CHRISdotTODD

I found this video on the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) from Yves Behar, the designer of the OLPC.

My work laptop is a Dell Latitude D810, and it has always ran hot. More recently on a business trip it crashed three times, which I am convinced is due to the high temperature. I found a utility, SpeedFan , which allowed me to monitor various temperatures. SpeedFan indicated very hot (flames) for many of the components, but it wasn't capable of turning the fans on or up. Further, it didn't give me any indication of what temperature was dangerous to my laptop. In searching for threshold temperatures, I found another, more useful utility, 18kfanGUI . 18kfanGUI was developed by Christian Diefer of Germany specifically for Dell laptops (see his compatibility chart). Using 18kfanGUI, I am able to get my fans to turn on or up sooner, and therefore keep the temperature of my laptop lower. Christian also hosts a Forum , which appears to be very active, so you can support beyond his manual and FAQs. Now, my laptop is a bit noisier, but I am much more comfortable in knowing that my lapto...

I receive a weekly email from ZDNet called Download Digest (which I read about every 4th one). It is their weekly recommendation of software; much of it is useless, but occasionally there are some nuggets. In addition, there is a section on recommended TechRepublic articles. These are recycled over time, but again there are some nuggets. For example, if you're not real Internet savvy, you might be interested in 10 things you should do to a new PC before connecting it to the Internet . (Note that you must sign-up for a free account to access TechRepublic.) Here are some TechRepublic tips and guides that I believe people may find valuable: Powerful PowerPoint Presentations : This wont teach you how to make better presentations, but it will teach you how to use PowerPoint to its fullest capability. How do I...Migrate from Outlook Express to Mozilla's Thunderbird? : If you haven't yet switched to Thunderbird for email, this article is helpful in getting you through the proces...

Not really computer related, but rather solved with a computer... I have one of those 6-piece block puzzles that has been apart for some time. I decided to look online to see if I could find a solution. First I learned that it is called a 6-piece Burr puzzle; then I discovered that there are too many different combinations that I would be luck to find a solution. Then I ran across an IBM Research site on Burr puzzles . After looking through many of their solutions, and not finding a match, I discovered their applet to solve any Burr . I just entered the cuts of each of my 6 pieces, and within seconds it had the solution for me. And if that wasn't enough, it showed me piece-by-piece how to reassemble it. Truly I am impressed.

Micheal Wesch of Kansas State University , with the help of his students ... a team of cultural anthropology undergraduates led by Dr. Michael Wesch and human interaction on digital technology. exploring the impacts of digital technology on human interaction on digital technology put together this superb video on the Information R/evolution. Check it out and see what you think. What a change.

Windows has an annoying way of asking every five minutes whether I want to reboot after a Windows Update. Of course most cases, I don't because I'm working. Well I learned that there is a way to change the length of time between nags. Go to the Group Policy Editor (type gpedit.msc at the Run prompt) Expand the window to Local Computer Policy | Computer Configuration | Administrative Templates | Windows Components | Windows Update Double-click on Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations In the dialog box that opens, click Enable and enter a high number such as 1000 minutes Click OK and close the Group Policy Editor

As most of us know, over time our PC just gets slower. This is due to temp files, old registry entries, a full hard drive, and a host of other "features" of a Microsoft OS. Fortunately, PC World just released an article on Cheap and Free Tools to Put Zip Back in Your PC . The PC World article covers four subject areas: Speed Freaks Optimize for Speed Internet Boosters Application Boosters For Speed Freaks, the one fully free tool is Cleanup Assistant . Cleanup Assistant will scour your hard drive and remove unnecessary files for you, e.g. duplicates and caches. In the Optimize for Speed category, there are four free tools mentioned. Three of them look to optimize your Registry: Eusing Free Registry Cleaner , CCleaner , and Auslogics Registry Defrag . In addition, CCleaner will also look at removing unnecessary files, similar to Cleanup Assistant. The final free tool in the Optimize for Speed category is Advanced Windows Care 2 Personal, which its primary utility is to clean u...

