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
Microsoft killed the Autopatcher project some months ago which was a shock to everyone who used their monthly Windows Update collections to update their computer(s) which had several benefits such as downloading the updates only once and not connecting to a Microsoft server at all.
Microsoft is releasing a monthly Security Release Iso image which contains the security releases of that month packed on one Iso image. The benefit of this approach is not really obvious for home computers running just one version of an operating system by Microsoft but for networks with lots of installed operating systems.
Most software mp3 players do not report playback errors which is not such a big problem most of the time. It could however become one when you copy the mp3 to a player, be it software or hardware, that does not play the file because it checked for those errors before playing the mp3.
It can be quite a task to run Thunderbird on more than one computer and even running Thunderbird on one computer with more than one mail account can cause some problems. Filters are one of them. Mail filters can be global filters that filter all incoming mails or mail account filters which only filter mails that are send to the account in question.
Most of my advertisers pay me in Dollar and I have to convert that revenue to Euro which is either done by the advertisement company (Google Adsense for instance) or by cashing in a Dollar check at my local bank (Tribalfusion). When I started blogging I received €850 for $1000 which was not an excellent conversion rate but good enough.
NBC Direct is a software that will be installed on your computer if you want to watch the videos offered at the NBC Direct website. Before NBC Direct is installed the Open Case Media Agent is installed on your system as well which is used for distributing content and managing rights.
Microsoft has introduced so called add-ins in Microsoft Office and Word which are first-party or third-party applications that extend the functionality of the software. One add-in in particular is being a great asset for me personally, it is called the 2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS and works with eight Office programs including Microsoft Word 2007 and Excel 2007.
Most notebooks tend to run out of power quickly and most of the time in an inappropriate moment. What most users do not know is that every component in the notebook is using power even if you are not using it at the moment. This leads to the conclusion that disabling unneeded components would save power and thus prolong the work time.
Windows gives you no choice but to use the default printer when using the Send To right-click menu. This is not problematic if you only use one printer but if you are working in a place with several printers it could become a nuisance. There is always a way though to make things work the way we want them to.
Wlandscape is a Java application that displays the Wlans in a specified area on a street map making it so much easier to identify possible hotspots that can be used to access the Internet. The software needs some batch file editing before it can be used, nothing serious though.
I let it slip once or twice in the comments that I'm going to buy and build a new computer in the first quarter of the next year. I just once bought a pre-assembled computer and since then decided to select the hardware components and build it by myself. This has some advantages but also several disadvantages which I would like to shortly address.
A rule of thumb is that websites or servers go down in an inappropriate moment either when you are sleeping, at work or in another location where you cannot check if your website or server is still up and running. A website that is not available for eight ore more consecutive hours can do serious harm to its reputation and possible revenue that is generated.
Hello to Alexqjm, Demetri and thousand other random usernames that you like to use to post a fake comment on my website thanking me for that article using a homepage link that points to your Viagra, Cars, Russian Brides, fake Rolex watches and other bullshit that no sane person would ever buy from you.
Many users save their passwords in Firefox so that they do not have to enter it again when visiting the website it was saved for again. Firefox remembers the password and enters it automatically if the user selected this option on his first visit. This is great for us lazy users but poses the problem that we sometimes can't remember the password when we need it again.
I'm really excited about this new technology that will make its way and replace those magnetic hard drives in the long run. Solid State hard drives are based on flash memory which you usually find in most mp3 players these days. They have several advantages in comparison to magnetic hard drives.
It's becoming dark and cold outside sooner these days which is in my opinion the best time for some serious PC winter cleaning. I'm doing those cleaning once every three months to make sure my computer runs stable and without ballast that drags performance down. This article will only look at the software and operating system and not on the hardware which could be optimized as well by looking for firmware and bios upgrades.
Thumbwin was mentioned by a few readers in my Bring Order to your Desktop and Taskbar article which described a software called Minimize which allowed the user to display minimized windows as thumbnails. Thumbwin is apparently a software of choice for some of my readers and that is good enough for me to take a look at it and review it here at Ghacks.
How do you cut a Mango, add more Gigabyte to an Ipod Mini, build a Geometric Cut Paper Table Lamp or date a girl who is way out of your league. ? All of those questions and many more are answered on the Instructables websites which is a community driven website showing people how to create and do things. Two type of instructions are available and it depends on the author if the instructions are by video or by screenshots.
By default Windows XP searches only inside a handful of selected file types and ignores file types that are not registered in Windows. This means for instance that the Windows search is not searching through php documents. Here is a quick Registry hack that enables searching in all file types and not only a selected few.
Every window that gets minimized is placed in the taskbar which holds a limited amount of windows and starts to group windows of the same process together to save space. MiniMize is a software that brings order into that chaos. Instead of minimizing windows to the taskbar it displays them as thumbnails on your desktop.
