So what do you do?

Get an intern to do it? Nope because it is confidential!

Bang your head against the wall?  Nope!

As you are a Make Use Of reader we are here to show you a solution.

That solution comes from one of our favorite utility programmers – NirSoft . NirSoft has two applications Mozilla History View and IEHistoryView. As you can probably work out, each one of them works for their respective browser and will not work with the other. So keep both of them on your memory stick when you go a’ hunting.

Run the portable application and it will start scanning the machine instantly. Below I ran this on..umm…a user’s machine – yeah that’s the ticket – a user’s machine and not mine at all!

The application will scan all your (or a user’s) browsing history and return it in the graphical user interface. If you browsed your local machine with your browser it will show up here as well.

Uh oh….this person (not me! ) has been browsing the Pirate Bay and Rapidshare! Wow and they have been downloading files! For shame for shame! Now we need to record and export browsing history to send to Human Resources. We simply hit the save button on the tool bar which you can see represented by a disk like so:

Once you hit that button you will have several options for file types such as CSV, TXT, XML, HTML or even a “tabular” file. Once you save it you can print or email it at will!

The Internet Explorer version is very similar – actually identical but it obviously reads in a different history file and has a different name.

Again your desktop browsing will also show up in here so you can catch someone opening porn or other non work related items (unless you work for a porn company!). Both applications have a different set of fields and they are from the IE application:

• URL
• Title
• Hits (counter)
• Page Modified Date
• Expiration date of the page
• User
• History folder

Firefox’s columns are a little better with:

• URL
• Title
• First Visit
• Last Visit
• Visit Count
• Refering site
• Host Name
• Title
• Record Index
• Visit type (Download, link or typed URL) <— This is the big one that proves the site was typed in instead of being opened by a pop up or something along those lines.

No one wants to be the bad guy and get people fired but network security is a administrator’s job and sometimes the job can fall on a executive secretary or anyone – at least make the job of recording browsing history a little less painful with these easy to use tools.

Nirsoft rocks! Do you have another method of doing this? Hit us up in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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The premise behind the text replacement software is simple – you type something and Texter expands it into something larger or more difficult to remember. How about typing addr and hitting the tab key to type out your mailing address? How about a few characters to spit out awesome quotes that you would never remember? If you are a coder you can use this for repetitive code-like functions you use over and over again – do you see where I am going with this?

Let’s take a look at how to install and use Texter. You can grab the installer from here. The download link is halfway down the page – you can’t miss it!

Run the installer and you will be prompted for an install directory like so:

Then you can click finish to launch the application or uncheck the box if you don’t want to start it.

Once Texter is done installing it will take a few minutes on first launch while it configures things in the background. You will see the following screen:

Once the app is finished initializing you will see the graphical user interface below:

Hit the plus sign below and enter your first “hotstring” – don’t be put off by the terminology – that is where you type your codewords. Then choose what will be its trigger. If it is a common few letters you will not want to use instant or you might be shooting yourself in the foot If you use a common word and use instant it would turn your common phrase into your replacement text right away. So for those instances use tab or space.

I love using instant! As you can see below I used the hotstring klg and it instantly turns into my name. Pretty nifty eh? This saves me a ton of time and typing during the day.

You can see below I created my work email, memo or document signature with Texter and when I type Thank and hit tab – blamo!  Instant signature. That shaves 10 minutes off my day.

You can include as much text as you want, see below for my preamble to the United States Constitution. I type preamb and hit tab and automagically the preamble appears. Really I can’t get enough of this!

Do you have another method for text replacement? Let us know about it in the comments. I would love to take it for a test run as improvements are always welcomed! Thanks Adam.

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I know some people that have – but most of you are just downloading away without a care in the world. Would you like a little bit of extra downloading protection?

Companies set up fake peers and trackers that either send you malicious files or note your IP address. Now using Peer Block we can stop them from getting all of us! Once a IP range is detected as being malicious they are added to the Peer Block database. Peer Block will then prevent your machine from allowing them to connect. It is not foolproof by any means but for those of you who keep on downloading, this might be a little piece of mind.

Let’s take a look at how it works. You start your downloading protection by downloading the application from here.

Just unzip the contents and run the exe file. If you have show extensions turned off in your Windows Explorer it will be the icon shaped like a blue cube. It is the third one down in my screenshot below:

Once you run the executable the setup wizard will begin – the program does not install to the best of my knowledge. It looks like it lives in the directory you unzip it to making it a great companion for portable uTorrent.

We hit next on the first screen to move along through the installer. The rest of the screens will have information for you to fill in. On the second screen which you can see below, this screen allows you to pick what you want blocked. For most of us it will just be P2P (for most file sharing applications) but you can also block ads, spyware and educational sites. You can import or create your own list and there is an option to allow http always – this means you can browse via your web browser to sites in the ranges that are in your list. Check which ones you want and hit next to continue. You should also read the recommendation at the bottom of the screen.

Now these lists change daily so just like your antivirus software you need to keep your definitions up to date. Configure this on the next screen that you can see below.

That is it. You have a little bit more downloading protection in your online adventures of bootlegging and pirating… Arrrr matey!

The application will start updating the Peer Block application and the selected lists that you choose way back at the beginning.

Once the updates are complete the application will generate a list cache so it can do its thing.

That’s it. The application is now running and blocking what you requested. You can click on the disable button to disable the whole kit and kaboodle or click the allow HTTP to allow web access to an address in your list.

Do you have any other methods of staying safe? We would love to hear about it in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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According to Wikipedia:  A software port (usually just called a ‘port’) is a virtual/logical data connection that can be used by programs to exchange data directly, instead of going through a file or other temporary storage location. The most common of these are TCP and UDP ports, which are used to exchange data between computers on the Internet.

Most people know what FTP is. FTP is the File Transfer Protocol. It is designated to run on port 21.

