Fun Things to do with PuTTy and Linux-Routers

If you set up some kind of SSH Connection on a windows computer over the past few years, be it to connect to the university's network or to secure a line for an insecure FTP Transfer,you have probably encountered the program PuTTy on the way to salvation. It's easy to use, free and OSSish powerful. What many people don't know about PuTTy though, is what other powers aside from or better in addition to SSH slumber inside the little executable.

Songbeat another music downloader

Songbeat is a desktop music search, play and download software using Seeqpod technology. It scans the Internet for songs, stores information in its database and provides the user with fast working results once a search is initiated. The program could not be easier to use. Just enter an artist and results are displayed after several seconds.

Ridata introduces new Solid State Drives

Finally we are seeing the long awaited progress in the Solid State Drives market. Ridata was the first company to announce three new 2.5" SATA Solid State Drives in 32-, 64-, and 128GB capacities that have read speeds of up to 170 MB / per second and write speeds of up to 105 MB / per second.

Building a PC January Progress

It's only a few more months until I will make the final decision about the PC components that I will place in my new computer. I think I will finalize everything in the second quarter of 2008. But before I do that I list once again the components that I want to use in the new PC and hope to receive feedback if you think anything is missing or misplaced.

Increase Windows Stability

Xtra Windows Stability is an interesting piece of software that was mentioned in Shellcity's top 25 software of the year series. The product was especially designed to increase Windows stability by forcing important subsystems of Windows into separate processes.

Adobe buzzword - The new kid on the block

After such word processing giants as Google Docs and Zoho Writer, is there room for another one? The answer has to be a definite yes, I think there is always room for […]

Thunderbird Duplicate Contact Manager

I introduced a Thunderbird extension to remove duplicate mails yesterday and I want to continue today by writing about a Thunderbird extension that checks for duplicates in the Thunderbird address book. The add-on handles one address book at the time currently which is a little unfortunate but the author promises to deliver the possibility to check all existing address books in a future version.

Never again run out of household items

Amazon Subscribe and Save was mentioned in the Cybernet News RSS feed and it sounded that interesting that I decided to take a look at it myself and write a small article about it. The service offers a way to subscribe to household items and select a delivery schedule for those items. Shipping is free of charge and buyers do get a 15% discount on purchased items.

Another RSS Feed to IM Service

I have written about the web service Anothr just a few days ago. This service made it possible to receive RSS Feed updates in Skype, MSN and Google Talk and turned out to be pretty useful to some readers. I discovered another service that is offering RSS Feed updates send directly to Instant Messengers.

Receive Feed Updates in Skype, MSN, Google Talk or Email

Inezha is a new startup that offers a innovative way of receiving feed updates from your favorite websites. The feeds that you add to the service are delivered right to your Instant Messenger, Skype or Mail box which offers some practical uses. I have Skype enabled all the time usually which means it is more convenient to receive feed updates in Skype instead of opening Netvibes or Google Reader.

Reevaluating Google is the best theory

I was thinking about looking at other services that I could try to see if they were any better than the Google services that I'm using at the moment when I came upon a post by Everton who was writing about the same thing at this blog. His main domain received a major Pagerank decrease from 6 to 3 and this made him realize that it is probably the time to move on and look for services that do it better than Google.

Validation removed from Internet Explorer 7

Microsoft must be desperate. That was my first thought when I read that Microsoft made the decision to remove the Windows Genuine Advantage validation check from the download and installation of Internet Explorer 7. I was not able to come up with any other explanation why they decided to turn around 180 degrees and head for the other direction.

Send Text Messages to the Future

Textmemos is a service that lets the user type in text messages that he wants to have delivered at a certain date and time. All that needs to be done is to enter the cell phone number, the cell phone provider, the date, time and of course the message. As of now 38 different cell phone providers are supported by Textmemos most operating in the United States and Canada with only a handful European ones.

Font Smoothing for LCD Displays

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.

Is that the future? Waiter free Restaurants

Companies try everything to reduce labor costs to a minimum by automating, which simply means replacing humans by computers, and outsourcing, which means producing in countries with lower labor costs, processes. The ideal world for them is a world without labor costs at all to maximize profits and please the shareholders.

Autopatcher August 2007 released

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.

Taking another look at Joost

It has been a few months since I used Joost for the last time and I thought it would be a good time to take another look at Joost considering the announcement that they would go live at the end of the year with almost one million beta testers. A post at the Cybernet Blog also called my attention where Ashley asked if someone was actually still using Joost.

play flv video files

How to play flv files on Windows

Several readers have been asking how they would be able to play movies with the flv extension. Those flash videos do not play normally in standard programs such as Windows Media Player but there are a handful of great alternative video players that support flv files out of the box.

Going Online with my Nokia N73

I never before tried to go online using my mobile phone and notebook because I always had the chance to use a wireless connection or lan network to go online. I identified several obstacles that could prevent me from going online with my N73 and Toshiba notebook.

Autopatcher June 2007 for XP finally released

I mentioned three days ago in my blog that the Autopatcher team released the June 2007 patches for Windows Vista and just now they announced that the updates for XP can be downloaded as well from their sites. In case you missed the last post here is what Autopatcher does.

Random Time Wall Clock

If you are looking for a rather unique clock you should take a look at the so called Rnd_Time Infinite Wall Clock. The Rnd_Time stands of course for Random Time but it is not the time that is shown randomly but the placement of the hours on the walls. The hours can be placed randomly on the wall while the clock is still displaying the correct time. It could be hard to tell the time but it sure looks unique. You do get 12 blocks that display the hours from 1 to 12 and another block for the clock hands.

