David.R.Gilson

David’s links of the week June 18th through July 1st:

• Is Mozilla Firefox Safe? Add-Ons That Improve Privacy and Security – While some of us have been lured over to Google Chrome, Mozilla’s Firefox remains the favorite browser here at MUO, and I’m willing to wager that it does so because of near-limitless customization options. We’re also very security-minded as well, so we’ve compiled a brief list of security-conscious Firefox extensions which are compatible with each other. In fact, I can safely say that these are three of the top four extensions under “Security and Privacy” on Mozilla’s Add-Ons site (number four being Xmarks, for reasons uncertain, since it’s a bookmark manager).
• Gmail Account as Archive/backup – EmailDiscussions.com – A guide how to set up GMail as a back up email storage systme.
• btnx Manual – btnx, a.k.a. Button Extension, is a program that enables you to route mouse button events as keyboard combinations and command executions. btnx-config is a GUI to used to detect your mouse and its buttons, and then edit the btnx configuration file.
• http://www.linux-france.org/prj/imapsync/README – imapsync – IMAP synchronisation, sync, copy or migration tool. Synchronise mailboxes between two imap servers. Good at IMAP migration. More than 32 different IMAP server softwares supported with success.
• MailServer – Community Ubuntu Documentation – Setting up an email server is a difficult process involving a number of different programs, each of which needs to be properly configured. The best approach is to install and configure each individual component one by one, ensuring that each one works, and gradually build your mail server.
• Dovecot – Community Ubuntu Documentation – Dovecot is a Mail Delivery Agent, written with security primarily in mind. It supports the major mailbox formats: mbox or Maildir. It is a simple and easy to install MDA. This guide explains how to set it up as an IMAP or POP3 server. For alternate IMAP/POP3 servers see Courier or Cyrus.
• Postfix – Community Ubuntu Documentation – Postfix is the default Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) for Ubuntu. It is in Ubuntu#039;s main repository, which means that it receives security updates. This guide explains how to install and configure postfix and set it up as an SMTP server using a secure connection.
• How To Make A Budget And Wipe Out Debt With Quicken Online – I admit that I tend to overcomplicate the whole “budget” thing. It drives my wife crazy. My Excel budget spreadsheet includes all sources of income, utilities, expenses, mortgage, credit card debt, as well as an array of sheets and charts that estimates debt payoff out to the next five years. In all honesty, the spreadsheet is probably one of the most confusing documents I’ve ever created, and attempting to keep it updated is a complete nightmare.
• 10 Great Apps to Convert Audio Video Files in Linux – With the different audio and video formats available, there is often the need to inter convert amongst them – sometimes for quality and sometimes for compatibility. Here are some of the better software, that you can use to achieve the inter conversions on your Linux box.
• YouTube – d3o Rocks – Liquid body armour
• A ‘time bomb’ for world wheat crop – Los Angeles Times – The Ug99 fungus, called stem rust, could wipe out more than 80% of the world#039;s wheat as it spreads from Africa, scientists fear. The race is on to breed resistant plants before it reaches the U.S.
• The Sean Kennedy TV Show – The Sean Kennedy TV Show was borne from Sean Kennedy#039;s almost five years of radio DJ experience at the time and various video projects. Every Monday night at 8PM PT/11PM ET Sean Kennedy spoke to a live studio audience and the Internet, broadcasting LIVE on RantTV. The show ran for twenty episodes with the help of a large crew of volunteers, Sean Kennedy and Cimmerian all being run ragged arranging bands and guests every week. The show was aired live from Endoplasmic Studios – Unit A – 6011 196A Street, Langley, BC, Canada

David’s links of the week May 5th through June 14th:

• Top 10 Most Effective Job Search Websites – With the world economic climate still painfully low, more folks are losing their jobs than ever before. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. unemployment rate hit over 9 percent in May 2009. France unemployment jumped to 8.2 percent, Germany was at 7.6 percent in January, and the UK was at 6.77 percent in March. It’s imperative that job seekers have all of the tools at their disposal to find new work. High unemployment rates don’t necessarily mean that there’s no work, it often means that the fields where there are available jobs are changing. For this reason, I’d like to offer a list of the top 10 most effective job search websites to help MakeUseOf readers land that new dream job as quickly as possible.
• How to backup your MySQL tables and data every night using a bash script and cron – base64.co.uk

  software development tutorials and code snippets covering : Apache, PHP, Perl, MySQL amp; classic Visual Basic 6.
  How to backup your MySQL tables and data every night using a bash script and cron

  published : 01.Apr.2005

  I now offer an off site MySQL database backup service, if you need a reliable a backup solution for your on-line database, please take a look.

  Summary:
  This tutorial will show you how to write a simple bash shell script which will extract your database schema, compress the data and email you the backup. Utilising cron, this script can be configured to run in the early hours of the morning when your web server is least active.

  After completing your database enabled web site, you need an automated method for backing up all that valuable data. Below is a bash shell script which can be used to backup all your clients databases using a nightly cron job.

