can only retrieve mail from accounts that have POP3 access enabled. Learn more
Embarrassment-reducing new message notifications
Ever replied to a message only to find out that someone sent a better, smarter reply right before you? Now, if someone sends a reply while you're in the middle of reading a conversation (or replying to it), you'll get a notification that a new message has arrived. Click "update conversation" to see what you’ve missed.
Forward all
When viewing a conversation, use the new “Forward all” link on the right if you want to forward the entire conversation instead of just one message.
Chat even when your friends are offline
Chatting in Gmail just keeps getting better. Now, if you're chatting with a friend who goes offline, your friend will be able to see whatever you were typing the next time he or she goes online.
Get Gmail on your mobile phone
Download it once, and start accessing Gmail on your phone with just a click or two. To try it for yourself, point your phone to gmail.com/app. Learn more
Voicemail
Your friends can leave you a voicemail using Google Talk. The voice message is sent to your Gmail account as an audio file that you can download or play right from your inbox. Learn more
Reply by chat
When you're about to (or in the middle of a) reply to someone, and you see that person online, you can just send your reply as a chat message. And if you've chosen to save your chat histories, then your chat even gets threaded with that original email conversation. Learn more
A picture's worth a thousand words
With contact pictures in Gmail, you can pick ones for yourself, see which ones your friends have chosen, and set certain pictures to show up for specific people in your Gmail account. Best of all, you can even send picture suggestions to your friends. Learn more
Gmail Chat
Get in touch with your friends instantly, from right inside Gmail! It's the biggest thing to happen to Gmail, since well, Gmail. Learn more
Vacation auto-responder
Set an auto-response so that if you're lying on a beach or taking a train across Siberia, your friends will know you won't be checking your email. Learn more
Contact groups
One of our most-requested features is finally here! Now you can send messages to a group instead of having to pick out the individual addresses every time.Learn more
View as HTML
Now you can view Microsoft Office, OpenOffice or .pdf attachments as web pages by clicking the "View as HTML" link instead of downloading. For when you want to see it faster, you're on a mobile device, or you don't want to install software just to view a document. Learn more

Export your Gmail Contacts and save them in a file for back-up or to use in another account or service–great if you're using Gmail's free POP access. Learn more
Auto-save
Saves to ‘Drafts' as you're composing. Never lose a half-written email again.
Get to Gmail from any web page
Download the new Gmail-enabled Google Toolbar. Search your mail or instantly go to your Inbox from any web page with just one click. Learn more
Gmail on Google.com
See your new messages directly from your personalized Google.com homepage.
Google Talk
IM and make free calls through your computer with Google Talk. Your Gmail contacts are even pre-loaded. Learn more
Customized 'From:' addresses
Customize the address on your outgoing messages to display another one of your addresses instead. Learn more
An application for Macs
The Gmail Notifier for Mac OS X even supports plug-in development.
Free POP access and automatic forwarding
Access your mail the way you want to. Download your messages. Read them offline. Use your Blackberry or Outlook or any POP-enabled device. Or forward new messages to an email account you specify. You can even switch to other email services without having to worry about losing access to your messages. Think of it as email portability Learn more
Import Contacts
Move all your contacts from Yahoo! Mail, Outlook, and others to Gmail in just a few clicks. Learn more
Signature options
From the settings page, create a signature that's automatically added to the end of all your outgoing messages. Learn more

Best Top 11 All Time Blogs That You Must Visit

2009-03-19T13:20:00.001-07:00

The Huffington Post

Latest news with style.

Engadget Sounds like Endangered gadgets. However, very cool sites on the newest gadgets around.

TechCrunch
Ultimate Power House of all Techs, Gadgets and more.
Boing Boing

Boing Boing is a weblog of cultural curiosities and interesting technologies. It's very popular around the world.

Gizmodo

Tech, Mods, Gadgets, News.. this is the place to be.

Lifehacker
All the latest geeky, interesting, updates you can possibly imagine.
Ars Technica

Ars Technica specializes in original news and reviews, analysis of technology trends, and expert advice on topics ranging from the most fundamental aspects of technology to the many ways technology is helping us enjoy our world.

Mashable!

Mashable is a leading tech blog focused on Web 2.0 and Social Networking news. With more than 5 million monthly pageviews, Mashable is the most prolific blog reviewing new Web sites and services, publishing breaking news on what’s new on the web.

BloggingStocks
Like the Name suggests, great financial news communicated in a simple easy way.
S Smashing Magazine

we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. a weblog dedicated to designers and web developers.

INTERNET’S BEST FREEWARE SOFTWARE

2009-03-19T08:55:00.001-07:00

TOP FREE UTILITIES THAT YOU MUST HAVE!

The recession is hitting everyone hard and money is tight. That doesn’t mean that can’t get the most out of your computer. There are so many great free applications that can help you do just about anything. I’m going to take a look at 22 applications that I use all the time with wonderful results.

I’m going to identify the free applications that I use in the following categories:

Communication
Internet
Productivity
Multimedia
System Utilities

I have my personal favorites that I’m going to talk about, but those are not your only options. I’ll also list any other viable alternatives that I’m aware of for each category.

Communication

I’m a big fan of Microsoft Outlook, but I have been using Thunderbird on my computer for a while now. It’s not quite as good, but it’s constantly closing the gap. Here are some of my favorite ways to keep in touch for free.

Thunderbird - This is Mozilla’s open source answer to Microsoft Outlook. You can do Email, Contacts, and Calendaring very similarly to Outlook (minus some of the polish). It’s built using the same open, extensible platform as Firefox, so there is a steadily growing collection of extensions to augment it’s functionality. Turbocharge Thunderbird with these plug-ins. Alternatives: Gmail.

Digsby - Simply the best Instant Messenger tool available. You can connect to all of your IM networks (AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Google, ICQ, Jabber, and Facebook ) to let you chat with any of your contacts. That alone makes it valuable, but wait, there’s more: Get real-time updates on your social networks (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn). You can also get updates on your inbox for just about any email account (Gmail, Yahoo, MSN, plus any IMAP and POP3 accounts). Alternatives: If you’re looking for something almost as good, try Pidgin IM or Trillian with a bunch of plug-ins. Meebo (Web Based).

Internet

This is the home of the freebies. There are so many free internet browsers and applications that I could go on all day. Actually, the follow-up article will focus on the best web-based applications.

Firefox - The Granddaddy of all free software. If there were one piece of software that I would just not give up, it’s Firefox. Alternatives: Flock (Firefox variant aimed at media and social networking), Opera (decent alternative, but no extensions), Google Chrome (lean and clean new-kid-on-the-block), Apple Safari (only for testing web development).

Google Earth - Put every inch of the Earth at the tip of your finger. I’m not sure how much anybody "needs" this software, but you know you want it. Stalk your friends, enemies, and ex, then check out the Eifel Tower and Pyramids.

Productivity

Getting things done on your computer can often cost you a pretty penny. While I’m still an advocate of forking over the money for Microsoft Office, there a lot of other areas that you can save money.

Windows Live Writer - I write every one of my blog posts using Live Writer. If you have a blog you really should try this. It handles multiple sites and has tons of extensions to customize it. Alternatives: Raven is a desktop blogging software that is a lighter alternative to WLW. Not light enough? Try the Scribefire extension for Firefox.

Notepad++ - Sure, Windows comes with a text editor built in, but not like Notepad++. You can use the tabbed interface to work on multiple documents at once. There is syntax highlighting for editing code. If I need to do minor edits to code I can open a file, make the changes, and have it closed before Dreamweaver would even begin launching. This is another application with plethora of extensions that allow you to modify it to your heart’s content.

Foxit PDF Reader - Love PDFs, but hate the bloat of Adobe Acrobat? I thought so. Foxit will open your PDF files so fast, you’ll wonder why anyone would ever use Acrobat. Get hours of your life back.

CutePDF Writer - If you need to create PDF files from your documents and don’t want to shell out for Acrobat Pro, then get CutePDF Writer. This installs on your system as a Printer. Then, you can turn any printable information from any application on your computer into a perfect PDF. Put it all together to be a PDF champion.

Multimedia

Here is one of the fields where you can spend your whole paycheck on commercial software. Pick up anything from Adobe, Corel, Pinnacle, etc and you’ll see what I mean. Fear not, there are plenty of ways to view, manage, create, and distribute your media without spending a dime.

Paint.net - If you need to do minor edits to your photos and images that don’t warrant the King’s ransom that Photoshop commands, you should give Paint.net a try. You can do edits that range from simple to complex without spending a dime. Yes, I know there’s a huge Gimp following, but I just like this better. Alternatives: The Gimp do yourself a favor get the Gimpshop version.
VLC - This is a streamed down media player that will play any audio or video format ever created flawlessly. This is a lot like Foxit for your videos. It opens lightning fast and begins playing your files. Light, fast, simple!

Picasa - Manage your photos like a champ. If you have more than 10 photos on your computer, you MUST get Picasa. Organize, search, display, and share your photos in a way that will make you really appreciate your camera. Windows Live Photo Gallery (Reasonable clone of Picasa integrates with Windows Live services well).

iTunes - Yeah I know, there are a bunch of alternatives but, I still just like iTunes. It does just about everything I need very well and the few things it doesn’t do, I just use one of the other options. Alternatives: (Media Monkey, Songbird, Winamp, Miro TV)

DVD Shrink - If you want to make "backup copies" of any of your "legally purchased" DVDs, this is the simplest application out there. Pop in the disk, click "Backup" and go. Then, use DVD Decrypter to burn it to a blank disk. Once you do the simple setup, you can do a two click back up of any DVD. (I hope Netflix doesn’t read this blog.)

System Utilities

Keeping my system healthy and working its best is a never ending challenge. These are some of the tools that I use to help.

CCleaner - Keep your PC squeaky clean with this System Optimization tool. It deletes just about every kind of unnecessary crap from your computer. Temporary files, Cookies and other junk from every browser, Programs running at Startup, Uninstalls software and fixes all kinds of problems in your Registry. Click about five buttons and wait about a minute and your machine is a new person. Alternatives: NCleaner – better in some ways, but worse interface. AdAware and Spybot for spyware removal.

Filezilla - My favorite FTP client. Quick, simple, and easy. FTP from your browser with FireFTP. Not secure enough, try WinSCP for secure FTP. Use Putty for Telnet and SSH access.

Rocket Dock - Do you have Mac Envy? This launching doc is nearly a dead clone of Apple’s dock. You can launch Applications, Folders, Files, and other processes so quickly and easily, you’ll never click the Start button again. Alternatives: Object Dock

7Zip - This WinZip alternative will open just about any archive file format known to man. It’s faster and lighter on resources than any archive tool I’ve used. Alternatives: There are a bunch, here is a list of free winzip alternatives.

