Be sure to read my article at Lost in Technology on How To Backup All of Your Holiday Photos for Free Online.
Setting up short urls for your domain for free has never been easy, messing with databases and servers and all of that jazz. While you could pay $100 a year for awe.sm’s service (much easier), many (including me) find that price out of our range. Fortunately, there is an alternative. An excellent alternative. A Google alternative. I am not talking about goo.gl, Google’s latest release for a Google url shorterner. I am talking of Google Apps experimental Google Short Links. After a couple clicks, Google Short Links is setup and ready to use. Here’s how.
Post by Squealing Rat. Find him on Twitter and check out his latest blogs, Looming Tech and Lone Iguana.
Post by Squealing Rat. Find him on Twitter and check out his latest blog, Looming Tech.
OK, when your computer takes five minutes to open a program, it’s probably time to clean it out. This post is more about preventative care rather than about the actual savior of your machine.
When you get a computer, the first thing you want to install is a security program. One example is Norton Anti-Virus. When you buy your computer, the salesperson probably tried to sell you a program. Really, you don’t need Norton or McAfee. They don’t work that well. Instead, all you need is something mentioned below.
For the cheapskates
Free anti-virus programs are a dime a dozen. Two examples are AVG Free and Avast. I personally use AVG which is an excellent program for protecting your computer. Get it at free.avg.com. But not only do you need a good anti-virus, you need a good firewall and a good spy-bot program. Comodo Firewall Pro and Spy-Bot Search and Destroy get the job done for free. And don’t forget to check for updates before running checks.
For the buyers
NOD32 is one of the better antivirus programs. The program itself costs $40.00 dollars a year. For firewall and spybots, you don’t even need to pay. Both Comodo Firewall Pro and Spy-Bot Search and Destroy get the job done for free. And don’t forget to check for updates before running checks. (That’s the second time I have said that. Which means it’s important. I will say it once again for emphasis. And don’t forget to check for updates before running checks.)
No security program can protect you from all threats. Be smart: avoid downloading from unknown sources or entering your bank account code on suspect websites.
Links
AVG: free.avg.com
Avast!: avast.com
Comodo Firewall Pro: http://personalfirewall.comodo.com/download_firewall.html
Spybot Search and Destroy: safer-networking.org
NOD32: eset.com
Just wrote an article over at Lost in Technology on How To Keep Eyes Riveted on Your Presentation.
Post by Squealing Rat. Find him on Twitter and check out his latest blog, Looming Tech.
Wow. I just spent 10 minutes listening to and transcribing this. If you don’t have a life, just watch the part below to sing along.
“There was a man who shot the man who was the man who shot man, Cal Johnson, Cal Johnson
Cal Johnson was born the day he died”
He wore a hat, his favorite hat, he loved that hat, he hated hats, Cal Johnson, Cal Johnson
He was a dad to zero kids, and yet he fathered five
He got shot dead a year ago and yet he’s still alive
He’s rich beyond his wildest dreams yet never had a dime
A lawman to the very end he led a life of crime
In all of his years of life on earth he never fired a gun, yet when it came to Chinese men he shot down every one
He had a horse named Bandit, and the horse’s name was Clyde
Extra points if you realized that “Cal Johnson” was the actor that played David Putty in Seinfeld and Top of the Line Mac in the Apple commercial. Now, please excuse me while I go read something educational.
In the past several days you may have noticed that this site was down. This was due to a hosting problem. We regret the disturbance.
I know, I know. Why did Apple make it such a pain to send an MMS with a location? I don’t know, but since it took me a couple minutes of research, I thought I would help everyone else out. OK, here’s how:
Go to the Maps app on your iPhone. Sending MMS locations can NOT be done using the Messages app. (Stupid!)
Click the GPS button (blue, bottom left), to get your current location. If you are sending another location find the location you want to send, then drop a pin there.
Now, either click the blue dot, or the pin.
Last step: press the share button and then MMS.
There you have it. Thanks for reading.
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[Originally published at squealingrat.com. In the future, all written posts will be only posted here, so grab the Word's RSS feed here.]
[Post originally published on The 2.0 Life. See the post here.]
My recent post on The 2.0 Life talks a little about what goes into my browser. Take a peek at the excerpt below, or just click the link above for the full experience.
Browser
IE is terrible. Safari is nice. Chrome is sweet. Firefox is amazing. You can guess which one I use. Do it. Guess.
If you didn’t guess, I use Firefox. The main reason to use Firefox is the extensions. Extensions allow you to add your own personal touch to Firefox. More popular extensions include those that block ads, download content and add the weather to the sidebar. But I will go into the depths of extensions later.
If you find yourself without the need for wonderful ways to expand your browsing experience, find yourself needing simplicity, don’t lose hope. There are others. Pretty darn good entries in the race I might add. Those would be Chrome and Safari. Chrome is Google’s browser. It works the best on PCs, and is very fast. The Mac version is not as polished, but still does a fine job, which leads us to the second contender. Safari. Safari is Apple’s default browser on the Mac is sleek and nearly identical to Chrome.
But I won’t dive into the browser wars when there is so much more that can be discussed.
