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
In a place far away from reality - which happens to be somewhere near Seattle - two Star Wars geeks decided to create the ultimate home theater: A Star Wars Death Star Home Theater. It took them 36 months to complete the project which in my opinion resembles the interior of an Imperial Star Destroyer and not the Death Star.
Page Defrag is a tiny 70 Kilobyte software that displays information about how fragmented your paging files and registry hives are. Defragmenters running in Windows have no way of defragmenting those paging files and registry hives which usually means that they get fragmented over time which can degrade system performance.
Microsoft released the Office 2003 Service Pack 3 just a few hours ago which contains the latest updates for Office 2003. The pack with a size of 117 Megabytes contains 22 security patches and updates as well as the previous two service packs for Office 2003. The main emphasize of this service pack seems to be security related because 14 of the 22 updates are security related.
I know that I'm a bit late with this article but I thought I give it a try anyway. Simpsonize Me is a flash application that was created to promote the new Simpsons movie that was shown in cinemas earlier this year. What it does is that it transforms a closeup picture into a Simpsons character.
I am a big fan of flying and everything related to it and I'm excited about the job of all air traffic controllers. Among excellent knowledge of English language, this kind of work requires perfect concentration on anything that the controller does or says.
There are many stations on the internet that let you listen to voice navigation from different airports around the world almost in real-time, with just a small delay. However, at least one of these sites stands out of the crowd by providing a real-time visual summary of current situation in the air above the Atlanta airport, along with controller's speech.
I was looking for a way to start softwares at a given time of the week and found X-ecutor to be the perfect choice for that. X-ecutor actually gives you even more options that that. It allows you to start softwares at system start, shutdown and at a selected time or day.
Font Smoothing is not optimized properly on your computer. I can say that because it holds true for almost any computer that is running Windows XP using a LCD display. Windows XP offers only two ways to smooth fonts which are both deeply hidden in the system.
The XeroBrowser that I wrote about just a few hours ago is a nice software especially for inexperienced users who feel insecure when configuring security applications. Experts or users who want to control what is being installed and used on their system want to manually add security extensions to Firefox. This is probably the better approach because they know exactly what is installed on their system.
XeroBank Browser, or xB Browser which was previously called Torpark, is a portable browser based on Firefox with security and privacy add-ons that can be run out of the box. The burden of installing all those extensions and softwares and making sure that they work correctly is taken of the users hand which should appeal to many users who do not have the time or knowledge to take care of that by themselves.
More than 6500 internal emails from anti-piracy company Mediadefender have been leaked on the Internet as one big Mailbox file that can be imported into email clients. Mails give in depth information about tactics that have been used to spread fake releases, fake edonkey servers and their opinion about several bittorrent clients.
Userbars can be used to display custom messages in signatures that are displayed in forums and other places. The difficulty is creating those userbars which normally requires knowledge of image manipulation applications such as Adobe Photoshop or Gimp. There are several softwares that take that burden from the user and make it quite easy to create userbars with a few simple clicks of the mouse.
Experts are able to gather sensitive data from your computer if they gain physical access to it. This can be achieved by various means like Live CDs, accessing unprotected accounts or administrators that take a look in your profile folders. They can search the files on your hard drives, read documents, look at your Internet cache, the mailboxes which contain all of your mails - even the deleted ones - and histories of downloaded files.
I do not like the way all major browsers display and let you manage the bookmarks and favorites. Internet Explorer 7 displays the favorites either in a sidebar or a tiny window and it becomes really annoying if you have to edit a lot of favorites from time to time. I do add a lot of websites to the favorites at work because that is the only computer that I'm forced to use the Internet Explorer.
Printing websites is not as easy as it sounds. It is surely possible to simply hit the CTRL + P shortcut and hope that all relevant information will be on the printout which is usually not the case because menus and advertisement increase the width of printouts of many websites and add unnecessary information to it.
A new beta version of Winamp 5.5 has just been released as usual in a full, pro and lite version. Winamp lite is basically a music player supporting many different audio formats while the other Winamp editions support video playback, cd ripping and an integrated browser to browse sites like Shoutcast.
It has been a long time ago that I was addicted to a multiplayer shooter. The game back then was Unreal Tournament and I have yet to witness a game as addictive, as fun and exciting as the original UT 99. Team Fortress 2 could be that game judging from the trailers, class videos and gameplay movies that I have seen so far.
I regularly register at websites that either force me to register to leave a comment or that offer such great value that I want to join to become a member of the community. The signup process is always the same. Enter a username, a password, a valid email and if you want several additional information about yourself to register at that website.
This episode of Weekend Fun at Ghacks is reviewing a straight 2D shooter called Arachnos that reminds me of those old Gradius titles that I loved to play back then on the SNES. You choose the type of weapon that your ship is equipped with and realize that this will be a hell of a ride after the first waves of enemy hit the screen.
If you install many softwares you notice that some of them add entries to the Windows Explorer menu. The menu looks crowded after some time and it takes longer to find and click on the entries that you use often.
The software with the rather strange name MMM steps in and lets you rearrange all menu entries. This is done by offering a way to hide entries that you never ever use and a way to add entries that you rarely use to a submenu. My initial right-click menu had ten items listed of which I moved five to the hidden area making it look so much better afterwards.