TightVNC - Remotely view and control other computers from your desktop. Install the server software on one (remote) computer and then control it with the viewer software from your main computer. Great for helping diagnose computer problems on your family and friend’s computers. Alternatives: UltraVNC and RealVNC have comparable feature sets and decent followings. See this tutorial for Using VNC to remotely control another computer.

uTorrent - The best way to download huge files is with BitTorrent technology. My (current) favorite BitTorrent client is uTorrent. Nothing spectacular, just a solid tool that fills an important role. Alternatives: Azureus is a java based bit torrent client with similar features.

SyncBack Freeware - Very powerful backup program with numerous configuration options including: Backup and Restore of files, Synchronization of files, Zip Compression of backed up files to save space, Back up to FTP servers, Filters for choosing what to back up or ignore. Alternatives: Mozy Backup (web base $5/per month)

AVG Antivirus - Don’t destroy your computer with that garbage that Norton and McAfee are peddling. Those two applications will screw up you computer worse than any virus. AVG Antivirus (free version) protects your computer from viruses, spyware, and heebie-jeebies of all types without bogging down your computer. Alternatives: Antivir and Avast also offer very good free antivirus options

Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V “Mouse Not Captured” Problem and a Simple Fix

2009-03-16T11:42:00.001-07:00

First, very disappointed by Google this time because when you search for “mouse not captuerd for hyper-v” in google there is not even one result that can help you with the problem.

The first hit that comes up is of “John Howards” blog which does not have the fix need to capture the mouse in Windows 2008. It only tells you how to use your keyboard and throw away the mouse. Well, in the 14th century I would have made use of that tip but in this day and time that’s not feasible.

The Problem is that when you install Microsoft Windows 2003 or Microsoft Windows 2008 or Microsoft Vista or XP, you don’t get a mouse from the start. That’s a Hyper-V problem and needs to be fixed. Keep in mind I have tried the KB fixes that most blogs have posted with 0 success rates. Most of the fixes are not available on Microsoft site any longer.

The Integration Services are software packages that improve integration between the virtualization server and the virtual machine. The good example is that the NIC may not work after create the Virtual Machine until you install the Integration Services. Another example is he mouse can't move outside of the virtual machine window except you press Ctrl+Alt_Left Arrow keys. So you have to work with your arrow keys and the Task Manager.

Since your mouse will not be captured in the “Hyper-V” Virtual Environment” you will have to learn to use your keyboard for some basic input/out operations.

The first thing you have to learn is to install Integrated Services Step Disk” in the virtual environment.

Goto “Action” and “click” on Insert Integration Services Setup Disk”

Second thing is you have to learn how to bring up “explorer”.

Click on Action and then click on “Ctrl Alt-Delete” And then click on “Start Task Manager”, as shown below:

Click on “Alt and click the right arrow botton to goto options. Hit the down arrow botton and uncheck “Always On Top”

Another thing to be aware of is what’s the name of the setup file that you have to learn, in this blog I will guide you step by step through all these processes to make sure your mouse starts working.

Now go to ‘File and select “New Task”

Now in the Open, field, type, “d:\” and tab to “Okay” and click enter.

Now explorer will start. Depending on your hardware architecture either choose (tab) amd64 or x86

Then by using the arrow keys inside the folder go and highlight “setup.exe” after which you have to click enter.

This will start the installation process for Integrated services which will make your mouse work after the install. Please reboot the machine after the installation is done.This procedure was for Microsoft Windows 2008 Server. But you can use it for Microsoft XP, Microsoft Windows 2000, or Microsoft Windows 2003.

One Tip worth mentioning is that for Microsoft Windows 2003 burn a copy of Service Pack 2. Install it. And then try installing Integrated Services and it will automatically install all the necessary pieces for you to work with the mouse. Enough support will be installed to make the mouse work.

If you have liked this post please let me know. Thanks.

The Way I See It-

2009-03-15T20:14:00.001-07:00

Brass Monkeys Help In Wars, How?

2009-03-13T09:06:00.001-07:00

It was necessary to keep a good supply of cannon balls
near the cannon in olden men of war. But how to prevent them
from rolling about the deck was the problem, when the vessel heeled with the wind and waves. The best storage method devised was to stack them as a square based pyramid, with one ball on top, resting on four, resting on
nine, which rested on sixteen.
Thus, a supply of 30 cannon balls could be stacked in a
small area right next to the cannon. There was only one
problem -- how to prevent the bottom layer from
sliding/rolling from under the others.
The solution was a metal plate with 16 round indentations.
The plate was called, for reasons unknown, a Monkey. But if this plate
were made of iron, the iron balls and plate would both quickly rust..
The solution to the rusting problem was to make the plate of
brass - hence, Brass Monkeys.
Few landlubbers realize that brass contracts much more and
much faster than iron when chilled. Consequently, when the
temperature dropped too far, the brass indentations would
shrink so much that the iron cannon balls would pop off
of the Brass Monkeys.
Thus, it was quite literally, cold enough to “freeze the
balls off a brass monkey”. And all this time, you thought
that was just a vulgar expression, didn't you?

Suicide bomb blast in Sri Lanka caught on camera- Viewer Discretion is Advised

2009-03-12T10:34:00.001-07:00

Three Great Tools To Install Ubuntu on Windows XP or Windows Vista

2009-03-11T13:19:00.001-07:00

Number One: The Best Possible solution is the VirtualBox from Sun Microsystems. I have used other virtual machines however the ‘power” of this product is mind blowing. I am a well versed “Windows” user and with no background of Ubuntu I was able to install and use it using this product. Here is a screen shot from my installation. You have to have some knowledge of your swap partitions and other simple Linux fundamentals but over all the installation is a breeze. There are absolutely no problems.

VirtualBox is a family of powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). See "About VirtualBox" for an introduction.

Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), Solaris and OpenSolaris, and OpenBSD.

VirtualBox is being actively developed with frequent releases and has an ever growing list of features, supported guest operating systems and platforms it runs on. VirtualBox is a community effort backed by a dedicated company: everyone is encouraged to contribute while Sun ensures the product always meets professional quality criteria.

On this site, you can find sources, binaries, documentation and other resources for VirtualBox. If you are interested in VirtualBox (both as a user, or possibly as a contributor), this website is for you.

Number Two: Wubi is an officially supported Ubuntu installer for Windows users that can bring you to the Linux world with a single click. Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other Windows application, in a simple and safe way. Are you curious about Linux and Ubuntu? Trying them out has never been easier!

Wubi is a disruptive technology and as such it does not fit well with traditional schemes (and sometimes people get confused). Wubi fills the gap between a pure demo (LiveCD or VM) and a real installation. Until today, demo mode and real installation have always been two completely separate setups (even if they come on the same medium), Wubi blurs the difference, like a demo it is very easy and safe to try/install/uninstall. Like a real installation it gives you a dual boot setup with full HW access (read 3D desktop), almost full speed and persistent storage. If you like what you see, and find yourself using Ubuntu a lot, you can "upgrade" to a dedicated partition via LVPM (still in early beta). If you do not like what you see, you can uninstall cleanly and revert the system to its previous state.

Wubi promotes an install-then-try approach which is more captivating than the try-then-install approach of the live CD or VM. The partitioning/bootloader hurdle becomes an optional step and it is deferred until the user has accumulated enough goodwill. Without a dedicated partition the user gives up a bit of performance, some robustness and the ability to hibernate, but he still gets a fully usable set-up, and the transition becomes gradual and smooth.

Also some people do not seem to digest too well that Wubi "requires" Windows. They fear that you might end up needing Windows in order to install and use Linux. Not quite. Our "dependency" on Windows is only for the installer front-end. Once installed, you end up with a dual boot installation that is completely independent of the host OS. The installation simply "sits" inside the host filesystem. Do you know what happens to a Wubi installation if you delete C:\WINDOWS? Absolutely nothing. You can still boot and use Ubuntu. So much for dependency...

As for the Windows front-end (Wubi), that happens to be the most popular one for obvious reasons, but we also have a front-end for Linux (Lubi), and we plan to create a Mac front-end called "Mubi". So what does this "dependency" really boils down to? Simple: we aknowledge that most people already have an OS installed, and we try to leverage that to improve the installation experience.

To begin with we do not have to explain how to change BIOS settings to boot from a CD. Nor to explain what to do with an ISO file. With an executable there is absolutely nothing to explain, but if you want to run an executable, you need an OS.

Second, since we run the installer from a working OS we can detect the settings from a live and working system, therefore we can spare the user several pointless questions and make fairly good guesses. Yes you already have migration-assistant to import the settings (and in fact we do use that), but observing an online system is always better than observing an offline system.

Third, since Wubi sits inside another OS, it can also be uninstalled cleanly. There is no ominous message such as "once you press this button, there is no turning back". We just install. If the user has seconds thoughts, s/he can always restore the system to its previous state.

Well, all that puts us in a fairly unique position. What is the result? The result is that Wubi is probably the first 1-click OS installer ever: enter the password, click "install" and reboot. It does not get any easier than that. First impressions are important, and sporting what can possibly be considered one of the easiest OS installer around does help a lot if you have to fight the stigma of being a "difficult" OS.

Will Wubi replace traditional installers? No. If you already know that you want to use Ubuntu and/or are confident about ISO burning and partitioning, there is not much point in using Wubi at all. Wubi helps when you do not know whether you will end up using Ubuntu and/or you are not confident about ISO burning and partitioning. It's a "niche" market, but one that includes the vast majority of users out there.

So will it change things for Linux? I really hope so. Wubi might end up disrupting the Linux installer scenario, like the introduction of LiveCD did a few years ago'. I would not be too surprised (and quite pleased indeed) if we ended up with Wubi clones popping up in other distros (debian-based distros are already supported by the way). In fact Wubi will be incorporated within Ubuntu in the 8.04 release cycle.

Wubi is Simple

No need to burn a CD. Just run the installer, enter a password for the new account, and click "Install", go grab a coffee, and when you are back, Ubuntu will be ready for you.

Wubi is Safe

You keep Windows as it is, Wubi only adds an extra option to boot into Ubuntu. Wubi does not require you to modify the partitions of your PC, or to use a different bootloader, and does not install special drivers. It works just like any other application. Wubi is spyware and malware free, and being open source, anyone can verify that.

Wubi is Discrete

Wubi keeps most of the files in one folder, and if you do not like it, you can simply uninstall it as any other application.

Wubi is Free

Wubi and Ubuntu cost absolutely nothing (free as in beer), but yet provide a state of the art, fully functional, operating system that does not require any activation and does not impose any restriction on its use (free as in freedom).

Number 3:

Microsoft Virtual PC does not run Ubuntu well. It spits out errors and is probably the worst choice for installing Ubuntu. I tried and failed many times so a word of caution, do not use this for installing Ubuntu. That being said, it lets you create separate virtual machines on your Windows desktop, each of which virtualizes the hardware of a complete physical computer. Use virtual machines to run operating systems such as MS-DOS, Windows, and OS/2. You can run multiple operating systems at once on a single physical computer and switch between them as easily as switching applications—instantly, with a mouse click. Virtual PC is perfect for any scenario in which you need to support multiple operating systems, whether you use it for tech support, legacy application support, training, or just for consolidating physical computers.