• How to Backup And Install Your Linux Applications With AptOnCD – Make Tech Easier – Everytime after you have reformatted the hard disk and reinstalled the Linux distro of your choice, the one troublesome thing that you need to do is to re-download all your applications and restore all the settings. This is made worst when your wireless connection just don’t work with the newly installed distro. How are you going to download all your applications when you can’t even connect to the Internet?
• 10 Windows Command Line Tips You Should Check Out – Linux geeks are proud of their command line prowess and generally have some tricks up their sleeves. While the Windows command line is not considered as powerful as a Linux’s, here are some Windows command line tips and tricks not everyone might know about.
• Save money on your Mobile Phone bill – Save money on your mobile bills when calling 0800 and other non-geographical numbers

  Most mobile phone providers in the UK still charge their customers for calls to 0800, 0808 and 0500 numbers, and normally at higher rates than they charge for calling a land line, but there is a way around this. Mobile Fun recently stumbled upon 0800Buster. They operate a service that lets you call these numbers using your mobiles inclusive minutes, by providing you with a UK land line number to dial instead.

• How to Get a Quake-style Drop-down Terminal in Linux – Make Tech Easier – A lot of games out there have some form of command prompt, often just for entering cheat codes. You know the type – you hit some function key and a bar drops down from the top of the screen letting you enter commands or codes or whatever else. Well some clever folks have taken that design and applied it to the command prompt in your Linux desktop. You can get a fully featured, skinnable terminal with split-screen views and all at the touch of a button. Yakuake is just such a program. It’s been around for a few years but has remained below the radar for most Linux users.
• Web life: Phun – physicsworld.com – Phun is a free, downloadable physics-simulation programme that bills itself as a “2D physics sandbox”. The programme’s limitless virtual space allows users to construct simple (and not-so-simple) machines out of levers, gears, motors and as many different shapes as they care to draw, then set them in motion. The results can be educational, bizarre or downright hilarious, depending on what you choose to do, but thanks to a sophisticated simulation engine, they will always be physically realistic — unless you decide to turn off friction and gravity.
• The unique universe – physicsworld.com – Many cosmological theories not only see our universe as one of many but also claim that time does not exist. Lee Smolin argues against the timeless multiverse
• Make Tech Easier – How To Compress A Video File with Virtualdub – Anyone who has played around with any kind of video knows how huge uncompressed video files can be. The huge size of video files is what has led to the proliferation of video compression algorithms like DivX, Xvid, MP4 etc, but how exactly do you compress an uncompressed video to one of these formats, to save space and maintain your sanity ?
• Make Tech Easier – Ubuntu: How to Mount iso, Bin And Cue Files Directly From Nautilus – We have covered the easy way to mount iso images in Windows. This time round, we are going to cover the easy way to mount an iso, bin or cue file in Ubuntu without having to hit the terminal every time.

  With the use of fuesiso and nautilus-actions, we can easily create an option in Nautilus to mount the CD images right from the context menu (mouse right click).

• Make Tech Easier – Mastering the Bash History – The Bourne Again Shell, better known as bash, is the default for most Linux distributions. It’s extremely powerful as far as command shells go, and holds all kinds of nifty tricks for those willing to learn. One of the best features is, in my opinion, the command history system.

  There are many options to use with the bash history, some of them I use nearly every time I open a command shell. Today I’ll be covering some of the most useful aspects of the history, but I certainly won’t be able to cover them all.

• Make Tech Easier – Gaming In Linux (Ubuntu) – Gaming in Linux is always a big issue. Many gamers are not willing to migrate to Linux (though they are not happy with Windows) because they are worried about the lack of support for gaming. This is really a big myth, since there are really plenty of great games in Linux.

  In case you are wondering what choices of game you have in Linux (Ubuntu), here are my top 10 list.

• Make Tech Easier – Things You Need To Know To Become An Apt Guru – Quite possibly the most distinguishing feature of Debian-based Linux distributions (such as Ubuntu, Mepis, Knoppix, etc) is their package system – APT. Also known as the Advanced Package Tool, APT was first introduced in Debian 2.1 in 1999. APT is not so much a specific program as it is a collection of separate, related packages.

  With APT, Linux gained the ability to install and manage software packages in a much simpler and more efficient way than was previously possible. Before its introduction, most software had to be installed either by manually compiling the source code, or using individual packages with no automatic dependency handling (such as RPM files). This could mean hours of “dependency hell” even to install a fairly trivial program.

• Make Tech Easier – The Ultimate Guide To Manage Your Audio/Video Files In Linux – Have you ever come across a situation where you wanted to convert a video from one format to another in your Linux machine and you have absolutely no idea how to do it? What about playing DVD on Ubuntu or rip your favorite VCD to mpeg file?

  Below, I have come up with a great list of software that you can use to handle your video/audio files in Linux. All the software listed are compatible with any of the Linux distros out there. The installation instructions and screenshots are based on Ubuntu, so if you are on a different distro, you will have to change the command accordingly.

