TechnologySpeak.com

What's an easy and effective way to protect yourself from viruses?  Connecting your cable modem or dsl modem to a router instead of directly to your computer.  The reason is simple, when you connect your computer directly to your modem, attackers have access to and can interface directly with your computer.  By default, unless you are running a good firewall, all ports are exposed.  Theoretically this shouldn't be a problem since the operating system should be secure and won't allow unauthorized access.  Unfortunately, virus writers are quite good at circumventing security. 

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These days with cheap memory prices and multi core processors, it's becoming increasingly useful to install virtual machine software on your computer. VMware is an excellent piece software, that provides great compatibility and useful features.  Here are some effective ways to use it.

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The Opera browser is great for a number of reasons.  A superior rendering engine, good memory management, and a wealth of functions that provide a great browsing experience.  But what I appreciate most about Opera are its keyboard shortcuts. You can get a list of keyboard shortcuts from Opera Help, (Press F1).  Here I'd like to highlight some of the most useful and interesting shortcuts.

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In Microsoft Outlook, I find the AutoComplete function to be quicker and more useful than the address book.

  When sending emails, I usually start typing the first few characters of the email address and Outlook magically figures out who I want to send it to, based on emails I've composed in the past.  The problem is, every time I install Outlook on a new computer, I lose the AutoComplete and have to start from scratch.  Continue reading »

I've used Google Desktop Search, Copernic, Yahoo Desktop Search, and Microsoft's Windows Search.  What do all these programs have in common?  They are all resource hogs that can slow down your system.  After I got tired of the constant noise coming from my hard drive being accessed relentlessly, I just gave up on all of them.  These programs build huge databases of all the files on your hard drive including the contents, for the purpose of allowing you to quickly find the files you are looking for based on keywords that appear in the files.  Admittedly, they do a good job of searching and the results come up quickly if not instantaneously.  But that is to be expected.  After all, that's what an indexed database of every word in every file is supposed to do.  Unfortunately, with all these products, the cost is a big chunk of hard drive space, coupled with what seems like constant disk access.

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The most powerful yet least known tool in the Microsoft Office Suite is definitely OneNote. The concept is simple - it's a virtual electronic notebook. I've used OneNote 2003 and OneNote 2007 and it's become a tool that I can't live without. Part of the reason why it's not as popular as it should be is because it's difficult to explain the appeal and usefulness of the application to someone who's never used it. I'll attempt to shed some light on OneNote 2007 in this article.

What is it and what does it do?
Basically, OneNote provides pages where you can write down notes and information. Well that's not so special right? You can do that in Microsoft Word. However, it's the flexibility and interface in which you can organize this information that sets it apart. First of all the paradigm is that of a notebook. The pages are automatically divided into notebooks, sections, pages, and sub pages, just like a physical notebook. So, as soon as you start the application, you are on a page of a section in a notebook. This natural hierarchy lends itself to easy organization and more importantly reorganization of important information. People tend not to immediately plan out an entire structure of how they want to organize all the information and documents that encompass all aspects of their lives. That would be a full time job in and of itself. Instead, we tend to think and work on a micro level and along the way, a structure and hierarchy naturally forms by itself. Continue reading »

Opera is a powerful web browser and deserves much more recognition than it's been getting. I've been using Opera since 2000 and have never been disappointed. With the much anticipated release of Firefox 3, and the always disappointing releases of Microsoft Internet Explorer, I'm sticking with Opera.

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Over the years, one of my biggest complaints about Microsoft operating systems since Windows 3.1 is that every time I install a new piece of software, I'm putting my entire system in jeopardy.  Most of the times things work fine, but every so often,  I install something and from that point on, the computer just starts doing something weird.  It might be something minor like increasing startup times (although after a while this becomes a major problem as the system becomes slower and slower), or it might completely render the system inoperable.  The truth of the matter is that every time you run a new installer for some software that looks promising, you run the risk of doing some damage to your computer - at least on a software level.  You're not going to physically damage the computer but it's a problem nonetheless.  How can you avoid these hassles?
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The latest version of Ubuntu, version 7.1 named  "Gutsy Gibbon", has recently been released.  If you've ever wondered what all the hype is about with Linux, now is as good a time as ever to try it out yourself.  You can download a free copy at the Ubuntu website.  Ubuntu has become one of the most popular distros used by the Linux community.  It's gaining a reputation for being user friendly and full of useful software.

Upon downloading and burning an image of the Ubuntu CD, all you do is pop the CD in your drive and reboot.  The CD is both an installation CD and a "live" CD, which means that when the CD boots, Linux will actually load up and run.  So, you can test drive the operating system and see what it's all about before you commit to installing it.  When you run a live CD, Continue reading »

I have an iPod Nano and I use Rockbox.  Am I happy with it?  In a word, yes.  But it's not a perfect solution.  There are definitely tradeoffs.  If you're unfamiliar with Rockbox, it's an alternative operating system that you can load onto your iPod and various other mp3 devices.  There are some people who use it just to be different.  But, Rockbox adds some interesting features to the iPod, which is the main reason I use it.

With Rockbox, I can free myself from using iTunes.  Continue reading »