Thursday, February 28, 2008
I spend plenty of time creating online content using three different interfaces: Blogger, WordPress and Typepad. When I heard about w.bloggar I figured this could simplify my life.
Monday, December 31, 2007
It’s quite common for a category of software to get dominated by a particular program. For example, for word processing it’s Word, and for image manipulation it’s Photoshop. Heck, even our operating system is dominated by Windows. It should come as no surprise that optical disc burning is dominated by one program, [...]
Thursday, December 27, 2007
With my LCD monitor off in RMA land, I’m finding myself relying on my notebook in the interim. Since my last OS reload, I’ve left it pretty empty, and I’m just reloading all of the needed programs. I always consider this an opportunity to reconsider my software choices as I repopulate it.
I’ve had [...]
Friday, November 30, 2007
While Oldster is often fascinated with tiny Linux distributions, for me, I’m always intrigued by alternate browsers. After all, a browser is our window (literally) on the internet, so we might as well make it a good one. I recently heard of a tiny browser known as Off By One, so I did [...]
Friday, November 16, 2007
As time goes on, and my printer always seems to be on the fritz, I turn more and more to digital document files. When I want to email an attachment of a file, a PDF is my format of choice. This is because they are easy to view, and print (assuming the printer [...]
I’ve been no fan of the fax machine for some time now. Whenever possible, I send my documents as email attachments and totally avoid the whole fax experience. It still makes no sense to print a document to then add a fax cover letter to then scan it to send it over the [...]
Many folks use their hard drive to store their music. Transforming the desktop into a “digital jukebox” is great for organizing a collection, transferring to a portable music player, and listening whether from the desktop itself, or from an evolving category of device- the media extender. At the cornerstone of all of this [...]
I’m still on the quest to find digital ripping perfection, and my next stop was Exact Audio Copy. I’ve been playing with version 0.95, which is currently in beta. The last time I looked at this software, the CD database it connects to was not active, so I moved on to other solutions. [...]
Quicktime is a common format for web based video. It is an Apple format that is well suited to downloadable videos because the resulting videos are small and can be downloaded within a reasonable time frame. Unfortunately, Windows is made by Microsoft, and as such, natively, they’re not going to support no stinkin’ [...]
Sad to say, it beat me, broke me, turned me into a quivering gelatonous mass when all was said and done. What can I say? I was spoiled by Windows MCE. (!!!) SageTV is less intuitive, requires more work, and, in the final count for me, refused to switch tuners when recording back to back [...]
Last year when I looked at music file formats and software, I leaned towards iTunes as reasonable way to create mp3 music files from CD’s. This year when I built my new desktop, I decided to reexamine my choice. As of late, I was finding iTunes a little to resource hungry, and not [...]
With my Shuttle all assembled, it is now time to figure out if the processor is running too hot. Even though I’m not planning to overclock my Athlon X2 5200+ (the 90 nm version that uses all of the energy…) in the Shuttle case, I still desire to know the chip’s temps. Maybe [...]
Beyond “just” a great search engine, Google offers a whole bunch of other services and utilities for the computer user. Even better, a lot of the stuff is free. I’m not sure if they took over a web service known as Writely just to annoy Microsoft, or if they really are going somewhere [...]
Quite often, one piece of technology while solving one problem, creates another unforeseen one. More specifically, while I love listening to MP3’s in the car, I often have problems with the volume. This issue is hardly new, as CD’s were quite often not all produced at the same volume. However, when I [...]
For a while now, I’ve been hearing about Flock, the so called “social browser.” After playing around with it for a few hours, I’m not quite sure I agree with that designation. However, it is a cool piece of software, and if we want to see where the next generation of browsers is [...]
With their convenience, just about everyone uses a USB flash drive to store their portable data nowadays. Even drives with one gig or more of capacity are affordable to everyone. Unfortunately, only a few drives come with the software to back up their data. And while it was easy to back up [...]
Thursday, December 14, 2006
With a penultimate name like “The Ultimate Troubleshooter,” this software already had a lofty expectation to uphold. I’m not generally a big advocate for “fixit software,” as too often in the past, I’ve had the experience that as many problems that were solved were created. In short, the net result was not really [...]
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
When internet junkies think of online mapping software, the one that instantly pops to mind is Google Earth. While it does involve a quick download, it has a lot going for it in terms of stability, and well detailed images of our planet (as well as the moon).
Not to be sidelined, Microsoft has decided [...]
Friday, November 10, 2006
After our recent antispyware article, I wondered if there were any other freeware alternatives out there that we should know about as well. After a little Googling, and a search through some magazine articles on “10,000 Freeware Alternatives,” (ok, I’m exaggerating, it was only a thousand or so…), I found SpyCatcher Express. I [...]
Thursday, November 2, 2006
At least in my opinion, spyware is a far greater threat to our computer’s security than viruses ever were. I’m not saying that you don’t need an antivirus program, but I’ve only seen one or two viruses in over a decade of computer use. Alternatively, spyware is just about everywhere these days on [...]