• Make Tech Easier – How To Control Your CPU Frequency In Ubuntu – Needless to say, conserving your battery power is the most important task when you are on the move with your laptop. Other than disabling all unused programs by shutting down them during the startup, one of the great way to save battery power is to reduce the running frequency of your CPU. The slower frequency the CPU runs, the less power it consumes.

  In your Ubuntu, you can easily switch your CPU frequency via the CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor Gnome-applets.

• Using Spotify Links In Linux – The Atheist Blogger – I’ve yet to officially start my tutorials on Linux, but I’ve been playing around with Spotify recently and I’ve been annoyed by the problem of getting Spotify playlists to load from my web browser directly into Spotify. For those who don’t know about Spotify, I suggest you read my previous post, and if you still want invites, I am getting them on a daily basis, so please apply. Spotify playlists can be shared easily in the form of a link, and there have been several websites set up to publish these links. The problem of using these links in Linux consists of two issues:
• [Jaunty] synaptics driver needs to be updated to work with devices known as "ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad" and "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" starting with 2.6.28 series kernels – solved my non working touchpad by doing in terminal:

  modprobe -r psmouse
  modprobe psmouse proto=imps

  at this time the touchpad should be working

  and add: options psmouse proto=imps
  to: gedit /etc/modprobe.d/options

  best of luck.

• Quick and dirty guide to rsync | The Sillican Files – rsync is a software application for Unix systems which synchronizes files and directories from one location to another while minimizing data transfer using delta encoding when appropriate. (Thanks, Wikipedia.) Since this is supposed to be a quick tutorial, we’ll skip the formal lecture and get on with some usage examples.
• How To Build a Social Networking Site using Wordpress | MakeUseOf.com – To create a social networking site, you can either register a free account with a ahird party social networks provider or install open source software on your server and be your own administrator. There are pros and cons in these two methods. The first method allows you to handle your social networks without any technical knowledge, but you risk losing all your data when the third party site close down. The latter requires you to have certain technical knowledge, but you get full control over every single detail in your site.
• Make Tech Easier – Useful Firefox Shortcut Keys (and Cheatsheet Download) – I like using the keyboard as much as possible because it makes me feel more productive. In my opinion, moving your hand over to the mouse is unnecessary the majority of the time because most applications provide very convenient keyboard shortcuts. Today we will discuss the most useful Firefox keyboard shortcuts that will allow you to navigate the Internet faster, thus getting more work (or play) done.

David’s links of the week March 30th through April 28th:

• Download the Smart Installer Pack – Welcome to the Frontpage – What Smart Installer Pack actually does is incorporate a handful of software* usually installed on new computers, reinstalled operating systems, etc.

  So, SIP was made just to eliminate all the searching around for nothing, waiting, downloading (which can take up a lot of time) and only then installing.

  Now, all you have to do is download this Smart Installer Pack and click on the preferred icons – you can choose which software to install (see screen shots).

• Use Smart Installer Pack to Install All Needed Software at Once | MakeUseOf.com – Some time back we looked at how you can create a custom Windows XP CD so that you can include all you favorite software on the CD that would install automatically. If that was too much for you, here is a simpler way. Try out the Smart Installer Pack.

  While the Smart Installer Pack (sip) might not offer the same amount of customization as offered by the method we demonstrated, it certainly gets the job done quickly and provides you with some pretty nifty applications.

  So if you reinstalled the Operating System or other wise looking for some handy applications for your needs all you need to do is to download and run the Smart Installer Pack

• How to format external hard drive to FAT32 in Windows – Trying to format a large external USB or Firewire hard drive to the FAT32 file system? Can’t do it? Only see an option for formatting the drive using the NTFS file format? Well if you answered yes any of those questions, then you’re at the right place.

  I was recently trying to format my 1 TB MyBook external hard drive in Windows XP to FAT32 instead of the overly forced-upon NTFS format. Why? Well because I needed to connect it to a NAS device and the NTFS permissions were causing the NAS not to be able to access the drive. Simple solution is to use FAT32, no security, no problems. Though it’s sometimes useful to format a USB drive in NTFS format.

• Make Tech Easier – 10 Useful Ubuntu-related Sites You Should Bookmark –
• 5 Easy-to-use Freeware Video Converters | MakeUseOf.com – Our lives have turned into a big media center. Each of us likely have our own set of desktops, laptops, mobile phones, portable media players, handheld consoles, and MP3 players. The many video formats needed to run our gadgets just add more stress to our already media-entangled lives.

  With so many video formats and too little time to organize our video files, we need an easy-to-use and intuitive video converter that handles all our video files on the go. Let us look at 5 of the best freeware video converters that will keep your video collection a little less insane. For converting other files, you can choose an online file converter that were covered earlier.

• Make Tech Easier – 9 Things You Need To Do/Install After Installing Ubuntu 9.04 – After you have downloaded and installed Ubuntu 9.04, what is next thing you should do?

  Getting Ubuntu onto your hard disk is only the first step. It is still in the raw and unpolished state. To get the best out of it, you really need to configure and customize it to suit your needs. In part 3 of the series, I am going to go through the important things that you need to do after you have got Jaunty up and running.