Now let’s think about this. If you want to have a FTP server on your computer that is accessible to the outside world you will need to open port 21 on your router or firewall.   Bittorrent Client Azerus uses inbound and outbound ports 6881-6889 below is how I opened them on my Dlink router.

To open a port on your network you would log into your router or firewall.  You will need this IP address and username/password to connect. Once you are in, you would look for the firewall portion of your interface. If this is over your head, go to Port Forward and they will walk you through it. All you need is your router’s make and model. Your firewall or router might call it Applications, Rules , Virtual Servers or Firewall rules.

Over the years more and more applications function over the Internet or network. About 7 years ago I needed to open ports on my Linksys router and it was not easy. It was confusing to me and at the time I was opening ports left and right on Cisco PIX firewalls and manually creating incoming and outgoing rules. To see all computers that are connected to your computer and the ports they are connected to go to the command prompt and type Netstat -a.

The third and forth columns are what we are looking at. The third column has the address of the machine that is connected to your machine then there is a colon and the port number this machine has connected or is trying to connect on. The last column states either Listening or Established. Listening means the port is open and waiting and Established means that the machine is connected.

The reason that the manufacturers made it so difficult to open ports was security concerns. By opening ports on your router you are essentially unlocking a window or door to your home. The bad guys might not know it is unlocked but by trying it, they might figure it out.

To give you an example of how opening ports can harm you, I will share with you my first time I got hacked. It was not a proud moment. It was humbling and an eye opener. I came home from work to check why I could not get to my FTP on my home computer from work. My machine was on and it looked like the hard drive was going crazy. Once I logged on to the machine I saw that my free space was at less than 1% and my machine was crawling due to no free space issues.

Apparently someone used my open port 21 to gain access to my IIS based FTP server and upload crap loads of porn. I quickly took my machine offline and checking the log files, was going in and out of the machine all day and night with a new user set up.

By opening port 21 there was a way into my machine and using some exploit they took it over. I saw that the hackers were connecting from specific IP addresses -  I blocked those in my router and then I modified my rules.

All my rules now have source IP addresses, No longer will I open a port to everyone – I will add my office IP address and work around that. Another nifty tip is to use different port numbers than the usual ports. When I say usual ports I mean port 80 is normally used to access the web but you can change the port your webserver uses to 8888 via IIS. They you would need to type in http://www.yoururl.com:8888 if the user did not know the port they could not find the website.

I used 3737 for FTP for a while. The reason this helps is that hackers scan networks for open ports. Port scanning takes time and so they scan for ports like 21,22,80,8080 and other commonly used ports. If you are able to change your ports do so. In this instance I then accessed my FTP site using my IP and the port like so:

ftp://172.23.33.211:3737 (that is a fake IP address for you hackers out there!)

Most FTP clients allow you to change the port your client connects with as well. You can use a free port scanner from an outside computer like this one or you can use a service like Can You See Me to scan individual ports.

The external website is a better test as it shows what is open from the outside in.

One you confirm that you have ports open that you want to close you will need to go to your router and find the rules and delete them or you can turn on your Windows Firewall from your services manager. For total control download Zone Alarm’s free offering. The firewall will provide you with protection from threats inside and outside your network.

How do you safely open ports and protect yourself from threats? Share your opinions with us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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These tips to fix dvd drive errors will also work for a CD or CDR drive. The first thing we need to do is determine where the issue is. It can either be a physical issue like power not getting to the drive or a IDE / SATA cable has come unplugged. It could be a Windows operating system problem that is preventing your drive from showing up or reading disks and finally it could be that disk is garbage. You might have a scratched up dirty disk and it is unreadable by your player.

Let’s see how we can identify and resolve these issues. I see issues with drives on a daily basis in my day job as well as hundreds of questions coming in at Ask The Admin. Let me share some of my troubleshooting tips with you. Maybe it will stop the questions – but I doubt it!

These instructions can be used for both internal and external drives but some of the fundamentals might be a little different. Like the power cord versus the internal power connector, the USB interface or a IDE connector. But use your intuition to guide you.

Some of these problems are common both to the external and internal drive and can be fixed with a little application or by following the tutorials that come with these drives.

Step one: Is the drive not showing up in Windows Explorer? Here I can see my CD burner but not my DVD burner. My DVD burner is usually drive E:\.

First things first, we should check the power and connections to your computer.External drives can be checked while the system is powered on but internal drives will need you to shutdown the system and remove the power cord before beginning.

If the cables are connected but loose pull them free and reconnect them.  Start the system back up and see if the drive or drives are showing up. If you have recently modified your drives in your system and have removed or changed jumper settings remember cable select is normally the best way to go. If you are on an external drive these jumpers will not matter.

When the system is on and the drive is getting power you can push the eject button and it will open. If it does not open and it is powered on it can be a physical issue which we will see below.

Step two: If your drive is getting power and will not open or close, it is time for the paper clip trick. Sometimes these drives get stuck closed and you cannot open them. This can be from someone spilling something or using the drive as a cup holder. Go get a paper clip and straighten it out. Ladies and gentleman we will perform this amazing feat of opening a stuck drive with a paper clip and only a paper clip. Are you ready?

Push the paper clip into the small hole located on the right, left or slightly to the right of the left hand side in the older drive above. Pushing the paper clip in the hole releases the door and you can open it with your hands. If it is sticky use a damp cloth to clean it.

Step three: Your drive is opening and closing and it still doesn’t work? We need to check that the drive is connected to the computer. Just as you checked the power, check the connectors. See if the drive now shows up in your computer.

Step four: You have ruled out power and system connections. Now let us look at the device manager in Windows. Open it by right-clicking on My Computer and selecting manage. Then select Device Manager. On older machines it will be in the system properties and then device manager.  If there is a red exclamation point next to one of the items, resolve it and your problems will go away. The drive should appear like this:

A device with an error will have this icon before it:

Step five: If your drive has power and your Windows operating system recognizes it but still it does not read the discs it may be because of a dirty laser lens in the drive. Clean the laser lens with a cleaning kit or run some other discs after the cleaning kit and then try. If the drive works after cleaning it you have found your issue.