This is likely dated for most folks, but if you are still having problems with the Microsoft XP Update for MSXML 4.0 Service Pack 2, there is a rather simple fix. If you are not sure, but have had Microsoft's yellow shield in your taskbar for some time, select Custom Install and you can see what is trying (and failing) to install. If it is MSXML 4.0 Service Pack 2, then this is the fix for you. Go to Add or Remove Programs in the Control Panel Remove all instances of MSXML 4.0 Service Pack 2 (KBxxxxx) Retry the update -- that's it.

Did you see the article from The Content Wrangler, Video Documentation: Seven Sites That Show You How To Do Things ? The Content Wrangler includes some familiar names such as YouTube (How-To and DIY channels) and VideoJug , and some new ones too. Check it out.

Stuck with an iPod and no juice? I ran across Household Hacker's video on YouTube that shows how to remedy the situation. It takes simply an electrolyte such as Gatoraid, an onion, and 45 minutes. See for yourself.

I have used iTunes for years to listen to my favorite music and podcasts; since the early betas of Joost , I've been able to see some good TV, such as National Geographic , but I still had to search all over the Internet to get a good selection of shows. For example, I would go to CBS for CSI, AOL for a few good reruns, and Disney when my kids were over to see their Saturday morning favorites. And of course there's always YouTube. Recently I heard about a new Internet TV interface that would solve all these problems, and it's open-source -- Miro . I downloaded and tried Miro over the weekend. Miro has an interface that is familiar -- it feels a lot like iTunes, but at version 0.9.9.9.1, it's still buggy. I quickly learned that Miro's primary feeds are the same RSS feeds used for podcasts and videocasts. I took a few of my podcast feeds from iTunes, tried them on Miro, and they worked. Likewise, I took some of the Miro feeds and they worked with iTunes. So I tho...

From the Poverty.com folks, you can now improve your vocabulary while and feed the world at the same time. FreeRice.com has been able to sell advertisement on their site in exchange for your eye balls while you improve your vocabulary. After starting just a few weeks back (October 7), FreeRice.com has already donated 537,163,380 grains of rice. Now I don't know how many grains of rice are in a cup, but it sounds impressive. For every correctly identified definition, 10 grains are donated -- perhaps with some traffic growth, FreeRice.com could charge advertisers more, so 15 grains of rice could be donated for every correct answer. It's time you do your part -- work on your vocabulary and help feed the world.

Apple and Starbucks just started (October 5, 2007) a new service in participating Starbucks stores. Using your laptop, iPhone , or iPod touch , you can get free access to the iTunes site and review and buy up to the last 10 tunes played in the Starbucks store. When using your iPhone or iPod touch, you will also be able to get the song on your Mac or PC for no additional charge. I learned about this today when I went into Starbucks. As part of the promotion, you can get a free, new song every day in Starbucks through November 7th. The first artist was Bob Dylan and has include greats such as Gloria Estefan and Mavis Staples; upcoming releases include Herbie Hancock, Dave Matthews, and John Mayer. Personally, I think this is a great combination of two great products, coffee and music, brrought to us by folks who know how to do it so well, Starbucks and Apple. That'll be a triple-grande-latte for me.

Ever consider having your own Internet TV? Perhaps you are an Indie band trying to get some exposure or you are a tech geek helping others. Using Ustream.tv you can do exactly that. As I write this, I am listening and watching a live stream from Indie Game Conference hosted by GarageGames (the band's name isn't listed) -- the band is about as good as I might hear on a night out at the clubs. All it takes is a computer with a webcam and mic, and 320 Kbs minimum upstream bandwidth, and you're good to go. After registering and providing some basic info on your feed, you get a custom URL that you can share with all your Internet friends. In addition, you can embed the stream into another web page and you can have real-time chat with your viewers. Of course it's not a perfect solution. Ustream.tv could really put some work into finding recorded and live streams, as there is a lot of junk. For example, when I click on a tag in their tag cloud, I get all shows from one poste...