The Best House Security System That Won’t Cost You A Penny!

2009-03-11T09:21:00.001-07:00

PUT YOUR CAR KEYS BESIDE YOUR BED AT NIGHT

Tell your spouse, your children, your neighbors, your parents, everyone you run across.

Put your car keys beside your bed at night. If you hear a noise outside your home or someone trying to get in your house, just press the panic button for your car. The alarm will be set off, and the horn will continue to sound until either you turn it off or the car battery dies.

This tip came from a neighborhood watch coordinator. Next time you come home for the night and you start to put your keys away, think of this:

It's a security alarm system that you probably already have and requires no installation. Test it. It will go off from most everywhere inside your house and will keep honking until your battery runs down or until you reset it with the button on the key fob chain. It works if you park in your driveway or garage. If your car alarm goes off when someone is trying to break into your house, odds are the burglar won't stick around... After a few seconds all the neighbors will be looking out their windows to see who is out there and sure enough the criminal won't want that. And remember to carry your keys while walking to your car in a parking lot. The alarm can work the same way there. This is something that should really be shared with everyone. Maybe it could save a life or a crime.

Windows Vista Ultimate “Tiny” Version

2009-03-10T12:15:00.001-07:00

Tiny Vista Ultimate experience edition

The 512Mb RAM memory requirement is reduced to just 256Mb. The requirement of almost 8Gb of disk space is reduced to less than 3Gb.
No product key is needed. Windows Vista is activated upon installation. Windows is fully loaded with all important Windows Updates.
This installation only takes up about 35% of the size of a normal installation of Windows Vista. Many components have been removed from this edition of Windows, but you still have Microsoft's three main programs:
* Internet Explorer 7
* Windows Mail (Formerly "Outlook Express")
* Windows Media Player 11
You also have the new Aero theme in this edition of Windows and the ability to use Windows Update.
There are no services taken out of this special edition of Windows. Only three services have been disabled: Remote Registry, Windows Error Reporting Service, Windows Search.
You cannot do an upgrade installation from this CD, because the upgrade files have been removed. You can only install Windows by booting from the CD and formatting your partition or hard drive.
DirectX DLL Files
Despite Windows Vista being an absolutely massive operating system, it still does not even include DirectX DLL files! What were microsoft thinking? So if you need the DirectX 9 DLL files (d3dx9_24/25/26/27/28/29/30/31/32/33.dll) you can just double click the file in this folder to extract these 10 DLL files to system32. This will keep compatibility with games you might have stored on another drive from a previous installation.
Ethernet Drivers
Despite Windows Vista being an absolutely massive operating system, it still does not even include some Ethernet Drivers! What were microoft thinking? So if your Ethernet card is not working after installing Windows Vista and it needs its driver installing, you can use the Ethernet Driver pack thats included in this folder. Follow the instructions in the ReadMe.txt file. After installing your Ethernet Card, see if your onboard sound is working, IT PROBABLY WON'T BE, it seems microsoft forgot to include Realtek AC97 sound drivers in Windows Vista, this is ridiculous considering almost every motherboard in the world has Realtek AC97 sound! Its almost as if microsoft are trying to annoy people on purpose, they give you a 2.5Gb+ DVD sized Operating System WITHOUT Ethernet Drivers, Sound Drivers or DirectX DLL files.
Release Information:
This folder contains all the detailed information about this Tiny Vista CD:
* FAQ
* How To Install Windows
* Removed Components
* Windows Updates
* Custom Tweaks
How To Install Windows
This unattended version of Windows is very easy to install.
You can only install this edition of Windows onto a formatted partition or hard drive, in other words, you cannot do an upgrade installation from within Windows.
To find out all the information on how to install this edition of Windows, open the experience folder that is on the CD and open the file "2 - How To Install Windows.htm" This guide will show you exactly what to do, with full images of the setup screens.
Custom Tweaks
This edition of Windows is heavily modified for the best possible user experience, with more than 120 registry tweaks, you can see all the details of the changes made by looking at the file "5 - Custom Tweaks.htm" that is in the Release Info folder in the [color="#FF0000"]eXPerience folder[/color] on the CD.
Removed Components
This CD sized release of Windows Vista has had the following components removed using vLite:
Accessories
* Accessibility
* Speech Support
* Welcome Center
Drivers
* Display adapters
* Modems
* Printers
Games
* Game Explorer
* Inbox Games
* Premium Inbox Games
Languages
* Japanese
* Korean
* Simplified Chinese
* Traditional Chinese
Multimedia
* Media Center
* Movie and DVD Maker
* Screensavers
* Wallpapers
* Windows Media Samples
System
* BitLocker Drive Encryption
* Help
* microsoft Agent
* Natural Language
* Security Center
* Tablet PC
* Windows Defender
* Windows Easy Transfer
The ability to upgrade from an older version of Windows has also been removed manually after vLite was used. vLite does not support this at this moment in time, but this was done by removing every file and folder from the "sources" folder on the CD except the two Windows image files "boot.wim" and "install.wim"
Windows Updates
This special eXPerience edition of Windows Vista includes all the important Windows Updates.

http://rapidshare.com/files/148152272/TinyVista_Rev02-ISO.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/147831406/TinyVista_Rev02-ISO.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/148436495/TinyVista_Rev02-ISO.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/147582723/TinyVista_Rev02-ISO.part4.rar

Password: WWW.SENDOWN.COM

Top Internet Products

2009-03-10T11:59:00.001-07:00

1. Twitter

Twitter is the de facto leader of the microblogging scene, a realm usually rife with witty repartee between leading social media consultants and Web 2.0 developers. But when household names like Lance Armstrong, Richard Branson, Al Gore, Shaquille O'Neal, Britney Spears, and politicians across the US started using it, this year, it was clear that our selection as the Best Web LittleCo for 2007 had grown up - and entered the public consciousness.

2. Firefox

February was a great month for Firefox November 2008 marked the fourth birthday for Firefox, arguably one of the most successful open source projects and clearly the most popular Web browser that users have to actually install. In 2008, more and more of the consumer population gravitated to the browser that strives to deliver the Web the right way.

Firefox has continued to grow in popularity throughout 2008, but it was the download day for Firefox 3 that began to truly turn heads. Site crushing traffic to download a Web browser? Believe it. So much traffic, in fact, that it set a world record. That, and a number of other factors, had Firefox reaching a 20% market share in October of this year.

3. IntenseDebate

IntenseDebate - dubbed by RWW as the "the sophisticated blog comment system with the silly name" - provides a commenting add-in for blogs and Web sites that allows users to better manage their profiles and comments across multiple conversations. It also supports OpenID.

In 2008, distributed commenting was still a very young space with no clear leader. But when IntenseDebate appeared as the comment system on US President-elect Barack Obama's change.gov, it stepped into the public eye. Now, thousands of people are using the commenting system. This makes Automattic - the company that manages the development of WordPress - look pretty insightful for acquiring IntenseDebate this year.

4. Hulu

If Hulu - a joint video content sharing venture between NBC Universal and News Corp. - is any indication, traditional mainstream media companies are beginning to get this whole "online thing."

And with good reason. In 2008, Hulu shed its ugly duckling image and came into its own and was projected to earn a staggering $90 million in its first year. How? Again, the true turning point was the US elections. Consumers turned to Hulu as much for the political content, as for the satire - like Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show. Now, consumers are hooked and that affinity for the service is showing no sign of slowing.

5. Ning

Ning is a service designed to help anyone build a social network about anything that interests them. And in 2008, consumers flocked to the site to do exactly that - to the tune of a new social network created every 30 seconds.

As of October 2008, Ning was host to half of a million networks. And it will only continue to grow in the consumer space. Why? Much like Twitter, Ning has begun to attract celebrities who find the service a viable way of interacting with fans. Plus, with its integration of OpenSocial, Ning gains access to tech savvy consumers on a variety of social networks who already understand the dynamic.

The best firefox extensions list:

2009-03-10T04:09:00.001-07:00

The best firefox extensions list:

Blogging:

StumbleUpon - StumbleUpon lets you "channelsurf" the best-reviewed sites on the web. It is a collaborative surfing tool for browsing, reviewing and sharing great sites with like-minded people. This helps you find interesting webpages you wouldn't think to search for.
Clipmarks - With Clipmarks, you can clip the best parts of web pages. Whether it’s a paragraph, sentence, image or video, you can capture just the pieces you want without having to bookmark the entire page.
Sage - Sage is a lightweight RSS and Atom feed aggregator extension for Mozilla Firefox. It's got a lot of what you need and not much of what you don't.
Jeteye - Jeteye is a unique Web-based application and service that is designed for the next generation of enterprise and consumer use of the Web. Jeteye changes how we interact with the web, in an era where communication and social computing are more powerful than ever.
Performancing - Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right in your Firefox browser and lets you post to your blog easily. You can drag and drop formatted text from the page you happen to be browsing, and take notes as well as post to your blog.
TorrentBar - BitTorrent File Search Toolbar for Firefox. Allows to search numerous sites in a matter of minutes for needed torrent files.
Wizz RSS News Reader - A fairly good RSS and Atom news reader.
MeasureIt - Draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage.
Show MyIP - Displays your current IP address. If you have a static IP (Internet Protocol) address, this number will stay the same each time you visit. If you have a dynamic IP, the number will change each time you log on to the internet (or your ISP assigns a new IP).
NewsFox - RSS/Atom News Reader.

Developer Tools:

FireFTP - FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers.
IE Tab - IE Tab - an extension from Taiwan, features: Embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox.
Web Developer - Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.
Firebug - Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.
Greasemonkey - Allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript.
Tab Mix Plus - Tab Mix Plus enhances Firefox's tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. It also includes a full-featured session manager with crash recovery that can save and restore combinations of opened tabs and windows.
Image Zoom - Easily zoom in, zoom out, fit image to screen or set custom zoom on individual images within a web page. All this can be done by using the context menu or a combination of mouse buttons and scroll wheel. Handy to see the finer details of smaller pics or to make very large pics fit within your screen.
ColorZilla - Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies.
IE View - Lets you load pages in IE with a single right-click, or mark certain sites to *always* load in IE. Useful for incompatible pages, or cross-browser testing.
iMacros - Automate your web browser. Record and replay repetitious work.

