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Tuesday February 09, 2010

Newsletter for February 9th, 2010 - "Valentine Computing"

1. Newsletter Editorial

Greetings everyone, and happy upcoming valentine's day.  If you have a carbon-based loved one in your life, might I suggest that you turn off the computer for the day and spend it with them.  Or else set up a lan network in your house so the two of you can chat via instant messenger.  If you don't have a human loved one in your life, don't stress it -- plenty of posts in this newsletter to excite your neurons.

And now let's get down to brass tacks.  If you haven't yet heard about and checked out the software creations unveiled on January 1st as part of our NANY (New Apps for the New Year) event, that's the first thing you should go check out -- several of the entries have continued to flourish and are worth your attention.

And if those applications aren't enough for you.. I'm excited to be able to highlight another wonderful surprise to emerge from the Coding Snacks section of our forum.  The Coding Snacks area is a place where anyone can come and post an idea or request for a new freeware utility -- and where coders hang out and implement these requests.  Recently someone posted a very clever idea to combine standby/hibernate modes with a computer restart operation, and it resulted in a very cool utility called Boot Snooze which you can read about below.

Let's see what else.. Well I put lots of posts in the "Your input requested" section of this newsletter (section 2), so if you've never posted on the forum before, why not pick one of those threads and add your thoughts.

    Click here to continue reading the full newsletter now..

posted by mouser donate to mouser - Today at 04:02:00 AM
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Some nifty tools: Rizone

For those of you that are always on the lookout for some nifty tools to stick on a USB drive or for one's back pocket when called to the rescue for some friend or family member, I ran across some nifty tools from:

http://www.rizonetech.com


Some very cool and unique stuff here (Beep Codes Viewer for example).

posted by chrisa52 donate to chrisa52 - Today at 02:30:00 AM
discovered on Technibles
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Monday February 08, 2010

Tech News Weekly: Edition 5-10

I'm sorry to say folks that I won't be able to do the weekly news over the coming weeks. Trawling through the news on a daily basis typically happens at work (I have very little free time on weekdays), and my company is currently in the process of being relocated, generating a ton more work than usual. I expect that in the next 2 months or so my free time will pick up again and I'll be able to get back to the regular weekly tech news for you all. In the meantime, I'll be sure to post anything I come across that I think is relevant to the forum and will generate discussion. See you round the forum guys.
-Ehtyar

Table of Contents:
  • 1. Facebook’s Project Titan: A Full Featured Webmail Product
  • 2. Quantum Superclock Will Be Accurate Past End of Life On Earth
  • 3. "Don't Be Evil" Meet "Spy On Everyone": How the NSA Deal Could Kill Google
  • 4. H.264 Video Codec Stays Royalty-free for HTML5 Testers
  • 5. Carbon Trade Phish Scam Disrupts Exchanges
  • 6. Wikileaks Finds Cash to Continue
  • 7. IiNet Wins! Film Industry's Case Torn to Shreds
  • 8. Crystals in Meteorite Harder Than Diamonds
  • 9. Comcast Sees End of IPv4 Tunnel, Beginning IPv6 Trial
  • 10. Oz Banker Caught Porn-surfing On Live TV

    Click here to read the full edition now..

posted by Ehtyar donate to Ehtyar - February 08, 2010, 12:11:00 AM
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Tale of a Would-Be Spy, Buried Treasure, and Uncrackable Code

Another nice real life spy story:

Quote
When officials searched the aspiring spy, they found a paper tucked under the insole of his right shoe. On it were written the addresses of several Iraqi and Chinese embassies in Europe. In a trouser pocket they discovered a spiral pad in which Regan, who had been trained in cryptanalysis by the Air Force, had written 13 seemingly unconnected words — like tricycle, rocket, and glove. Another 26 words were written on an index card. In his wallet was a paper with a string of several dozen letters and numbers beginning “5-6-N-V-O-A- I …” And in a folder Regan had been carrying, they found four pages filled with three-digit numbers, or trinomes: 952, 832, 041, and so on. The spiral pad, the index card, the wallet note, and the sheets of trinomes: The FBI suddenly had four puzzles to solve.

http://www.wired.com/maga...e/2010/01/ff_hideandseek/

posted by mouser donate to mouser - February 08, 2010, 12:10:00 AM
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Saturday February 06, 2010

Essay - Blogging: a great pastime for the elderly

I find the rise of twitter and the decline of blogging sad..  It seems like the amount of aggregate writing on the web is staying constant, we're just now getting a lot more one-line off-the-cuff throwaway comments, and less thoughtful considered commentary.

Quote
I remember when it was kind of cool to be a blogger. You'd walk around with a swagger in your step, a twinkle in your eye. Now it's just humiliating. Blogging has become like mahjong or needlepoint or clipping coupons out of Walgreens circulars: something old folks do while waiting to croak.

Did you see that new Pew study that came out yesterday? It put a big fat exclamation point on what a lot of us have come to realize recently: blogging is now the uncoolest thing you can do on the Internet.

http://www.roughtype.com/...10/02/blogging_a_grea.php

posted by mouser donate to mouser - February 06, 2010, 12:35:00 PM
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Wednesday February 03, 2010

Developers cheatsheets

Found this this morning, and it may be of use/interest to others

Lots of quick reference/cheat sheets for a wide variety of languages and applications

http://devcheatsheet.com/

posted by Target donate to Target - February 03, 2010, 07:20:00 PM
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Tuesday February 02, 2010

Seagate's Replica: Highly praised foolproof backup drive and software

Just came across this on Tom's Hardware site -- they really love it and say it's the first foolproof backup solution they've come across.  Might be the perfect gift for a loved one in your life who needs some backup intervention.

