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Santa Spotted - Track via your mobile device

aaron — 2010-12-25T06:25:00Z

This Christmas eve, join NORAD to track Santa's flight from your phone. On December 24th, open Google Maps for mobile and do a search for "Santa" to see his latest location. For the non-smart-phone-techie-crowd, you can just go to Norad's site: http://www.noradsanta.org/en/index.html

Fax Machines Fight the Good Fight!

aaron — 2010-12-23T06:27:00Z

It's official. Fax machines are revving back up from near extinction thanks to the brewing troubles in the Koreas. After South Korea's military drills a few days ago, North Korea has now launched a propaganda war against the South by sending faxes to South Korean business asking them to revolt. All they need now is a red stapler. More from http://articles.cnn.com/2010-12-22/world/koreas.propaganda.war_1_faxes-propaganda-war-christmas-tree?_s=PM:WORLD

Kensington HD Universal Dock Converts Laptops Into Desktops

aaron — 2009-09-24T02:04:08Z

Kensington HD Universal Dock Converts Laptops Into Desktops with One Single
Connection [Peripherals]

via Gizmodo by Jesus Diaz on 9/23/09

If you are looking to turn your laptop into desktop workstations with one single USB 2..0 cable, driving monitors up to 2048 x 1152 pixels, you must be out of your freaking mind. Or maybe you just need these.

They are two new Kesington Universal Notebook Docking Stations, both powered by the DisplayLink DL-195USB graphics processor. That means that your notebook graphic card would not be used. The DL-195USB will process all the graphics and send it to your monitor, so your build-in fancy GPU will sit idling and whistling.

The $149.99 K33926US can connect to DVI or VGA monitors at that resolution, providing with Ethernet connectivity at the same time. The $129.99 K33930US will do the same, sans the Ethernet. [Kensington ]

Life-Size Gears of War Lancer Is Sure to Get Some Kid Expelled [Gaming]

aaron — 2009-09-24T01:55:41Z

Life-Size Gears of War Lancer Is Sure to Get Some Kid Expelled [Gaming]

via Gizmodo by Mark Wilson on 9/23/09

This Gears of War replica Lancer doesn't fire real bullets, and it's lacking the motor components to saw someone in half. But damn does it look deadly.

Packing a weight of 15 pounds and a full-sized length of over three feet, the Lancer has been crafted out of polystone before getting a hand-painted finish. And if you'd like to actually own this work of art, you can preorder the Lancer now for $950.

It'll ship in February, or just in time to destroy any intimate relationships you may have before Valentine's Day. [Triforce via Kotaku]

AT&T plans for iPhone MMS to arrive Friday

aaron — 2009-09-24T00:29:49Z

From Macworld:

The iPhone is, arguably, the most advanced smartphone currently on the market. However, whenever you make that argument here in the U.S., invariably some wise guy will say, "If it's so great, why can't you send MMS messages?"

AT&T did promise that the iPhone's innate ability to send MMS messages would make its American debut by September 25—this Friday, in case you don't have a calendar handy. Is AT&T going to disappoint us (again) or will it deliver the goods? Count on the latter, according to no less a source than AT&T itself—or at least the corporate behemoth's Facebook page.

On that site, the carrier promises that MMS support will launch late in the morning, Pacific time, this Friday. "The new carrier settings update enabling MMS should be live and ready to download through iTunes," AT&T says, promising to provide more details when the launch begins. (Once the update is live, you'll be prompted to install it the next time you connect your phone to iTunes. It's not a whole software update, just a small installation of additional settings onto your iPhone.)

As a reminder, the ability to send and receive photos, contact info, audio files, and locations via the iPhone's Messages application was added with Apple's iPhone 3.0 update—AT&T just didn't support it. That's not the case in at least 76 other countries where iPhone 3G users already take advantage of MMS support.

Needless to say, a lot of people will be paying attention to AT&T on Friday. And if this report on DSLreports.com is accurate, that's making the carrier very nervous, as it rushes to beef up its infastructure to support the expected burst of activity.

Here's hoping that AT&T's network is ready for millions of iPhone users to send a few test MMS messages starting late Friday morning.

The complete story can be found here:
http://www.macworld.com/article/142962/article.html

We hope you will find this story interesting and informative. Macworld, an IDG publication, provides independent, unbiased, reviews, news, and information about technology.

Stuffed Animal USB Hand Warmers Quickly Brand You as "Office Weirdo" [USB]

aaron — 2009-09-20T05:33:55Z

From GizmodoStuffed Animal USB Hand Warmers Quickly Brand You as "Office Weirdo" [USB]

If you feel like your coworkers just don't ostracize you enough, these fuzzy bear and rabbit USB hand warmers are sure to do the trick. "Why does that guy have his hands jammed into a stuffed animal's esophagus?" they'll ask.

