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
Pcsx2 emulator as the best Playstation 2 emulator in existence and I have to say that it really does an awesome job as long as your computer is fast enough to handle the emulation. There are two prerequisites that are a big hurdle for many users. The first is that you do need a Playstation 2 bios file.
I have been praising emTube just a day ago which was an application for Symbian S60 mobile phones such as the Nokia N73 and Nokia N95 that made it possible to browse Youtube with your mobile phone and download + view movies as well. No conversion was needed and the quality of the service was astonishingly good.
Some Windows tips are that short that I can't write enough to justify an article for them which is why I have decided to collect five quick Windows tips that are still very useful and probably not know to anyone reading this article. At least I hope that some of them are new to you.
Some applications have the nasty habit of bringing their program windows into focus even though they appear most of the time unwanted and in inappropriate moments. This happens from time to time when I'm reading an article on a website or in Word. The bad thing that is happening is that the focus is lost on the document that I'm currently reading even if the new window is just a small popup informing me about an update.
Xray is a bookmarklet that can be used in Firefox, Internet Explorer 6+ and Safari that displays CSS Properties of elements on a website. The process is as simple as it could be. The user loads a website, clicks on the Xray bookmarklet which loads an overlay that will display the information.
How many mail accounts do you have ? Last time I counted them I had ten. Ten private and business accounts at various webmailers and servers. Ever since then I was looking for a solution to backup all my mail accounts in one go which would include the possibility to place them in a secure location such as a CD or DVD.
Clickbank is a large advertiser that is mainly known for informational products such as ebooks. If you look around on their website you find a lot of webmaster related products but also products of other niches such as Business to Business and Money & Employment. The interesting part (for us) begins when we take a look at their requirements for pages, or better thank you pages, that sell Clickbank products.
Want to listen to the latest charts of the UK, Europe and Germany ? Want to create your own playlist, add artists to it and search for songs as well ? Mucelli offers all of this in a easy to use very user friendly interface. They pull the music from Youtube and display it either with or without the video.
I personally like to change my wallpaper from time to time and collected 19 wallpapers over time that are really beautiful. I used to change wallpapers manually every now and then but quickly forgot about this and started using one wallpaper solely.
Have you ever thought that the process of downloading mp3 files, opening itunes, adding the files and syncing them is kinda overcomplicated ? The creators of the browser extension Tunestor for Internet Explorer and Firefox surely did and created an extension just for that purpose.
There are actually several impressive programs out there that can be used as a replacement for commercial CD and DVD writers such as Nero Burning Rom. They are interesting not only for users who do not buy a commercial products but also for those that feel that those commercial applications have become so bloated with features that their responsiveness has gone down the hill.
ImageSorter provides a way to automatically sort pictures of a directory by using several parameters such as color, name or size. Results will be displayed in a picture matrix and the user can zoom in and out fluently, use the mouse to navigate through the displayed thumbnails and click on images to load them in their original size.
Firefox offers a great way of changing hundreds of settings by opening about:config in the address bar. The downside is that many users feel overwhelmed by this way of changing the Firefox configuration simply because it lists so many of them. I did not look through all the available settings but found ten lesser known parameters that I would like to introduce today. Lesser known means that they have not been mentioned on every "Tweak Firefox" article on the net - yet.
I think I heard about Wyzo the first time on Techcrunch and thought to myself at that time that no one would need a browser that would be able to download torrents and the files connected to them. But then it occurred to me that this approach would benefit many users, especially those that never came into contact with Bittorrent before.
My last review of Security and Privacy Complete dates back to December 2006 and I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at this application again. The software is a security solution for Windows and lets you disable privacy and security related features of Windows.
When Apple released their iPhone they never forgot to mention that the iPhone was able to play Youtube videos. I think they mentioned it as a key feature and several television ads showed this feature as well. If you do not own a Apple iPhone but another mobile phone, mabye like the Nokia N73 (my phone) or Nokia N95, you will be delighted to hear that a Symbian S60 application brings Youtube to those phones.
Hulu is doing a huge promotion currently offering several websites 2500 beta invites each and lots are still available. I found three website promotions with roughly 4000 invites left for Hulu, make sure you head right out and sign up using any of the following links:
Most notebooks have several hardware components installed that are not used by the user. A notebook with WLAN and network card for instance and a user that only uses the WLAN to connect to a network and the Internet. Every component installed is using battery and it is a wise step to disable those components that are not used - ever.
A lot of users are still working with Internet Explorer 6 either because their company did not make the switch to Internet Explorer 7 yet or because they don't know that a new version is already out. They might be perfectly happy with it but some will probably consider switching to IE7 or another browser when they experience the following odd behavior.
The default cursor set that ships with Windows is not really friendly to the eye and it happens from time to time that I have to search for the cursor on the screen because it blends in nicely if the page has a similar background color.