Pandora stopped International Streaming

Pandora.com made the decision to stop streaming music to users who are not living in the United States. To be able to do this they implemented a script that checks the IP address of every user connecting to the server and if that IP happens to be located outside of the United Stats of America you will not be able to connect to the streaming client anymore. Pandora already updated their FAQ section to reflect this changes, here is what the entry said:

Weekend Game World of Padman

World of Padman is a multiplayer ego shooter that is using the Quake 3 engine which is a very capable engine. Just imagine the game Quake 3 without the adult science fiction theme but a theme that resembles a game for children. Not saying that World of Padman is actually a children's game. Action is as fast paced as in Quake 3 and the game mode is still deathmatch. Frag the others before they frag you. Levels look really detailed and the style of the game is pretty unique as well. Before you begin you can select a character that you want to play and customize it a little bit.

Comparison of Joost and Babelgum

Babelgum and Joost are two services that try to deliver tv content to your computer using peer to peer technology. Both services seem to have the same aim to make the transition from watching shows on your television to watching shows on the internet as fluent as possible. There is no configuration involved, all that is needed is the Bablegum or Joost client and a broadband connection to the internet.

Alternatives to uTorrent

There has been a lot of controversy about the recent acquisition of uTorrent by Bram Cohen, the creator of the Bittorent protocol. Most users seem to be disturbed about the partnership between Bittorrent and the MPAA which started in fall 2005 with the agreement that illegal searches would be removed from its own Bittorrent search engine. The fear that the cooperation will affect the development of the popular uTorrent client seems to grow with every passing day.

Game for the Weekend Toblo

Fast Paced Multiplayer CTF action, that's what Toblo is about. Two teams, the read and the blue team try to capture the flags of the other team and reach the own home base with it. The only weapon that exists in the game are the cubes that compose every structure in the game. Every player may pick up those cubes and either throw them at the enemy or destroy structures for better access to the enemy base. The flags themselves are located on top of structures at the beginning which have to be destroyed as well to reach them.

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.

The Sage English Dictionary and Thesaurus

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.

Nintendo Wii Launch Games

The Nintendo Wii will come out in the United States November 19th, 2006, in Japan on December 2nd, 2006 and in Europe on December 8th, 2006. The Nintendo Wii features a unique method of controlling the action on screen which could revolutionize the way games are played on video game systems. It concentrates on this aspect instead of pure horsepower like the ps3 and xbox 360.

10 Widgets I can't live without

Widgets are small programs that add their small windows to your desktop and can be used from there. Widgets come in all colors and forms and you could categorize them the following way:

nes games nintendo

Play Hundreds of NES Games in your browser

Kornie send me a a link to a great webpage that hosts hundreds of NES games that are playable in your browser. All you need is a java plugin and you are ready to go. They currently host 250 English games, 80 Japanese games, 10 prototype games, 25 unlicensed and 25 miscellaneous games.

amazon instant video

Amazon Unbox and its absurd restrictions

Amazon Unbox, the new video download service provided by Amazon, went live yesterday offering users a free and easy way to download and view videos on their computer. Most tv series cost 1,99$ while movies begin at 3,99$ up to 19,99$ for new releases. Files are offered in .wmv and .amzn (for portable devices) format only and can't be burned on DVD to watch the movie at the television. The only way to do that would be to connect the computer to the televsion.

Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD comparision

Do you know about the differences between Blue-Ray and HD-DVD ? I mean, the real differences, not the technical mumbo jumbo that has no meaning in real life. With the releases of Training Day, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Rumor has it on Blue-Ray and HD-DVd the guys at High Def Digest were able to compare the two formats directly. All three reviews analyze the video and audio quality, the depth of supplemental content, the overall ease of use and menu navigation.

winuae

How to emulate an Amiga on your PC

I´am not sure if most of you will like this article or not. My second computer was an Amiga 500 which I used almost 100% for gaming. I loved many of the games that came out for that incredible machine and still yearn for some of them. I always wanted to play those games again but did not want to buy an Amiga because of several reasons. I don´t want to get into to much detail but it´s mainly a storage problem and a problem of availabilty. Sure, you can buy some cheap amigas on ebay and probably buy some games there as well, but most of the games are hard to come by this days.

stumbleupon

Stumble Upon Firefox Extension

I´ve been using the Stumble Upon firefox extension for some time now and must say that I´am very pleased with the extensions progression. After installation it can be activated by either hitting CTRL + F11 or using the View / Toolbars Menu. You also have to create an account at their website and select some categories that you like, e.g. shareware, windows and bizarre.

Auto It Freeware

I do a lot of signups for example on webmaster forums and sites that require you to be registered to view the content. Its a tedious task to enter the information that are required by hand. You often have to add more information but the username and password, name and location for instance.

Auto It is able to help you fill those fields automatically, but not only that. It uses a combination of simulated keystrokes, mouse movement and window/control manipulation in order to automate tasks. AutoIt v3 is a freeware BASIC-like scripting language designed for automating the Windows GUI and general scripting.

hosts file

Block Ads Using Your Host File

This has been around for some time now but its possible that some of you have not heard of it yet. I found a site through digg.com that has a neat list of 40000 entries that you could partially or fully add to your windows host list and prevent ads from those 40000 hosts to be shown on your system, ever again.