Windows Tip of the Day

Windows 7: Backing up EFS certificates

2012-01-23T18:15:00.000-08:00

Do you use the Encrypted File System (EFS) that's built into Windows 7 (which is included in Pro, Enterprise and Ultimate versions of the OS) to protect your data on your local hard drive? If so you should make sure that you back up the EFS certificate so you can recover your encrypted data if the stored keys on your hard drive get accidentally corrupted or deleted. To backup the EFS key, use

Article: AWS offers free Windows on EC2 (kind of)

2012-01-19T18:55:00.002-08:00

GIGAOM reports: "Amazon will let customers run free micro-instances of Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 on its EC2 service starting now, according to a new post to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) blog. Such try-before-you-buy tactics have helped Amazon win converts to its cloud platform by letting them test new or existing applications in its cloud for free. While Amazon offers a choice of operating

Article: Microsoft revives flight sim by giving it away free

2012-01-19T18:47:00.000-08:00

The Register reports: "Microsoft has said that it will be reviving its Flight Simulator franchise this spring with a free version of the game entitled simply Flight.Redmond is making the game available in a private beta at present, but plans to release it as a free download eventually. The game needs a minimum of 10GB of hard drive space, a dual-core 2Ghz processor, Windows XP SP3 and 2GB of RAM,

ShapeCatcher.com (Unicode Character Finder)

2012-01-16T20:44:00.001-08:00

ShapeCatcher.com helps you to find the right Unicode characters. All you have to do is draw the Unicode character you're looking for, and the site will show you the closest matches in their database. Currently, there are 10877 Unicode character glyphs in their database. Note: The site currently doesn't support Japanese, Korean and Chinese characters. If you don't know what Unicode is, per

Play Cut the Rope for the your Browser

2012-01-16T20:38:00.000-08:00

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team partnered with ZeptoLab to port their popular game Cut the Rope in to HTML5 to demonstrate its robustness as a development platform. The game was primarily designed to demonstrate Internet Explorer 9 capabilities, but it works in other browsers (like Chrome).

Emperor 1510 Workstation from MWE Lab at CES 2011

2012-01-16T20:22:00.000-08:00

At CES 2012 MWE Lab introduced the Emperor 1510, which is the ultimate computer workstation chair for around $6000 USD. Check out the site for more information.

Speed Up Your SSD By Correctly Aligning Your Partitions

2012-01-05T20:35:00.000-08:00

If you have a newer SSD drive you have to make sure that the partition alignment is setup correctly. Otherwise, you might be sacrificing some of your performance.LifeHacker did a great article called "Speed Up Your SSD By Correctly Aligning Your Partitions", here is an excerpt: "To see if your partitions are aligned correctly, hit the Start menu and type in msinfo32. Enter Msinfo32 and go to

Privacy: Introduction to Publicly Available Information

2012-01-01T16:51:00.001-08:00

As the Internet grew over the last few decades, people and companies would make information publicly available without realizing how it can be exploited if used improperly. Criminals have learned how to take advantage of this information by having computers crawl the public web looking for it. For example, they first started looking for email addressees for sending SPAM, and later evolved into

Software: Open Freely (Open Almost Anything)

2011-12-27T00:00:00.000-08:00

Do you have a file that you can't open because its in a format that you don't have a program for? Check out a free program called Open Freely that allows you to view over 100 different file formats (e.g. Microsoft Office, media [graphics and movies], compressed files, and more). Open Freely's installation includes the free K-Lite Codec Pack, which contains dozens of CODECs for opening media

Web Sites: Top 10 Under-Hyped Web Apps, 2011 Edition

2011-12-24T10:17:00.001-08:00

Excerpt from lifehacker.com: "We all discover new web apps each year but not every one of them gets the recognition it deserves. With 2011 drawing to a close, we wanted to highlight the 10 we felt deserved a bit more hype." (read the rest of the article) IMHO: Some of these web applications are really cool and worth checking out.

Software: Windows Defender Offline (beta)

2011-12-20T10:55:00.000-08:00

Microsoft has publicly released a beta of its Windows Defender offline tool (32-bit and 64-bit versions are available). This tool allows for the creation of bootable CDs, DVDs or USB drives that allows you to run Windows Defender. The application is designed to detect and remove bootkit and rootkit malware that can infect the Windows boot process. (Get more information and download the tool)

Software: Macrium Reflect FREE Edition

2011-12-19T20:27:00.000-08:00

Macrium Reflect FREE Edition is a Windows XP/Vista/7 disk imaging/cloning backup solution that is free for personal use. Some of the features of the software include: Access images in Windows Explorer Schedule backups Linux Rescue CD Windows PE 3 Rescue Media (RAID support) Obviously, the paid version of the software offers more features, see the following chart for a comparison.