What language will a German and a French use to communicate usually ? What a Italian and Swede ? They will speak English unless you find someone that speaks both languages which, depending on the two languages in questions, could be rather rare. A huge problem arises when you have to speak to someone who does not speak English, how do you communicate ?
I know that you can literally use hundreds of scripts that lookup a domain name or IP and display information about that domain or IP. Most of those sites are rather slow and / or have so much advertisement on their websites that I prefer to use WhosIP from Nirsoft when I quickly want to lookup an IP.
I was testing the software Tidy Start Menu which offers users a way to move start menu entries into several categories like Office, Games and Internet when it occurred to me that I did not need that program at all to do the same. The only advantage that I could see in using it was that I did not have to create the main folders in the startmenu by myself.
If you have discovered a Virus or Trojan on your system you are advised to reset (or check) the settings of your firewall to make sure that no backdoor has been created that allows the hacker to log into your computer easily again even if the Virus or Trojan has been removed.
One of the most popular application launchers for Windows has been updated to version 2 yesterday and I think that this is an appropriate moment to see what has changed since my first review of Launchy which dates way back. First time users of Launchy who happen to not read the instructions might be a bit puzzled at first because even though Launchy is started after installing it it is not visible on the system.
Are you using the Microsoft Internet Explorer ? You might be shocked by the following example of how insecure the Internet Explorer really is. Copy some text into the clipboard, you can use the text that you are just reading or any other text that you come across. Now visit the IE Clipboard Test website and see what happens.
I'm not regularly buying or selling websites but I know the trends, can estimate the value of a website, its future potential and current and future market situation. The following is not really a trick but more of a using information posted on website sales to your advantage.
If you still have an old Hotmail account that you use regularly you might be relieved to know that there is a way to update or move all of the mails from that account into another software. Well, another software is not the right term, you can move them into Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007 and from there into any other mail account such as Gmail, Thunderbird or Yahoo Mail.
I more than once asked myself why I had so many svchost processes running when opening the task manager which displayed no additional information on the process. I needed another software that would help me analyze the svchost processes and determine if they were really needed or even malicious.
The normal way of changing Firefox themes is painfully slow. You download and install the theme from the Mozilla website and activate it afterwards. Then, after activating the theme in the Themes menu you have to restart Firefox so that the new theme will be displayed after the next start.
Have you ever brought in a computer for repair to the friendly computer store next door or send your notebook to that big company that sold you it so that they could check what's wrong with it ? Did it ever occur to you that the technicians that would check the computer could do more than just checking ?
I introduced a Thunderbird extension to remove duplicate mails yesterday and I want to continue today by writing about a Thunderbird extension that checks for duplicates in the Thunderbird address book. The add-on handles one address book at the time currently which is a little unfortunate but the author promises to deliver the possibility to check all existing address books in a future version.
How does that sound ? A community that shares free sound effects and loops. That's right, all of the sounds posted on the website by the community are free to use in your projects and websites. You do not have to be signed in to download the mp3 or wav files from Soundsnap so it's as user friendly as it can get.
Duplicate mails can be a problem in the most advanced email applications. It does not matter if you use Outlook, Thunderbird or a self coded mail program, duplicate mails can be a problem in all of them. This can happen for instance if you merge folders in the mail program or if a server or download error has the result that the mails are downloaded twice from the mail server.
I'm using a desktop PC and a Toshiba notebook at home, sometimes both at the same time which is the case when I write an article about Windows Vista. The desktop PC is running Windows XP and I use the notebook with Windows Vista to test what I'm writing about. I do my research on the Windows XP PC however and find it convenient to use the clipboard across the network.
Bookmarks are like Gold in the online world. It can take years to compile a list of precious bookmarks and it is a huge catastrophe for most users if those bookmarks happen to be gone. There are several scenarios that I can think out of my head that would make the bookmarks disappear in Firefox.
I have been looking for a flexible file rename for a very long time. I found some, tested some, wrote articles about them here at Ghacks but was never really satisfied. This has changed with the discovery of PFrank File Renamer. Stupid name ? Yes for sure although PFrank is an acronym for Peter's Flexible Renaming Kit.
I do work with a Samsung SyncMaster 19" LCD monitor which is an awesome monitor. I used to work with two Samsung monitors of the same size but the second monitor had to replace the defect one at my mothers computer. Monitors with higher resolutions become more and more affordable and I thought it would be nice to purchase a monitor that is capable of displaying images in a higher resolution.
Windows XP displays several system folders in the startmenu with no obvious way of removing them from it. System folders are for instance the MyDocuments, MyMusic and MyPics folders. They are displayed even if you do not use those folders at all and no files are located in them.
The Windows hosts file is one of the major files on the system that malicious scripts, trojans and spyware programs use to manipulate the host system to redirect website or IP requests. It could be used for instance to redirect the website of Google, Ebay or Amazon to a different server while the correct url would still be visible in the address bar.