We all know that Microsoft can update Windows Vista and Windows XP at will if automatic updates are enabled. Did you know that Microsoft can also update your operating system even if you disabled automatic updates ? Most users would probably deny that this is possible but it turns out to be true.
A new version of iTunes Sync has been released today and can be downloaded from the developers website. The software syncs iTunes with mp3 players other than iPods. I'm still not sure why users would want to use iTunes but I suppose it has something to do with the ability to buy music and videos there.
Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 is currently priced at $619 at Amazon. Microsoft knows that only a few students have the money to buy a software suite for roughly $600 which is why they decided to run a promotion that sells Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 for $59 which is an absolute bargain.
If you do not know yet there is a Skype worm spreading around that is affecting Skype Windows clients. The virus automatically sends a chat message to other Skype users containing a link to an image on a website where he is prompted to download a file with the .scr extension using a simple redirection
Nine Inch Nails is one of the few bands that is openly opposing the music industry by trying out new ways and methods to distribute their music. This time a full album called 'The Limitless Potential' containing 21 tracks of fan made Nine Inch Nail remixes were released to the public.
Windows file operations are displayed in an basic window with no option to enhance them at all. This can be really tiresome if you copy hundreds of files only to realize that the operation was terminated somewhere in the middle. There is no possibility to resume transfers as well and no list showing all file operations including their status.
Enter Startup Delayer. What this software does is to list all applications that are started when Windows starts. You can then delay the startup of applications that are not system critical. I would for instance instantly start my security applications but delay the start of lesser important programs such as Office, iTunes and other applications of that kind.
If you happen to work regularly with the registry of your Windows system you might have thought that it would be great to be able to open the most used registry keys using a bookmark like system. It's kinda funny that I never noticed until now that it is possible to add registry keys to the registry favorites.
Firefox, Word, Thunderbird and several other applications all have a build in spell checker that warns the user if a word that was written was not found in the dictionary file. There is however no general spell checker in Windows which means that users have to write their texts in softwares that have a spell checker and copy paste them into the software that has none. Or they could write their texts without spell checking.
We have all made the experience in the past that many websites are not available all the time. A website that got on Digg's homepage or slashdotted might have went down pretty fast which is unfortunately if you want to read what the buzz that it created was all about. I normally bookmark those websites and visit them again later to see if the website is available again. If it is not I try it a few more times and if it is not up at that point I either forget about it or delete the bookmark.
Windows does not handle Wallpapers for Dual Monitors very well. If you ever tried to use different wallpapers on each monitor or stretch a wallpaper across both you know what I mean. We - again - have to rely on third party softwares to add functionality to Windows.
Many users think that usb flash drives are all the same. They look boring and can only be used to plug them into a usb port. The Lexar usb flash drive Jumpdrive Mercury adds one useful function to the usb drive.
If you are looking for a sophisticated file and directory monitoring software that looks rather complex on first sight but offers a lot of possibilities if one works for a short time with Log Monitor. Directories or files that you add are monitored in intervals - even realtime is possible - that you specify and commands are executed if checks that are performed in that intervals return a positive value.
Have you ever been in the situation that you have been visiting a foreign country only to find out that they had a unique good there that you needed a constant supply of ? Or something that you did not buy during your visit but are craving for now ? Bringsome may be the solution in all of those cases.
Oh Sony, when will you learn that manipulating the public will not be taken lightly when it becomes public. This time, someone from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's studios in Liverpool was caught adding a sentence to the Halo 3 entry on Wikipedia. The person in question added the sentence 'Although it won't look any better than Halo 2' to the game description which has been removed after discovery.
I'm one of those who always wants to find the perfect gift for people that I care about which usually takes some time to think about. My usual approach is that I listen carefully and make mental notes whenever I hear something, a desire or wish, that makes the perfect gift.
Democracy at it's finest I would say. The project My Football Club has the goal to raise enough money to buy a real world football club in the United Kingdom. Every member pays an annual fee of £35 which in turn gives him an equal share in the football club. All important management decisions such as buying and scouting new players and team selection are democratically decided by counting all member votes with each member having exactly one vote.
Paying $0.99 for a single Ringtone is way to much especially if you already bought the song from iTunes or have it available on CD or as mp3.The funny thing is that Apple introduced a new format for ringtones with the extension .m4r which is simply a renamed .aac file which are the files that you download when you make a purchase at iTunes.
Retroshare is a secure Instant Messenger with File Sharing options. It uses a 2048-bit RSA encryption keys in combination with trust style authentication to ensure maximum security. Connections are only established to friends who received your Retroshare certificate which is of course a little bit more complicated but it is well worth it.
The IT Crowd is one of the best British comedy series ever produced. It's up to the point, uses nerdy characters that remind me of many of my work colleagues.The IT Crowd is about three guys - actually two guys and their female boss - from the IT appartement and their daily life in the office.
If there is one thing for sure it is that spammers are creative in finding new ways to bypass anti spam filters. They send distorted pictures, add random text to their messages, zip their spam, use excel files, pdf files and nowadays fdf files. Fdf files ? What's that again ?