Thanks to Digg , I found a very interesting blog from Jesse Ruderman, Indistinguishable from Jesse . Jesse has a great post on how you can help in the effort to remove memory leaks in Firefox . Of course not all of us have the skills that Jesse and others working on Firefox have, but he indicates there are other things we can do to help. If you're a Firefox user, an easy way to help is to browse with a trunk nightly build wrapped in a script that calls leak-gauge.pl when Firefox exits. If it reports that documents or windows leaked, try to figure out how to reproduce the leak and then file a bug report. In addition to coverage on Firefox, Jesse has assemble a wealth of useful information in the 4 years of writing his blog. For example, he has a link to his del.icio.us links , a list of 43 things he wants to do, and a humor list . So if you're looking to learn more about Firefox or just looking for a good blog, give Indistinguishable from Jesse a look.

If you're lucky enough to have free access to a wireless Internet hot-spot, it's easy to connect your entire home network to it and get free Internet access. David A. Karp explains how with just a few slides at PC Magazine (pcmag.com). This is a great solution if you live in an apartment complex or close in the city.

How much do you really pay attention to the logos of Internet companies? I bet not as close as you think you do. Go to guessthelogo.com and find out for yourself. This is a simple, 10 question, multiple choice quiz; how well can you do? I was just a bit under 2 minutes -- good luck!

I recently learned about a new beta music service, MediaMaster . MediaMaster provides the ability to upload your music collection and then access it from any PC. In addition, you can stream it to your PC or portable device, such as a cell phone. You have the ability to create playlists and a radio station that others can listen too. You can also create a widget to embed in your website -- choose from recently played to newly added to a playlist. Here's my recently played list -- click the play button to listen. So far, so good -- looks compelling. Well with the good comes the not so good. I have over 1500 music titles in my collection, and 3 days into it, I am still uploading. I can adjust my upload speed from as little as 100 Kbps to 5,000 Kbps -- it just takes a long time. In addition, the site responds very slowly. Perhaps because it is still beta or perhaps it's slow because my uploads are being processed, but it is definitely slow. In addition, the find functionality to di...

I have been using the Web Developer toolbar for Firefox for some time now, but I recently learned of a new, powerful Extension, Firebug from Joe Hewitt. Firebug makes it very easy to inspect different portions of your code while on your web page. For example, click the Inspect tab and then you can see the related code as you hover over different elements on the page. Where the Web Developer toolbar makes it easy to look at different parts of the code on a page, Firebug lets you interact with the page and subsequent code. If you want to see how fast (or slow) the various elements load on the page, click on the Net tab. In addition to showing the time to load the various elements, it is very easy to filter by element types such as JavaScript, images, and even Flash. You can use Firebug as a part of your browser window (while you're interacting with it) or in its own window. the one drawback I see is that each time I change tabs, the new website is processed by Firebug; not that it...

The Red Ferret Journal recently reminded us (original post June 2006) about Tim Berners-Lee's position on Net Neutrality . I thought it was a good reminder, as we are gradually seeing more and more restriction being placed on activities such as peer-to-peer and Internet telephony. Berners-Lee's video simplifies the issue very nicely: If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level. But the phone and cable companies are using their deep pockets to keep the government from stepping in and protecting the people. Check out Exposing the Justice Department’s Hit Job Against an Open Internet from Save the Internet blog and decide for yourself. If you're looking for a more independent view, see PC Magazines article released this week: Senate Chair Takes on FTC in Net Neutrality Fight . To conclude, if you haven't notified your Congressional leaders ...

Tired of Lifehacker ? Is the DIY Network not your idea of fun? I found a fun new website, Instructables , a site with step-by-step instructions for do-it-yourself projects. Imagine using Legos to create a USB charger or to encase your USB memory stick. You can also find instructions for cracking and hacking windows passwords, extending the range of your car remote, and how to open a bottle of beer without an opener. Instructables has 8 categories: art, craft, food, home, life, not liable, ride, and tech. You can also browse the site using one of the many keywords. If that isn't enough, Instructables has an active Forum where you can exchange ideas and get help with the tricky parts of your project. Have fun. I know I like the car remote extender.

JimmyR has made a nice tutorial on how to save YouTube videos for playback on your computer or iPod. Here is the websites and software that he references: YouTube Downloader MediaCoder VirtualDub There are many ways to accomplish the same task, this is just one simple way. Have fun!

