Cool Blog Tech

That Annoying UAC in Vista

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 18:49:00 +0000

We have all seen it, that annoying pop up, User Account Control or UAC. In a nutshell, UAC is a piece of security software from Microsoft© that prevents access to administrative functions from software application. It helps prevent spyware and malware from installing without your knowledge but it can also be a pain in the hard drive if you install a lot of software, or try to access higher level privileges.

I personally turn it off because it is annoying. to disable UAC follow these steps:

Type windows key and R and then type msconfig and hit enter.
Select the "Tools" tab
Scroll down to "Disable UAC"
Click "Launch"
Reboot at your leisure to ensure it is actually disabled.

Microsoft does not recommend disabling UAC. If you are somewhat of an advanced computer user then you can always disable it. If you are not sure what to do then just leave well enough alone.

Jason

Quote of the Day:
The enraged colonists were mad.
--CJ's US History Work

Do The Shuffle

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 13:46:00 +0000

Call me crazy or maybe it’s my OCD tendencies, but when it comes to my taskbar I like to have certain things (apps) in certain places. I like to have my browser first, Thunderbird email second and so on. As far as I can tell or even remember, it’s not inherently possible in Windows. That is, until now.

Jay Elaraj over at the Nerd Cave (The NerdCave) has written a beautiful application called Taskbar Shuffle. With this great app you can simply drag and drop your various minimized apps and put them wherever you want. Simply click and drag the taskbar item to change their order, done. It even works with UltraMon for multiple monitor support.

Jason

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:58:00 +0000

Just wanted to drop all our readers a little note. We would like to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and we hope that 2009 will treat you even better.

Jason

Quote of the Day:
If life is a waste of time, and time is a waste of life, why don't we all get wasted and have the time of our lives?
--Unknown

Writers Wanted

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 19:52:00 +0000

Are you interested in writing for us as a hobby? Drop us a line @ info@coolblogtech.com. You don’t need to be a professional writer, just a writer that’s interested in anything technical that you want to write about.

Jason

How The Times Have Changed

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:58:00 +0000

I was born in the early '70s in Newfoundland, Canada. My teenage years were spent through the '80s and they were the best times in my life. I was thinking the other day just how different the kids (teenagers) of today are from when we were kids growing up.

When we were growing up and going to school, we had libraries to do our assignment and paper research. The was no such thing as the Internet, or at least as we know it now. There was DARPA Net but that's military. We actually had to read books, there was no copy and paste. Most of our assignments and papers were all hand written. Some of us lucky ones had access to a computer with Word Perfect on it at our parents' office or knew someone that did.

We never had text messaging or cell phones. We always told our parents where we were going and what time we would be back. Some of us would call from a friend's house but that was it. There was no instant communication like there is now.

We walked everywhere. We never even thought about asking for a ride from our parents or about how long the walk was. We just did it.

We shared a bottle of Pepsi or a bag of chips and no one got sick or got some awful disease.

Your thoughts?

Jason

Ubiquitess

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 21:20:00 +0000

I am sorry for the lack of quality posts as of late. However, I have stumbled across a great add-on for Firefox, it's called Ubiquity. Check out Ubiquity at http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/. It a great add-on in that it allows you to perform simple tasks like emailing selected text from a web page directly to a contact. You can also embed maps (from Google Maps) directly into an email or other page showing the directions to a favorite restaurant. Actually the uses for Ubiquity are quite possibly endless. If it doesn't exist as a command, it can probably be created.

Until next time,
Jason

Karate Depot

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:50:00 +0000

For staff and high quality Weapons, shop the web's #1 martial arts retailer, KarateDepot.com. Save big with $2.95 shipping every day.

Jason

My Favorite Firefox 3 Extensions Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:57:00 +0000

Over the past year or so I have been really loving this Firefox browser. No it's not for everybody but after seeing and using Firefox 3.0 for several months now (in beta from 1 through 5 and now in final) I am beginning to think it actually just might be a good choice for anyone.

Firefox doesn't come with all the bells and whistles you would probably want but there is a huge community of Firefox Extension developers around the world who are helping to alleviate that. Add-ons like BetterGmail (from Lifehacker editor Gina Trapani (http://ginatrapani.org) ) and Colorful Tabs 3.2 by Shivanand Sharma (http://binaryturf.com) are just 2 of the many Firefox 3 extensions I could absolutely not function without.