Step six: If the drive still is not reading your disk but it is connected and the system sees it, try another disk. If this other disk works it can be the disk. Some older drives cannot read CDR’s or CDRW’s. Try a purchased CD  and see if that works. If so you should probably replace your drive.

Got any other tips for fixing DVD Drive errors – share them with us in the comments!

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So you have the last episode of the Sopranos to watch and no way to get it to play on your DVD player? I will help you learn how to burn mkv files to DVD with a free application!

The application is called E.M. Free MKV Video2Dvd V3.10 (Freeware). It can be downloaded from here. Once you download and install it you will be ready to convert and burn your MKV files to a DVD directly or to an ISO file to burn later on. Either which way you will be on your way to watching your video file in no time.

You will then choose between Easy Mode and Advanced Mode. The easy mode is well um….easy! So that is the way we went. If you need to modify the menus, chapters, subtitles or other good stuff choose the advanced mode option.

Hit OK and you will see the program’s main interface. This is where you will drag and drop your MKV file (or files) to be converted to a DVD. It looks like this:

Locate your MKV file in Windows Explorer and drag and drop the file in the white portion of the window above. Repeat the process for any other files you want in the same compilation. Could it be any easier? Yeah well they could do it for you right! But this is pretty damn easy.

Once you get your files in there can you guess what we do next?

If you said hit the Burn Now button – shame on you Make Use of reader!  We should look at the settings before burning! If you don’t want to hit Burn Now choose your output files as ISO or burn to DVD and you are done.

You will see choices for NTSC and PAL on the TV system pull down menu on the left hand side. And then on the right you will see the display aspect ratio. You can drop that down to choose widescreen or normal old TV options on the aspect ratio. 4:3 is normal for those of you who don’t know. You can also hit the change profile button to see the pre-configured profiles for quality. I left mine on the Automatic adjustment setting. You can choose the best setting for yourself and obviously the worse the quality the more you can fit on the disk.

Now you are ready to burn. Hit OK on the settings screen and Burn Now on the main interface. From there you will see your two options. One for a DVD disk burn and another for a straight ISO image. You can burn the ISO later.

Once you select your burn now preference you will see the progress of the burn. My video was just a sample 5 minute clip and it finished almost instantly.

I saw this and knew I was done. I now had a ISO I could burn. If I had a DVD burner in this machine I would have burned directly.

How do you deal with MKV files? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!

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I hope I am not alone in reminiscing about these games but this is what I grew up on!

Now when you have some time to kill you can browse on over to the authors home page here or his software company’s webpage here and play a similar Asteroids arcade game called Luminara.

Luminara plays in your browser using flash 10. All you have to do is go to their website and start playing! When you arrive at their site you will see this:

Click on the word Play in the center of the screen and you will be off and ready to play.

The premise is the same as the asteroids arcade game – you shoot using your mouse button and spin using your mouse. You break or destroy the asteroids that are coming at you. But the twist is addictive music, colors and awesome looking icons. There are 50 waves of colorful enemies and explosions ready to draw you in…

But as they always say it is better to show you then explain it to you. How do you explain pretty colors other than slipping someone a hit of acid? Well without further ado here is a 6 minute video walk through that will get you amped for this game:

So now that you see a little bit of what I am talking about, let’s see what the game has to offer. As you play you will be offered different power-ups like lasers and companion players. Those friendly assistants help you clear out those hard boards. Use your up and down arrows to guide your ship around the screen and collect those power-ups. Here I am after grabbing my first companion ship. They sure help!

And the author named the companion players after the regulars in his forums! That sure is funny. I bet they love playing this game. Hit the P key on your keyboard to pause the game and bring up your options as you can see below:

You bounce off the sides instead of going through and out on the other side like the classic game. Your bullets also bounce off the walls and can continue killing after they bounce. My day is seriously screwed as I tried to get this game in between doing my duties! I am addicted.

We would love to hear about your high scores and your other favorite (FREE!) games. Leave them in the comments so all of our MakeUseOf readers can benefit.  Do you have a game you cannot get through the day without playing? Then hook us up, put us on and we might just do a full review of it here. Remember we are writing for you, the readers, so let us know what you want to see more of (or less of!)

Ok that’s enough for today boys and girls I umm have to…you know…get back to work. No really I have stuff to do

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It’s hard to tell what people will enjoy or be revolted by. For instance I enjoy gruesome videos, my wife on the other hand like cuddly snuggly bunnies. So choose your videos wisely.

Here are 5 Internet video sites that I frequent to find videos that will entertain me! Let’s check each of them out.

VeryFunnyAds

The first one is called VeryFunnyAds. As you can imagine this website has only very funny ads, as in advertisements. It is a collection of awesomely funny commercials that have either aired on television or were mockups of what should have been aired! I worked for a company called Adforum way back when (10 years ago) and they catalogued advertisements as well -  but long story short – VeryFunnyAds has very funny ads!

From their homepage you can choose to see only the most recent videos or view them by categories. But come on, any Internet video site that has Kevin Nelon doing the introduction video has to be good right?  Just think of his amazing work on Weeds!

Here is a awesome ad with Coke as the subject. You see it plays onscreen in a flash player with the normal options like volume and full screen mode at the push of a button.

By clicking on the most watched tab you are guaranteed to find some awesome videos. Let us know what your favorite is in the comments!

Metacafe

The next Internet video site is Metacafe, located here. They also have similar categories as Very Funny Ad’s (and most other video sites) but here you can find the category Highest Rated and Most Discussed alongside Most Viewed and Most Recent.

Clicking on a video will bring it up also via flash in your browser window. I couldn’t resist the Never Look At Woman ad…when the woman smacks….oh wait I won’t spoil it for you! Let us know what you think of it in the comments.