Editing and Forms:

Performancing - Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right in your Firefox browser and lets you post to your blog easily. You can drag and drop formatted text from the page you happen to be browsing, and take notes as well as post to your blog.
Gmail Skins - Skins and other extra features for Gmail.
InFormEnter - InFormEnter adds a small, clickable icon next to every input field in a web form, from where you can select the item to be inserted - no typing required. You can configure it to display your frequently used information such as name, email, address and whatever else you want to be available from the form menu.
Snipshot - Edit any picture on the web with one right-click. The picture will be brought into the online image editor Snipshot where you can crop, resize, rotate or recolor it, then save it into a variety of formats (JPG, GIF, PNG, PDF) or to Flickr or a free image host. For faster workflow, you can optionally enhance the image as it enters Snipshot or resize it to fit a set of custom dimensions.
JSView - All browsers include a "View Source" option, but none of them offer the ability to view the source code of external files. Most websites store their javascripts and style sheets in external files and then link to them within a web page's source code. Previously if you wanted to view the source code of an external javascript/css you would have to manually look through the source code to find the url and then type that into your browser.
Password Exporter - This extension allows you to export and import your saved passwords and rejected sites between computers. Your passwords will be exported to an XML or CSV file and can be encrypted.
AI Roboform Toolbar - Add RoboForm Toolbar to Firefox.
DejaClick - DéjàClick is a web recorder and Super Bookmark utility designed exclusively for Firefox. You can record and bookmark your browser activities, then with a single click, replay the entire sequence all over again. Got a package or an order you want to track? Have a favorite category at an online auction site? Tired of going through the steps to log into your e-mail? Use DéjàClick by AlertSite to automatically access any final URL. Also works great for quickly producing web application test scripts.
Unofficial Myspace Toolbar - Automatically login to Myspace, instantly access your messages, view hidden comments, create styled comments/bulletins and more with this intuitive and customizable toolbar!
FireFoxMenuButtons - Adds 41 new Buttons (duplicating of menu strings) from Firefox Menu on the Toolbar!

Image Browsing:

FlashGot - Download one link, selected links or all the links of a page together at the maximum speed with a single click, using the most popular, lightweight and reliable external download managers.
DownThemAll - The first and only download manager/accelerator built inside Firefox!
Cooliris Previews - Cooliris Previews for Firefox gives you the power to browse faster and send links instantly.
Gspace - This extension allows you to use your Gmail Space (2.8 GB and growing) for file storage. It acts as an online drive, so you can upload files from your hard drive and access them from every Internet capable system.
Firefox Companion for Kodak EasyShare Gallery - Organizing and sharing your pictures is easier than ever with Firefox Companion for Kodak EasyShare Gallery. Upload photos directly to your Kodak EasyShare Gallery, all within your browser. Drag, drop and arrange pictures adding photo titles, and create albums by multi-selecting photos - all of this without interrupting your Internet browsing. Co-developed by Kodak, it also includes other popular photo services.
BlueOrganizer - The blueorganizer is smart browsing and personalization technology for Firefox. It makes the browser aware of everyday objects like books, movies, wines, restaurants and much more. The blueorganizer helps you automatically collect these object from many popular sites, manage them and instantly find related information.
DownloadHelper - DownloadHelper is a tool for web content extraction. Its purpose is to capture video and image files from many sites.
Firefox Showcase - Showcase provides a new way to manage your Firefox tabs and windows by showing them as thumbnails in a single window, tab or sidebar. Includes a find bar that will filter the thumbnails, and the capability to select the thumbnails in the same way you would select files in your system.
Image Zoom - Adds zoom functionality for images.
Send 2 Cellphone - Send2Cellphone provides a simple way to send images from web pages directly to mobile phones via free Send2Cellphone service. Simply right click any image on any web page and select "Send2Cellphone" from the context menu. After transferring the picture to your cell phone you can view it, use it as a wallpaper or send to a friend via MMS.

Message Reading:

Cooliris Previews - Cooliris Previews for Firefox gives you the power to browse faster and send links instantly.
Mouse Gestures - Allows you to execute common commands (like page forward/backward, close tab, new tab) by mouse gestures drawn over the current webpage, without reaching for the toolbar or the keyboard.
Gmail Manager - Allows you to manage multiple Gmail accounts and receive new mail notifications. Displays your account details including unread messages, saved drafts, spam messages, labels with new mail, space used, and new mail snippets.
ReminderFox - ReminderFox is an extension that displays and manages lists of date-based reminders and ToDo's. ReminderFox does not seek to be a full-fledged calendar system. In fact, the target audience is anybody that simply wants to remember important dates (birthdays, anniversaries, etc) without having to run a fat calendar application.
NewsFox - RSS/Atom News Reader.
Yahoo! Mail Notifier - This extension notifies you when new messages arrive in your Yahoo mailbox.
Gmail Skins - Skins and other extra features for Gmail.
WOT - WOT helps you avoid disingenuous Internet content by allowing you to learn from others' experiences. WOT shows you website reputations on your browser, telling you how much other users trust a website. This helps you make better decisions while browsing and avoid phishing, malware, and other types of fraud. Reputations can also be added to web search results, Gmail, Wikipedia, and other selected sites.
Temporary Inbox - This extension generates random disposable email addresses. You can use these email addresses for registration in forums, adult sites or whereever.
infoRSS - Displays RSS, Atom, parsed HTML and NNTP feed in a scrolling area the status bar. Compatible with podcasting RSS which can be downloaded directly.
It's also a good Gmail notifier.

News Reading:

Forecastfox - Get international weather forecasts from AccuWeather.com, and display it in any toolbar or statusbar with this highly customizable and unobtrusive extension.
Cooliris Previews - Cooliris Previews for Firefox gives you the power to browse faster and send links instantly.
Sage - Sage is a lightweight RSS and Atom feed aggregator extension for Mozilla Firefox. It's got a lot of what you need and not much of what you don't.
BlueOrganizer - The blueorganizer is smart browsing and personalization technology for Firefox. It makes the browser aware of everyday objects like books, movies, wines, restaurants and much more. The blueorganizer helps you automatically collect these object from many popular sites, manage them and instantly find related information.
TorrentBar - BitTorrent File Search Toolbar for Firefox. Allows to search numerous sites in a matter of minutes for needed torrent files.
Wizz RSS News Reader - A fairly good RSS and Atom news reader.
ReminderFox - ReminderFox is an extension that displays and manages lists of date-based reminders and ToDo's. ReminderFox does not seek to be a full-fledged calendar system. In fact, the target audience is anybody that simply wants to remember important dates (birthdays, anniversaries, etc) without having to run a fat calendar application.
Forecastfox Enhanced - Enhanced version of the popular Forecastfox extension (forecastfox.mozdev.org) by Jon Stritar and Richard Klien. This adds 12 improved radar images for US locations and 4 for international locations and the ability to supply a URL to use images from other sites.
NewsFox - RSS/Atom News Reader.
1-ClickWeather - Because weather is important to you everyday... weather.com offers you instant local weather conditions, alerts, radar in motion, satellite maps, and forecasts all within your Firefox browser.

Tabbed Browsing:

IE Tab - IE Tab - an extension from Taiwan, features: Embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox. This is a great tool for web developers, since you can easily see how your webpage displayed in IE with just one click and then switch back to Firefox.
Tab Mix Plus - Tab Mix Plus enhances Firefox's tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. It also includes a full-featured session manager with crash recovery that can save and restore combinations of opened tabs and windows.
Firefox Showcase - Showcase provides a new way to manage your Firefox tabs and windows by showing them as thumbnails in a single window, tab or sidebar. Includes a find bar that will filter the thumbnails, and the capability to select the thumbnails in the same way you would select files in your system.
Colorful Tabs - The most beautiful yet the simplest add-on that makes a strong colorful appeal. Colors every tab in a different color and makes them easy to distinguish while beautifying the overall appearance of the interface.
Session Manager - Session Manager saves and restores the state of all windows - either when you want it or automatically at startup and after crashes. Additionally it offers you to reopen (accidentally) closed windows and tabs. If you're afraid of losing data while browsing - this extension allows you to relax.
Tabbrowser Preferences - Enables enhanced control for some aspects of tabbed browsing.
Advanced Dork - Advanced Dork: gives quick access to Google's Advanced Operators directly from the context menu.
ChromaTabs - Colors browser tabs based on the site loaded. For example, visiting mozilla.org will make the tab blue, and cnn.com will make the tab green.
Tab Catalog - Shows thumbnail-style catalog of tabs.
Tab Control - Take control of your tabs!

XUL Applications:

FireFTP - FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers.
FoxyTunes - Do you listen to Music while surfing the Web? Now you can control your favorite media player without ever leaving the browser and more.
DownThemAll - DownThemAll is all you can desire from a download manager: it features an advanced accelerator that increases speed up to 400% and it allows you to pause and resume downloads at any time!
Gspace - This extension allows you to use your Gmail Space (2.8 GB and growing) for file storage. It acts as an online drive, so you can upload files from your hard drive and access them from every Internet capable system. The interface will make your Gmail account look like a FTP host.
ChatZilla - A clean, easy to use and highly extensible Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client.
Jeteye - Jeteye is a unique Web-based application and service that is designed for the next generation of enterprise and consumer use of the Web. Jeteye changes how we interact with the web, in an era where communication and social computing are more powerful than ever.
Performancing - Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right in your Firefox browser and lets you post to your blog easily. You can drag and drop formatted text from the page you happen to be browsing, and take notes as well as post to your blog.
AllPeers - Share your files privately and securely. Chat with your friends.
Wizz RSS News Reader - A fairly good RSS and Atom news reader.
ReminderFox - ReminderFox is an extension that displays and manages lists of date-based reminders and ToDo's. ReminderFox does not seek to be a full-fledged calendar system. In fact, the target audience is anybody that simply wants to remember important dates (birthdays, anniversaries, etc) without having to run a fat calendar application.

Bookmarks:

StumbleUpon - StumbleUpon lets you "channelsurf" the best-reviewed sites on the web. It is a collaborative surfing tool for browsing, reviewing and sharing great sites with like-minded people. This helps you find interesting webpages you wouldn't think to search for.
Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer - If you use Firefox on more than one computer, you'll want Foxmarks. Install Foxmarks on each computer, and it will work silently in the background to keep your bookmarks synchronized. As a bonus, log in to my.foxmarks.com from any computer anywhere to access your bookmarks.
del.icio.us Bookmarks - This extension integrates your browser with del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/), the leading social bookmarking service on the Web. It does this by augmenting the bookmarking functionality in Firefox with an enhanced experience.
Clipmarks - With Clipmarks, you can clip the best parts of web pages. Whether it’s a paragraph, sentence, image or video, you can capture just the pieces you want without having to bookmark the entire page.
Tab Mix Plus - Tab Mix Plus enhances Firefox's tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. It also includes a full-featured session manager with crash recovery that can save and restore combinations of opened tabs and windows.
Yoono - Yoono instantly suggests similar sites, blog notes and people sharing the same interests while you are surfing, for each page you open. Zero effort required - no more tagging, typing keywords or changing interface. Let Yoono bring you the best that others have discovered.
BlueOrganizer - The blueorganizer is smart browsing and personalization technology for Firefox. It makes the browser aware of everyday objects like books, movies, wines, restaurants and much more. The blueorganizer helps you automatically collect these object from many popular sites, manage them and instantly find related information.
Jeteye - Jeteye is a unique Web-based application and service that is designed for the next generation of enterprise and consumer use of the Web. Jeteye changes how we interact with the web, in an era where communication and social computing are more powerful than ever.
Firefox Showcase - Showcase provides a new way to manage your Firefox tabs and windows by showing them as thumbnails in a single window, tab or sidebar. Includes a find bar that will filter the thumbnails, and the capability to select the thumbnails in the same way you would select files in your system.
iMacros - Automate your web browser. Record and replay repetitious work.