I'm guessing that like myself and countless others, you are probably using GMail as your email of choice. "But it's missing some features," you say. This is where the BetterGmail 2 Firefox Extenstion (Available Here) rides to the rescue. I like to be sure that I always view my GMail securely through SSL and I can force GMail to do it with BetterGmail2.

I can have a count show next to the Inbox or not. I can also choose the types of key macros (regular or modified). The other great about this extension is that is has several different skins included to change the look of your GMail interface. This add-on brings so much added functionality to my GMail experience that I could not be without it for a second. Of course, these are just a couple of the dozens of features available in BetterGmail2.

You can also:

Add highlights to rows
Add icons for attachment types
Automatically show message details (default is hide)
HTML signatures
Various CC and BCC options
Skinning
Ability to hide certain things in sidebar
Many more features.

During the course of my day job as a Network Engineer, I usually have anywhere from 3-7 webpages open at any given time. After a little while all those tabs seem to meld together into one ugly mess. This is where Colorful Tabs 3.2 (Download) by Shivanand Sharma shines on my day, saving me.

As you can see, each tab is a different color, which makes them stand apart from each other. There are also a lot of cool features built right in. You can:

Preset colors for domains that you frequent
Generate random colors or use a default palette
Use an image as a tab background
Limit the percentage of Saturation and Luminance

I can go on and on about all my favorite extensions but I will let you explore them for yourself.

Here are my other favorites in no particular order:

Firefox Showcase 0.9.4.8 (Here)
GMarks 0.9.9 (Here)
GooglePreview 3.11 (Here)
IE Tab 1.5.20080618 (Here)

In part 2 of this post I will talk about my other 4 cannot do without extensions.

Got another I missed? Leave it in the comments or send it along to tips@coolblogtech.com

Write For Us

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:39:00 +0000

Here at Cool Blog Tech, we are looking for volunteers who would like to write for us. Interested? Drop us an email at info@coolblogtech.com. Novices and Amateurs or anyone interested in tech blogging are encouraged to apply.

Jason

Back to Basics

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:53:00 +0000

Over the past few months, we have an extremely busy and unfortunately neglecting this weblog. Content is not a problem, but time is.

So I thought I would start out once more with some simple tips and tricks that I have learned over the years. Today I will concentrate on some simple Google searching tips. Why Google you say? Google is the world's largest and arguably the most widely used for searching the Internet.

We've all been there, try to search for information on one particular site that doesn't have its own search engine. Using the Google search engine, we can do a site specific search for whatever it is we are searching for. For instance, if we are looking for anything related to the BetterGmail Firefox extension on http://lifehacker.com then we would type:

The result will be every page that Lifehacker.com has that has anything to do with BetterGmail. The syntax is quite simple here, "site:nameofsite.com search term" (without the quotes of course). Why have Google search millions of sites for something you know is on the one particular site but just can't find it? This is where the site: syntax shines. Give it a try.

Want to know what 133 x 34 is? Or what is the value of the Canadian Dollar is US funds? Simply type "133 * 34" or "$1 Canadian in US funds" and hit enter and presto there's your answer.

Jason

Where I Have Been

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:15:00 +0000

I can only offer my sincerest of apologies for the extreme lack of posting here in the past couple of months. We are trying to recruit some writers to help us with content, but it’s hard to find writers these days. Or maybe I’m going about it all wrong. Please stayed tuned, I promise we will get things back up and running again as soon as possible.

Jason

Web Clipping

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 01:06:00 +0000

This week I would like to offer a couple of Web Clipping (note taking) sites that I have stumbled across over the past couple of weeks. There are many sites that are offering this type of service but I just wanted to focus on these couple just to get you started. The first being Google Notebook. Which is in open Beta now and offers a great way to keep track of different snippets that you stumble across while surfing. Head on over to http://notebook.google.com and play around with clipping. It's pretty intuitive and easy to navigate. Be sure to install the browser extensions to make using it much more user friendly. After you select what you want to clip, simply the little notebook icon just in the status bar at the bottom right. That's it. Pretty simple hey?