Funny Video Shack

Funny Video Shack is online here and has – you guessed it – funny videos! The first video at the top of the featured ads is entitled NudeIT – New  iPhone app. The tag line says Do you want to see someone nude? Yeah, there is an app for that! C’mon how could that be bad?! Go waste some time over there viewing their top rated, favorites, popular, most discussed or recently added videos.

Let’s see what the most popular video on here is… Hot Chick Eats Maggots? First off she isn’t that hot and after seeing this I could not scratch that.  I would not want to picture her naked. After turning off the lights you would think there were bugs crawling all over you – and maybe there would be.

I stopped on What’s a HO? Gameshow style as you can see below:

Youtube

And of course we could not talk about video entertainment sites with out Google’s good old YouTube . This is the one site everyone thinks of whenever someone says “video online”. They have been around forever and have been the innovators of the industry. Today I clicked on Videos and the categories listing and chose Comedy.

That brought me to a lot of scary looking videos but luckily one stood out. Good old Family Guy and the Roadhouse parody…

YouTube clearly has the best interface for actually watching the videos.

Break

And last, but certainly not least, is Break which is meant as a video site for your breaks (i think!). I clicked on Videos at the top of the screen and was greeted by some strange ass videos!

Romanian Lady Goes Crazy On Live TV? Maybe things like this are not strange in Romania but this lady is w-a-c-k-o with a capital W!

Checking out their top videos I found some winners. And then I clicked on High School Girls Soccer Brawl….it did not disappoint.

They have options to share the video you are watching via the popular social network buttons below the video.

Where do you go to watch entertaining videos online? Share your sources in the comments!

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You can turn your portable computer or even your desktop computer into a full featured Kindle. It may not look like a Kindle but it can let you read, bookmark and annotate your eBooks.

Is it sounding too good to be true?

Well it’s not and it is here to stay! Why would Amazon want to limit their sales to only people who have shelled out the dough for a Kindle?

So with out further ado here it is in all it’s glory – the Kindle for PC, with the Mac version on it’s way!

Let’s take a look at how to download, install and start reading eBooks. Your Kindle for PC will also let you download and pay for books as well. But as we cover free software here we will focus on some free eBook downloading and reading.

I started by downloading the software from here. After the download is completed, run the installer and install the application. Then you will see a screen that looks like this:

You will need to give them a email account or your Amazon account’s email address to speed things along. And you will HAVE to have a credit card on the account. You will not need to buy anything but a credit card is required.

Fill in the required information:

Go ahead and click the register button. That will bring you to your Kindle home screen. On it in the upper right hand corner you will see this:

If you already have purchased or have books in your account they will show up here. If not, hit the shop in the Kindle store button next to the Menu button. From here you can buy or download free books. The ones on the home page are their best sellers and cost money!

But let’s search for some free books. Do you see the search box at the top? Go ahead and hit the go button:

That will return all the results in Kindle Land. Then when you have your search results lets sort them by price lowest to highest like so:

If you see something that catches your eye grab it. If not search for your favorite old world authors. I chose Charles Dickens as you can see below:

Then I went ahead and clicked on Oliver Twist, circa mid 1800’s. To download it click on the Buy now with 1 click orange button. It will deliver to your PC version of the Kindle by default. If you have other devices select the appropriate one.

Then you will see a thank you screen. Next go back to your Kindle screen and hit the sync and check for new items (F5) button as you can see below:

That will get the ball rolling…

Yeah! I have a book! Click on it to start reading…

The right and left buttons will turn your pages. And your other options are bookmark and note. Here is what the text looks like:

Hit the bookmark button to store a bookmark. To retrieve it hit the show notes and marks button:

You can add notes by dropping down that box to say notes and type away! Do you love it or hate it?

We would love to hear how you consume eBooks. Let us know in the comments!

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It was originally conceived as a wireless alternative to RS232 data cables. It can connect several devices, overcoming problems of synchronization.

But in plain English, Bluetooth is a protocol that allows you to remotely access and use devices on a computer or phone without the use of wires. Originally it was used for connecting headsets to a mobile phone. Then Bluetooth started being used to connect headsets to a regular computer and then progressed on to making printers wireless as well as being able to connect to a Bluetooth network. Bluetooth signals travel through walls, windows, doors and can get great reach depending on what is in your way. In my home I can leave my phone upstairs and still use my headset all around the house thanks to our porous walls!

Today I used Bluetooth on my Windows Mobile device to connect to the internet on my netbook via internet sharing. All in all Bluetooth is AWESOME! Let’s take a look at how to connect bluetooth devices – such as Windows Mobile Devices or your Bluetooth headset.

First we should make sure Bluetooth is running. You should see an icon for it in your system tray. If you do not, hit up the control panel and turn it on. It will be under the Bluetooth Control Panel. This is the same on XP and Vista (and presumably Windows 7)

It depends on what you want to connect but go to Bluetooth Devices under the control panel and click on the add button.  This will start the wizard.

Next up is the passkey window. Devices like headsets have passkeys associated with them so you will not get hacked. Who wants to listen to someone else’s conversations or worse!

So when setting up a Bluetooth headset make sure you use the passkey that came with the device. Otherwise you are free to use and set up your own options. Once the wizard is complete it will prompt you to choose what roles you want the device to play. They will list items like stereo headset, a2dp and others. Choose all of them if you do not know what they do and experiment.

Once the headset is connected to your machine – it will use that as the default stereo device outputting all sound to your head set. Very cool!

Setting up Bluetooth on your mobile phone is usually very easy and can be set up in 2-3 steps. Consult your owners manual for specific information.

• Turn on Bluetooth
• Pair a device.
• Enjoy using your device!

It is that easy! The pairing process on the phone will also use a passkey so make sure you refer to the owners manual.

All in all I love Bluetooth and use it when ever I can. I have not had wires on my headphones since the late 90’s! How do you use Bluetooth? We would love to hear about it in the comments!

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The thing that I remember and loved about answering machines were that you could buy pre-recorded messages on cassette tapes so that your callers could hear this before leaving you a message.