• Creating Bootable Vista / Windows 7 USB Flash Drive at Kevin’s Blog – It surprised me to find that there are very few dead-simple guides to creating a bootable USB thumb/pen/flash drive for a Vista and/or Windows 7 installation. I cobbled together the following from VistaPCGuy and another source I don’t remember right now.

  This will walk through the steps to create a bootable USB flash drive for the purpose of installing a Vista or Windows 7 OS. These instructions assume that you have a computer with Windows Vista installed on it.

• How To Scan and Fax Documents Online for Free | MakeUseOf.com – Popular in the 1980’s, faxes are still around in many organizations and are the fastest and most reliable way to communicate via physical media. To give an example, PayPal requires you to verify your identity by sending a fax with copies of bank statement and government ID if it can’t process your card automatically.

  In these kinds of situations, sending a fax for free as quickly as possible would certainly be useful. In this article, we’re taking a look at 4 websites that let you send fax online and come with a free or trial version.

• 10 Youtube URL Tricks You Should Know About | MakeUseOf.com – Youtube – You know that site with videos and all. Yeah! It turns out that its quite popular and you happen to visit and use it quite often. Instead of just searching and playing here are some top Youtube URL tricks that you should know about:
• 3 Easy Ways To Send a Complete Web Page via Email | MakeUseOf.com – There are two ways to send a webpage to someone. The most common and the most followed is to copy paste the webpage link in the email. The second is to send the entire web page via email, that is include it within the body of the email.
• Check If Your ISP Throttling Your BitTorrent Downloads | MakeUseOf.com – So the cat’s been out of the bag for a while now that ISP’s are throttling or in some cases even blocking your BitTorrent downloads or seeding.

  Comcast came out and admitted to it’s practices in the United States last year. You can read about it here on wired. Since then there has been lot’s of speculation on if other ISP’s are doing the same thing…

• 6 Cool Websites To Unleash The Mad Scientist Within You – Were you the type of kid that would get in trouble because you were always blowing something up or mixing things together that shouldn’t be mixed? Do you now have a boring 9 to 5 job that makes you yearn for those free days in your childhood when all things were possible? If you answered yes to those questions, then this post is for you. I will show you six cool web sites that you can use to unleash the mad scientist within and try fun science experiments at home.
• 5 Dead-Easy Websites to Share Files Without Signing Up | MakeUseOf.com – Sharing or sending files via eMail is very inconvenient. First of all some files are simply too big to be eMailed. Secondly, when the recipient downloads mail they cannot control when to download the file and for the time it takes until the eMail is transferred they are stuck. And last but not least, someone downloading mail at work may find that some file types are blocked by default, thus they may never even receive the file.
• How To Find Unprotected Website Directories Get “Interesting” Files | MakeUseOf.com – With all the risks involved in using file sharing networks, browsing unprotected website directories is probably a lot easier and safer. Only when you start doing that do you realise half the stuff that people keep in their website folders (Sports Illustrated magazines!)

  Then you start to realise how silly they are for not password protecting those folders and leaving them wide open for the whole world to walk in an

• Phoenix Guardian HEPA System – The Phoenix Guardian HEPA System was the first portable air scrubbing device designed exclusively for the restoration industry. The Guardian can perform several critical air quality remediation functions simultaneously.
• Make Tech Easier – Making Full Use of the Super (Windows) Key in Gnome – I use a lot of different computers. Many of those computers are on different operating systems, or desktop environments. Just when I find myself growing accustomed to a particular way of doing things, I find myself on a different system with a different way of doing things. Key combinations are some of the most common distinctions between platforms, so I try to set each system up to recognize the key combos I need. Normally, that’s not a big problem. You just go into the keyboard settings for that environment and set it the way you like, right? Well not always.
• Feeling Depressed? Here’s The Top 5 Good News Websites | MakeUseOf.com – If you are like me, then you are sick and tired of all the negative news being thrown at you by the mainstream media outlets. Pick any major online news outlet and you will find the majority of items are about the ever sinking economy, Iraq or someone’s unfortunate death.

  Some might argue that reading about people who have it worse can make you feel better about yourself, but I really do not think that is true.

• Make Tech Easier – How To Configure A Firewall In Linux Using Firestarter – Long back, when I was running a Windows only PC, a firewall utility was always among the first software that I used to install on a newly formatted machine. Along with an Antivirus, a firewall used to be considered a must for any Windows installation that was in any way connected to the outside world.

  Of course, times have changed now. I use Linux almost exclusively and rarely see the Windows login prompt. Most Linux distributions are far more secure than Windows, out of the box, but the threat is still there and having a good firewall protecting your computer is still a good idea.

  Almost all Linux distributions comes bundled with a firewall software known as iptables, which is a command line based software for configuring Firewall rules for all network traffic to and from the Linux kernel.