TechRepublic recently posted a link to a great site for fonts, dafont.com . dafont.com has nearly 7500 fonts of all types and styles. The only complaint I have is that some are inappropriate for children; this is not a site that I would share with my teens. Font themes include Fancy, Foreign look, Techno, Gothic, and Holiday among others. Here are some samples of the Sci-Fi and TV/Movie fonts. dafont.com also contains links to free and fee font related software. So next time you need just the right font, give dafont.com a look.

For the last several months, Outlook 2003 has periodically been real slow. The most common time would be first thing in the morning, so I wasn't sure whether it was network related or startup related. I would also experience it occasionally when sending an email... it would hang for a long time before starting the spell checker, and then between words it would hang again. I did some research, and though it has not been long enough to be certain it has been corrected, it looks promising. Here are the suggestions that I tried: Archive everything older than 3 months (it was 6). This should reduce the size of your PST file -- mine was 2.6 MB. My understanding is that newer versions of Outlook do not have problems with large PST files, but why take a chance? Tools | Options >> Other >> AutoArchive... Start a new outcmd.dat file (C:\Documents and Settings\[your user name]\application data\microsoft\outlook), as it could be corrupt. Close Outlook, rename the file, start Outloo...

As Time-Warner puts packet-shaping technology in place to throttle service, Senators Snowe and Dorgan are still fighting for the public's right for Net Neutrality. Wouldn't it be nice to have more Senators representing the public instead of the huge corporate contributors? -- oh, that's for different blog. For all intents an purposes, Time-Warner's RoadRunner service just change their offering (June 6). Now, regardless of the bandwidth package you purchased, during busy times, they will slow down or throttle back certain traffic. So regardless of the service, instead of improving their infrastructure, Time-Warner will limit your bandwidth of certain tasks. "...implemented for newsgroup applications, regardless of the provider, and all peer-to-peer networks and certain other high bandwidth applications not necessarily limited to audio, video, and voice over IP telephony." I think it's high-time that the government steps-in to at least regulate that the ser...

In September 2006 , and again in April 2007 , I wrote about great, free music on the Internet. Well, I recently discovered some additional sources. My latest discoveries are SeeqPod Music and The Hype Machine / Hype Radio . Hype Machine follows music blogs discussions while Hype Radio streams songs listed in the blogs. Hype Machine also provides easy links to buy the music via iTunes or Amazon.com. Perhaps the best feature is the RSS feed. The feed send down the current song being played, which you can save and play locally. I did encounter a few that failed. If you don't want to receive the RSS feed, and perhaps just checkout the music, you can also listen from your browser, vis-à-vis Hype Radio. To get a song played, it has to be mentioned by a blogger that is signed up with Hype Machine. SeeqPod is a search engine specific to audio and video on the Internet. When you first reach the site, you can click on one of the scrolling search results (from other searchers called PodCra...

Well I downloaded and used Safari Beta 3 for Windows tonight... it looks and feels a lot like iTunes. Of course the first question is, "Do I really need another browser?" My first answer was "No." But upon reconsidering, I wondered if it might be a good alternative to testing sites for users of Macs and possibly the iPhone. So maybe for that reason, it's a good idea. I already have IE7 and Netscape in addition to Firefox. I also have a Linux VM with Firefox for test too. With that in mind, I decided to test the popular sites I frequent. Here's my results: This blog -- no problems Authoring the blog -- failed: couldn't get the cursor in the Title field eBay -- warned me to upgrade my browser, but worked PayPal -- no problems Gmail -- no problems Google Calendar -- no problems Last.FM -- no problems Pogo -- failed: couldn't load a game My company website -- no problems (includes Flash movies and apps) My bank -- no problems del.icio.us -- no problem...

Do you like those commercials? Well in addition to finding them at Apple's website and parodies on YouTube (including Linux), you can also find parodies at TrueNuff TV! In case you haven't had enough, here's one more.

Yep, last month the cash machine turned 40 years old. The first cash machine was located north of London, and it used carbon 14 checks, a mildly radioactive substance — not a plastic credit card. When initially installed, the cash machine, invented by John Shepherd-Barron, would dispense up to 10 pounds UK. Learn more about the first cash machine on the BBC's website .