Nowadays we all have voicemails so how can we do the same thing? Do you want Captain Picard telling your callers that you are not at home (don’t worry we won’t judge you – yes we will!!) then you need to head on over to one of these three ancient sites, play the recording back via your speakers and hold your cell phone up to the speakers as you are recording your message!

This will work for any sound emitted from your machine so you can use this trick with any audio files and not just the ones from these old school sites. Many of the ones that I remember from way back when are very down.

The first one up for funny voicemail messages is Audio Comedy’s site available here

Not only do they have real answering machine messages but they also have other audio files like song parodies and stand up comedians. They also have sound boards to have fun with sounds. You can play just the parts you want and use that as your voicemail.

The comedians they have available are: Carlos Mencia, Chris Rock, Daniel Tosh, George Carlin, George Lopez, Jeff Foxworthy, Kevin Meaney, Lewis Black, Margaret Cho, Pablo Fransisco, Robin Williams, Stephen Lynch and Jim Breuer. If this is up your alley you can also do this with video clips via YouTube.

You can see a glimpse of their sound boards below (I love the Eric Cartman one!- call me and see )

The next site up for funny voicemail messages is via AhaJokes and can be found here. This site has lots of funny audio links but the descriptions are non-existent. So unless you have lots of time to kill, this will probably make you mad. But I have found some gems on here that I have never heard before. So go exploring and enjoy!

The categories that they have are as follows: Machine Related, Authority related, Odd organizations, Musical theme, Fun with the family, Why can’t you answer it?, You are in big trouble now, Confuse or stun the caller, Science fiction and Other. Click on them play them and laugh! Let us know which are your favorites!

The last site is via Silly Humor and can be found here

This site does not have a lot of recordings but the quality of them make up for it! I listened to every one on this site! You can have Spock, Picard or even Humphrey Bogart answer your phone! People might snicker or call you a dork but who cares?

Don’t worry, one day some one will leave you a message!

Which sites do you like that offer funny voicemail messages? Let us know in the comments!

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But that’s not all – no sir re bob! QMMAnder is not a one hit wonder! You can also have two separate listing types going on at the same time. Qmmander is written in C++ and uses Qt, a cross-platform application and GUI framework from Nokia. The Google Code page says that the application is buggy but I have not run into any issues yet.

You can have one window preview showing a detail listing so you can sort by file size, while in the right pane you have big icons so you can easily recognize the file icons you are looking for. The software is also portable and can (should) be run from a USB or thumb drive.

A person’s Explorer tells a lot about them. If you are using the built in Windows Explorer it shows that you do not like to tweak but if you are using something like this – it shows you think outside the box. That’s not just because I am a geek right?

Let’s see what QMMAnder can do! When you first launch the application you will be seeing double – the same thing on both sides, as you can see below:

Let’s fix that and make them two different drives You can see this view below:

Yeah yeah, we all know you can sort by each column by simply clicking on the headers but let’s check out the program’s other options. As we said before, you can change each view. Here is an example:

You change the view on each item by selecting a pane and then clicking on one of these buttons in your toolbar:

The buttons are as follows: details, list, little symbols, big symbols, directory tree or split horizontally instead of vertically (respectively). You can also change these from the options menu as you can see below:

You can also swap the left side with the right or vice versa as well as refresh or switch which side is active. Let’s check out how the horizontal split looks. This seems like it would be a better view for me:

And that is my view! Wow I love it – the detailed listing on top and the tree view on the bottom. This Windows explorer alternative is very versatile and uses very little memory.

What do you guys use for a file browser? I know that Make Use of readers aren’t using Explorer – are you? We would love to hear about what you are using in the comments – so leave us a comment!

Oh and if you do hit any bugs leave them in the comments as well so we can all bombard the author with them! Karl Gechlik over and out.

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We will actually be doing a Repair. Once the repair session hits the GUI screen we can launch a command prompt that will let us reset your password, create new accounts or promote another user to be the administrator. Heck we can even make it so the machine logs in as the Administrator automatically! So here’s how you do it.

Grab your CD along with its CD key and boot to your media. Once you boot to your CD, it will say, “Press a key to boot to CD”. Go ahead and press any key.

Let Windows do its thing and start. We will not format or lose any data if you follow my explicit instructions. I was amazed when I got this to work and also sickened by how insecure workstations can be! If you have a third party SCSI, RAID or SATA adapter you will have to point it at the drivers so it can access your hard drive. If this is you then you know what to do already – F6 and point it to the drivers.

Another few minutes will pass by and Windows setup will say that it is starting Windows. Be forewarned – DO NOT HIT THE R KEY ON THE NEXT SCREEN. We will be hitting Enter to start the installation.

On the screen below that says Welcome to Setup make sure you hit the ENTER key and not R. R here will take you to the recovery console – if you do not have the administrators password you will have to start ALL OVER AGAIN! So hit Enter to set up Windows and continue.

The agreement pops up hit the F8 key to continue.

Ah ha! Now on this screen below you will want to highlight your installation of Windows if there is more than one. And hit the R key! Yes, here is where you will hit that key to repair the installation. The process rewrites all the system files and what not.

After you hit that R key the Setup wizard will start to copy the system files from the media to your hard drive/Windows Installation. This took about 4 minutes on my machine.

Windows will now reboot automatically or you can hit ENTER to speed things up a little. When the machine restarts DO NOT BOOT FROM THE CD! DO NOT HIT A KEY TO BOOT FROM YOUR CD! Take the CD out of the drive if you think this is going to be an issue for you.

Once the computer starts back up it will jump into the installer. Here, when you get to about 37 minutes left on the installer it will say Installing Devices on the bottom left hand side of the screen – Hit Shift-F10 at the same time and a command prompt will pop-up! Just like that.

Using some basic command line kung fu we type control userpasswords2 and we can do whatever we want to. You can get at anything from this command prompt you have full root/administrator access!

Once you have the user accounts control panel up, you can add, modify or remove users. Promote a user to administrator status or what have you. Remember only use this for good and not evil.