• XMind – Social Brainstorming and Mind Mapping – XMind, combined with online sharing service, provides a revolutionary way to enable both team brainstorming and personal mind mapping. With this major upgrade, we bring Web 2.0 concepts on community sharing into a popular desktop application. New Gantt view allows project managers to easily track project tasks and schedules. You#039;ll find many more useful and time-saving functions in XMind product family.
• Hive Five: Five Best Mind Mapping Applications – Mind mapping is a great way to add structure to brainstorming sessions and visualize your ideas. Check out the applications your fellow readers use to do their best brainstorming.

  Earlier this week we asked you to share which mind mapping application helped you brainstorm most effectively. The votes are in and we#039;re back to share the results and arm you with the tools to make your next think tank meeting that much more productive.

• The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security – There#039;s lots of innovation going on in security – we#039;re inundated with a steady stream of new stuff and it all sounds like it works just great. Every couple of months I#039;m invited to a new computer security conference, or I#039;m asked to write a foreword for a new computer security book. And, thanks to the fact that it#039;s a topic of public concern and a quot;safe issuequot; for politicians, we can expect a flood of computer security-related legislation from lawmakers. So: computer security is definitely still a quot;hot topic.quot; But why are we spending all this time and money and still having problems?
• Add Your Twitter Blog to Technorati Directory – You can consider adding your Twitter account to the Technorati Blog directory for the following reasons:

  1. You can associate relevant Technorati tags to your Twitter profile and this could give you extra exposure via the popular Technorati blog directory (see tags).

  2. With Technorati, you can automatically track other blog posts that are linking to your tweets.

  3. Your Twitter account will also show up in your Technorati profile page just like your other regular blogs thus increasing visibility.

David’s links of the week March 24th through March 29th:

• ChkFlsh checks your Flash Drives on Windows | MakeUseOf.com – Do you have a flash drive that is a little bit iffy? Are you just a geek and like to run checks against… well anything that you can run tests against? Are you worried that your flash drive might be failing?If you have answered yes to any (or all) of these three questions than have i got a free application for you! I have been using it for a little while now and I must say it does exactly what it says it will do. It will check your Flash Drive for bad blocks or in errors in reading and writing to it.

  Think of it as putting your Flash Drive through the test, and it does work for normal, regular other drives as well.

  SSD drives are still pretty damn expensive and you do not want to start using a damaged drive then you can use this to test those drives also.

• Flash Countdown Timer Generator – Create a countdown for your blog, website, or myspace page -
• Simple Yearly Archive Plugin – Wordpress, Plugin, Option, Beiträge, Kategorien, Archive – SCHLOEBE.DE – Personal Portfolio von Oliver Schlöbe – Simple Yearly Archive ist ein recht einfaches Wordpress Plugin, das die Wordpress-Archive nicht wie gewohnt monatsbasierend darstellt, sondern in einer jahresbasierenden Liste. Es entsteht quasi eine Art Jahresarchiv. Übergeordnet werden die Jahre angezeigt, in denen Beiträge geschrieben wurden, darunter die geschriebenen Beiträge. Darüber hinaus lässt sich einstellen, welche Kategorien angezeigt werden sollen.
• Five Free Temporary Email Services To Avoid Spam – he internet is filled with junk. One of the most common pieces of junk is spam. Many of us are bombarded with spam every day and hate it. Although there are a few email providers that provide great spam filtering services, sometimes that just isn’t enough.Maybe you need to fill in an email for a one-time registration that, you are sure, will only lead to spam. That is where temporary email services come into play. Today we will talk about 5 of those that I highly recommend.
• The TSH Normal Range: Why is There Still Controversy? Insights from One of the Nation’s Leading Endocrinologists, Dr. Jeffrey Garber – here#039;s no question that thyroid treatment is an area of controversy. Perhaps one of the most confusing issues for patients today is the issue of the changing quot;normalquot; reference range for the TSH — thyroid stimulating hormone — test, which is relied on by most conventional practitioners to detect and monitor thyroid problems.

David’s links of the week March 6th through March 24th:

• E.gg Timer – simple online countdown timer – Use it like an egg timer or a count down timer.
  Example usage:

  * http://e.ggtimer.com/2minutes
  * http://e.ggtimer.com/1hour14minutes35seconds
  * http://e.ggtimer.com/5years3months
  * http://e.ggtimer.com/30 (when you just put a number it assumes seconds)

• She’s no superhero, but she just might try :: Naperville Sun :: Hilary Decent – Friendly piano teacher by day, ethereal composer and performer by night and dark Gothic novelist in the twilight zone. Will the real Kimberly Steele please stand up?
• 10+ Best Firefox Addons for Security and Privacy – Security and privacy are some of the major concerns these days while choosing a web browser to use. So much so that all the major players in the “browser wars” are providing or developing a private browsing mode.

  Firefox with the myraid of add-ons that it has to offer is never far from action. Here are some of the top Firefox addons that you should install for better privacy and security

• Macrium Reflect FREE Edition – Information and download – The fastest disk imaging software is now available as a free edition.

  Absolutely free! No strings! The only free XP and Vista compatible disk imaging software with BartPE and Linux based recovery options.