Quote
Seagate’s Replica is a portable hard drive with automatic backup, versioning, and disaster recovery features to make backup a no-brainer. The product works so well that it deserves our rare Best of Tom’s Award.

Review: http://www.tomshardware.c...backup-recovery,2450.html

Looks like its from $130 to $180 in price: http://www.seagate.com/replica/

posted by mouser donate to mouser - February 02, 2010, 06:40:00 PM
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Itching to put together your own pc from parts, but need help choosing parts?

Tom's Hardware is one of the most respected computer hardware review sites on the web.

They've started a new recurring series called "BestConfigs" where they regularly challenge some of their more serious people to put together and optimize a few machines at different price points, and then they analyze the hell out of them, overclock them, and sum up the performance.

So if you've been itching to try putting together a new PC, I think you'd do well to keep an eye on this series, and when you find a pc setup that tests particularly well and fits your budget, well then you have a parts list and you can give it a try.

Quote
Welcome to a new feature we call BestConfigs, where you can find recommended parts for office PCs, gaming rigs, a workstation, or a home theater setup. If you're so inclined, feel free to chip in with suggestions for next month's recommendations, too!

http://www.tomshardware.c.../value-pc-build,2506.html

posted by mouser donate to mouser - February 02, 2010, 05:53:00 PM
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Cache My Work: reopen your Apps after reboot

CacheMyWork is a handy utility that enables you to reboot Windows without losing your place in your work. It builds a checklist of currently open applications, and will restart the apps you've selected the next time you logon to the computer. Cache My Work is great for occasions when you need to unexpectedly reboot, such as on "Patch Tuesday", after installing new drivers, or when Windows runs out of Desktop Heap, Handles or GDI Objects (which happens more often than I'd like - even with the fixes described here).

If you're like me, you avoid rebooting your computer because it means you'll forget what you were working on. Every time I have to reboot because of some install/uninstall/patch, invariably I forget half of what I was working on because I don't remember all the docs and apps I have to reopen (those 5-15 minutes between "shutdown all apps" and "logged in, Windows quieted down" are huge opportunities for me to be randomized and lose my short-term memory cache).

Home Page
Download

posted by paarkhi donate to paarkhi - February 02, 2010, 01:48:00 AM
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Monday February 01, 2010

Boot Snooze: Faster boots combining hibernate and restart

A DC Member wrote about an interesting idea for a utility, which was promptly coded by resident DC coding snack phenom Skwire, and dubbed "Boot Snooze":

Quote
Many users use the hibernate feature instead of shutting down so they can start the computer faster next time, there a downside for this though: the computer will hardly ever get restarted, so it can't perform the usual startup checks and other stuff that keeps the OS healthy.

If others took the other rote and decided to shutdown the computer completely, the next start will be slower than a hibernate of course, but at least the OS will have a chance to reload, free memory..etc

So why not have both? When a user wants to shutdown his computer, the little program will kicks in: performing a restart instead, which will then be accompanied with a hibernate after the computer completely boots so the next boot will be 5 seconds away!

    Click here to read more and download now..

posted by skwire donate to skwire - February 01, 2010, 11:42:00 PM
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Tech News Weekly: Edition 4-10

The latest edition of Tech News Weekly is out.
Table of Contents:
  • 1. Google Mystery Server Runs 13% of Active Websites
  • 2. Who's the World's Largest Tech Firm?
  • 3. Google Wants to See Client Addresses in DNS Queries
  • 4. Gallery: The Best and Worst Fake Apple Tablets
  • 5. Simpsons, Powerpuff Girls Porn Nets Jail Time for Australian
  • 6. Aussie Censor Balks at Bijou Boobs
  • 7. Settlement Rejected in ‘Shocking’ RIAA File Sharing Verdict
  • 8. Ubisoft's New DRM Solution: You Have Be Online to Play
  • 9. IPv4 Free Pool Drops Below 10%, 1.0.0.0/8 Allocated
  • 10. Do You Have a Pad I Could Borrow?

    Click here to continue reading the full edition now..

posted by Ehtyar donate to Ehtyar - February 01, 2010, 08:08:00 PM
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Sunday January 31, 2010

DJ Legend - The Super DJ Software Review Thread

This thread contains mini-reviews of several DJ tools including:
  • PCDJ Red Mobile
  • DJ Surface
  • DJ Legend

    Click here to read more..

posted by scancode donate to scancode - January 31, 2010, 11:49:00 PM
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MakeUseOf.com: 5 Computer Hardware Review Sites for the PC Enthusiast

Nice roundup today on MakeUseOf.com about some good hardware review sites.  They recommend the following sites:
  • Tom’s Hardware Reviews
  • Overclockers Club
  • HardOCP
  • Legion Hardware
  • Hardware Canucks

http://www.makeuseof.com/...es-for-the-pc-enthusiast/

I'd only add that once you have a candidate piece of hardware in mind, the NewEgg.com reviews and Amazon.com reviews can be extremely helpful.

posted by mouser donate to mouser - January 31, 2010, 02:00:00 PM
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