Log in and you are good to go! Do you have another method to get back into your machine that does not require any media? We would love to hear about it in the comments.

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But for argument’s sake, let’s say you are the Human Resources manager and you have an Excel chart of everyone’s salary – that should not be stored on the network and if the file falls in the wrong hands, the consequences could be severe. But if you were able to hide that drive from prying eyes even if they are able to circumvent your security, you will be safe.

Let us take a look at No Drives Manager, an application you can use to hide drives. You can grab the download from this link on SourceForge directly or from the users page on SourceForge here.

The application does not need to be installed and can be run from a memory stick. What the application does is modify the registry so you don’t have to! Take a look at the GUI.

The interface is very intuitive and easy to use. There are drive letters listed along the top drives A: through Z:. If the drive has been hidden, it will have a check box next to it. Chances are starting out no drives will be selected. You can hit the Hide all drives button to hide all your drives. But more likely you will want to hide a single drive. Let’s see how to do that.

Here is what my Explorer has to say about my current drives on my system:

Let’s say, I want to hide my D: drive aka WhosYourDaddy. I simply check the box next to the letter D. The Binary and decimal settings will be auto-populated and you will not need to mess with them. If you want to use this application to teach yourself how to hide drives manually – you can use this data to do so.

After you choose the drive you want to hide, you have to hit the Write current setting to the registry button. That will tell you that you need to log off and back on to see your changes.

I am logging off to complete my task. OK, I am back and logged back in. Now let us take a look at my Windows Explorer – My Computer again:

I feel like a cheap magician! Wow, look it has disappeared! And with a wave of my magic stick I can make it re-appear. Well, a click of the Run button that is…

This exercise will show you that the drive is hidden but shortcuts and typing in a path or direct file path will take you to where you need to go as you can see below.

Un-doing it is just as easy concealing the drive. Bring the application back up, then uncheck the box next to the drive letter you hid – the D: drive in my case. And write your modifications back to the registry using the Write current setting to the registry button. After you log out and back in again your drive will be magically restored. We have tried doing this with the Windows tool diskpart – but we wound up corrupting data so this is far less risky!

Do you have an easier way of doing this? We would love to hear about it in the comments, come on don’t be shy!

No Drives Manager.

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Go ahead and download the plug-in files and either upload them via FTP or use the automatic plug-in uploader via your Wordpress wp-admin console. You can see my experience below. I logged in to WP-admin, I hit the plug-ins menu option on the left hand side. Then I clicked Add. I choose the upload option and pushed the browse button. After navigating to my plugins directory where I downloaded the Wordpress exploit scanner plugin to, I was able to hit the Install now button.

While it is installing you can see it’s progress on your screen like so.

Hit the ‘Activate plugin’ button and you are ready to go. You can verify that the plugin is actually active by scrolling through the active plugin list. It should look like this:

Once it is successfully active, you will have a new menu item listed directly under your Dashboard menu item. Click on it to get down to business.

Once you click on the link for the Wordpress exploit scanner, it will start querying your database for all of your files. What it checks is as follows:

1. Modified Core Wordpress File – this is when a hacker modifies system files to have Wordpress do their bidding like injecting code into posts or even serving up malware. You need to be very cautious about this. Thankfully, this came up as Hooray! None of your core wordpress files have been modified! I am thankful for things like this as I will not have to reinstall Wordpress!
2. Suspicious strings. It searches for iFrames – unfortunately I use iFrames on my site for various reasons so I had to scrutinize the entries below. Hackers use iFrames to inject content or ads into your site.

I read through the 1500 entries or so with iFrames and thankfully they were all pointing right back at my site. The attack that I corrected before actually injected these iFrames into my site to show my users Viagra ads! Freaking hackers! It actually got me unlised briefly from Google Searches. But after going over my results with a fine-tooth comb, I am at ease.

Did your search result in any unexpected modified files or some nasty code injected? We would love to hear about it and I would love to lend my expertise in helping out hacked Wordpress owners.

Hit us up in the comments, bloggers – We are here for ya! The plugin author’s website can be found at here.

Wordpress Exploit Scanner

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All of my files come from different locations or methods of ripping, so they are all different. One day, I will have some time on my hands (one day I hope!). With that time, I would fix up and normalize my MP3 collection – why, what would you do with that free time?

So I downloaded an application from Sourceforge called MP3 Diags – a one-stop shop to analyzing and fixing up your MP3 music tracks. Check out the application here. It is a 6.4MB installer which sets up pretty quickly.

Once you get the application installed you will see this screen:

Navigate to where your music is stored. You can have the application create backups of the files it is modifying in a different directory with the backup option. You can point the program to a different settings file as well from this screen.

I selected my folder and hit the OK button. I am a “fly by the seat of my pants” kind of guy so I didn’t opt for a backup. I would recommend that you do opt for a backup – just to be safe.

You will see MP3 Diags running through your files one at a time like so:

When it is complete, you will see all your music tracks listed and the problems each track contains:

On the right hand side, is a series of check marks denoting issues like so:

Checking out the issue, it turns out it is that the MP3 does not have a APIC frame to hold it’s image. Lots of my MP3s suffer from this issue and others. By highlighting a music track, you can see all of the associated issues.

Now even though the application lets you fix the problems, it is by no way automatic. You have to use the buttons at the top of the screen to fix your problems.

Each of those buttons has a function which I will go through here but beforehand, remember the application is in beta so you should run a backup. Also if you simply left-click, all the visible files get processed. However, it is possible to process only the selected files. To do that, either keep SHIFT pressed down while clicking or use the right button, as described in its user guide.

The first button has lots of functionality as you can see below. Choose one and run with it:

The buttons labeled 1 through 4 each have custom tasks associated with them that you can see by mouse hovering them. I did this for the first option below:

Then I ran it:

I hit ‘Yes’ and it did it’s thing. It worked awesome, not as quick as I might have liked but this baby really does work. And it can fix any issues with your music files.