  * Create a disk image whilst running Windows using Microsoft Volume Shadow copy Service (VSS).
  * Image to Network, USB, FireWire drives and DVD.
  * Built in scheduler.
  * 32 bit and native 64 bit versions.
  * Industry leading compression levels and speed.
  * Linux based Rescue CD with Network access and full GUI. Only 6.5MB in size!
  * Built in CD/DVD packet writing engine. Supports packet writing to DVD DL media with Windows Vista.
  * HTML log files.

• Online Mind Mapping – MindMeister – Get creating and sharing mind maps online with our unlimited Premium account. Access your maps anytime and from anywhere and brainstorm with friends and colleagues in real time, just using a web browser.
• 100+ Funny Photos Taken At Unusual Angle [Humor] | Inspiration – They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes this ain’t exactly right. Distance overlapping, positions, and timing can sometimes create a brand new perspective of a photo. This weekend, we want to show you 100+ Funny Photos Taken At Unusual Angle, a compilation of photos taken at the exact right timing and angle, thus creating a humor side of the story; intentionally or unintentionally.
• ChavTowns – Hull –
• The ten most addictive online flash games ever made – Crave at CNET UK – For some people online flash games are a passing distraction to fill the hours between lunch and home time. For others online flash games are a passionate hobby that keeps glued to their monitors while they try and beat their last score. We#039;ve put together a list of the top ten best flash games ever, in no particular order. From simple animal cruelty to complex platform puzzles, these should keep you entertained all day long.
• Schneier on Security: TrueCrypt’s Deniable File System – Together with Tadayoshi Kohno, Steve Gribble, and three of their students at the University of Washington, I have a new paper that breaks the deniable encryption feature of TrueCrypt version 5.1a. Basically, modern operating systems leak information like mad, making deniability a very difficult requirement to satisfy.
• Use PDFVue To Fill Froms – So what do you do when you want to fill out forms online or edit a PDF? Need to mark up a PDF? Well you can’t do that with the free version of Acrobat Reader. So we have to find another solution!

  Nifty website pdfVue does exactly what we need it to do. As long as we aren’t working on top secret documents (or even tax forms for that matter) we should have no problem in uploading our documents to PDFVue’s server and then manipulate them using their online Adobe Acrobat Pro-esque editor.

• how to flash your bios with dos using a usb stick: – Notebook Forums and Laptop Discussion –

David’s links of the week February 19th through March 4th:

• The Mystery of the Haunted Vampire » Blog Archive » An interview with a vampire author – I recently listened to a free podcast of Kimberly Steele’s vampire novel Forever Fifteen. I thought it was the best vampire novel since Richard Laymon’s The Traveling Vampire Show. Steele’s vampire is Lucy Albert, who was turned into a vampire at the age of 15 after surviving the Black Death in the 1340s in Italy by an ancient vampire, who wanted her for his carnal desires and to ease his lonely, undead existence.The novel is set in 1983 in the United States, where Lucy lives among mortals, posing as an innocent foster child, who moves from family to family while she secretly commits her monthly murders to satisfy her blood cravings.Steele really captured the “otherness” of a vampire living among humans. It’s obvious she put a lot of thought into how a vampire would exist and maintain secrecy over the years. The serial killing scenes were particularly well done.
• Windows Post-Install Wizard Home – Windows Post-Install Wizard (WPI for short) is a hypertext application designed for giving users choice. While Windows XP offers many ways of customizing the setup process out of the box, its major drawback is the lack of being able to select which applications an end user may install. In the past, end users and administrators needed to either download the files manually, or create overly complex scripts that could only be used once. WPI allows you to create one image, which can then be custom configured, and optionally, automated, so that end users can install any applications.
• How To Reinstall Windows Without Losing Your Data | MakeUseOf.com – The Windows XP installation CD includes an option to repair an existing Windows XP installation. Using this option allows you to reinstall Windows without losing the files, personal data and programs you already have on the system. To take advantage of it, just place the CD into your CD or DVD drive on your PC and reboot the computer.
• How To Make Your Own Windows Live CD | MakeUseOf.com – Live CDs as you know allow you to boot your computer from a CD-ROM and performs various functions on your system. Such Live CDs are excellent for recovering data, fixing problems or to have a custom desktop at your disposal when you are not at your own computer.While the Live CDs are common place in the Linux world, it’s not often that you hear about a Windows Live CD.Here today we are going to show you how to make custom Windows Live CD
• How To Create An Unattended Windows XP Disk | MakeUseOf.com – An unattended XP disk is a customized installation disk that allows you to perform a Windows installation with minimal effort (once the disk is created). All of the effort takes place in creating the unattended disk, but it is well worth it. With an unattended XP disk, you can preselect all of the options you wish to use for the installation.
• 13 Alternative Search Engines That Find What Google Can’t | MakeUseOf.com – Google has become the standard search engine of virtually every web-goer on the internet today. In fact “to Google” is pretty much synonymous with “to search”.But that certainly doesn’t mean that other search engines can’t do a decent, if not better, job and this list has been compiled for just this reason.So check out this catalog of awesome alternative search engines that are certain to help you search faster and more efficiently on that World Wide Web.
• 8 Ways To Improve Your WordPress’s Loading Time – Make Tech Easier – f you have been blogging for quite a while, you will find that as your traffic increases, your blog’s loading time become slower and slower. This could be due to inefficient coding, too many images (or advertisement) or just that you have activated too many plugins that take up your valuable server resources. If the above is true for you, then it is time for you to do some spring-cleaning and start to streamline and optimize your site.
• 4 Websites to Learn Cool Linux Command Line Tricks | MakeUseOf.com – Hollywood movies often have a tech geek entering commands and doing amazing things. While it may not be that easy to hack into public transport systems or or control the world like Eagle Eye, the command line is certainly a geeks playground.Want to show off your command line prowess to your geeky friends but don’t know any cool tricks? Well you are in luck. The following websites will give you plenty of tricks and tips to satiate your hunger:
• WordPress Backups « WordPress Codex – Your WordPress database contains every post, every comment and every link you have on your blog. If your database gets erased or corrupted, you stand to lose everything you have written. There are many reasons why this could happen and not all are things you can control. But what you can do is backup your data. After all, it is important. Right?