A newer, promising one is Evernote (http://www.evernote.com). It is currently in closed Beta but I have a dozen or so invitations to give away on a first come first server basis. From my last couple of days using Evernote, I must say that I am really liking what I am seeing. You can download the desktop client for Windows, Mac or Linux from their site once you get your account setup. You can also install a simple bookmarklet that allows super easy web clipping. Once you select the stuff you want, click the bookmarklet and you're done. Once you log into you Evernote page, poof, there is your clippings. Couldn't be any simpler in my opinion. I really like this one and think it will become a huge hit. time will tell I guess. If you want an invitation or information, you can drop me a line at jason@oolblogtech.com.

Jason

What of I'm speaking

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:59:00 +0000

Yes, I run iTunes on my PC. Yes, it's gotten slower and weirder as the "updates" progress. Yes, I used to work for Apple. Yes, I still love their design.

Yes, I was just a little delighted by the little Apple Software Update widget telling me that there's a version of their browser, Safari, for the PC. Yes I downloaded it.

Yes, the fonts were so snuggly-familiar and eye-pleasing and, yes, by golly it was faster than Firefox. Yes, I enjoyed it on my favorite flash-infested websites.

Then there was the attempt to watch a slightly mal-presented WMV file and the little apologetic error telling me exactly the memory address at which something bad happened. A lot. Over and over and over and over.

So close. Such beauty. But it still hides the heart of a geek that assumes a user needs to know the memory address at which it All Went Bad. Just tell me it's not gonna work. Or just ignore the error, like Firefox and, yes, IE does.

Sorta the reverse of my Volvo. Instead of Boxy but Good, it's Beauty but Geek.

Oh well.

View Source, Of Course

noreply@blogger.com (The Blue's) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 23:44:00 +0000

Jack of all trades…you know the drill. This is me. (Maggi that is)

By day…I am a “cheery” people person working in public and community relations (my “official” area of expertise) but by night…I am a lover of many things geek. Design, technology, code….but most of all – the relationship between these items and how they, together, create beauty. (Ok, I am all that by day as well…but I sound way cooler the first way.)

I would like to consider myself a geeky artsy chick type…but I not so cocky as to believe that either side would claim me. Let’s face it. I AM that bubbly PR girl that everyone loves, but at the same time secretly hates. (“Is she EVER not smiling? Sheesh.”)

I am a freelance graphic and web designer/geek wannabe who pays the bills by being good with people but, to be totally honest…I am a coder groupie. My strong suit is in design and I am an artist at heart – but there is just something about nice clean code that makes that same artsy-fartsy heart shiver with desire. It is fascinating to me and dare I profess it…I think I actually love CSS. And yes, to respond to the elementary playground taunt, I WOULD marry it.

So. There. I said it.

Now, I know there are many developers who will fight me on this…but for me, as a graphic designer – CSS is, and can, produce beauty. To illustrate this, I present http://www.csszengarden.com/.

I hear you asking, “Whatever. Zen? That is sooo 2004 and, frankly, sounds like a load of cheese.” Yes, I know it does, however, here are a few of the reasons why I visit it on a weekly, if not daily, basis:

1. It reaffirms my love of CSS and its strong tie to design
2. Um. It’s cool as hell.
3. Inspiration (and often skill-envy)
4. Most of all…I learn something new every time I visit.

As a designer and lover of CSS (I will save PHP for a later date *fans self*), what is the second thing I do after visiting a site that gets me juiced? View source, of course. It one of the best learning tools around.

< /ramble >

Welcome Maggi

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:58:00 +0000

We have a new addition to the Cool Blog tech family, Maggi Blue. Please join us in welcoming Maggi to the Cool Blog Tech team. Maggi's specialty is web and graphic design. She will talk about web and graphic design as well as sharing her unique humor and insight into women and technology.

Welcome Maggi

-=Jason=-

Who is this Rob, and why is he so inept?

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:22:00 +0000

I admit that it took a little poking to figure out how to post something to this Blog machine. I used to be ashamed of this ineptitude. Now I'm a little proud.

Let's be clear. I wrote my first computer program when I was 10. That was in 1972. It was on a PDP 11/20, which was the size of most people's kitchens. I am not unaccustomed to technology. I have seen more technology than most people have had fish dinners.