Next up, Normalization:
Normalization needs to be run in album mode on a single album. Or you will see this error:

Next up, tags – and the MP3 Diags tag editor. Hit the Tag button and off you go:

This is a console for editing and downloading tags. It has multiple sites to grab your tags from.

All in all, this a really comprehensive MP3 fixer for any music lover who really wants full control over their files. What do you use for fixing up your music files or their tags? Let us know in the comments!

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Do you know where your 200GB is on free space? What’s that? You only have 72MB free? What is using all that lost hard drive space? What do you mean you don’t know?

It looks like you are in need of a virtual canine application called Space Sniffer (Windows only)… Get it? Like a dog.

Umm well, the software is MUCH better than my joke – I assure you. No, really!

Go ahead and grab the download from here. It is a 1.1MB file. Once you get that file downloaded, go ahead and extract the executable file from the zip file. It is called SpaceSniffer.exe and it is completely portable!

Once you get the file out and run it you will see a screen that looks like this:

On that first screen, select the drive you want to analyze or sniff for lost hard drive space. I selected my C:\ drive. And hit Start. That starts the action and you will see a moving representation of your selected drive as it sorts out what is on your drive. You will see something similar to this as it runs:

If you click on any of the drive portions, you can “Zoom In” like so (even while you are still scanning). I double-clicked on the desktop portion occupying 5.4GB of data and saw this:

It is pretty damn cool to see the directories or drives broken down like this. My drive did take some time to complete. In the area of 15 minutes. But I was using the system as I went for normal day to day activities. Then it was complete.

Now let’s take a look at your options. You can see them by hitting Edit – Options. Then, you can see each of the four tabs below:

The first tab denotes if you should show free space, show unknown space, sort item and the minimum size of an element (this is the smallest items), proportions of items against each other and initial detail level. Mess around with them and see what works for you.

Hmm dynamic zoom as a effect? Let’s enable it and see what happens. After enabling this feature it, shows the effect of “Zooming in”. It’s cool but not very useful. It did not use as much memory as I expected.

Scan alternate data steams? This had me stumped so I checked my friend Google and read this:

Just after that I heard about an Alternate Data Stream (ADS) scanner named LADS. When I ran it on one of my drives I was shocked to find that I had over 17,000 hidden objects that ETrust had apparently placed there as part of it’s virus scanning procedure. They’re “Alternate Data Streams”, and one was associated with every file on my NTFS partitions. [http://www.2kevin.net/datastreams.html]

That sparked my interest enough for me to check the box and re-run my scan.

My new scan showed free space but no Alternate Data Streams – but I will scan my servers tonight and let you guys know via the comments how it went later on.

The last option in the preferences is the colors of items placed on your map. Tweak them to your heart’s desire and let us know how it works out in the comments!

Do you use a similar free program to find lost hard drive space? We would love to hear how you keep your hard drives in check! Voice it out in the comments.

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Let us take a look at Household Register 2010 which is a 6.8MB download. Once it is installed you can launch it from your start menu.

You will see a screen that looks like this:

You will see the standard home inventory list fields in there such as item number, item name, category, quantity, location, purchase price and owner. Are you ready to add your items? Do you have a list of serial numbers?  Maybe you will need to go around and collect the information. But you will need to provide this data to this application as it is not magic. Keep your paper copy as well for a backup. And maybe save a copy of your file to your Dropbox or Gmail account.

You are now ready to begin. Hit the add button and  you will get a type of wizard to fill in your information, as you can see below. There are places to fill in all your data and several tabs to do it on. The interface is very intuitive and simple to use.

If you hit the down arrows after certain fields you will see a List that you can choose from like this one for the item below:

Next up is the value field asking you about how much it cost, what credit card it was purchased with and appraisal value etc.

The model tab is where you fill in manufacturer, serial number and who you bought it from. Simple and easy so far right?

The warranty tab shows you normal and extended warranty information such as the date, phone number for repair and cost. The more you fill in the better off you will be when the item is broken or stolen.

There are two more tabs, one for notes and the other to insert an image of the item. Then hit OK. That will bring you back to the main inventory screen as you can see below. Hit add to continue adding items until you are complete.

You can run reports against your items in the home inventory list and save them as PDF’s, HTML pages or just print them. Some of the included canned reports are warranty information, details, valuation, location, category and a bunch more.

I love some reporting!

This program helped me save my data so the next time I need something – I already have it. You will thank your lucky stars that you have this when you need it. Take the hour or so to do this!

What do you use to keep your home inventory list? Do you keep serial numbers? Do you not? Do you wish you had after an incident?  Share your experiences in the comments kiddies!

Download: House Hold Register

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For those of you that do not know what NCAA stands for, chances are this post is NOT for you! The National Collegiate Athletic Association has some great college basketball going on and you want to watch NCAA games online for free do you?

Well there are a bunch of free alternatives to watching the games on the old boob tube. We will take a look at two of them.

Our first option is NCAA.com. That is the NCAA’s on demand site.

If you browse on over there you will see this:

So if you want to be emailed and have access to all the NCAA games starting from the first round all the way to the NCAA championships simply fill out the form above. Once you do that you will see this confirmation:

You can click here to forward this information on to your buddies.  Seeing as I can’t show you this year’s games as they have not started yet, here is a peak at what the service has looked like before:

You get the full action on your computer or mobile device and best of all you can hit that magic boss button at the top right hand side of the screen to minimize your action and display a fake Excel-like spreadsheet. I don’t think that would satisfy my boss but hey maybe you work for a pushover (or a dummy!)

Here is what that boss key brought up last year. Maybe it will stay the same, maybe it won’t. But their press release has already stated that the boss button will still be present.

If you look closely you will see it is a spreadsheet with details about NCAA’s Video On Demand service! How funny is that? Why not a chart of women’s breast sizes? That would be just as relevant wouldn’t it

And if we take another look at the video window we will also see a perpetual score at the top of the video, buttons to hide the video or audio, a stats button (this is something every fan will love!) and a button to share the video with others.

