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

mp3 my mp3

Record any sound on your computer

I always thought that it should be theoretically possible to record any sound that you are hearing on your computer. Sometimes solutions for selected programs exist but I was looking for a free program that could record any sound no matter the source it was coming from. This can be for example quite useful if you want to record conversations in Skype or Teamspeak or record a sound that you heard on a website on the internet. Yes, even streaming radio poses no problem but you should note that the following free tool is not capable of recognizing the beginning and end of songs. It just records for as long as you want.

convert dvd to avi

Convert DVDs to Avi

As you might know I have a modded xbox that has a replaced bigger hard drive and I use it to watch movies from my Xbox Media Center. I dislike watching downloaded movies on my computer and transfer them to the Xbox via ftp to watch them on tv instead. I was looking for a solution to add some of my DVDs to the Xbox as well which has the main advantage that I have them accessible all the time from there. No matter if I lend them to someone for instance.

5 Things you did not know about ghacks

It seems that currently a blog tagging game is making its rounds and finally reached me thanks to my friend Everton Blair who tagged my blog. Everyone who gets his blog tagged has to write about 5 things that his readers did not know about yet and tag 5 additional blogs afterwards to keep the ball rolling. Here we go, 5 things that you did not know about ghacks:

Stellarium your own free planetarium

Men has been looking to the stars from the beginning of the world and this tradition is still visible in our modern world, although for slightly changed reasons. After the download of Stellarium finishes (Windows, Mac and Linux version available) you may startup the application to take a first look at the stars. I took a look from Paris, not sure if this is the default for everyone though. The name of the stars that I was able to spot were shown in the 360° landscape.

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FineTune a Pandora like Music website

If you do now Pandora you feel right at home when entering the FineTune website. Guests may use only part of the streaming radio services offered at the website but it is good enough for a rough overview of what FineTune has to offer. Just enter an artists name in the search field and FineTune will search for the artist that you have entered and related artists and start with the playback of songs that the search found.

Riaa is sueing Allofmp3

Ding Ding Ding, welcome the the next round in this amazing fight. In the right corner we have the underdog, a Russian mp3 website that offers what customers apparently want: MP3 files without DRM, variable bitrate at low costs. Did I mention that this is a perfectly legal company under Russian law ? In the opposite corner the RIAA, a institution living in the past, trying to hold of progress by sueing its customers and denying them what they really want.

Software for Starving Students

The name of this software distribution is probably a little bit out of line but the purpose is not. The goal is to reduce software costs for students but the compilation is also attractive to everyone else. The website offers a version of this distribution for Windows computers and for Macs. You may download it using the preferred method bittorrent to ease the load on the servers and reduce bandwidth costs.

Games for the Weekend 5 Base Invaders

The objective in the highly additive freeware game Base Invaders is simple: Defend your central tower. Hordes of aliens, among them the feared drillers, ninjas and bombers try to overcome the obstacles that the player creates to lay siege to the central tower. Every structure in the game can be planted by the player, reminds me a bit of the famous Dungeon Keeper games by Bullfrog.

karens replicator

Karens Replicator automatic backup solution

I think it is funny that I never experienced a hard drive failure in my whole life. Many friends that I have been talking to did experience corrupt or damaged hard drives and lost data because of this. Did I mention that I do backup my files regulary while they are not ? I could bet a large amount of money that one of my hard drives would fail as soon as I would decide to discontinue backing up my files.

And so the Pirates win the day

It began with the ban of the Russian website allofmp3 by the internet provider Perspektiv. The Piratebay decided to ban users of the provider from accessing their website as a response of the ban against allofmp3. Guess what, Perspektiv announced today that they lifted the ban of the Russian website and the Piratebay in turn decided to lift their ban as well.

Why you should switch your parents PC to Ubuntu

About a month ago my mother called and asked if I could help her with a problem on her computer that I build and installed for her. The computer reacted slowly to her input and was opening unknown websites for no reason. It was immediately clear that some sort of spyware or even worse virus or trojan was responsible for this behavior. She was really desperate and I began to scan the system immediately.

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Internet Censorship 101 - DNS Server Filtering

I decided to start a Internet Censorship 101 series of articles that takes a look at and explains the various methods of censorship on the internet and possible solutions to this situation for the user who tries to access information that are blocked / censored. I'm going to start with a relatively weak form of censorship called DNS Filtering.

How to bypass Internet Censorship

If you are looking for a comprehensive, and I mean really really comprehensive, guide on bypassing internet censorship you might want to take a look at the excellent guide written by Freerk. The guide is divided into two parts; The first analyzes different methods to censor information on the internet and the second part describes different ways to bypass censorship.