Rather, I am uniquely qualified to be cranky at it.

How do you think "real" people deal with such complexities as firewalls or an antivirus program that causes more damage than a virus? The answer is either a) they buy a new computer or b) they try to find someone else to tell them to buy a new computer.

You geeks out there. Yes, you, with the bluetooth whatever and the
dual core whatsit. You with the car that speaks and the house that just doesn't understand your needs.

You're forgetting that people are the greatest hack.

Let's talk about people, and how they're the technology, and the stuff around them is merely artifacts of the ill-considered promises and sad compromises that led up to this moment, here, this one, that you can time with atomic precision.

People are what it's about. Don't worry. They're just as irrational as, say, Vista when bullying back the most popular game in the world. Only you can't just press the "whatever, just do it" button.

Doesn't that sound like more fun?

Welcome Rob

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:26:00 +0000

Here at Cool Blog Tech, we have been searching for writers who want to write about anything and everything technical and we have found such a person in Rob Oakley. Rob has a long career in IT and extensive knowledge about all kinds of technical things. He also has a great ability for writing and humor. Check out some of his articles as they appear in the coming days and weeks.

Jason

I Have Grand Central Invites

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 14:03:00 +0000

Have you ever checked out the Grand Central service from Google? Check it out at http://www.grandcentral.com. You can sign up and pick a phone number in almost every state and then you can do a lot of cool stuff. You can have everything go to voice mail, forward to a cell phone and/or your land line, even email you. you can screen your calls, listen in while people are waiting, record your calls and even block unknown callers from reaching you. It's a great free service but you need to be invited to sign up but I have several invites left, so if you want one just email me at jason@coolblogtech.com and I will gladly send you one.

Take care,
Jason

gOS

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 01:14:00 +0000

No, it's not Google Operating System, it's Good Operating System. You may have seen the PCs from Wal-Mart that had this OS. They aren't too bad a PC but the OS is what caught my atttention. I run gOS through VMWare Server virtually so it's not actually installed on my computer as such (more about that in a future article). So what is gOS? Simply stated, gOS is a collection of web based applications like Firefox, Facebook, Google News, Gmail, Meebo, Youtube, Blogger and Wikipedia just to name a few. They also have the OpenOffice application.

Surf on over to their website (http://thinkgos.com/) and download and burn the iso for the Live CD and take it for a spin. If you like it you can always install it in a virtual machine like VMware Server or Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 (both free appications).

Jason

Getting Things Done (GTD)

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:24:00 +0000

There are a multitude of websites and articles on the Web that help you Get Things Done (GTD). GTD is a method of action management of David Allen (http://www.davidco.com ). Just a search on Google on GTD (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLL,GGLL:2008-03,GGLL:en&q=gtd ) yields just over 4.6 million results.

I generally check out several websites daily (most of them all through out the day) that help me get things done more efficiently and sometimes even help me revamp a process that I currently had used that was more improved by a newer or streamlined process. I could almost guarantee that some, if not all, of these sites will help you get more out of your day and possibly even give your more time to achieve even more. Not a techie? Don't worry, a lot of these sites have many solutions that do not even involve any technology, only a thought process or mindset change.

The sites:

http://www.dailycupoftech.com

http://www.hackyourday.com

http://www.43folders.com

http://www.lifehacker.com (one of my favorites)

http://www.lifehack,org

http://www.pimpyourwork.com

http://www.makeuseof.com

Take care,

Jason

jason@coolblogtech.com

Writers Wanted

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:11:00 +0000

Here at Cool Blog Tech, we are always searching for a few good people who are interested in writing about computers, tech and gadgets just to name a few. This blog is meant to be a relaxed environment where you can read about really cool technology and get to submit articles to it as well. All work will be credited to the appropriate authors. Please do not submit plagiarized works as this will only cause trouble down the road not to mention stealing credit for someone else's hard work.

So if you're a writer (amateur or otherwise) or want to get started as a hobby and would like to post informative tech articles on this blog just drop us a line at tips@coolblogtech.com with your interests and what topics you would like to write (blog) about. Include a small simple if possible, but no enthusiastic writer will be turned away.