David’s links of the week January 31st through February 6th:

• The race to build a quantum computer – physicsworld.com – Quantum computation was a highly speculative enterprise facing serious technological obstacles until a shy young physicist came along. Dave Bacon tells the story of Alexei Kitaev’s big idea
• Electricity unplugged – physicsworld.com – However, Tesla did not foresee that people would be willing to drag wires around the entire globe to use electricity. Instead, he dreamed of a way of transferring electrical energy wirelessly over long distances. This would be achieved using big, coupled electromagnetic resonators able to generate very large electric fields, which were meant to propagate most likely either via conduction through the ionosphere (presumably including gigantic sparks) or through the Earth (possibly via intermediate coupling to the Earth’s charge resonances, so-called Schumann resonances). The epitome of Tesla’s efforts to achieve his goal was Wardenclyffe Tower, a 57 m high structure in Long Island that was meant to deliver electricity to the entire planet. The construction was interrupted in about 1905, not because the method was considered impractical or dangerous, but because the funder, the famed financier and banker J P Morgan, was concerned that there would be no way to bill remote electricity users
• CSS should not be used for layout – Seeing as how the CSS wars seem to have flared up again, I thought I would weigh in. I have finally had a chance to really dive in to the details, and I have come to the following conclusion:

  CSS is really cool. It is useful for a lot of things. The basic idea of separating content from presentation is sound. But when it comes to layout, the design of CSS is fundamentally flawed. Use tables instead.

  There, I#039;ve said it. But you might want to hear what I have to say before you release the hounds.

• Cow causes chaos in Hull –
• Press Release Census answers could be passed to snoopers » NO2ID – As NO2ID highlighted in the Queen’s Speech [1], the Coroners and Justice Bill which received its First Reading in the Lords yesterday [2], will turn the Data Protection Act on its head as far as government use of personal information is concerned − giving powers to ministers to override confidentiality and data protection and to use information collected for one purpose for any other purpose.
• Mastering WordPress Shortcodes | Developer’s Toolbox | Smashing Magazine – ntroduced in WordPress 2.5, shortcodes are powerful but still yet quite unknown WordPress functions. Imagine you could just type “adsense” to display an AdSense ad or “post_count” to instantly find out the number of posts on your blog.

  WordPress shortcodes can do this and more and will definitely make your blogging life easier. In this article, we’ll show you how to create and use shortcodes, as well as provide killer ready-to-use WordPress shortcodes that will enhance your blogging experience.

• Liberty is crucial to democracy – Tony Benn has been a political idol for years. For The Guardian#039;s quot;Liberty Centralquot;, here he present a great argument as to why left-wingers should be concerned by our government#039;s attitudes towards surveillance and civil liberties.
• How To Become A Twitter Rockstar – Sort Of –
• Connected – physicsworld.com –
• How to Friend Mom, Dad, and the Boss on Facebook…Safely – ReadWriteWeb – Oh no! Your mom just joined Facebook and what#039;s even worse, she wants to be your friend. More and more people are finding themselves in this situation today and unsure of what to do. Friending mom and dad, the boss, or other work colleagues opens up the details of your private life for the whole world to see – and you might not be entirely comfortable with that. What#039;s to be done?

David’s links of the week January 25th through January 30th:

• Q and A: Mercury in energy-saving light bulbs – Old-fashioned tungsten light bulbs are due to be phased out in Australia, the UK, and the US over the next five years, and the spotlight has fallen on their low-energy replacements. The new light bulbs contain mercury, which has triggered a rash of concerned media stories – but is there any fact behind the fear? Chemistry World investigates.
• What else does Spotify need to succeed? – Brief review of Spotify, the new internet jukebox application. Also a list of suggestions for how they should innovate with their product.
• Ubuntu: Ubuntu Pocket Guide Available as a Free Download – In the midst of the current financial crunch, the popular, free Linux distribution Ubuntu has never looked more attractive. If you#039;ve considered switching, a free copy of the Ubuntu Pocket Guide is the perfect place to start.

