I apologize if this topic drifts a bit away from the usual ones you find here at ghacks but I thought it would be extremely useful for everyone who has a server or webspace that supports htaccess and htpasswd. Htaccess files can do much more than just secure a directory on your server or website but I want to concentrate on this topic because it is something that I have been using on some of my websites for a very long time to increase security.
YouTube is one of the most popular video sharing sites on the internet today. Although videos posted on the site may not have the best quality there’s no doubt in my mind […]
Things are heating up over at the Creative forum where Creative Labs have issued a statement that forbids the user Daniel_K of providing X-FI sound card drivers for Windows Vista that fixed […]
Installing the Nokia PC Suite on your computer has the side effect that a Nokia Phone Browser system folder is added to My Computer. I rarely connect my Nokia N73 phone to […]
I'm not using playlists normally when I want to listen to music. I either tune in to some Internet Radio station or drop a folder full of music on my favorite music […]
What's the best way to fight illegal downloads and streams of your tv shows ? It could be to offer them for free on an official website. That's probably the same line of thoughts that the creators of South Park had when they created a website called South Park Studios together with Comedy Central.
I'm the family's computer guy and it is slowly spreading to family friends and even neighbors as well thanks to recommendations of family members. Recently my mum told my grandmother's neighbors that […]
You’ve just watched this movie that you really enjoyed. Now you’re in the mood for something similar but you don’t quite know what to pick next. Don’t worry. All you have to […]
I just wanted to remind you that Joost is running their first big Live test run tomorrow with NCAA March Madness. It begins Thursday at 12:20 p.m. EDT / 4:20 p.m. GMT and ends after the last game which is scheduled for 9:55 PM EDT. 16 games will be streamed live on that day and it will be interesting to see how the Joost client will handle that kind of traffic.
One way to save lots of money is to refill printer cartridges instead of buying new ones. The process itself was rather messy in the past but it has become easier now and there are even shops that refill the ink for you. Some printer cartridges however have a chip build in that prevents that the printer is recognizing the refilled cartridges effectively preventing users from using this low cost method.
Website owners should test their websites with the most common browsers to make sure that the website is displayed as intended in all of them. Nothing is more frustrating than to realize that a website was not displaying properly for users that have been visiting the website with a certain browser.
I got the inspiration for this post from the Download Squad article "Is this web site down for everyone or is it just you ?" which mentioned a service that would check if a website was down or if it was more likely to be a problem on the user's side. Some guys mentioned in the comments that the website checking service would display false results from time to time which in turn convinced me to write a post about other methods on how you can check if a website is up, or not.
According to New Tee Vee Joost is going to start a public live streaming test today. A new client will be released for that purpose becoming available today as well. The first public live stream will be a video chat with the Joost technical team, a first test so to say to see if everything runs smoothly.
Hulu has left private beta and is now publically available to US-consumers which is definitely a good thing. Users can just go and visit the official Hulu website and browse the contents […]
This is not strictly software or web apps, but a Moleskine may be a great addition to many people's lives. Think of it as your Outlook when you're away from the PC. […]
We are coming closer to the finish line. I'm thinking of making the purchase of the new PC components in the next month or the month thereafter. I would like to thank everyone for their great and valuable comments which pointed me into the right directions concerning some components.
When I was working back then for a big company I had to use a computer that they provided with no options to install new software on that computer. I still did update my websites frequently in my spare time but always struggled when I had to install new scripts or upload files to the website because I did not have access to an ftp client nor something like WinSCP.
I really loved the 8-bit gaming systems. I was pretty much a Sega fan back then and only played some Nintendo games like Super Mario Brothers or Zelda on the Nintendo Entertainment System. I did however follow the news and games and know lots of old classic games that came out for that Nintendo video game system and I actually bought a few already on my Nintendo Wii using the Virtual Console.
Users from outside the United States try lots of things to get access to Pandora which streams customized Radio to users with US IPs only. Some succeed with the user of proxies, virtual private networks or services like Global Pandora that come and go. Others point their eyes to France to discover a music service that resembles Pandora in many aspects but is way better.
Radiohead was the first band that used the Internet as their main distribution method for their music and that gave their fans the best price ever for their music by letting the downloaders decide what they would pay. This premiere was not perfect by all means though but it was definitely a step in the right direction.
Yesterday I spent about 4 hours trying to get a pdf right. I was making a subscription based newsletter for my website, so I obviously needed something of high quality. I couldn't […]
Keyboard, Mouse and Gamepads: Those are the standard controls of today's video gamers and I personally did not think that this would change anytime soon. Then came the presentation of the OCZ Actuator which changed my mind. It looks like a high tech headband but it's actually more than that.
