Martin Brinkmann

martin photo

Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News back in 2005. Martin started his career as a tech support representative at a large German financial corporation which he used to finance his college education in English, Information Technology and History.


He quit college and his job when Ghacks began to attract a large enough readership. He made the decision to become a full time blogger and webmaster, and has not looked back since.


Martin is interested in all things tech. His primary focus is on desktop operating systems, web browsers, Internet services, and privacy related topics.


He published the book The Complete Windows 10 Privacy Guide: Windows 10 Fall Creators Update version in 2017. Martin writes a weekly column for fellow tech site Betanews as well.


You can reach Martin on Facebook or on Twitter. Please use the contact form at the bottom of the page to contact the author directly.


Martin has been quoted or mentioned in many major online and print publications, including Forbes, Lifehacker.com, ComputerWorld, LinkedIn, Reddit, Betanews.com, Bleeping Computer, TechCrunch, PC World, Tom's Hardware, Slashdot, Hacker News, The Register, and more.


Martin's articles on Ghacks

delete confirmation

Are you sure you want to delete...?

Confirmation messages seem to be pretty unique to computers. Have you ever used a coffee machine that did ask you if you really wanted to start making coffee, an iPod if you […]

Avira AntiVir Personal 8

Avira AntiVir Personal 8 was released today and I thought it would be nice to write about this new release since AntiVir is one of the most popular free antivirus applications available. […]

Fast Flickr Search Tool

The search possibilities on Flickr are not optimal in my opinion. The search is rather slow, displays only a few results and does not make good use of the screen space at […]

Automatically Convert Mistyped and Obfuscated URLs in Firefox

If you are a regular on the Internet you have experienced your share of mistyped urls that don't let you click the link because it is not recognized as one by the […]

Outlook Tools

Many PC users are still working with Microsoft Outlook as their main email application. It's rather convenient because Outlook Express ships with the Windows operating system and the retail Outlook is part […]

MSN Repair

MSN Repair is a small utility developed by the Italian software developer Valentino Marangi. MSN Repair 2 is the successor of the first version of MSN Repair which was already downloaded more […]

Opera add-ons

Kavin send me an email recently asking me if there was a site for Opera add-ons similar to the highly popular Firefox add-ons website. Yes there is such a website for Opera. […]

True Make Money Online Websites

Making money online, that's everyones dream I guess. Working from home, letting the websites collect the money for you and all you need to do at the end of the month is […]

Font Cubes Font Collection

I'm not someone who is searching for and downloading fonts regularly. Actually I only did it once or twice in the last years because I had to create a new logo for […]

CS Lite Firefox Cookie Manager

Cookies are used for two main purposes basically. The first is to remember that a user is already logged in on a website and the second to track user actions. While the […]

Drag and Crypt Ultra

Drag and Crypt is a tiny application for Windows NT and newer operating systems that provides the user with a dropzone on the desktop that encrypts and decrypts files and folders dropped […]

New Windows Vista Gadgets

I'm not a huge fan of gadgets on the desktop. Does not really matter if they are implemented in the operating system or added by using a Widget engine. Placing gadgets on […]

Fix for Missing Display Properties

It can happen that the tabs of the display properties are missing after installation of new graphics card drivers or a change of the graphics card itself. You may notice that only […]

Convert a full website to PDF

Victor send me an email some days ago asking if I knew of a way to convert a full website into PDF format. I knew that there were several ways to convert […]

high risk files registry

Add File types to the Microsoft Outlook Attachment Manager

Microsoft Outlook categorizes mail attachments into three risk types which are high, medium and low. Outlook uses the default Microsoft configuration to determine if a file poses a high, medium or low […]

Surun beats all Sudo like applications in Windows

If you ever tried to work in Windows NT systems as a limited user you surely have encountered wondrous things like having no permission to change the Windows clock and especially when […]

Silencing your hard drives

I just read an article over at Lifehacker that was called Silence Your Hard Drive with Elastic Suspenders and I thought I weigh in my 2 cents on the topic because I […]