  Written by Keir Thomas, author of Ubuntu Kung Fu, Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference covers all the beginner-to-expert knowledge you#039;ll need to make the move to Ubuntu.

• Kevin Rose: 10 Ways To Increase Your Twitter Followers – This guest post is written by Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg and the cofounder of Revision3 and Pownce. Kevin, who has over 88,000 followers on Twitter (making him the second most followed after President Obama), also “bloggs” at kevinrose.com. He is an investor in Twitter.
• Set up WiFi on your Series 60 smartphone – A guide showing you how to set up WiFi on your series 60 smartphone; avoiding all those expensive data charges
• Top 50 Linux Alternatives to Popular Apps – LaptopLogic.com – Linux is quickly gaining popularity, but there are still many users afraid to convert as they are not familiar with the applications. Today our Linux guru Blair Mathis is back to introduce fifty of the most popular applications on this OS

I have just checked my “Share Spotify” page and was delighted to see that I have 10 more invites to give out. So just like the other two posts, please leave a comment on this post and I’ll fix you up with an invite as soon as I can!

P.S. If you are posting for an invite, please consider giving me a Digg, or at least telling your friends to come here. Use the “Share this” link below!

An example of searching for music on Spotify

David’s links of the week January 17th through January 23rd:

• Atoms teleport information over long distance – physicsworld.com – Physicists have teleported quantum information between two atoms separated by a significant distance, for the first time. Until now this feat had only been achieved between photons, and between two nearby atoms through the intermediary action of a third. According to researchers, this advance could be a significant milestone in the quest for a workable quantum computer.
• Tip of the week – 23rd January 2009 – Windows:
  Are you bored of the taskbar? Then try these two tips:

  1) Autohide – You may only need the taskbar sometimes so the rest of the time, why don’t you get rid of it! If you right-click your taskbar and select Properties, you’ll see that the second tick-box down says “Auto-hide the taskbar“. If you check this the taskbar will slide off your screen. When you need to see it, move your mouse to the bottom of of the screen and it will reveal itself again.

  2) Move it around! – Did you know that the task bar can live on the other three sides of your screen? Just right-click and click the “Lock the taskbar” line so that it no longer has a tick next to it. Next, drag any empty part of the taskbar to the side of the screen you want it to be. Once you’re happy, you can “lock” the taskbar into play by repeat the first part of this tip.

• get_iplayer | Linuxcentre – This tool allows you to download or stream any iPlayer programme from the BBC in H.264 (Quicktime/mp4) format, any BBC radio programmes in MP3 or RealAudio format (optionally converted to wav or mp3) and all BBC podcasts in MP3/AAC format. It even downloads the BBC subtitles where available. It also has support for downloading ITV TV programmes.A major new feature adds PVR-like capabilities (like Sky+ / TiVo / Series-Link); You can save lists of programme searches which are automatically downloaded when they become available.

  The H.264 feeds from the BBC are higher quality than in the Flash iPlayer (normal quality) or the Wii. See the beebhack wiki for a comparison. They are intended for the Apple iPhone and are consequently made difficult to download for any other OS. The same goes for the iPhone MP3 radio streams. Although there is now a new feature which allows downloading fo the flash based content.

• 10 Cool Linux Apps You Maybe Didn’t Know About | MakeUseOf.com -
• Movie Review: BLAST The Movie – A review of quot;BLAST The Moviequot;, a documentary about a graduate project to fly a telescope to the edge of our atmosphere on a balloon to peer into the earliest galaxy formation in the universe.
• Our world may be a giant hologram – space – 15 January 2009 – New Scientist -
• Tip of the week – 16th January 2009 – In windows, if you plan to do some work “under the hood” or are trying to fix a problem, make sure you manually save a restore point.
• 12 Useful Web Tools for Designers – Six Revisions – When it comes to design, there’s a plethora of free web-based tools to help you accomplish tasks such as color palette selection, creating unique fonts, editing images, and testing typography.In this article, you’ll find a bunch of handy online utilities for designers.
• Starship size comparison – size comparison of all the starship we#039;ve ever seen!
• Encrypt Your Files In Linux With eCryptfs – Mark has previously described how you can use TrueCrypt to encrypt your sensitive data. While that is a great encryption software, it requires you to pre-allocate a fixed size to the container before you can store confidential data to it. If you are using only 10% of the allocated space, the remaining 90% of the space goes to waste. If you are looking for a more dynamic solution to encrypt files in Linux, eCryptfs might be the solution for you.eCryptfs is a stacked cryptographic filesystem embedded within the Linux kernel (versions 2.6.19 and later). Being a stacked filesystem, it can easily encrypt and decrypt the files on your Linux PC as they are written to or read from the hard disk.

  The greatest advantage of eCryptfs is that all encryption is made at the single-file level. This means that you don’t have to create a fixed size container to hold your files.