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Archive for the 'Tips and Tricks' Category

How to Set Up a Home FTP Server

Posted by Alan Henry on October 26th, 2005

LifeHacker [ http://www.lifehacker.com/ ] to the rescue again! For those of you who would love to have access to all of your files from wherever you go and whatever computer you might use, and would also like the ability to transfer files to your home computer or home network, this trick is for you! I [...]

Tips and Tricks: TinyURL Etiquitte

Posted by Alan Henry on October 25th, 2005

One of my favorite sites, LifeHacker [ http://www.lifehacker.com/ ] has a few tips that I know for a fact a lot of people need; TinyURL etiquitte. Too often people use TinyURLs for everything without remembering that when you use a TinyURL you lose the context of the link, so people don’t know what they’re clicking. [...]

Essential Firefox Extensions

Posted by Alan Henry on September 20th, 2005

Lifehack.org has published a list of their essential firefox extensions. Some of my favorites are naturally missing, but that’s okay with me-there are a lot of excellent suggestions here, and there are links under the list to favorite extension lists around the web. I really like this list; there are a few here that I [...]

Hacking Firefox: Speed Up Your Browser

Posted by Alan Henry on September 7th, 2005

Another excellent Extremetech article all about hacking your favorite software! Firefox [ http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ ], which is my web browser of choice at least, and the browser of choice for internet savvy browsers around the globe, is probably the most customizable web browsing program ever, and customizing it is incredibly easy. Extremetech has, for those who [...]

Nifty Utilities to Hack Mac OS X “Tiger!”

Posted by Alan Henry on September 7th, 2005

Extremetech to the rescue! For all the folks who recently bought Macs or just upgraded to Mac OS 10.4, “Tiger,” there are a ton of awesome tools and utilities that’ll let you get under the hood and change the settings in a way that System Preferences never let you do! A lot of these techniques [...]

Andy Walker’s New Book Scheduled for Release in October

Posted by Alan Henry on August 2nd, 2005

Andy Walker’s new book, Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Security, Spam Spyware and Viruses is slated to hit the store shelves in late October, and you can already preorder the book at Amazon. [ Amazon US | Amazon CA ] The book looks good so far, and looks to be full of tons of valuable information [...]

Hacker Mitnick Advises on Security

Posted by Alan Henry on July 25th, 2005

Kevin Mitnick, perhaps one of the security world’s most famous convicted hackers, now spends much of his time consulting on matters of IT security for various institutions, and his message is clear, real, and while not old, definitely fresh for some ears. Social Engineering is a much greater threat than viruses, worms, and other software [...]

Keeping Your PC Healthy

Posted by Alan Henry on July 25th, 2005

ExtremeTech.com has an excellent piece today on keeping your computer in good working order. From physical maintenance to cleaning up your system’s software, purging startup files, and getting together something of a maintenance regimen for your system, you can keep your computer in tip top shape at all times and make sure it’s in excellent [...]

Build an $800 Gaming PC!

Posted by Alan Henry on June 2nd, 2005

In the true spirit of the old Screen Savers segments when you would build either the Ultimate Gaming Machine or that memorable time when Patrick Norton managed to cobble together a pretty damned swanky gaming system for only 500 bucks, ExtremeTech has a how-to on how to build your own gaming PC for $800 bucks. [...]

Hot Linux Reviews!

Posted by Alan Henry on May 17th, 2005

Courtesy of Eric Craft in the TechTV Forever Yahoogroup [ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/techtv-forever/ ] we have a ton of reviews for some of the most popular Linux distros available, including the obscenely popular Ubuntu, which has seen rising popularity in recent days. SuSE [ http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1791610,00.asp ] [ http://usalug.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=6399 ] Ubuntu [ http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,120520,00.asp ] [ http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=10413 ] Xandros [...]

Build Your Own Linux Home Theater PC

Posted by Alan Henry on May 17th, 2005

As part of their “Microsoft-Free Home” series, ExtremeTech put together a particularly interesting how-to on building your own Linux-based HTPC, complete with DVR capability. For the non acronym-savvy in the audience, what the really means is building a computer that you can use for home entertainment, movies, music, the works, based on Linux, and that [...]

Easy Ways to Recycle Old PCs and Cell Phones–Really!

Posted by Alan Henry on April 23rd, 2005

The folks at PCWorld never fail to dissapoint, and this time is no exception. Ever wonder what to do with that old monitor you’re replacing, or that old computer that’s up and died, and you’ve long since picked up a new one to replace it? What about that laptop that they say will take a [...]

Andy Walker Writes a Book!

Posted by Alan Henry on April 15th, 2005

Looks like Andy Walker, of Call for Help 2.0 fame, is writing a book on computer security! The book should be geared towards end-users, average people who are concerned about keeping themselves safe online but may not be all into computers or particularly knowledgeable from the getgo. It looks like it has promise, we haven’t [...]

Picasa 2: Better than the Original?

Posted by Alan Henry on March 8th, 2005

I’m a huge advocate of Picasa, Google’s photo application that does more than just catalog all the images on your system, but it’ll do everything from create custom slide shows and presentations to create a searchable index of all of your images, and if you’re like me at all, you have hundreds and hundres of [...]

iPod Shuffle RAID

Posted by Alan Henry on February 9th, 2005

I’m not entirely sure why anyone would really need an exceptionally slow 4GB RAID array, but this guy did it: [ http://www.wrightthisway.com/Articles/000154.html ] It took something like 11 minutes to copy about 1.8GB from his G5 to the 4GB RAID array, but it’s just proof that it can be done! So if you need to [...]

iPod Mod!

Posted by Alan Henry on February 4th, 2005

Another in the line of iPod goodness today, here’s something for all you guys with a regular iPod (since the last tip applied to the Shuffle and the Mini): Constantly worried about scratching up the mirrored finish on the back of your iPod? If you’re like me, you’ve probably already scratched it a few times-but [...]

Trick out your iPod Shuffle

Posted by Alan Henry on February 4th, 2005

Got an iPod Shuffle yet? Ready to trick it out, make it really yours? Here’s a little something that’ll make your iPod Shuffle stand out from the crowd when you hang it around your neck, and it’ll make sure the thing will never get lost. Ipod Shuffle skins! Check it out: [ http://www.evolutionvinylworks.com/?function=&cat_id=140 ] These [...]

Looking for Firefox Extensions?

Posted by Alan Henry on February 3rd, 2005

This morning I happened on a treasure trove of Firefox extensions; some of them allow you to easily back up your bookmarks, one of them remembers the tabs you have open(so if you crash or have to restart or something happens to Firefox, you can reopen Firefox and go back to the tabs you had [...]

David Pogue Blogs about Firefox in today’s NY Times

Posted by Alan Henry on December 27th, 2004

In a Christmas Eve blog post, David Pouge sings the praises of Firefox, especially in the wake of yet another Internet Explorer vulnerability being found; this time related to exactly how easy it is for phishers to falsify web address information when a user is using IE. His suggestion for keeping safe and secure on [...]

Windows Tip: Using the System Info Tool to Track System Changes

Posted by Alan Henry on December 23rd, 2004

This tip was kindly posted by Jean, a member of the TechTV Forever and Long Live TechTV Yahoogroups! It’s a really good one, and anyone who’s done any IT work knows that sometimes the tipoff to what caused a specific problem or system failure has everything to do with what’s changed on the system recently. [...]