Though I've had the good fortune to have never worked in an office, I have seen every episode of The Office and thus feel qualified to say that wearing these things are a surefire way to turn you into a weirder, colder and furrier version of Dwight (or Gareth, or whoever fills that role in the Australian, Quebecoise etc versions). They're a little bit cute and a lot bit creepy, and available for $22.50 per pair. [Technabob]

Top 10 Tactics for Protecting Your Stuff [Lifehacker Top 10]

aaron — 2009-09-20T04:39:39Z

From Lifehacker

Top 10 Tactics for Protecting Your Stuff [Lifehacker Top 10]

We've offered up a wealth of tips on locking down your data, but old-school, straight-up stealing is another matter entirely. Try these 10 tips on securing, disguising, tracking down, and hiding your goods so they don't get nicked.

Photo by tom.arthur.

10. Sign your gear, add return incentives

Your wallet or purse already has your license in it for identification and mailing, but what about your other, possibly more expensive gear? You should definitely get a label on it. Adam kinda-sorta thinks the ImHonest label service makes sense, if you want to protect your mailing address and give gadget finders an offer of a reward to return your gear (even if that reward is, not surprisingly, just some ImHonest labels, unless you go further yourself). Homemade labels with an email address might be good enough for most, but for gadgets with memory cards inside, digitally signing with a .txt file makes sense as well. (Original post)

9. Make your lunch look less appetizing

This falls under the same category of ugly-as-deterrent mentioned elsewhere on this list, but office lunch thieves are a different kind of bandit. They (somewhat) know you, they (hopefully) don't want to sell your goods, and they're more of an opportunistic nuisance than a hit-and-run thief. Since we originally posted about designer Sherwood Forlee's faux-moldy anti-theft lunch bags, Forlee's put his bags up for sale at $10 for 25 bags. Not a bad price for semi-reusable bags, but you can likely replicate the effect on your own with non-toxic paint or food dye. Better still, if you're willing to sacrifice two slices of bread for the cause, we've heard a surreptitious coffee grounds sandwich often teaches a vital lesson about personal property to refrigerator prowlers. (Original post)

Less Than a Third Of You Accurately Adjusted Your HDTV Settings

aaron — 2009-09-20T04:33:24Z

From Gizmodo

Less Than a Third Of You Accurately Adjusted Your HDTV Settings [Home Theater]

According to our recent poll, only 29% of respondents actually calibrated their HDTVs. That means as many as 70% of you might not have your settings optomized. Fortunately, that's not too difficult to change.

If you think the picture quality might be off, follow this guide and learn how to calibrate an HDTV on your own. And, for the love of God, don't waste money on this service from a big box store.

iPhone 3G S Batteries Overheating Has Users Hot

aaron — 2009-06-30T13:17:00Z

When it comes to the perennial issue of batteries overheating in small devices where there is smoke there is usually fire.

Apple with its wildly popular iPhone 3GS is the latest vendor to grapple with reports that batteries are overheating.

The blogosphere is burning up with a heated debate on whether the new iPhone 3G S at times is getting so hot from battery overheating that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) will be forced to step in and demand a recall of thousands, tens of thousand or even hundreds of thousands of the product line. More on this story from ChannelWeb.

Restore Missing CD or DVD Drive

aaron — 2009-06-04T16:09:00Z

Restore Missing CD or DVD Drive

Reports have filtered in that CD or DVD drives will suddenly cease to exist in XP and Vista systems. Most often this
has been reported in conjunction with program installations and Windows upgrades, but it has also
happened for no apparent reason. This tweak will restore the missing drives after a reboot.

** NOTE** This fix requires editing the computer registry - backup first!

[Start] [Run] [Regedit]

Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class

Key Name: {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

Value Data: [Delete All Value Data from UpperFilters and LowerFilters]

Note: Do not delete the Key or the Multi-String Values. Delete only the data values.

Exit Registry and Reboot

How to avoid getting a virus / trojan / worm / etc

aaron — 2009-05-08T15:50:00Z

-updated 05/08/09

Malware, spyware, trojans, viruses, worms, and all the other nasties out there come in many shapes and sizes, and get onto your PC in several different ways. The purpose of this post is to bullet proof your PC so they do not even get the chance.

