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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
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.
We were taking a look at possible hardware incompatibilities of Windows Vista yesterday and will do the same today for software. Do you think that all the software that is currently installed on your Windows XP system will run on Vista ? Think again. Did you for instance know that the latest Nero Burning Rom or the firewall Outpost are not working in Vista currently ?
Vista here, Vista there - I know that I'm writing many articles about the upcoming operating system but there is already that much to write. You may have heard that Vista has some "enhancements" that could make the switch from another operating system to Vista a living hell. Did you know for instance that many old devices and even brand new software will not work in Vista ?
I had a small conversation with mouser today, one of the guys who runs the great donations coders website. He mentioned that they were running a blog and forum as well and I was kinda stunned by this. I visited the site many times but never realized that there was a well frequented blog and forum as well. One of the blog posts was mentioning a new application called Desktop Teleporter which immediately caught my attention.
Among other features that Opera has is the right-click Paste and Go option when you paste a link into the address bar. Firefox does not have this feature and I missed it dearly. I'm lazy and I think it's to much work to paste the link into the address bar and hit enter or push a button afterwards to load the new site.
There were lately some rumors about tvu player, the program that I normally use to watch tv over internet. The website was not reachable and everything seemed to go down the hill. I decided to take some precautions and test other tv streaming programs to see if any could reach the quality of the tvu player.
Thunderbird changed the way quotes are handled. If you have been using a different email program before you may found the way Thunderbird handles quotes irritating. Take a look at the screenshots below and you know what I mean. The first shows the general way most email programs handle quotes. The second shows the way Thunderbird handles quotes usually.
I was asking the question to myself the other day. Windows Vista will come out in many, and i mean many, editions and it could be quite confusing for customers to find the right product.As a short test, try and name the known Vista editions in their correct order. Did you get them right ? You probably know that there will be a Vista Home and and Vista Ultimate but what about the others and how do they differ ?
Do you know how long the battery of your notebook lasts in different modes like idle and workload ? You probably know that the manufacturer of the notebook claims that it would last for a certain time but you don't know if you can believe the figures ? Battery Eater Pro is a freeware utility that tests the battery of a notebook in certain modes and displays accurate information about battery life.
There is no comfortable function in iTunes to transfer large e-books or documents to or from the iPod. Everytime major functions are missing a freeware author steps in and offers a freeware program that would add the functionality. Ipodlibrary is the freeware program that steps in this time. You can use it to add and remove all sorts of text documents to and from your iPod.
I'm very happy about the fact that Firefox 2.0 has a build in (English) dictionary which helps me correct most of the mistakes I make while writing articles here at ghacks. The build in dictionary is great but lacks certain features and that is why I went on a hunt for a better dictionary. Look what I found in my net today: The Sage's English Dictionary and Thesaurus.
Just a few weeks ago I was reporting that Universal Studios was receiving it's share from every Zune player sold and asked my readers to consider this before buying a Zune player because it could very well be the precedent of something that Universal, and other movie studios, wanted: A share of every media player that is being sold. Apparently they were quick to act.
I write about a new game that could make your weekend every Friday. This time it is a remake of a classic game: Zelda Ocarina of Time. The developer created a 2D version of this classic game which can be downloaded from his website. If you remember the original Zelda games on the like the legend of zelda for the nes or a link to the past for the snes you might be in for a suprise. The game looks and feels a lot like those classic Zelda games.
The windows xp star menu adds new entries to the end of the list even though you have sorted it alphabetically before by right-clicking and choosing to sort the entries by name. Most users who sort their start menu alphabetically don't like it when new entries to the start menu are added at the bottom of the list. Looks bad, causes confusion.
Every wanted to create a huge poster from a relative small image that you had on your computer ? Or are you looking for a great gift idea for Christmas for someone you like ? Rasterbator creates huge rasterized images from pictures that you either upload from your computer or select from a website. You may create those images online or download the software and use it that way. Take a look at two examples that I have selected from the Rasterbator gallery.
You might remember the other stories that circulated the internet before: get a free usb stick, get a free microsoft visual studio 2005. This time it is a free microsoft vista and microsoft office if you do the same as last time. Register at the power together website, listen to three webcasts and bam, you might get vista and office shipped right to your doorstep.
Wow those sites seem to popup like nothing else at the moment. Everton from connected internet was writing about streamick and I decided to add an article of my own to give you an alternative to all those other streaming sites out there. Streamick offers more than 300 tv channels to choose from including BBC One, ESPN Starsports, CNN & several other news channels.