I have been using Antivirus software for a very long time and even though I kept it up to date it never catched a single virus, worm or Trojan. It did however slow down system startup and the scan of new files also used system resources. This let to my conclusion that I did not need a Antivirus software, because frankly, Antivirus software is basically preventing the user from doing something stupid.
I have written about the web service Anothr just a few days ago. This service made it possible to receive RSS Feed updates in Skype, MSN and Google Talk and turned out to be pretty useful to some readers. I discovered another service that is offering RSS Feed updates send directly to Instant Messengers.
Songza is a music search engine that searches websites for music of the artist, band or song that you enter into the search form. Most interesting is the fact that they mainly search Youtube for those artists or songs. Don't yell at me just yet, this is not another "Search Youtube, display Videos" type of website.
Automatic Updates means that your computer will check periodically if updates for Windows XP are available and install the automatically if it finds any. The computer needs to be restarted after installing those Windows updates because some files can't be exchanged while the operating system runs.
Google changed the clickzones of their Adsense ad units and most webmasters are reporting decreases in their ad unit click through rate and revenue. Many have seen a decrease between 1-2% in click through rate which reduced the earnings by a figure between 30-70%.
Rruben send me a link to an interesting software called Resizor which is an image resizer that utilizes the newly introduced seam carving technology to create impressive results. Instead of modifying the dimensions the same percentage throughout the image it analyzes areas that are less important and removes or adds to those with priority.
Firefox automatically adds a print header and footer when printing websites which is something that most users do not want. By default, page title and URL as well as the page number and time / date are added to each page that gets printed. It is not that obvious but it is possible to customize the printout.
I think we can all agree that the default way of removing software in Windows is probably the worst way possible. It takes ages until the Add or Remove Programs window populates the entries and removing entries is painfully slow and sometimes not working as well. I have been using MyUninstaller until now which is faster and comes with some comfort like removing entries from the list of installed programs and details about the software that has been installed.
I seldom come upon a software that is small and packed with so many useful features that should have been integrated in Windows in the first place. What I really do not understand is that Microsoft does not seem to look at those applications and put the most thought after functionality into their next Windows.
Running Windows XP on a hard drive or partition with the NTFS file system has several advantages. One of them being a increase in system and file security because it is possible to alter file access rights on a per user base. Most Windows users do not know that it is possible to set those rights much similar to those on Linux and Unix systems.
Every software that is installed using an installation routine will be added to the Add or Remove Programs Windows menu and can be uninstalled by any user who has access to this window. I'm going to explain a trick that removes the entry from the Add or Remove Programs window without removing the software itself.
Whenever you open the Command Prompt in Windows you are taken to a default directory which is usually your Documents and Settings \ Username directory. Most of the time you navigate away from it because you need to access files that cannot be accessed from there.
Deleted websites is probably not the right catchy phrase that I should use. What I mean is that it happens sometimes that you find a search result in Google or follow a link from another website only to find out that nothing is found. Sometimes the information that has been could be essential. Fortunately for us there is a way to display the contents for most "The Page cannot be displayed" websites.
This is going to blow you away. What do you normally do when you save a file or want to open a file in a specific folder on your hard drive ? You click your way through the folder structure of your operating system until you finally reach the desired folder. This is a thing of the past because we can use bookmarked folders to reach those folders instantly.
Have you ever wondered why the mouse cursor stops when you reach one of the monitor borders ? It feels like it is bumping right into a wall. CursorUs is a tiny 22K software that extends the mouse cursors functionality and lets the user move beyond this invisible wall. The mouse cursor will appear at the opposite end of the screen whenever it reaches the border of the monitor.
NTFS file systems have many advantages over FAT32 file systems that's why I would suggest to convert existing FAT32 partitions to NTFS. Let me first explain how you can find out which file system is used by a partition / hard drive in Windows. Click on My Computer and right-click the hard drive or partition that you want to check. A window should pop up displaying the File System of the selected drive.
Setting up custom icons for your hard drives, cd, dvd and removable drives can be an excellent way of visualizing the contents of the drives. Windows offers a way to change icons of folders but no obvious way to change the icons of those drives. I would like to point out two possibilities that allow it to change drive icons in Windows.
Inezha is a new startup that offers a innovative way of receiving feed updates from your favorite websites. The feeds that you add to the service are delivered right to your Instant Messenger, Skype or Mail box which offers some practical uses. I have Skype enabled all the time usually which means it is more convenient to receive feed updates in Skype instead of opening Netvibes or Google Reader.
Gigatribe is a software that creates a private Peer to Peer (P2P) network that offers a group of users, for example your friends and family, an easy way to share files securely. All communication is protected by a 256-bit Blowfish encryption so that no one can snoop on the files that you send and receive.
Just a quick fix to a computer problem that I encountered in the last days on an old computer of a friend who was using Internet Explorer 6. Nothing happened when he clicked on mailto email links on websites and he did not know why this happened. Normally his email software should open allowing him to write an email to the address of the link.