I have been listening to podcasts for years now, and the one that continues to stay on top is TWiT (This Week in Tech), the flagship show for the TWiT Netcast Network. Created by tech legend Leo Laporte, the TWiT network contains many wonderful technology podcasts for those of us who enjoy technology so much. (Go to Wikipedia to learn some TWiT history.) You can read Leo's bio yourself to get a sense of where he's been or read what Wikipedia has to say about Leo. Many of us remember him from the days of the Screen Savers and TechTV. Leo is well balanced between having a deep technology understanding and understanding that main stream technology (i.e. computers, cellphones, and the like) is too difficult for the average person. [BTW: he also hosts a technology help show, The Tech Guy , every Saturday and Sunday.] So what is TWiT and why do so many people enjoy the show? Well, it is Leo and his tech friends discussing the latest in technology news. You can get opinions on new...

I viewed Apple's iPhone demo on their website, and despite a few quirks, I'm hooked. As they say, their best iPod ever -- it sure looks that way. Of the many features , I'm not sure if it is the touch-screen controls, the great interface, or some of the nice features such as how voice mail and Google mail is done, but my next cellphone will be an iPhone -- that's assuming I can afford AT&T. If you're not sure, checkout the demo , I think it'll sell you.

Did you see Computer World's, " The top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills " published last month? Some have been on the list for some time, such as Cobol -- it's needed just long enough to finally get companies off those legacy systems. What surprised me is even the mention of non-relational DBMS and non-IP networks. I guess I'm a bit ignorant in the fact they these two still exist in places. Then there is the more obvious, Cold Fusion. Of course with open source solutions and better scaling solutions, Cold Fusion is on its last legs. I remember when it was a good choice, because the open source alternatives and Microsoft had not matured; now, if you're not a Microsoft shop, you're probably using open source. For the rest of the items, couldn't we get something that is a little more "on it's way out," not already gone? take for instance the hobbyist turned pro developer. In the early days of the Internet, HTML was easy, and it didn't...

You know that Google is popular, right? SearchEngineWatch.com reported a nearly 44% share for July 2006, while Yahoo! and MSN continue to lose market share. ( HitWise reported a 64% U.S. share for March 2007) In January I wrote about a few alternate search engines ( Ms. Dewey , ChaCha , Snap , and Rollyo ), in case you were interested in whether their was a competitor or two on the horizon. If that didn't move you away from Google (it didn't make me change), there are 100 more search engines you might want to try at Read / WriteWeb . Let me know if you find any promising alternatives; right now I'm staying with Google.

I recently ran across a blog posting at The Simple Dollar titled 30 Essential Pieces of Free (and Open) Software for Windows . They are not quite all essential; perhaps 10 are. Many I have heard of, but a few are new to me. Of course it lists popular open source software such as Firefox , Thunderbird , and Audacity , but there are some other good ones including Filezilla (FTP client), Handbrake (watch DVDs locally without the DVD), and FreeMind (mind mapping). Check this blog post and see what you might be paying for that you could get for free and legal.

If you have ever explored Google's advanced search capabilities, you would know that it can be very powerful in finding specific content. For example, you can use it to find web directories with music from your favorite artist. Take this code for example, which you can enter into the Google search box: -inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(wma|mp3) “Stevie Ray Vaughn” Your results would be something like this: You can even add different file formats and wildcards for the search string: -inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3| ogg ) "stevie ray vaughn % " How does this apply to Firefox? Well I'm glad you asked! You may recall that by entering a keyword into the field of a bookmark, you can retrieve the bookmark in the Address Box by just entering the keyword. Firefox also supports wildcard parameters, so you can ...

I recently published a blog post on my experience in moving to Skype as my phone service. Since that time, I found an article from VOIP News that has 25 hacks for Skype. This article includes a wealth of information on how you can extend the capabilities of Skype. For example, using a program called AudioID , it will announce the Skype user name on incoming calls. This is a great feature if you're away from your PC. Other hacks include: A DIY security system Recording calls Enhanced voice mail Integrating with last.fm Lip syncing Avatar If you have Skype, this is a must read; if you don't ahve Skype, check out what you're missing.