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Firefox add-on to discover media links

I'm currently using the Video Downloader add-on for firefox to download videos from websites such as youtube or google video. It is working perfectly on those websites but has limitations when it comes to different type of websites that use MMS or RealMedia links for their movies for example.

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BitComet 0.80 has been released

While downloading the latest version of the bittorrent client BitComet it came to my mind that I never wrote an article about this excellent client here at ghacks. I have written about Azureus and uTorrent which I have tried both but not about the client that I'm personally using because I think it is the best one of the bunch. I like BitComet because of several reasons: speed, usability and because it is using low resources.

Add Features to your MP3 Player

If you are currently unhappy with the features of your mp3 player you might want to take a look at the open source rockbox firmware which adds lots of functionality to your mp3 player including iPods, iRiver and Archos models. A firmware update is of course something that should only be done with extreme precaution because it will void the warranty. Take a look at some of the features that can be added:

Low budget presents for Christmas that rock

Christmas is only seven days away and it becomes harder to find presents for your loved ones that do arrive in time and are personal at the same time. Sure, you could hop into the next store on Saturday and make a quick purchase just to have something but that's not how it should be. Money is also playing a role here - a limited budget does not make it easier to find something special.

skype lie detector

Lie Detector for Skype

If you ever wanted to know if a person you are talking to in Skype is telling the truth you might want to give the KishKish Lie Detector plugin für Skype a try. Just download the plugin from the developers website and run the file once the download has been completed. It will automatically assign itself to Skype and you will have to tell Skype to give this plugin access.

Increasing the performance of Windows Vista

My first impression of Windows Vista was that it was a very shiny operating system with lots of useless stuff (for me) that wasted lots of valuable ram on my system. Things like the sidebar which may be useful for some are absolutely useless to me. Besides that they use ram. I have decided to remove everything that I would not need to increase performance on the system.

Vlite Windows Vista Configuration Tool

Windows Vista installs many programs and add-ons on your system during its installation which most users normally do not need. I'm speaking of things like Tablet PC support or Speech Support. All those programs take up space on the Vista DVD and on your hard drive and I was looking for a way to remove those files before installation - and Vlite is exactly the tool that I was looking for.

easy bcd

How to Repair the Vista Bootloader

I encountered a problem after I installed Windows Vista and Ubuntu Linux next to my Windows XP operating system. Ubuntu and XP were loading fine but Vista was showing an error that it could not load a file which made me think that the bootloader was trying to access Vista on the wrong partition. Vista unfortunately has a new location where the boot information are stored, it is called BCD Store.

Game for the Weekend 4 Battle for Wesnoth

You know it must be Friday when I'm introducing a new game for the weekend. This time it is a strategy game called Battle for Wesnoth. Maybe some of you know the classic games Shining Force by Sega, Final Fantasy Tactics by Square and Fire Emblem by Nintendo. All are turn based strategy games - so is Battle for Wesnoth which can be downloaded for free for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Access Internet and Files on an expired Windows installation

You got 30 days to activate your windows operating system, once the time period is over you can't log into Windows anymore and most users feel a little desperate. What can they do to access their important files, where can they find help about this problem ? Steve discovered a clever way to access the internet and file folders from the login screen of an expired windows installation.

My first day with Ubuntu

I tried to install Kubuntu yesterday but the partitioner failed and I decided to try out Ubuntu today because I knew they were using different partitioners. I downloaded the Ubuntu iso image and burned it to a CD. I then changed the boot sequence in the bios to be able to boot Ubuntu from CD. The distribution that I downloaded is a live CD and installation CD at once which means it will boot the complete operating system from CD first and give you the choice to install it or simply use the live CD version.

Skype 3.0 final has been released

A new version of the communications suite Skype has been released today. Just head over to the Skype homepage and download the version for your operating system. Skype 3.0 introduces some new features and bugfixes, please take a look at the release notes if you are curious about them. The interface has seen some slight changes and some new features like public chat have been introduced.

Adding Windows Vista and Kubuntu to Windows XP

I did not expect that it would take this long to install Kubuntu Linux and Windows Vista on another hard drive of my computer. I bought a new external hard drive and wanted to install both new operating systems next to Windows XP. It was unfortunately not possible to install Windows Vista or Kubuntu on that external drive. It took some time to create enough space on my second internal SATA drive to use it to store both operating systems.