Download and install Secunia. This program will run constantly in the background and advise you when any program on your computer is missing an update. Very stable and secure, for Windows only.
Change your browser! Stop using Internet Explorer. Most evil things get onto your computer through your web browser, and IE is not that secure. Available for all platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux) l suggest using FireFox.
Once you've downloaded Firefox, install the WoT (Web of Trust) addon. This will place a green or red circle next to every link when you do a Google, MSN, or Yahoo search. Green is good / safe, red is bad / evil. If you click on a link that was marked red, you are almost guaranteed to end up with something on your computer that you do not want there!
Install a working up to date (and auto updating) anti virus program. AVG and AVAST! are both great personal and free programs. The biggest difference is AVG comes with a toolbar/link scanner (which you can hide so it doesn't get in the way) and AVAST! does not. If your current anti virus program is expired, not working, or you just don't want to pay for it anymore, use one of these.
Bad things like to play and live in your temp files. CC Cleaner is a robust disk cleanup program that runs very quickly and takes care of those files plus more. Does not run automatically, should be run monthly.
Malwarebytes is one of the top rated programs for keeping malware off your PC. The free version works great, but does not do live background scanning (you have to run it manually). Most anti virus programs do NOT find what this program does; this is a must have program. If you use the free version, depending on your internet usage, we suggest running it once every 2-4 weeks.
OpenDNS is like a traffic cop for the internet. It censors (at your discretion and choice - it is completely customizable) what your computer / network can look at and see on the internet. Completely free, this is highly suggested for anyone that has children / teenagers and small businesses. Even if you know that little Johnny would "never" intentionally go to a bad site, misspelled words in search engines happen.
Do an occasional online scan. (this does require using Internet Explorer though); Bitdefender Online scan will find things that your onboard antivirus program may not, especially if there is a trojan that is blocking it from running correctly.

Good luck, we wish you safe browsing!

IE8 Crashes - Why you should wait, and how to fix

aaron — 2009-03-26T00:52:00Z

Issue: After installing Internet Explorer 8 on an XP Home SP3 computer, end user was no longer able to:

Enter information in any blank fields of any websites
Enter information into Outlook Express in the "body" field
Access System Restore - the calendar was blank

There were additional multiple run time errors.

The Fix: Uninstall Internet Explorer 8

From the START (Globe for Vista users) button, goto CONTROL PANEL
ADD / REMOVE PROGRAMS
IE8 - Uninstall

A reboot is required. After reboot, all previous issues were fixed. Advised end user to use FireFox.

System Error Fix

aaron — 2009-03-10T17:43:00Z

If you have the following error on shutdown of a windows computer, uninstalling all Norton applications (including Live Update programs) will correct the problem.

Event Type:   Error
Event Source:   System Error
Event Category:   (102)
Event ID:   1003
Date:       3/10/2009
Time:       8:33:51 AM
User:       N/A
Computer:   D9CQK771
Description:
Error code 1000000a, parameter1 000000b0, parameter2 00000002, parameter3 00000000, parameter4 80507fac

Getting rid of your computer? Don't forget to clean.

aaron — 2009-02-17T02:24:00Z

A whopping 40% of the used hard drives on eBay contain easily recoverable personal data. Use the following guide to ensure your personal data never makes it out into the wild. - From Lifehacker.com

Why not to use your ISP's (Internet Service Provider) "free" email account

aaron — 2009-02-01T17:07:00Z

Most ISPs (Internet Service Provider) provide an email address to you when you sign up for their service. Which is nice, except for when:

They go out of business
They are purchased by another company
You move

Locally (Susanville, CA), the high speed cable service provider has changed hands three times in the last 4 years. Anyone that had an adelphia.com email address had to change it to roadrunner.com. Now they have to change it again to a windjammer.com address. For the technically inept, this creates a challenge; not to mention the PITA it is to now inform friends, family, and companies that your email address has changed.

The solution is simple. Get a free email address from Gmail. Yes there are others such as Hotmail and Yahoo mail, however they lack many features that Gmail offers, such as:

POP3 access - which means you can still use Outlook, Outlook Express, or Thunderbird to access your email
IMAP access - you can use the aforementioned email clients on several computers, and they will all look the same
Email storage - Yahoo and MSN have low limits on amount of email stored (you can get more space with them but you have to pay for it); Gmail currently has over 7GB of storage space, with that number growing daily
(Almost) Ad free - Yahoo and MSN have flashy ads, things moving all over the place, when you're trying to check your email; Gmail is clean cut, no large ads all over the place

So if you don't already have one, get a Gmail account today.

Digital Frames loaded with viruses?

aaron — 2008-12-29T23:38:00Z

If you were one of the lucky (or perhaps unlucky, as it may turn out) ones that received a new digital picture frame for Christmas, you may want to run a virus scan on it before going to far. Turns out the Mecury 1.5 Digital Photo Frame (From Wal-Mart and other vendors), and some Samsung Frame software was preloaded with viruses and trojans.