I found a clever Excel template on the Microsoft site . With this template, it can help you solve Soduko puzzles. You enter the numbers you have, and have it calculate possible answers for the remaining open spots. If it cannot completely solve it, try 1 of the possible numbers and recalculate. Eventually, you will solve the puzzle. Microsoft has other game templates as well.

I have talked about some of my favorite music services in the past, including Pandora and of course the iTunes/iPod combination. I have also used YouTube , Live365 , and other streaming services. Now I have a new favorite, last.fm . With last.fm, I enter my favorite artist, band, or song, and it streams music related to that category. At the surface it sounds just like Pandora, but I believe the music matching algorithm is better, as well as last.fm offers many more features. For example, the module above will play my music recommendations, or you can play it on the last.fm site . These are the songs that match what I have selected. I can also play my recommended songs through a downloadable client . last.fm uses scrobbing to assist in recommending music. Scrobbling a song means that when you listen to it, the name of the song is sent to Last.fm and added to your music profile. Once you've signed up and downloaded Last.fm , you can scrobble songs you...

I ran across a cool trick with Firefox, which allows you to open Firefox within Firefox. There's no real purpose behind it, it's just a fun thing to do. Just enter this into the URL line of Firefox: chrome://browser/content/browser.xul

Where I live, basic service is about $25 a month; long distance is extra. That's a guaranteed minimum $300 a year if I don't make any long distance calls. I decided to do something about that -- I got setup with Skype . If you're in the US or Canada, all long-distance is free after a one-time $30 fee ( SkypeOut: Skype Unlimited ). In addition, to get an incoming number ( SkypeIn ), I only paid $38 for a year of service, which includes voice mail . You can get your incoming number to have any area code -- so if you have friends or family that have to pay long distance charges to call you, you can get a phone number in their area code. My final expense was an inexpensive Skype phone , $35. So for $103, I have local and long distance for a year. In addition, with just the basic free Skype service, you can talk Skype-to-Skype for no cost. Many Podcasters, such as Leo Laporte , use this service to record guests on their shows; which is cheaper and yields better quality than if ...

Excel is a great program to manipulate your data, perform what-ifs, and graphically display results. But it's not straight forward when you want to know the which Quarter certain activity took place. Fortunately, with a simple formula you can determine the Quarter. =ROUNDUP(MONTH(A1)/3,0) Roundup can be a useful function in other applications as well. The last parameter (0 in this example) is used to change the rounding level. A positive number will add decimal places, while a negative number will round left of the decimal (i.e. -1 rounds to 10s and -2 rounds to 100s).

I recently had a list of items that I wanted to grab from a web page drop-down list. Of course you can't copy a drop-down list, but... you can view the source and get the list. The problem though is, "how do you remove the option tags and the value?" As you may have guessed by the title, you can do it with Word. Here's a sample taken from News.com : Copy the list and paste it into Word. Open the Find and Replace dialog (Edit | Replace... or Ctrl + H). Click the More button and check Use wildcards . Here's the trick, as you need to use special characters. First, paste the string you want to remove in the Find what: field. For each greater than and less than character, place a backslash before it, i.e. becomes \ Replace the contents of the value field with an asterisk. Validate Word will be able to find the code by clicking the Find Next button -- the code should now be highlighted. Go to the Replace with: field and enter ^p . This will replace your code with ...

Do you ever have the experience where your typing away, say in Word, and another program pops-up and takes focus, forcing you to click back on the program you were working in? This happens the most to me when a new IM conversation begins in Trillian . It's not a problem once the conversation is going, just for new ones. Where there are a couple of work-arounds to prevent this from happening. Perhaps the easiest is to get Microsoft's Tweak UI to disable it. Look for Focus in the General section of Tweak UI. You can also do this through a registry setting: Start the Registry Editor: Go to Start | Run and enter regedit [Enter] Find HKEY_CURRENT_USER | Control Panel | Desktop Go to the Edit menu and select New > DWORD value Name the DWORD value "ForegroundLockTimeout" Assign a value of 30d40 Close the Registry Editor While your in the Registry Editor, you can also set how many times the Window seeking your attention flashes in your taskbar. This is another setting ...