Jason

Check It Out

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:03:00 +0000

I am so sorry about this post being so late. I am still recovering from my latest Shoulder Surgery where I had metal implants (Hemi Cap) put in my shoulder.

One of my new favorite websites for daily reading is www.pimpyourwork.com. Celine offers a ton of tips and tricks to help make your life (or tech life) a little easier.

So head on over and check it out.

Jason

Spyware

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 01:32:00 +0000

The epidemic of spyware is getting ridiculous. A lot of my time during the day is trying to recover from users getting spyware and malware. The first thing I like to do is run ccleaner (Crap Cleaner) from http://www.ccleaner.com/ . It removes a whole bunch of useless and obsolete files and free up some space too. When it comes to downloading and installing software from the Internet, just be careful. A lot of times, free (not open source) software and sometimes shareware will contain spyware and adware. The software makers sometimes partner with the writers of spyware to kind of offset the cost of providing the software free of charge to users. If in doubt just go to http://www.spywareguide.com/ and query the software title to see if it's listed. If that fails, the easiest and probably most effective way to research the particular software is to do a Google search on the program. Try a Google web search (http://www.google.com/ -- right from this site if you like) and if that doesn't pan out then try a Usenet groups search at http://groups.google.com/. Just remember, the best way to prevent spyware infestation (and spending $50 -$100 an hour to have someone rid your PC of it) is to do a little homework and find out if the program is a problem or not. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, " or so they say.

GNOME Partion Editor

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 14:13:00 +0000

Here is the scenario: You are almost out of space on your C: Drive but your second drive (D: let's say for instance) has plenty of space. What to do?

You could always uninstall a bunch of programs and then reinstall on the D: drive to free up space. If you don't want to go through all this you can always download and use the GNOME Partition Editor and "steal" some unused space from your D: drive and "give" it to your C: drive. Of course this little software dynamo will only work if your have either multiple hard drives or a single drive with multiple (at least 2) partitions. Point your browser to http://gparted.sourceforge.net/ and download the Live CD (another future topic) iso and then burn it to a CD using a program like CDBurnerXP (http://www.cdburnerxp.se/) which I will talk about in a future article.

Once you finish making the disc, pop the CD into the drive and reboot your PC and boot to the GParted disc. Most PCs will be fine accepting the auto configuration option. If your hard drive is a single one with multiple partitions, then then may be displayed as:

/dev/hda2
/dev/hda3

Notice the hda? That denotes for lack of a better term hard drive a. What does the number mean? The 2 and 3 in the above example denote the partition number. So in this case, a shrink and grow operation would work just fine.

As with all software of this nature, remember ALWAYS perform a Backup of your system or anything that you want to keep. A failure could render you dead in the water facing a rebuild of your system. Please be sure to read and understand all the directions before you proceed. I cannot guarantee that this works all the time but it worked flawlessly for me. So be sure to head over to http://gparted.sourceforge.net/documentation.php and see if this solution is right for you.

Got anything to add? Drop us a line at tips@coolblogtech.com.

J

The Key Stroke Launcher That Could

noreply@blogger.com (Jason) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 13:24:00 +0000

Do you use keyboard shortcuts? Find some programs out there are not really user friendly? If you're anything like us, you have been searching and haven't found the right program. That is, until now.

We stumbled across a program called Launchy. This program is a must have for heavy PC users and shortcut aficionados alike. Head over to http://www.launchy.net and read all about this great little app that can having you starting FireFox or Notepad in as little as 2 key clicks.

A quick pressing of brings up the Launchy window when I press "F" the key it determines from the number of times used that you want FireFox. Simply hit "Enter" and FireFox launches.

Highly Customizable

Launchy is a great program developed by Josh Karlin through Sourceforge. The program is open source which means that a great community of programmers can help make this program better. Through a host of "plug ins" Launchy can be configured to start almost anything. Want the weather for your area? Type "Weather your Zip Code" and hit enter and it brings up the weather through your browser. Want a Google search? Type "Google search term"
then "Enter" and voila there are your results. These are just a few of the plug ins included with Launchy. Members of the Open Source community develop their own plug ins that they share on the Launchy sourceforge page.

All the links to Sourceforge are available through the Launchy website at http://www.launchy.net. Drop on by and download your copy of one of the best keystroke launchers available.

J