Entertainment:

FoxyTunes - Do you listen to Music while surfing the Web? Now you can control your favorite media player without ever leaving the browser and more.
StumbleUpon - StumbleUpon lets you "channelsurf" the best-reviewed sites on the web. It is a collaborative surfing tool for browsing, reviewing and sharing great sites with like-minded people. This helps you find interesting webpages you wouldn't think to search for.
Gspace - This extension allows you to use your Gmail Space (2.8 GB and growing) for file storage. It acts as an online drive, so you can upload files from your hard drive and access them from every Internet capable system.
BlueOrganizer - The blueorganizer is smart browsing and personalization technology for Firefox. It makes the browser aware of everyday objects like books, movies, wines, restaurants and much more. The blueorganizer helps you automatically collect these object from many popular sites, manage them and instantly find related information.
Fast Video Download - Fast Video Download can save embedded video files from video-hosting servers.
MediaPlayerConnectivity - Allow you to launch embed video of website in an external application with a simple click.
Torrent Finder Toolbar - Torrent Finder Toolbar is a torrent search toolbar for Firefox, which enables users to search over 100 top torrent sites and trackers from their Firefox browser the same way they used to search using http://torrent-finder.com form. It allows users to search a single site, search all sites on one page, or open the sites in Firefox tabs.
TorrentBar - BitTorrent File Search Toolbar for Firefox. Allows to search numerous sites in a matter of minutes for needed torrent files.
FoxGame - Enhance user experience with O-game (now works in every o-game version)
Adds a lot of features to the webgame O-game. It also integrates Database features inside the game. O-Game, is a real-time spacial browser game.
Wizz RSS News Reader - A fairly good RSS and Atom news reader.

Kiosk Browsing:

Gspace - This extension allows you to use your Gmail Space (2.8 GB and growing) for file storage. It acts as an online drive, so you can upload files from your hard drive and access them from every Internet capable system.
All-in-One Sidebar - All-in-One Sidebar (AiOS) is a sidebar control, inspired by Opera's. Click on the left edge of your browser window to open the sidebar and get easy access to all your panels. It lets you quickly switch between sidebar panels, view dialog windows such as downloads, extensions, and more in the sidebar, or view source or websites in the sidebar.
Dictionary Tooltip - Press ctrl+shift+D (or) double-click (or) right-click after selecting a word to see its meaning. This extension is ideal for those who doesn't like to switch their window to see the meaning of a word.
FireFoxMenuButtons - Adds 41 new Buttons (duplicating of menu strings) from Firefox Menu on the Toolbar! Look for this buttons (after installing) on the "Customize toolbar" (Menu/View/Toolbars/Customize...).
Public Fox - Tired of cleaning stuff people download? Use this to limit file downloading. Prevent browser changes, block unwanted Web Sites.
Firefox Google Bookmarks - Creates a menu to access google bookmarks from any computer. Needs Google Account to use this extension.
Personal Menu - Feel tired of the conservative menus, and have tried to put them into a single menu but never want to waste time on one more click?
Full Fullscreen - Hides remaining toolbars that the normal fullscreen functionality does not. Hiding the tab bar, as well as starting up on fullscreen, are configurable from the settings dialog. Licensed under MPL.
gladder - Get over Great Firewall with Great Ladder!
R-kiosk - Real Kiosk is a Firefox 2.0 extension that defaults to full screen, disables all menus, toolbars, key commands and right button menus. Alt+Home still takes you home.

Miscellaneous:

Adblock Plus - Ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page? Install Adblock Plus now and get rid of them. Right-click on a banner and choose "Adblock" from the context menu - the banner won't be downloaded again.
NoScript - Winner of the "2006 PC World World Class Award", this tool provides extra protection to your Firefox. It allows JavaScript, Java and other executable content to run only from trusted domains of your choice, e.g. your home-banking web site.
Forecastfox - Get international weather forecasts from AccuWeather.com, and display it in any toolbar or statusbar with this highly customizable and unobtrusive extension.
IE Tab - Embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox. This is a great tool for web developers, since you can easily see how your webpage displayed in IE with just one click and then switch back to Firefox.
FoxyTunes - Do you listen to Music while surfing the Web? Now you can control your favorite media player without ever leaving the browser and more.
Fasterfox - Fasterfox allows you to tweak many network and rendering settings such as simultaneous connections, pipelining, cache, DNS cache, and initial paint delay.
StumbleUpon - StumbleUpon lets you "channelsurf" the best-reviewed sites on the web. It is a collaborative surfing tool for browsing, reviewing and sharing great sites with like-minded people. This helps you find interesting webpages you wouldn't think to search for.
Cooliris Previews - Cooliris Previews for Firefox gives you the power to browse faster and send links instantly.
Map+ - View a map of a selected address in Firefox without changing windows or tabs using the right click command.
Clipmarks - With Clipmarks, you can clip the best parts of web pages. Whether it’s a paragraph, sentence, image or video, you can capture just the pieces you want without having to bookmark the entire page.

Privacy and Security:

NoScript - Winner of the "2006 PC World World Class Award", this tool provides extra protection to your Firefox. It allows JavaScript, Java and other executable content to run only from trusted domains of your choice, e.g. your home-banking web site.
Fasterfox - Fasterfox allows you to tweak many network and rendering settings such as simultaneous connections, pipelining, cache, DNS cache, and initial paint delay.
Cooliris Previews - Cooliris Previews for Firefox gives you the power to browse faster and send links instantly.
Torbutton - Torbutton provides a button to easily enable or disable the browser's use of Tor.
Flashblock - Never be annoyed by a Flash animation again! Blocks Flash so it won't get in your way, but if you want to see it, just click on it.
FoxyProxy - FoxyProxy is an advanced proxy management tool that completely replaces Firefox's proxy configuration.
SwitchProxy Tool - SwitchProxy lets you manage and switch between multiple proxy configurations
quickly and easily. You can also use it as an anonymizer to protect your
computer from prying eyes.
iMacros - Automate your web browser. Record and replay repetitious work.
Firefox Extension Backup Extension - FEBE allows you to quickly and easily backup your Firefox extensions. In fact, it goes beyond just backing up - it will actually rebuild your extensions individually into installable .xpi files. Now you can easily synchronize your office and home browsers.
CustomizeGoogle - CustomizeGoogle is a Firefox extension that enhance Google search results by adding extra information (like links to Yahoo, Ask.com, MSN etc) and removing unwanted information (like ads and spam).

Web Annoyances:

Adblock Plus - Ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page? Install Adblock Plus now and get rid of them.
NoScript - Winner of the "2006 PC World World Class Award", this tool provides extra protection to your Firefox. It allows JavaScript, Java and other executable content to run only from trusted domains of your choice, e.g. your home-banking web site.
IE Tab - Embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox. This is a great tool for web developers, since you can easily see how your webpage displayed in IE with just one click and then switch back to Firefox.
Fasterfox - Fasterfox allows you to tweak many network and rendering settings such as simultaneous connections, pipelining, cache, DNS cache, and initial paint delay.
Greasemonkey - Allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript.
Cooliris Previews - Cooliris Previews for Firefox gives you the power to browse faster and send links instantly.
Tab Mix Plus - Tab Mix Plus enhances Firefox's tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. It also includes a full-featured session manager with crash recovery that can save and restore combinations of opened tabs and windows.
PDF Download - Allows to choose if you want to view a PDF file inside the browser (as PDF or HTML), if you want to view it outside Firefox with your default or custom PDF reader, or if you want to download it!
Gspace - This extension allows you to use your Gmail Space (2.8 GB and growing) for file storage. It acts as an online drive, so you can upload files from your hard drive and access them from every Internet capable system.
BlueOrganizer - The blueorganizer is smart browsing and personalization technology for Firefox. It makes the browser aware of everyday objects like books, movies, wines, restaurants and much more. The blueorganizer helps you automatically collect these object from many popular sites, manage them and instantly find related information.

Contacts:

JAJAH - Web-Activated Telephony - The JAJAH extension for Firefox integrates call functionality into your browser. Phone numbers on web pages are automatically detected and highlighted. When clicked, JAJAH initiates a phone call from your phone - landline or mobile - to the desired destination.
LinkedIn Companion - LinkedIn is an online network of more than 7.5 million experienced professionals. LinkedIn helps you be more effective in your daily work and opens doors to opportunities by helping you develop and manage your network of business contacts.
ReminderFox - ReminderFox is an extension that displays and manages lists of date-based reminders and ToDo's. ReminderFox does not seek to be a full-fledged calendar system. In fact, the target audience is anybody that simply wants to remember important dates (birthdays, anniversaries, etc) without having to run a fat calendar application.
Email This - Email This! (formerly known as GMail This!) will send your recipient the link, title, & highlighted text of the page you are viewing using GMail, Yahoo, and Stand-Alone Mail Clients like Outlook Express, Thunderbird, & More!
FireFoxMenuButtons - Adds 41 new Buttons (duplicating of menu strings) from Firefox Menu on the Toolbar! Look for this buttons (after installing) on the "Customize toolbar" (Menu/View/Toolbars/Customize...).
GTDGmail - GTDGmail discreetly integrates into Gmail making it even more suitable as a GTD tool.
Facebook Toolbar - Integrate your Facebook life into your browser.
WataCrackaz AutoSMS - Watacrackaz AutoSMS toolbar. Send and receive SMS text messages to and from cellphones around the world.
Skype Sidebar - Skype Sidebar allows you to call, add, find, chat, and voice mail other contacts without even leaving your browser. Skype Sidebar lets you see the status of your contacts and quickly chat with them. It saves you time, allows you to quickly send files, and also view contacts information. You can even start conference calls. You can customize the width of the Skype object.
SMS Send - ABC SMS Send is a toolbar that allows you to send SMS text messages to over 170 countries.

Download Tools:

Download Statusbar - View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar - without the download window getting in the way of your web browsing.
FlashGot - Download one link, selected links or all the links of a page together at the maximum speed with a single click, using the most popular, lightweight and reliable external download managers.
VideoDownloader - Download videos from Youtube, Google, Metacafe, iFilm, Dailymotion, Pornotube... and other 60+ video sites! And all embedded objects on a webpage (movies, mp3s, flash, quicktime, etc).
FireFTP - FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers.
DownThemAll - The first and only download manager/accelerator built inside Firefox!
PDF Download - Allows to choose if you want to view a PDF file inside the browser (as PDF or HTML), if you want to view it outside Firefox with your default or custom PDF reader, or if you want to download it!
Media Pirate - The video downloader - More and more websites publish their videos in those neat flash players. But if you want to download a video there is no download link. This doesn't mean that you can't download it. Media Pirate creates a download link for you!
Gspace - This extension allows you to use your Gmail Space (2.8 GB and growing) for file storage. It acts as an online drive, so you can upload files from your hard drive and access them from every Internet capable system.
Firefox Companion for Kodak EasyShare Gallery - Organizing and sharing your pictures is easier than ever with Firefox Companion for Kodak EasyShare Gallery. Upload photos directly to your Kodak EasyShare Gallery, all within your browser. Drag, drop and arrange pictures adding photo titles, and create albums by multi-selecting photos - all of this without interrupting your Internet browsing.