A great way to see if you are optimizing your site enough is to take a look at your meta tags and your keyword/content focus, A great Website Analyzer page I found […]
I loveYouTube, but you have to face it, specific genre sites can be much better. If you want music Imeem may be much better, if you want comedy then go to specific […]
Many mp3 players support album art, showing it to the user in the display. Several software players support it as well, for instance the Itunes Control plugin that I wrote about earlier this week. I don't know a single application however that can process a entire music library automatically and add album art to it.
Stage6 is shutting down. That's the announcement on the main page of the video portal that was posted today. Let me fill you in if you are amongst the many that have never heard of that video portal before. Stage6 is directly connected to the developers of the Divx codec, a high definition video portal.
The high definition format war is almost over with Blu-Ray winning the field. Microsoft was supporting the HD DVD format by offering the HD DVD player add-on for their XBOX 360 gaming system. In an announcement made today they made clear that HD DVD will be pulled as add-ons for the XBOX 360 as well.
I never liked taking my original CDs, or any CDs at all for that matter, with me on a roadtrip or on holidays. CDs are fragile and tend to break pretty quickly, especially if kids are around. If they don't break them they usually scratch the CDs into oblivion. I began to create backups of my CDs and take them with me on those trips which solved one problem. I still did not like carrying around dozens of CDs and decided to convert them into digital media and put them on my mp3 player instead.
The South by Southwest festival is one of the biggest festivals of its kind in the United States. Part of it is the Music Conference and Festival showcasing hundreds of artists over the course of several days. Many songs by those artists are offered as free downloads on the festival pages and as torrents.
I have always asked myself why there is no way to configure a function for double right-clicking. You can configure the left mouse button double-click but not the right mouse button one. Click Zap is a small application that lets the user configure a function for a double-click on the right mouse button.
Several video portals on the Internet have restrictions in place that prevent videos about a certain file size or length to be uploaded to their website. The normal limit is 100 Megabyte per file and a maximum length of ten minutes. Video uploaders create several parts of videos that are larger or last longer than the default limits - I came upon videos with ten and more parts on Youtube.
I have not really put much thought into the way podcasts work until now but when I stumbled upon Dir Caster I began to realize that publishing podcasts is different from publishing blog posts. I mean you have a mp3 file and need a way to create an RSS feed out of it.
A friend of mine recently received an error message whenever he was trying to open iTunes. The error stated that the file scarddlg.dll was missing on the system and that a reinstallation of the application might fix the problem. A reinstall did not help and he asked me if I was able to come up with a solution to his problem.
I'm sometimes astonished as to what people sell at eBay. I always thought those video game collections that filled rooms where impressive but this music collection must be one of the largest sales ever on eBay. A collector is apparently selling his entire music collection on eBay which consists of more than 3 million records and 300000 CDs currently stored in a 16,000 square foot climate controlled warehouse.
Almost everyone has used PowerPoint for presentations at some time or the other. Even if you’ve moved on to apps at GoogleDocs or the Zoho suite, PowerPoint is still a handy tool […]
Another month has passed quickly and I'm almost ready to buy the components for the new computer that I want to build. This article explains the changes that I made to the setup during the last month and all the components that I intend to purchase. I hope that this pc build could be inspiration for some of my readers who would like to build a PC as well but are not that sure about the right choice of pc components.
Do you know which audio and video codecs are installed on your operating system ? Did you know that you can easily find that out by using Windows tools ? I think it is nice to know that you can find about all installed codecs without having to use third party applications. I will recommend a third party program at the end which can be used to received additional information.
Calibrating a monitor, be it LCD or CRT monitor, can be a tedious task. I for one have always doubts about the settings that I have chosen when setting up the monitor for the first time. Questions about the monitor's brightness, the colors, contrast are not that easy to answer if you only have to rely on your eyes and have no test patterns that help you determine the correct settings.
Spam is a pain and we all got used to the necessity of fighting it every single day spending our valuable time on deleting junk mails and undergoing additional security measures like captchas and many others. Is there any way to transform daily wasted time and effort spent on these measures for good purposes instead of regarding them as a necessary evil? You bet there is.
The release of my own gaming blog has been delayed for a few months and I decided to post some great games in the meantime here at Ghacks to keep you all entertained. There is actually one flash game called Protector that I'm playing for some time now. It's one of those Tower Defense type games but with some basic RPG elements and more strategy involved.