In Amber McArthur's new position at CityTV, she has produced a lot of interesting material including her blog, Inside Popnology . Here she interviews Andrew Clement, Professor of Information Studies at the University of Toronto on the subject of Net Neutrality.

From my home, I can pickup several wireless signals, with about half unsecured. I have been using one of these connections, instead of paying Comcast's high prices. While connecting my desktop with my laptop (to transfer some files), I noticed from the laptop that I could see this neighbors computer. I decided, what the heck, I'll click on it and see if it is open. Well, I got challenged (which you would think is good), but I tried Windows XP default password for the Admin account and I got in. I suspect more people do not understand that they are not secure than being ignorant that they should be secure. Because people are assuming they are secure, their systems get left open to make easy access without any real hacker tools. If you're reading this, and are not sure about your computer security, I highly suggest you check your system out or have a technical friend help. Check the following: If you have wireless, at a minimum use WPA . You may also consider MAC ID filtering...

Do you ever get frustrated by having to always press F8 when you want to boot into Safe Mode or the Command Prompt? With a simple modification to your boot.ini, you can add those options to the boot menu. Here's a typical boot.ini (located at c:\): [boot loader] timeout=3 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Media Center Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons This boot.ini will prompt with: Windows XP Media Center Edition Microsoft Windows Recovery Console Add the following three lines under [operating systems] to get Safe Mode , Safe Mode with Networking , and Safe Mode with the Command Prompt : multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Safe Mode" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /safeboot:minimal multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Safe Mode with Network" /noexecute=optin /f...

I recently was on vacation and was reminded how much I like Google's Picasa to manage my digital photos. Each night as I returned from my activities, I inserted my memory card into my laptop, launched Picasa, and had it load my new photos into a folder unique for that day. Occasionally I took a few additional sunset photos, and common to camera memory cards, when loading I ended up with duplicate file names. Picasa handles this for me by automatically renaming the new files as they were saved to my laptop. Once the photos were on my laptop, it was very easy to take care of basic photo editing -- perfect for most of us non-Photoshop experts. For example, removing red-eye is simple; I can also sharpen photos; and of course rotation is a single click. Once my edits are complete, Picasa will save my original, so that I can always go back to it later. Once I finished my edits, I viewed all the photos from the day using the slide show feature. And when I was happy with what I saw, it wa...

Recently I was asked how to add a new Download Action to Firefox. In other words, how can I get Firefox to always use the same program and open a file from the web without having to save it first each time. I scratched my head for a minute and then thought, "this is easy, just click Tools | Options , and then the Content tab ." I found out I could only manage them here, not add. After being perplex for a while, I realized it is actually very easy. Download the file type (e.g. PowerPoint), select the Open with radio button, select the application you want to open it with , and (here's the hard part) check the box next to Do this automatically for files like this from now on . Now you can go back to the Content tab in the Options menu if you want to remove or change the file association. Ahh, such an easy solution to any easy problem.

Recently I took a class where the instructor could not get one of his DVDs to play for the class. This particular DVD was a custom compilation made by his organization. The error I saw when trying it on my laptop was that it was blocky and played fast. Another person tried it and got a black screen. I search Google on "free DVD codecs" and found a codec to that worked . Once installed, it still did not play with my default player, but it did play with the player installed with the codec -- the Media Player Classic. Because this first codec worked, I did not try the other downloads. I tried this one first because the file size was the smallest. So if you find that you still have trouble, try one of the other links within the first result ( Codec Pack All in 1 or K-Lite Mega Codec ).

Have you ever thought it would be easier to find a particular drive if My Computer would display a menu of all drives? Well actually it can do that, with a little configuration change. Right-click on the Start menu, and select properties Make sure the Start menu radio button is selected, and click the Customize button next to it Click the Advance tab Scroll through the list of Start menu items until you find My Computer Select the radio button next to Display as a menu Click OK twice That's all there is to it.