Hide Windows with Watchcat

Watchcat is a tiny Windows application that can be run from any location on the hard drive. Its main purpose is to hide windows from the taskbar and alt+tab window switching display. […]

printer profiles

Create Printer Profiles

My parents are using their HP printer most of the time to print text documents but every now and then they also use it to print a picture they have shot with […]

Ask The Readers: Best Free Burning Software

I have been using Nero Burning Rom for a long time. It used to be a free giveaway with every CD or DVD burner that I bought over the years and I'm […]

Fully Replace Windows XP Fonts with Windows Vista fonts

A while ago I described how to add Windows Vista fonts to Windows XP. The method was very straightforward because Microsoft was supplying the fonts with a free software downloads so that […]

Why my taskbar is on the right side of the screen

Moving the Windows taskbar from the bottom to the right side of the screen was probably the greatest layout change that I ever made or had to cope with since I started […]

Toe Tag just another MP3 Tagger ?

I do not use a software to tag my mp3 files regularly. I'm not that of a music buff who needs his files tagged properly all the time. One reason could be […]

Microsoft to be banned from EU contracts ?

Will Microsoft be banned from future EU contracts ? That's the question of Heide Rühle, a member of the European Parliament is asking the European Commission. According to European Law candidates shall […]

test my security

Test my PC Security

Is your computer secure? Is the firewall that you have installed working properly? Those questions are rather hard to answer even for users with lots of PC experience. Many users simply use […]

Adobe Media Player

My first though was "Oh no, not another media player". Adobe Media Player is based on the Adobe Air plattform which has to be installed before the media player can be installed.Think […]

Snap Windows together

If you ever have used Winamp you might have noticed how the different windows of Winamp snap when you move them close to each other. The windows are independent of each other […]

image recovery

Digital Image Recovery

It happened to me once that I accidentally hit the Delete All button on my Casio Exilim digital camera when browsing through the photos I had taken previously to delete the ones […]

Twins Visions Image Management

Twins Visions is an image management software that is currently in beta stage. It has a unique interesting way of viewing and managing images that differs a lot from normal image viewers […]

past icons windows notification icons screenshot

Past Icons Flusher

I published an article about Long Gone Icons in Windows before and walked you through a manual way of removing those icons from the system. Any icon that appears in the system […]

javaRa

Update Java and remove old Java versions from your system

JavaRa is a small application for Microsoft Windows that serves two purposes. The first is to check if a Java update is available and if that is the case download and install […]

Microsoft Security Patches April 2008

Microsoft have released their Security Bulletin Summary for April 2008 today which contains information and download links to eight patches for various Microsoft operating systems and applications like Microsoft Office and Microsoft […]

PC Building Advice

You know, I have no troubles of linking to your websites or articles if they are great and make up for a good story. Beecher send in a link to one of […]

Amic Email Backup

Emails normally contain a wealth of information that are valuable to most users. They can contain account details, important conversations or files and it would be a catastrophe - at least for […]

Free Spyware Doctor 5.5 Starter Edition

The security tools developers seem to be in a race currently to throw free versions of their products on the market in an effort to increase market share and brand awareness. The […]

Turn Windows Vista into Mac OS X visually

Microsoft pimped up Windows Vista quite a bit when you compare it visually to Windows XP. It seems to me that they have put lots of resources into the design which probably […]

Using Streamripper to save Internet Radio tracks

Streamripper was released in a new version today and I would like to use the opportunity to explain how you can save Internet Radio tracks using Streamripper. You actually do not need […]

We Heart It

We Heart It is a social bookmarking tool for pictures and videos, kinda a specialized version of Delicious that displays the images as thumbnails directly. The whole system is tags based which […]

Move all files from subdirectories into main directory

When I extract multiple archives at once I use a setting that creates a directory of the same name in the main folder. This isn't such a big problem normally if I […]

Regalyzer Advanced Registry Editor

Regalyzer is a free program for Microsoft Windows that you may use as a third-party program to edit the Windows Registry. It features advanced options such as the ability to enter a […]