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
Google Earth is a interesting application not only for geographers but also for everyone else who is interested in the earth. All the addons that are available for it make it a great experience to learn more about the earth. The sky is the limit, that's what Google probably thought when they decided to add the Sky - that's the blue thingy above your head with all the shiny stars - to Google Earth.
It does not happen very often that I see a demonstration of a new technique and say something like "Wow, give it to me, NOW!" immediately after it finishes. This is one of the times that it actually happened. The real problem with images on websites is that they are more or less static. The webmaster selected a size for the image and this is the size that you see when you visit the page and it does not matter if you have a very small screen or a big one.
I have been using two methods to create pdf documents lately and made the decision to stick with one of them after evaluating both of them. Creating pdf documents is not something that I have to do on a daily basis but it was always a rather complicated process because I did not want to purchase a professional version of Adobe Acrobat only to create a handful of documents each year.
Sauerbraten Summer Edition is an ego shooter that was created with the Open Source engine Cube 2. The game features single- and multiplayer game modes and looks incredible if you consider that this is an Open Source project and not a commercial one. The single player part of the game reminds me a little bit of games like Serious Sam and the original Quake games.
Reducing the bandwidth costs of my mobile phone is one of my top priorities in this month. You might remember that I used my Nokia N73 as a modem to go online during my summer vacation which did cost me more than $400 for just a few hours of going online and writing articles. It was quite a shock that I was charged this much because I did ask O2 support how much it would cost me and they gave me a different answer at that time.
The Internet community has been pestered with yet another wave of spam mails containing fake membership information and e-cards. The spammers use two attack vectors if you click on the ip that is listed in those emails. They try to convince you to download a so called Secure Login Applet which is nothing more than an infected executable named applet.exe and also try to use several known exploits.
Many users do not like to use the Adobe Reader because of its slow loading time which is mainly caused by the many plugins that are loaded. It seems to take ages until Adobe Reader initializes itself and displays the pdf document that one wanted to view.
The war between HD-DVD and Blue-Ray entered a next stage with the announcements of Paramount and Dreamworks to publish their lineup exclusively on HD-DVD. Rumors soon spread around the Internet that both companies were receiving payments (Paramount $50 million dollars, Dreamworks $100 million dollars) from HD supporters to make this decision.
The Autopatcher team seems to be back on track with the release of core and update Autopatcher files for Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 Server. Additionally, and for the first time, Autopatcher files for Office 2002, 2003 and 2007 have been released as well.
Don't you hate it when someone sends you an email containing links or other email addresses that are so long that your email program uses several lines to display them ? This is apparently a matter of how the email client in question is handling urls and emails that are to long to be displayed in one line.
I barely finished the article about the first USB devices with an build in Iris scanner when the next developer announced a system to secure data on USB devices called Flash Padlock. It is basically a a USB stick with one or two Gigabytes of space that is protected by a pin that has to be entered on the device itself to be able to access the data on the stick.
I don't like the Windows Vista sidebar that much and think that most applications - also called widgets and gadgets - are pretty much useless. The Windows Vista sidebar styler is a great software for those who use the sidebar and would like to have more options to customize the look and feel of it.
I decided to uninstall the old CCleaner version that I had installed on my system and replace it with the first CCleaner 2.0 beta version which was released just a few days ago. The new CCleaner version was rebuild from scratch in C++ adding Windows Vista, 64-bit and portable support to this excellent software.
I found this story at the Donation Coder blog and thought that I would pass it on because it is really worth to mention. A software author who submitted his softwares to various download sites before took a closer look at some of them only to find out that some download sites gave awards to every software in their catalog.
XdN Tweaker is not one of those usual tweaking softwares that give you access to change hundreds of Windows settings in one tiny menu. This one is different. It concentrates on only a handful of tweaks that are not so common and supports Windows Vista, Windows XP and Windows 2003 both 32-bit and 64-bit versions and needs the .net framework 2.0 as well.
I'm one of those guys who likes to have a neatly categorized mp3 collection with a distinct folder structure ( band name / album ) and properly named and tagged songs. I absolutely hate it if songs are not properly named or are missing tags because it messes up my iPod as well.
Have you asked yourself what you would do if you were in a situation like the castaway Robinson Crusoe, the famous protagonist of Daniel Dafoe's novel ? What would be your first task, find water, food or shelter ? How would you fight of wild animals, make fire or create tools ?
My biggest complaint that I have when using Open Office is the speed of the application. It loads terribly slow for instance and it only topped by the time GIMP needs to startup. Way to slow to edit a document quickly in my opinion. The guys at Zolved found a way to speed up Open Office by editing a few settings in the software's settings.
If you ask ten webmasters about the best Adsense unit that is offered at the moment, the best color scheme for that unit and best location you would get ten different answers. There is no absolute truth, no way to setup Adsense that will earn you the most. It depends on so many factors that it is difficulty to give general tips.
Everyone is able to access data on normal usb sticks unless the data on the stick is encrypted with softwares like True Crypt for instance. Software based encryptions however require that the software to decrypt the data is actually installed on the system. It would not be possible to decrypt the data. The user also needs to know the password to decrypt the data, if the password is lost the data is lost unless a weak password was chosen during the encryption process.