Humor:

Tab Effect - Add effects when current tab is changed.
Splash - Adds a splash screen to most Mozilla and Mozilla Based products.
Firefox Google Bookmarks - Creates a menu to access google bookmarks from any computer. Needs Google Account to use this extension.
President Bush Countdown - A timer that counts down the number of days remaining in George W. Bush's term as President of the United States. Clicking on the countdown shows a more detailed timer and enables people to air their grievances on newprez.com. An icon shows when there is a new topic for discussion or a vote.
Usage Counter - Tells you how much time you have spent using Firefox and browsing sites. (Previously known as Wasted Time Counter).
Bork Bork Bork - View web pages or mail as spoken by the Swedish Chef like this: "Feeoo veb peges oor meeel es spukee by zee Svedeesh Cheff."
Anglais - This extension provides proverbs and jokes to better learn English.
STOP! Hammer Time - Adds 'STOP! Hammer Time!' functionality to Firefox - Simply go to "view -> toolbars -> customize" and swap your stop button for the 'STOP! Hammer Time!' button. Now you can hear MC Hammer whenever a page needs stopping!
Sun Cult - Worldwide Sunrise, Sunset, Twilight, Moonrise and Moonset Times.
ghostfox - Stylises Firefox into Ghostzilla (The Invisible Browser) style. Move your mouse away and firefox disappears. Then move it towards the left edge of the screen, back to the right and again to the left and voila - firefox is back again, discretely blended with ur original application to appear like a part of it.

Navigation:

IE Tab - Embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox. This is a great tool for web developers, since you can easily see how your webpage displayed in IE with just one click and then switch back to Firefox.
Fasterfox - Fasterfox allows you to tweak many network and rendering settings such as simultaneous connections, pipelining, cache, DNS cache, and initial paint delay.
StumbleUpon - StumbleUpon lets you "channelsurf" the best-reviewed sites on the web. It is a collaborative surfing tool for browsing, reviewing and sharing great sites with like-minded people. This helps you find interesting webpages you wouldn't think to search for.
Map+ - View a map of a selected address in Firefox without changing windows or tabs using the right click command.
Tab Mix Plus - Tab Mix Plus enhances Firefox's tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. It also includes a full-featured session manager with crash recovery that can save and restore combinations of opened tabs and windows.
Yoono - Yoono instantly suggests similar sites, blog notes and people sharing the same interests while you are surfing, for each page you open. Zero effort required - no more tagging, typing keywords or changing interface. Let Yoono bring you the best that others have discovered.
PDF Download - Allows to choose if you want to view a PDF file inside the browser (as PDF or HTML), if you want to view it outside Firefox with your default or custom PDF reader, or if you want to download it!
BlueOrganizer - The blueorganizer is smart browsing and personalization technology for Firefox. It makes the browser aware of everyday objects like books, movies, wines, restaurants and much more. The blueorganizer helps you automatically collect these object from many popular sites, manage them and instantly find related information.
Firefox Showcase - Showcase provides a new way to manage your Firefox tabs and windows by showing them as thumbnails in a single window, tab or sidebar. Includes a find bar that will filter the thumbnails, and the capability to select the thumbnails in the same way you would select files in your system.
Mouse Gestures - Allows you to execute common commands (like page forward/backward, close tab, new tab) by mouse gestures drawn over the current webpage, without reaching for the toolbar or the keyboard.

Website Integration:

VideoDownloader - Download videos from Youtube, Google, Metacafe, iFilm, Dailymotion, Pornotube... and other 60+ video sites! And all embedded objects on a webpage (movies, mp3s, flash, quicktime, etc).
StumbleUpon - StumbleUpon lets you "channelsurf" the best-reviewed sites on the web. It is a collaborative surfing tool for browsing, reviewing and sharing great sites with like-minded people. This helps you find interesting webpages you wouldn't think to search for.
del.icio.us Bookmarks - This extension integrates your browser with del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/), the leading social bookmarking service on the Web. It does this by augmenting the bookmarking functionality in Firefox with an enhanced experience.
Greasemonkey - Allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript.
Yoono - Yoono instantly suggests similar sites, blog notes and people sharing the same interests while you are surfing, for each page you open. Zero effort required - no more tagging, typing keywords or changing interface.
Firefox Companion for Kodak EasyShare Gallery - Organizing and sharing your pictures is easier than ever with Firefox Companion for Kodak EasyShare Gallery. Upload photos directly to your Kodak EasyShare Gallery, all within your browser. Drag, drop and arrange pictures adding photo titles, and create albums by multi-selecting photos - all of this without interrupting your Internet browsing.
DownloadHelper - DownloadHelper is a tool for web content extraction. Its purpose is to capture video and image files from many sites.
Performancing - Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right in your Firefox browser and lets you post to your blog easily. You can drag and drop formatted text from the page you happen to be browsing, and take notes as well as post to your blog.
LinkedIn Companion - LinkedIn is an online network of more than 7.5 million experienced professionals. LinkedIn helps you be more effective in your daily work and opens doors to opportunities by helping you develop and manage your network of business contacts.
Fast Video Download - Fast Video Download can save embedded video files from video-hosting servers.

2009-03-10T04:03:00.001-07:00

15 Most Useful Productivity Tips for Windows Users

Our pursuit of increased productivity is endless. Right when you think that you are at your peak productivity level, new ideas or technologies pop out of nowhere and force you to reconsider your process.
Listen, no matter how good things are, there are always things that can be tweaked to perform better. Take the PC for example. Out of the box, a Windows PC can be very unproductive since most of the applications that come pre-installed aren't very functional. In this post, I'll show typical Windows users how they can double or even triple their productivity.

Reduce the Number of Auto-starting Programs
As your PC ages, it tends to get filled with a lot of auto-starting programs. These programs may be things you do indeed use a lot, but do they need to be started every time you boot your PC? You can remove unnecessary programs and services from starting-up automatically by downloading an app such as RevoUninstaller. RevoUnintaller is great for doing this because it tells you if the application is critical to the system and if it's safe to disable.
Configure Windows Updates Properly
There's one very annoying thing about Windows Update. After it has downloaded the latest patches and fixes, it will constantly send up pop-up reminders asking you to restart your PC. You not only lose time clicking the 'Restart Later' button, but if you accidentally press the 'Restart Now' button or if it restarts your PC automatically, you can loose valuable data.
To disable this behavior, right-click on 'My Computer', go to the 'Automatic Updates' tab, and select the 2nd option: 'Download updates for me, but let me choose when to install them'. Click 'OK' and you're done.
Get Mozilla Firefox
Firefox is the best browser, period. It's one of the fastest browsers and it's limitlessly customizable. If you don't use Firefox as your browser, you're not maximizing your output. Firefox has a lot of plugins but these two posts will point you to the best ones:
- 25 Must Have Firefox Plugins for Bloggers
- 50 Best Firefox Extensions for Power Surfing
Learn Keyboard Shortcuts
Most of the time it's much faster to navigate Windows with a keyboard than with a mouse. This is especially true with applications such as your browser and your word processor. Learn keyboard shortcuts and you'll be saving a lot of time everyday.
Get Digsby
You probably have at least 3 instant messaging clients running on your PC at this moment. In addition to it being absolutely painful to search three services for someone's name, it's wasting a ton of time. The solution to your woes is Digsby. Digsby supports AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber. It even supports Facebook Chat! So now you can manage your email and social networking accounts right from the window. To keep things under control, it features tabbed conversation windows. What more could you ask for?
Declutter and Organize Your Desktop
Clutter saps productivity. A clean and organized desktop will definitely make your more productive as you won't have to sift through your collection of 91 desktop shortcuts. Remove the shortcuts to apps you don't use regularly.
Use MemoKeys
Some of you might have heard of AutoHotKey and know that is a way to assign key strokes to actions. MemoKeys is similar, just a lot easier to use and configure. It saves you time by letting you call up commonly used text with keystroke combos.
Uninstall Unneeded Software
I'm sure your PC has lots and lots of programs that are just lying there, rotting away. Uninstall them! Removing the clutter from your PC will help you function better and get rid of distractions.
Get RoboForm
RoboForm is a must-have utility that stores your login info for every site, fills-in forms automatically, and has a random password generator. It's very useful as it saves the time you spend filling in forms, searching for passwords, and trying to remember all your user ids and passwords. It's not freeware but you can use the code GOOG1 to get $6 off.
Use VLC Media Player
Windows Media Player isn't a good media player as it requires you to install codecs to play the more obscure formats. For this reason, VLC Media Player is a godsend as it can play virtually any media file you throw at it, including DVDs, CDs, and various streaming protocols.
Automate PC Maintenance Tasks
Doing things such as defragging your hard disk, running a virus/spyware scan, and backing-up your files manually can be cumbersome and time consuming. Instead, use Windows' 'Scheduled Tasks'. Some apps also have built-in schedulers available. A more intuitive utility to do this is WakeupOnStandBy.
Use RadarSync to Automatically Update Programs and Drivers
RadarSync can easily update most of your programs and drivers in one click. The premium version of RadarSync also allows you to schedule a scan for checking updates for your programs. A nice alternative to it is the FileHippo Update Checker.
Organize Your Most Visited Programs & Folders in Start Menu
For quick two-click access to your most visited programs and folder, I suggest you add them to the start menu. To reduce start menu clutter, I also suggest you change the number of most-frequented programs that Windows automatically displays in the Start Menu to 0. You can do this by right-clicking on the start button, make sure the radio box beside 'Start menu' is selected, and click 'Customize'. You'll find the setting I mentioned under 'Programs'.
Organize Your Most Visited Programs & Folders in the QuickStart Menu
There's one more way you can gain easy two-click access to your most-visited programs: through the QuickStart bar.
Use Docks
A Mac-like dock can make it very easy to open frequented apps, and it's a great alternative to using desktop shortcuts to launch stuff. The two best dock programs in the market are RocketDock and ObjectDock.

I can assure you that if you follow all of these tips that you'll become more productive by a few hundred percentage points; at least I did. Improving your productivity isn't about reading articles; it's about reading articles and taking action soon afterwards. Go, take action!

Don’t Hunt For Torrents, Until You Read This Post- PROTECT YOURSELF FROM VIRSES WITHOUT ANY VIRUS SOFTWARE, GUARNTEED!

2009-03-09T09:51:00.001-07:00

Everyone knows about torrent files, and most of us search for files we need using the Torrent technology.

First of all, I am not advocating using Torrents to download copyright material, however, a lot of sites, for example, Open Office, Ubuntu, are using Torrent technology to promote downloading of their files. Particularly large iso files.

