Chalkboards and whiteboards are a great tool for making notes and sharing ideas with others. While, in my opinion, you can’t beat the real thing, online whiteboards are useful for ‘unstructured’ brainstorming or for just playing around. A cool whiteboard to play around with is Imagination Cubed. Imagination Cubed allows you to record your...

Did you see an offer on TV or the radio which sounds too good to be true (pretty much all of them are)? If you still want to do some homework to see if the offer is legit, a great resource to take a look at is Ripoff Report. What is the Ripoff Report? Ripoff Report is a service to the world’s consumers. The Ripoff Report enables YOU the consumer to be...

If you are looking to make your own media center computer and are still up in the air about which software/OS you should use, an article well worth the time to read is: Which Media Center Is Right for You: Boxee, XBMC, and Windows Media Center Compared. While there are lots more choices out there, the ones covered by this article among the most popular. Outside...

In the context of this article I’m referring to the Windows Live Mail the email client and not the email service (Hotmail). When composing an email in WL Mail, most people use HTML to use features such as colored text, bold/italic/underline, and so on. It is true that any email composed in WL Mail can be saved as a web page, and it’s quite easy to...

Facsimile machines in the way we know them have been around a very long time. Most people remember them sprouting up like weeds in offices in the mid-1980s and they’ve been around ever since. Most people, including myself, hate faxing. The process is slow, the image scan quality is poor, and if we had our way we’d ban fax machines like asbestos....

Everyone knows the importance of backups and I am not here to harp on that. One thing you may want to consider, however, is having a backup of your router settings in the form of screenshots. Hypothetically, assume your router got fried by either a power surge, inadvertent user error or a freak occurrence. Do you know what all your settings (ISP info, IP...

I have written a couple of posts in the past about ways you can reduce vampire power drain around your house to save some energy and money, so to add to this collection check out the Outlet Regulator. The premise is simple: when the plugged in device is fully charged, the Outlet Regulator physically ejects the plug from the wall to stop power draw. There is a...

The Steam platform has been introducing some really good games that have been re-ported so that they can play in modern versions of Windows. Some are put into collections that offer some seriously good bang for the buck, one of which is the Star Wars Jedi Knight Collection. It includes 5 games for $19.99 – all of which are awesome. It includes: Dark...

The way in which menus operate in an app is a big deal, because it can mean the difference between loving or hating the app. Something that has slowly but surely creeping its way into Microsoft applications is the ribbon interface. The difference between a regular toolbar and a ribbon is that a ribbon is a set of toolbars seen as selectable tabs. If you’re...

If you have the need for a dedicated file server and have some old equipment laying around, turn it into a fully functional file server with FreeNAS. FreeNAS is an embedded open source NAS (Network-Attached Storage) distribution based on FreeBSD, supporting the following protocols: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, TFTP, AFP, RSYNC, Unison, iSCSI (initiator and target)...

If you work with multiple monitors regularly and then switch back to a single monitor, you may find that some of your applications open in the additional (now nonexistent) monitor. If you find this is the case, there are a couple of tricks I have found which work:If you can only see part of the application window, try resizing the window by dragging one of the...

The weekend was not a good time in Internet Land. Facebook broke. Buzz is still ticking people off left and right, with some saying that Google doesn’t give a crap about anyone but themselves. Apple went on a banning rampage, again. Aaaaand last but not least, Firefox 3.6 now has a rather nasty exploit. Given that the #1 social network broke, Buzz still...

This tip is geared towards servers, but is applicable to desktops as well in certain cases. Whenever you shutdown Windows, a “stop” command is sent to programs and background services which are currently running. Typically programs will respond to this quickly and close, however services are a different animal which can take a while to quit (i.e....

If you ever need to develop a small website (say 10 pages or less) but don’t want to have to manage the HTML source on each page, a CMS (Content Management System) is the way to go. There are already well established, powerful systems out there, but if you want something lightweight and simple, Zimplit is something you should try. Zimplit does not have a...

Yesterday I had to downgrade my Firefox to version 3.5.8 from 3.6. Why? Add-on issues. I’ve been having them ever since I upgraded to 3.6. But when this one broke, in this fashion: ..that was the last straw because I use it routinely. The worst part about being a Firefox user is when add-ons bust. Every time Mozilla releases an update to the browser,...

One thing which has been preventing me from upgrading to Firefox 3.6 is the lack of support for IE Tab which, as you may know, allows you to run a site using the IE rendering engine inside of a Firefox tab. I need this for some sites such as Sharepoint and the Virtual Server control panel (so I don’t have to open IE directly). If you are facing the same...

By now, most of us know the short story. Google came out with a new social network and they integrated it right into Gmail. Then, a big privacy uproar ensued. And tech pundits everywhere chime in on whether Buzz matters or not. Does it matter? Is Buzz actually worthy of it’s name? Or are we looking at another snorefest, the likes of Google Knol or...

For those of you running Windows 7 Release Candidate, the trial period will be ending starting next month. I recently received an email from Microsoft which said this: It’s time to upgrade from the Windows 7 Release Candidate While most people who tested Windows 7 have now moved to the final version, some are still running the Release Candidate. If you...

There is no denying that everybody loves free stuff and software is no exception. So if you are interested in getting a fully licensed copy of commercial software packages then check out Giveaway of the Day. Basically, every day we nominate one software title that will be a Giveaway title of that day. The software will be available for download for 24 hours (or...

OK, we know Rich’s opinion on the Apple Ipad. What about you?Speaking for myself (and as a daily Mac user), I am uninterested. It looks cool, but I essentially see it as an Ipod Touch with a bigger screen. The fact that this device runs the Iphone OS and is tied to the App Store is such a HUGE ball & chain for a device which had so much potential. I...