Web Site: Free Online File Conversion

2011-12-17T10:47:00.000-08:00

Do you need to convert a file (e.g. picture, video, music, eBook, archive, document etc.) into a different format? There is a site called Online-Convert that provides a fast easy way to convert several different file formats, without installing extra software.

Software: Picasa 3.9 now available

2011-12-10T08:05:00.001-08:00

Its been awhile since Google has updated Picasa, their free photo-editing application. They added sharing directly to Google+, new photo editing effects, and more. Below is a list of some of the updated features: Added ability to upload to Google+: share with circles. Social Tagging with Google+. New photo editing effects. Side by side editing. Updated RAW support for newer cameras.

Software: Password Management Applications

2011-12-08T18:08:00.001-08:00

Do you have several passwords, and you're having a hard time remembering all of them. Writing them down on a piece of paper is not secure. You could created encrypted document of some type (e.g. text, Word, Excel, etc.) to store them. There are also several password management applications available for you to download, some are free and others cost money. Although before you pay for anything

Easy Application Installation and Removal

2011-12-04T07:48:00.001-08:00

If you just build a new PC, it can be a pain going around the web to re-install all your favorite applications. If you have an existing PC, and are looking for an easier way to find, download, updated, or uninstall applications. Below are some tools that can help you with these tasks: Allmyapps - An application store for Windows. Download the client to your computer, and find new

Windows 7: Manage User Stored Credentials (User Names and Passwords)

2011-11-27T14:33:00.000-08:00

When your computer tries to connect to other devices on your local network that requires a username and password. Windows will attempt to use the currently logged on user credentials to authenticate that connection. If that username and password doesn't work, it will attempt to find one in the stored credentials. If these credentials are not available on the local system, you will be prompted

Optimizing Your Network Connection Speed

2011-11-05T20:36:00.000-07:00

The Jason Chronicles reports: "The speed of your network is determined by three key factors, the speed of your equipment, Internet connection, and network configuration. Your network equipment is made up the NIC (e.g. the network port) on the computer, the router/switch, and the cabling you use to hook it together. If you're using wireless, there are different factors for this technology. The

Windows 7: Program Access and Computer Defaults

2011-10-26T21:22:00.002-07:00

In Windows 7 you can set the program defaults (e.g. browser, email, media player, instant messaging, and Java VM) for the computer (which means this applies to all users), in the Program Access and Computer Defaults control panel. If you choose the Microsoft Windows option, it will make Microsoft applications the default program that is open for specific file types (e.g. a browser shortcut will

Taking Control of your Data on Google

2011-10-25T21:52:00.002-07:00

Are you worried that Google knows too much about you? With the tools below you can take control of your account and data stored in Google's cloud. For example, you can download your data using Google Takeout, or you can control certain aspects of the data that the company stores about you. Google Takeout: Allows you to download a copy of your data stored within different services. Google

10 cool technologies to look for in your next PC

2011-10-21T21:41:00.000-07:00

TechRepublic reports: "It’s an exciting time for PC enthusiasts. I can’t remember a period when so many existing technologies were being upgraded to the next generation and new technologies were being introduced. Even non-enthusiasts need to know about the changes that are happening to the desktop PC." (Read the rest of the article)

Windows 7: Shrinking a Partition

2011-10-18T02:00:00.001-07:00

It use to be if you had a formatted hard drive with existing partitions, and you wanted to add or shrink one of them you needed a special utility called a disk partitioning tools such as Partition Magic. The Windows 7 Disk Management console has disk partitioning functionality built into it. Warning: Make a good backup of your drive before proceeding with the instructions below. To open the

Firefox ABOUT Pages (Hidden Features)

2011-10-18T02:00:00.000-07:00

Notes: This article covers a semi-advanced topic, and is not recommended for those that don't understand technical information about applications, network and system information. Use these features at your own risk, some of them are for debug web page or the browser and can intentionally cause the tab or browser to crash. Want to enable experimental features in Mozilla's Firefox browser

Software: BlueStacks Android OS Emulator for Windows

2011-10-15T22:29:00.000-07:00

BlueStacks allows you to run Android OS applications on a Windows PC. Video below offers a visual tour of the software. To get more information or to download the application, check out the following web site. This application is currently in Alpha as of this writing, so it might not be ready for prime time.

Windows 7: Installing IIS

2011-10-09T13:35:00.000-07:00

Internet Information Services (IIS) is Microsoft's web server software can be installed on a Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate edition. It is not installed by default, so you will have to follow the steps below to enable it. Log on to the computer with an account that has Administrators privileges. From the Start menu select the Control Panel, click Programs. Click the link