There’s nothing wrong with downloading Torrents as long as you admit and adhere and safeguard yourself against the potential dangers in downloading files from rogue or popular download “Torrent” sites.

These sites include: (but not limited to: )

1. Isohunt

2. Mininova

3. BTjunkie

4. Demonoid

5. The Pirate Bay

6. BiteNova

90% of users who have used these sites agree that at some point or the other HAVE infected themselves from a virus from these sites just by browsing these sites. Not even downloading a virus infected file. Why, is that one might ask? The answer is that virus/spyware software utilize java, or java script. A lot of programs like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, uses javascript (and tons of other sites as well!) so we leave this option ON on our browsers. The problem is that some of the sites listed above run scripts to grain control of some component on your computer to burst you with “POP UPS” or other malware which can record your “keystrokes”.

No mater what Antivirus you are running, you will not get 100% protection unless you perform a few simple steps to give your browser a bullet proof shield against these threats.

The first step is to open up your Firefox browser and click on Tools:

After that click on “Options”

After you are in the “Options Menu” click on

“Content” and uncheck “Enable JavaScript” and “Enable Java” look at image below:

Now go to “any’ of your favorite search torrent sites and start browsing and surfing safely. No scripts would run in the background thus no viruses would enter your system. Once you are done, you can easily check both of these boxes to resume your email, or other safe browsing practices.

Selective Freeware Programs Every Computer Should Have.

2009-03-09T09:24:00.001-07:00

Free Programs Every Windows User Should Have

Malwarebytes: This has been literally the lifesaver for me and many of my friends and family. This is the best virus/spy/scum ware remover on the planet. And it’s Free. Believe me when is say this that this works better then anything I have used recently including ComboFix (Which is pretty nice as well; google it if you don’t know about it).

µTorrent - I’ve used a few BitTorrent programs in the past, but I love µTorrent. It’s lightweight but feature packed. If your ISP is anything like mine, just having the scheduler to download at off-peak times is a god send.

ASquared Free - Scan your PC for infections of Trojans, Viruses, Spyware, Adware, Worms, Bots, Keyloggers and Dialers. 2 cleaning Scanners in 1:Anti-Virus + Anti-Spyware

CCleaner - This has got to be one of my favourite apps of all time. Just the ability to change start up with out using the MSCONFIG promt is great, but it gets better. The default Windows uninstaller is so slow, CCleaner has it’s own programs uninstaller built in, saving a lot of time. Oh, and did I mention is also has a registry cleaner?

ClamWin Free Antivirus - I haven’t been using this for too long, I tried it out because I got annoyed with AVG Free taking three hours a day to do a virus scan. This is quick, easy to use and lightweight.

Defraggler - Another good app from the guys at Piriform. The default windows defragger takes a lifetime. That’s time I just don’t have. This tool does the job in a fifth of the time. Get it.

Dup Detector - Not everyone will need this, but if you download a lot of porn pictures (I don’t, I’m just trying to use it as an example) you’ll find you have hundreds of dupes. This tool scans folders looking for pictures which are identicle then it asks you which copy you want to remove, giving you such information like file size and image size so you can keep the better copy.

DVD Shrink - DVDShrink is software to backup DVD discs. You can use this software in conjunction with DVD burning software of your choice, to make a backup copy of any DVD video disc. You can also delete the annoying Anti Piracy shit at the beginning of the DVD, saving your sanity.

FileZilla Client - Quite possible the best FTP client I have ever used.

FireFox - The Web is all about innovation, and Firefox 3 sets the pace with dozens of new features, including the smart location bar, one-click bookmarking and blindingly fast performance.

Fotosizer - With Fotosizer, you can shrink JPEG image files, along with other supported formats, and dramatically reduce internet transfer times, enabling you to quickly and easily prepare your image collections to be published on the web. Resize quickly and easily using a preset list of sizes including iPod, iPhone, and Sony PSP screen sizes.

Foxit Reader - If you haven’t noticed by now, I hate bloatware. Adobe Acrobat Reader is one of the worse programs for it. This is a great alternative. It doesn’t take three days to open, it doesn’t ask to update when you’re opening a PDF file.

IO Bits Smart Defrag - What is the fragmentation status of your hard disk? You no longer need to guess… this freeware will give you a complete diagnosis of your current hard drives, then defragment and speed up disk performance in minutes.

K-Lite Mega Codec Pack - I’m not sure why Microsoft don’t have basic things like DVD codecs built in to Windows as standard. But hey, this will sort it out and add lots of other codecs. Also included is the Media Player Classic. Remember that? A very simple media player. I love it.

Kompozer - Finally, a top-notch WYSIWYG web page program for the rest of us! Now there’s no need to pay a little fortune for a program to create and edit great-looking web pages, including powerful and easy to use CSS capabilities.
KompoZer is a complete Web Authoring System that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing capabilities found in Microsoft FrontPage, Adobe DreamWeaver and other high end programs.
KompoZer is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking web site without needing to know HTML or web coding.

Macrium Reflect Free - Create a disk image whilst running Windows using Microsoft Volume Shadow copy Service (VSS).
Image to Network, USB, FireWire drives and DVD.
Built in scheduler.
32 bit and native 64 bit versions.
Industry leading compression levels and speed.
Linux based Rescue CD with Network access and full GUI. Only 6.5MB in size!
Built in CD/DVD packet writing engine. Supports packet writing to DVD
DL media with Windows Vista.
HTML log files.

Notepad++ - The best text editor I’ve ever used. Simple things like Find & Replace are a breeze with this program. I use it for editing HTML, PHP, MySQL and CSS. It also supports lots of other languages.

ObjectDock - ObjectDock is a program that enables users to organize their shortcuts, programs and running tasks into an attractive and fun animated Dock. By allowing users to have more control over how they organize their desktop, users can take control of their desktop icons and shortcuts to have them be available when where and how they need them. This, all with the unique style and top-rate performance that ObjectDock is known to deliver!

Opera - Speed Dial: Your favorite sites are just one click away at all times. Search Shortcuts: Faster search – type your queries directly in the address bar. Trash Can: Instantly reopen recently closed tabs.

Paint.NET - When I just want to simply edit a picture without waiting for Photoshop to open, I use Paint.Net. It’s neat and tidy and has a lot of features.

Pidgin - I hate all the IM clients out there, they’re bloated and too many useless “features”. I have something like five MSN accounts, three AIM accounts and two Yahoo accounts. This lets me keep them all in one program. Easy to use, no bells and whistles, just a basic cross platform IM client.

Recuva - Recuva (pronounced “recover”) is a freeware Windows utility to restore files that have been accidentally deleted from your computer. This includes files emptied from the Recycle bin as well as images and other files that have been deleted by user error from digital camera memory cards or MP3 players. It will even bring back files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses!

Skype - I love Skype, it is built into my mobile phone and home phone. I used to make a lot of calls to America and Mexico when I was drunk using my land line phone, now I can do it for cheap and free at times. A real money saver.

Spybot S&D - I never get spyware or any thing like that any more, but I keep this as a security blanket.

Torrent Harvester - This hasn’t been updated since 2006. So if anyone knows of a program like this, please let me know. It searches all the main torrent sites to find what you’re looking for. In the past I’d use sites like TorrentSpy.com (R.I.P), Mininova.org, Thepiratebay.org. Now I just use this tool and it searches all the sites, even ones I’ve never heard of.

XAMPP - I like to play a lot with PHP & MySql scripts. This is perfect for the task. An easy install, clean interface and everything
you need to get running a test server on your own computer.

Do you know any other good programs which are free and very useful? Leave a comment and I’ll add them to the list. Sharing is caring.

Edit: I’ve written up a follow up to this post, Free Programs Every Windows User Should Have - Anti Spyware Edition

And thanks to everyone for the torrent site links, but no more please. I’m deleting all the old comments because this page is taking too long to load.

Interesting Facts

2009-03-08T13:47:00.001-07:00

The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.

The Boston University Bridge (on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts) is the only place in the world where a boat can sail under a train driving under a car driving under an airplane.

Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

David Prowse, was the guy in the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars. He spoke all of Vader's lines, and didn't know that he was going to be dubbed over by James Earl Jones until he saw the screening of the movie.

Many hamsters only blink one eye at a time.

Barbie's measurements (prior to her recenct makeover) if she were life size: 39-23-33.

February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.

Montpelier, Vermont is the only U.S. state capital without a McDonalds.

The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.

The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.

Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal category.

Columbia University is the second largest landowner in New York City, after the Catholic Church.

Back in the mid to late 80's, an IBM compatible computer wasn't considered a hundred percent compatible unless it could run Microsoft's Flight Simulator.

The first Ford cars had Dodge engines.

Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.

It takes about a half a gallon of water to cook macaroni, and about a gallon to clean the pot.

In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.

The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.

Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously

If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.

Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.

No NFL team which plays it's home games in a domed stadium has ever won a Superbowl

The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver".

In the great fire of London in 1666 half of London was burnt down but only 6 people were injured

Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright's son.

One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today because cotton growers in the 30s lobbied against hemp farmers --they saw it as competition. It is not chemically addictive as is nicotine, alcohol, or caffeine.

The only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports games (MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL) are the day before and the day after the Major League All-Star Game.

Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older

Bank robber John Dillinger played professional baseball.

If you toss a penny 10000 times, it will not be heads 5000 �� times, but more like 4950. The heads picture weighs more, �� so it ends up on the bottom.

The housefly hums in the middle octave, key of F.

A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.

The longest word in the English language, according to the �� Oxford English Dictionary, is �� pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.� The only other word with the same amount of letters is its plural, �� pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses.

The band Duran Duran got their name from an astronaut in the �� 1968 Jane Fonda movie "Barbarella.

Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was the physician who set the leg of �� Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth...and whose shame created �� the expression for ignominy, "His name is Mudd."

Wilma Flintstone's maiden name was Wilma Slaghoopal, and Betty �� Rubble's Maiden name was Betty Jean McBricker.

The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses �� II who fathered over 160 children.

Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when �� they rode past their king.� This custom has become the modern �� military salute.

White Out was invented by the mother of Mike Nesmith (Formerly �� of the Monkees)

Sylvia Miles had the shortest performance ever nominated for an �� Oscar with "Midnight Cowboy."� Her entire role lasted only six �� minutes.

Charles Lindbergh took only four sandwiches with him on his famous �� transatlantic flight.

Gilligan of Gilligan's Island had a first name that was only �� used once, on the never-aired pilot show.� His first name was �� Willy.� The skipper's real name on Gilligan's Island is Jonas �� Grumby. It was mentioned once in the first episode on their �� radio's newscast about the wreck.

Playing cards were issued to British pilots in WWII.� If �� captured, they could be soaked in water and unfolded to reveal a �� map for escape.

The "L.L." in L.L. Bean stands for Leon Leonwood.

Ivory bar soap floating was a mistake. They had been overmixing the soap formula causing excess air bubbles that made it float. Customers wrote and told how much they loved that it floated, and it has floated ever since.

Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks �� otherwise it will digest itself.

The Sanskrit word for "war" means "desire for more cows."