Many Firefox extensions that you install can be configured by accessing the Tools > Add-ons menu and clicking on the Options button of the extension that you want to configure. This is not an elegant way if you have to change options frequently. That is probably the same thought that James R. Skinner had who developed the Firefox extension 'Options Menu'.
Don't worry about the game title. Punishment is definitely not a punishment because it is really a unique experience. One of those games that does not look good but makes it up with incredible gameplay. Another one of those games that prove that graphics mean crap if the gameplay rocks.
It seems to become common for electronic companies that produces items with batteries to recall batteries with a manufacturing defect that could lead to mobile phone explosions under certain circumstances. I was concerned that my new phone, the Nokia N73 Music Edition, was one of the phones that could have a defective battery but I was lucky this time.
I recently read an article about Firefox tweaks that would speed up page loading time by changing several settings in the about:config dialog. I knew those tweaks but decided to take a look if my settings were different from the ones mentioned in the article.
I found out - to my big surprise - that I was running Firefox with the default settings and not the tweaked settings. I had the feeling that Firefox was running slower than before after the latest update but I was not able to determine the cause, until now that is.
Roman commented on my article about removing fonts to increase system startup speed yesterday mentioning the free software Font Frenzy which could remove all non system fonts with the click of a button. This is way more elegant than the suggested manual way that I came up with yesterday which is why I would like to write about Feed Frenzy today.
A friend of mine was asking me why the boot process of his Windows XP operating system would take this long. I took a quick look at his system and found out that he had more than 700 fonts installed on his system. A in depth analysis by pc spy using a virtual xp system and Microsoft Bootvis confirmed that 1000 fonts would delay system boot time by 30 seconds compared to 5.33 seconds if only 100 fonts are installed on the system.
I regularly work with a lot of applications in Windows Vista at once which should not be a problem because I have enough RAM and a fast enough CPU to handle all of those applications with each. It happens that I experience a strange behavior which can be only be attributed to the number of applications and windows that are opened simultaneously.
Last year I was describing a way to get into the website Experts-Exchange.com by disguising yourself as the Googlebot. Apparently a similar story makes its way around the Internet these days with a more detailed approach detailing the steps that you have to partake to be identified as Googlebot.
Microsoft released a total of nine security patches yesterday fixing six critical and three important vulnerabilities on its August Patchday. Those updates were available on both my Windows XP and Windows Vista system and Microsoft in Windows Update but can also be downloaded as single updates from the Microsoft website.
A website like Wikipedia that offers every user the ability to edit most of the articles is definitely being manipulated by organizations, companies and individuals that try to push their agenda on this new battlefield. It is however not that easy to determine if an article has been altered by someone on behalf of an organization.
RaimaRadio is a free software that lets you record music played by online radio stations. Several other programs such as XMPlay or Streamripper offer the same functionality and you might be wondering why I'm reviewing just another Internet Radio streamripper. The answer could not be simpler, RaimaRadio offers several unique features that make it worth a review.
Free DVD is a small freeware that is able to remove certain protections and other unwanted features of Video_TS folders on your hard drive. The software can remove the Region Code, Region Code Enhancements, Macrovision and so called UOPS (user operation prohibitions) protections.
DVDFab HD Decrypter is a free DVD and HD ripper that is able to copy the contents of a movie onto your hard drive even if that movie is copy protected. It can remove DVD copy protections such as CSS, RC, RCE, APS, UOPs and Sony ARccOS and even manages to remove AACS from Blue-Ray and HD-DVD disks which means that it should be possible to copy most DVDs and HD DVDs that you have to your hard disk without running into copy protection problems.
I just read an interesting article at Arstechnica by Ken Fisher who was commenting on the termination of Google's commercial Video service. The termination takes effect in just two days which would not be a big problem if the users who bought or rented videos from the service would still be able to play their purchased videos after that date.
I love to play flashgames when I'm on breaks or have some time at hand. The best thing in my opinion is that they are most of the time short enough to entertain you for a few minutes and that they can even motivate non-gamers to give it a try.. or two.
The Summer Olympics 2008 in China will probably be the biggest sport event in 2008 next to the Euro 2008. Many people from all over the world have the opportunity to watch the Summer Olympics live because they have access to television channels who broadcast the event.
Firefox's build in spell checker is a great asset for everyone who is working with Firefox. It does not matter if you update your blog, are a regular in a forum or like to write reviews on travel sites - the spell checker is a tool that you do not want to miss. New words can be added to the Firefox spell checker by right-clicking the word and choosing Add to Dictionary from the menu.
Not many Windows users now what the Custom Notifications are or where one could take a look at the elements hidden there. Microsoft describes Custom Notifications as the way in Windows to display active and urgent notifications. These icons show if you have new mail for instance.
One Click Installer is a Firefox extension and Wordpress plugin combination for Wordpress blog owners replacing the need to upload themes and plugins by ftp with a one click installation in Firefox. The extension will take any link pointing to a plugin or theme and upload it to the right folder of your Wordpress installation without the need to do that manually.
I have been looking for a rss reader for quite some time that would display the latest feeds in a news ticker style known from television news channels such as CNN. I quickly found an interesting Czech freeware that would display all my rss feeds in a news ticker either at the top or at the bottom of my screen.