MS Out of Cycle Patch

aaron — 2008-12-20T00:14:00Z

The boys at Microsoft are working overtime this week; for the 2nd time this year, yesterday they issued another "Out of Cycle" critical patch to the operating system. It covers the following:

A remote code execution vulnerability exists as an invalid pointer reference in the data binding function of Internet Explorer. When data binding is enabled (which is the default state), it is possible under certain conditions for an object to be released without updating the array length, leaving the potential to access the deleted object's memory space. This can cause Internet Explorer to exit unexpectedly, in a state that is exploitable.

If you haven't already done so, update your PC!

Errors and Omissions, oy vey! Got Insurance, Mr?

aaron — 2008-12-20T00:06:00Z

I find nothing scarier than the possibility that maybe, just maybe... I might have missed something when working on a computer / network / etc. Has something to do with customer service, I guess; or maybe just being really anal. Below is a clip of an article from Slashdot; I sure hope that guy had insurance (and don't worry, not that we've ever had to use it, but we do!)

"A Canadian business man is on the hook for a $52,000 phone bill after someone hacked into his voice mail system and found a way to dial out. The hacker racked up the charges with calls to Bulgaria. The business owner noticed an odd message coming up on his call display (Feature 36), and alerted his provider, Manitoba Telecom Services. They referred him to their fraud department, who discovered the breach. MTS said that they would reverse the charges if the hacked equipment was theirs, but in this case it was customer owned. The ironic part is that the victim's company, HUB Computer Solutions is in the business of computer and network security. They even offer to sell, configure and secure Cisco VoIP systems. Looks as though they even couldn't manage to secure their own system, which doesn't bode well for their customers."

More from Slashdot

DIY Complete System Recovery

aaron — 2008-12-19T23:52:00Z

Issue: The dang OS just isn't working right, and it's time to reinstall it from scratch

Fix: System Recovery

What this does: On most newer models of pc's there is a separate partition (usually the D drive) called System Recovery. What that is, is a complete recovery "disk" saved on your hard drive. When you run it, it will reformat your hard drive to the way it was the day you bought it.

How: When you first turn on the computer, you'll see the brief pop-ups saying BIOS, setup, etc. For a very brief moment you should see the command, "PRESS F11 FOR SYSTEM RECOVERY"; just do that. There will be (depending on manufacturer) 2 choices after this, a "Destructive" or "Non-Destructive" recovery. Destructive will reset everything, including saved pictures, music, documents - they will be gone, forever! Backup everything you want saved before doing that onto a flash drive or some other type of removable media. The "Non-Destructive" method attempts to save all of your files (pics, music, docs, etc) in a backup folder on the C drive; it then reformats and reinstalls the OS; you should still back up anything you want saved off the PC before doing this, in case it fails.

Note, you will still need to reinstall any programs (Quickbooks, Word, OOO, WoW, etc) no matter which method you choose; be sure to have those handy for afterwards. You'll need 1-2 hours for the entire process, and don't forget to do your Windows Updates (again).

Complete Worm Trojan Virus Removal

aaron — 2008-11-29T19:08:00Z

Issue: Worm / Virus / Trojan on PC

Causes: Usually out of date programs click here to read on how to find out of date programs on your PC

Fix: ***NOTE*** - seriously infected systems may NOT reboot / start after cleaning if Operating System files are infected; back up ALL important data / pictures / music / financial files off of the PC before attempting!

Do an online scan in safe mode. To do this:

¨ Shut down the computer; then restart by hitting the power button.

¨ Right after you hit the power button, start taping the F8 key, very fast, until it takes you to the SAFE MODE screen

¨ Use the up/down arrow keys to choose “SAFE MODE WITH NETWORKING”, then push the ENTER key

¨ Click YES to continue in SAFE MODE

¨ Open Internet Explorer

¨ Go to Google.com

¨ Search for “bitdefender online scan”

¨ Click the top search result

¨ Follow the instructions on the site; this will do an online scan of the computer, which does from time to time find things that your onboard anti virus program may miss.

¨ Once complete, reboot the computer normally

If the PC is still infected, download, install and run the following programs in SAFE MODE:

-Smitfraud: http://siri.geekstogo.com/SmitfraudFix.php Do option 2, CLEAN

-MalwareBytes: http://www.malwarebytes.org/

-Vundo Fix: http://vundofix.atribune.org/

-CC Cleaner: http://www.ccleaner.com/

-Adaware 2008 http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-2008/3000-8022_4-10045910.html?part=dl-ad-aware&subj=dl&tag=top5&cdlPid=10844457

Adaware 2008 may not install in SM (Safe Mode); if it doesn't, install in normal mode, then reboot into SM to run program

-CW Shredder http://us.trendmicro.com/us/products/personal/CWShredder/

Again, it is important that these programs are run in SAFE MODE with NETWORKING to ensure thier success.