A walla-walla scene is one where extras pretend to be talking in the background -- when they say "walla-walla" it looks like they are actually talking.

101 Dalmatians and Peter Pan (Wendy) are the only two Disney �� cartoon features with both parents that are present and don't �� die throughout the movie.

'Stewardesses' is the longest word that is typed with only the �� left hand.

The Baby Ruth candy bar was actually named after President Grover Cleveland's baby daughter, Ruth.

A whale's penis is called a dork.

Physicist Murray Gell-Mann named the sub-atomic particles known as quarks for a random line in James Joyce, "Three quarks for Muster Mark!"

"Three dog night" (attributed to Australian Aborigines) came about because on especially cold nights these nomadic people needed three dogs (dingos, actually) to keep from freezing.

The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan"

A group of unicorns is called a blessing.

Twelve or more cows are known as a "flink."

A group of frogs is called an army.

A group of rhinos is called a crash.

A group of kangaroos is called a mob.

A group of whales is called a pod.

A group of geese is called a gaggle.

A group of ravens is called a murder.

A group of officers is called a mess.

A group of larks is called an exaltation.

A group of owls is called a parliament.

2009-03-07T19:50:00.001-08:00

How I'd Hack Your Weak Passwords

If you invited me to try and crack your password, you know the one that you use over and over for like every web page you visit, how many guesses would it take before I got it?

Let's see… here is my top 10 list. I can obtain most of this information much easier than you think, then I might just be able to get into your e-mail, computer, or online banking. After all, if I get into one I'll probably get into all of them.

Your partner, child, or pet's name, possibly followed by a 0 or 1 (because they're always making you use a number, aren't they?)
The last 4 digits of your social security number.
123 or 1234 or 123456.
"password"
Your city, or college, football team name.
Date of birth - yours, your partner's or your child's.
"god"
"letmein"
"money"
"love"

Statistically speaking that should probably cover about 20% of you. But don't worry. If I didn't get it yet it will probably only take a few more minutes before I do…

Hackers, and I'm not talking about the ethical kind, have developed a whole range of tools to get at your personal data. And the main impediment standing between your information remaining safe, or leaking out, is the password you choose. (Ironically, the best protection people have is usually the one they take least seriously.)

One of the simplest ways to gain access to your information is through the use of a Brute Force Attack. This is accomplished when a hacker uses a specially written piece of software to attempt to log into a site using your credentials. Insecure.org has a list of the Top 10 FREE Password Crackers right here.

So, how would one use this process to actually breach your personal security? Simple. Follow my logic:

You probably use the same password for lots of stuff right?
Some sites you access such as your Bank or work VPN probably have pretty decent security, so I'm not going to attack them.
However, other sites like the Hallmark e-mail greeting cards site, an online forum you frequent, or an e-commerce site you've shopped at might not be as well prepared. So those are the ones I'd work on.
So, all we have to do now is unleash Brutus, wwwhack, or THC Hydra on their server with instructions to try say 10,000 (or 100,000 - whatever makes you happy) different usernames and passwords as fast as possible.
Once we've got several login+password pairings we can then go back and test them on targeted sites.
But wait… How do I know which bank you use and what your login ID is for the sites you frequent? All those cookies are simply stored, unencrypted and nicely named, in your Web browser's cache.

And how fast could this be done? Well, that depends on three main things, the length and complexity of your password, the speed of the hacker's computer, and the speed of the hacker's Internet connection.

Assuming the hacker has a reasonably fast connection and PC here is an estimate of the amount of time it would take to generate every possible combination of passwords for a given number of characters. After generating the list it's just a matter of time before the computer runs through all the possibilities - or gets shut down trying.

Pay particular attention to the difference between using only lowercase characters and using all possible characters (uppercase, lowercase, and special characters - like @#$%^&*). Adding just one capital letter and one asterisk would change the processing time for an 8 character password from 2.4 days to 2.1 centuries.

Password Length
All Characters
Only Lowercase

3 characters
4 characters
5 characters
6 characters
7 characters
8 characters
9 characters
10 characters
11 characters
12 characters
13 characters
14 characters
0.86 seconds
1.36 minutes
2.15 hours
8.51 days
2.21 years
2.10 centuries
20 millennia
1,899 millennia
180,365 millennia
17,184,705 millennia
1,627,797,068 millennia
154,640,721,434 millennia
0.02 seconds
.046 seconds
11.9 seconds
5.15 minutes
2.23 hours
2.42 days
2.07 months
4.48 years
1.16 centuries
3.03 millennia
78.7 millennia
2,046 millennia

Remember, these are just for an average computer, and these assume you aren't using any word in the dictionary. If Google put their computer to work on it they'd finish about 1,000 times faster.

Now, I could go on for hours and hours more about all sorts of ways to compromise your security and generally make your life miserable - but 95% of those methods begin with compromising your weak password. So, why not just protect yourself from the start and sleep better at night?

Believe me, I understand the need to choose passwords that are memorable. But if you're going to do that how about using something that no one is ever going to guess AND doesn't contain any common word or phrase in it.

Here are some password tips:

Randomly substitute numbers for letters that look similar. The letter 'o' becomes the number '0′, or even better an '@' or '*'. (i.e. - m0d3ltf0rd… like modelTford)
Randomly throw in capital letters (i.e. - Mod3lTF0rd)
Think of something you were attached to when you were younger, but DON'T CHOOSE A PERSON'S NAME! Every name plus every word in the dictionary will fail under a simple brute force attack.
Maybe a place you loved, or a specific car, an attraction from a vacation, or a favorite restaurant?
You really need to have different username / password combinations for everything. Remember, the technique is to break into anything you access just to figure out your standard password, then compromise everything else. This doesn't work if you don't use the same password everywhere.
Since it can be difficult to remember a ton of passwords, I recommend using Roboform. It will store all of your passwords in an encrypted format and allow you to use just one master password to access all of them. It will also automatically fill in forms on Web pages, and you can even get versions that allow you to take your password list with you on your PDA, phone or a USB key. If you'd like to download it without having to navigate their web site here is the direct download link.
Once you've thought of a password, try Microsoft's password strength tester to find out how secure it is.

EDIT: By request I've created a short RoboForm Demonstration video. It ain't great, but I guess it's better than nothing. Hope it helps…

Another thing to keep in mind is that some of the passwords you think matter least actually matter most. For example, some people think that the password to their e-mail box isn't important because "I don't get anything sensitive there." Well, that e-mail box is probably connected to your online banking account. If I can compromise it then I can log into the Bank's Web site and tell it I've forgotten my password to have it e-mailed to me. Now, what were you saying about it not being important?

Often times people also reason that all of their passwords and logins are stored on their computer at home, which is save behind a router or firewall device. Of course, they've never bothered to change the default password on that device, so someone could drive up and park near the house, use a laptop to breach the wireless network and then try passwords from this list until they gain control of your network - after which time they will own you!

Now I realize that every day we encounter people who over-exagerate points in order to move us to action, but trust me this is not one of those times. There are 50 other ways you can be compromised and punished for using weak passwords that I haven't even mentioned.

I also realize that most people just don't care about all this until it's too late and they've learned a very hard lesson. But why don't you do me, and yourself, a favor and take a little action to strengthen your passwords and let me know that all the time I spent on this article wasn't completely in vain.

Please, be safe. It's a jungle out there.

True Friendship

2009-03-05T13:56:00.001-08:00

As I've matured...

2009-03-05T13:55:00.001-08:00

As I've matured...

As I've Matured...

I've learned that you cannot make someone love you. All you can do is stalk them and hope they panic and give in.
I've learned that one good turn gets most of the blankets.
I've learned that no matter how much I care, some people are just jackasses.
I've learned that it takes years to build up trust, and it only takes suspicion, not proof, to destroy it.
I've learned that whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.
I've learned that you shouldn't compare yourself to others - they are more screwed up than you think.
I've learned that depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
I've learned that it is not what you wear; it is how you take it off.
I've learned that you can keep vomiting long after you think you're finished.
I've learned to not sweat the petty things, and not pet the sweaty things.
I've learned that ex's are like fungus, and keep coming back.
I've learned age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
I've learned that I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy it.
I've learned that we are responsible for what we do, unless we are celebrities.
I've learned that artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
I've learned that 99% of the time when something isn't working in your house, one of your kids did it.
I've learned that there is a fine line between genius and insanity.
I've learned that the people you care most about in life are taken from you too soon and all the less important ones just never go away. And the real pains in the ass are permanent.

Truly Remarkable Links of the 21st Century

What is Zero Cost Commissions:

Remove Viruses Easily and Effectively

World Clock

Good article on Torrents on LifeHacker

Wetransfer.com

Create Great Tutorials- FREE

Send a Large File…. Over the Net…

A Very Cool Site

Truly the Best 99 Freeware

Do and don’ts for p@$$w0rd$

A Guide to Strong Passwords

5 Great Posts Of The Week

Best Free Memory Optimizer

Freeware Software That You Probably Didn’t know about. Very Useful. Thumbs Up.

New software is being made every day now. Many of them have to be bought, but the others are being freely distributed. Though most people doubt the concept of “freeware”, some of them are really useful. Here are some very good freeware for various purposes.

Free Ringtone Maker

Poladroid

IVE

Splitcam

iSpring Free

TrakAxPC

TeamViewer

Free Video Converter

Wise Registry Cleaner

Movie DVD Maker

Vdownloader

A Free Video Converter that Beats Commercial Products!

Useful, Small, Freeware Utilities That Are A Must For Every PC/Laptop out there.

Antivirus & Antispyware

Audio, Video & Music

Backup

Games

Graphic & Web Design

Hard Drive and File Repair, Rename & Recovery

Information Managers

Internet - email, chat, browsing, networking

Macro

Office Tools

Operating System Tools

Project Management / Getting Things Done

Reading & Writing

Search & Replace

Security & Encryption

Links

How To Disappear, Protect Your Privacy, and Eliminate Spam

The Best Wireless Security Tools On The NET.

Useful Wireless and General IT Security Site Links

Wireless (General):

Wireless Tools:

Linux distributions (Wireless Specific) for embedded devices:

Default Usernames & Passwords:

Exploit Code:

IDS & IPS:

IP & Name Resolution:

Password Cracking:

Penetration Testing:

General IT Security:

Port Number Listings:

TOP 22+ Security Related Sites You Must Bookmark.

A FREE Strong Password Generator You Must Know……

Review of Cracking WEP and WPA Wireless Networks- Best Sites- Free Tools - Downloads

Free Alternative Software? Look No Further

Reviewing FSPRO And VirtualWin

Have as many as 9 virtual desktops on Windows with VirtuaWin!

Review – Website Cometdocs

You Pay Taxes, Where Do They End Up?

15 Essential Checks Before Launching Your Website

Read More Here:

Great New Popular Torrent Software Xtorrent

How to get your hands on a FREE copy of Windows 7

namechk – A very useful neat site worth visiting

26 New And Awesome Web Apps You Probably Don’t Know About