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Extract Flash Files from Browser Cache

Whenever I want to save a flash file, like a game or animation that I have been playing / watching, I have to go to the cache folder of Firefox and search for a file with the right extension and size. This is a lot of work if you have either a large cache or want to extract many flash files at once.

Piratebay fights back

Fight fire with fire - that song came probably to the minds of the Piratebay crew. They have decided to react on the censorship of the Swedish internet provider Perspektiv by banning the complete IP range of that provider from accessing the Piratebay, sort of like using censorship as a weapon against censors.

Preparing myself for Linux and Vista

Today I'm going to write about my master plan to install Ubuntu Linux and Windows Vista on my system to have them at my disposal next to my current Windows XP installation. I personally try to make the switch to Linux because I'm fed up with all the restrictions that Microsoft build (on pressure I assume) into Windows Vista. Nevertheless more than 99% of all my readers use Windows XP and I will continue writing articles for XP and Vista.

Large List of Podcasts that teach you something

There are not many people I know that do not have a mp3 player. Many use the player exclusively for music and probably never heard of the term podcasts before. The best way to explain podcasts is to compare them to radio shows. Some hosts talk about certain topics, you listen to jingles, to music sometimes that is played during breaks.

Things to check before switching to Vista Part 4

Welcome to the fourth and final part of my Things to check before switching to Vista series. Today we are going to take a look at DRM. DRM which stands for Digital Rights Management controls access and usage of media files. In case you are wondering, Vista is not the first to use DRM. Many portable media players and gaming systems use DRM as well to protect the media.

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Hide all icons on your desktop

I bet that you have many icons on your desktop. I do and I'm sure that the majority of users will have many icons on their desktop as well. It is convenient to have them there to be able to quickstart the programs right from the desktop. Some icons might be there because you forgot to disable the option to remove the icon on the desktop while installing the program.

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ShowMeDo Free Video Tutorial Website

ShowMeDo is a relatively new website that is about videos by the people, for the people as they put it. Not the normal type of videos that you find on sites like youtube but videos that teach the viewer. The site currently has seven categories where movies are located, those are Python, Java, Ruby, Linux, Blender, Screencasting and Other. The biggest category is the Other category which will most likely be the most interesting category for everyone who is not into programming, linux and 3d.

Some Games for the evening

I found some great (online) games today that I would like to pass on. The first is connected to Star Wars. I know you like Star Wars. I always thought why the Imperium was that stupid to construct the Death Star the way they did. A defense shield that was guarded by nothing at all, just some silly stormtroopers. A planet shattering canon and a tiny hole that made the whole thing vulnerable.

Free Online Conversions

Sometimes you download filetypes that your computer can't read because of a missing viewer or that you would like to transport to a portable device that only reads certain filetypes. Instead of download several programs that are able to convert the files you have into the filetypes that you need you could use the online file conversion website Zamzar to do the same.

Things to check before switching to Vista Part 3

Welcome to the third part in my Things to check before switching to Vista series. The last two articles dealt with possible hardware and software incompatibilities and ways to check whether your hard- and software would run in Windows Vista. It is imminent to check this before you make the switch. Just imagine that you make the switch and a program that you run on a daily basis will not install or run properly.

media info

Find out which codec is missing for playback

It happens sometimes that you download a video clip from the internet and have troubles playing that movie on your computer. This problem is most of the time codec related, one indication would be a black screen or no sound after hitting play. One solution, which is not that perfect, would be to install a so called codec pack and hope that the coded that is needed for playback is included in that pack.

Game for the Weekend 3 iSketch

I know that this is the second online game of the weekend in a row but this is just to much fun, and that's what games should be all about fun. iSketch is an online multiplayer game. One person sketches a word and the others have to guess what it is. The first one to guess right gets the most points and the others have 20 seconds to guess it as well before time runs up. If they guess it as well they are awarded lesser points than the first person.

Fox says that linking to sites that host illegal tv shows is illegal

Fox, the big media company, is apparently forcing a website owner to shutdown his website for linking to tv shows at sites like youtube and dailymotion claiming that linking to those shows would be illegal. This question never made it to court before it seems - here we have it again. A big company with money enough to pay a dozen lawyers is suing a website owner who probably can't afford to even higher one lawyer.

privacy complete

Security and Privacy Complete

Several security software solutions like xp-antispy exist for Windows XP and Security & Privacy Complete is one of them. The open source product offers to change security and privacy related settings in Windows XP. Everything is accessible from the main window and categorized in the following way: System, Internet Explorer 6, Media Player, Security Options, Services and Mozilla Firefox.