Another advantage to watching online instead of regular television, besides the fact you can do it at work, is that you can click around the web while you are doing it. You can look up facts or even save the video for another viewing.

I wonder if the option is available for Pro games? Not likely huh? They need to make their money somewhere right? How about advertising online on the side of the game? That has to be a viable option. Maybe we will start to see that soon.

Another option for catching NCAA games online for free requires a little technical knowhow and a sling box. But if you have a Sling Box at home chances are you don’t need me telling you how to use it! It allows you to watch your TV at home over the internet.

Do you know of any other ways to watch sports online? If so, let us know in the comments.

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I find myself downloading Putty, VLC, Firefox and a multitude of other applications each time I install. The ones I downloaded the last time around are easily outdated.

It is important to grab the latest and greatest versions to protect against bugs or other issues with the software. So you have a list of 10 items you need to download and install. Wouldn’t it be MUCH easier if we could select these applications from  a list or website and have IT download and install my applications?

It sure would be! And now we will show you how you can do just that! Head on over to Ninite and once you are there it will be a breeze to get the applications you want on your system with a limited amount of clicking. (Note: Ninite currently works only on Windows PCs)

Once you hit the installer app site you will see a screen that looks like this:

Under the instructions you will see applications and check boxes. You can install from a vast array of applications ranging from Skype to Firefox, Dropbox to Google Earth and back to Putty and Notepad ++.  You will see the applications broken up into categories that include Web Browsers, Messaging, Imaging, Documents, Anti Virus, File Sharing, utilities, compression, tools and other items. The list is quite extensive but if something is not there you can suggest it!

Let’s run through the list and check the check box next to each item you want to download.  If you want FoxIt reader installed simply click the box next to it – it is that simple. When you are done selecting the items you want in your installer app, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the screen.

You will see directly under the entry for Eclipse there is a grey button that says – Get Installer. All you need to do is hit this button and a custom installer app will be created for you on the fly so you can install all of these packages with ease. I selected 3 items and hit Get Installer.

The screen changed and told me the download would start shortly – I can only imagine they are compiling your download at this point. And sure enough in about 1 minute another window popped up.

My new installer app was ready to be downloaded and installed. I clicked Save File and Firefox saved the file to my normal download folder. I navigated through the jungle that is my hard drive and double clicked on the executable. The file’s name has all of the applications listed that you selected. That’s nifty!

Once I ran it it started preparing to run which took about 30 seconds.

Then the application started downloading my installers at the speed of light. The three of them were complete in under 1 minute.

As soon as the downloads were complete Ninite started installing each of the applications silently. I saw NO prompts. Very cool!

And as quick as it started – it was complete.

Upon checking my start menu all of the applications I choose were installed with the newest versions. This is a very handy tool!

Does anyone else use something like this on Windows? We would love to hear about it in the comments!

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Up until now I have sent out meeting invitations via email for a date and time that I wanted to meet on. Then the responders would send me back comments on whether it was good for them or not.  If it wasn’t, and they were crucial to the meeting, we would re-schedule. But how about a meeting scheduler you can use before the meeting?

Wouldn’t it be nice to send out a link to your attendees where they could click on several possibilities for the meeting? You can then use the results to gather when it would be best to have the meeting. Have you used the new cover sheets on the TPS reports? No you haven’t? Well then we will need to have a meeting about that this weekend.

Let’s use the meeting scheduler When is Good to schedule it.  You do not need to sign up or pay for an account to use the functionality we will talk about in this article.

The features the free basic account has are shown below. This is really all we need to get the job done. But if you want to brand it or get a few simple options in there then by all means pay for a account. But as I said before, we are using this on the free account without signing up.

I clicked on pricing and then created an event under the Basic heading. Then you are off to create your event. You will see a calendar and a button to create an event. First you will need to name your event and hit that button.

I named my event Test Event 1 and hit the create event button to continue on to selecting dates and times that are good for me.

Then you will see a message that instructs you to choose times and dates for your events. These will be the tentative times shown to the respondents of your email.

I notched off Saturday October 31st (Halloween!) at 2pm and Sunday November 1st at 1pm, 2pm and 3pm. These will be the only choices the users can choose between to keep things simple.

Once you have completed everything, you will get a super secret code. This code will enable your non-registered users to see the results of your survey. You can see mine below and actually use it to retrieve my results.

Now you are ready to compose an email, shoot out so instant messages or even send out a snail mail mailer. You will be given the link to send out, the link to go to where you will be able to review the responses from your survey. If you actually want to see how the user will see it, follow this link and feel free to make a selection or two and submit it.

You can also choose if you want the meeting scheduler to email you the responses as they come in:

You can go and view the results of my survey here.

This is the page that the user will see to make their choices:

To check the results of your survey, hit the enter results code link on the home page. This is the screen where you can enter your results code:

And now the moment you have all been waiting for….the results!

This is the screen you should hope to see. You will get this when one item matches across all the respondents. If not you will see something (more likely) like this:

Good luck on your meeting! Do you use a better free meeting scheduler? We would love to hear about it in the comments!

When Is Good

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Here is an example of one of these roguee programs. It is called Antivirus 2008 and there is another called Antivirus 2009 that looks identical to it but with the different year. If you have never seen anything like this… Then good for you! You are doing a great job at security (or you are using a Mac or Nix’ box!)

I’ve found a great free app that helps remove fake antivirus applications. It’s aptly called Remove Fake Antivirus. Check out the list of applications that it detects and removes. Each of these links will take you to the author’s blogspot which will tell you more about the threat.

1. Cyber Security
2. Alpha Antivirus
3. Braviax
4. Windows Police Pro
5. Antivirus Pro 2010
6. PC Antispyware 2010
7. FraudTool.MalwareProtector.d
8. Winshield2009.com
9. Green AV
10. Windows Protection Suite
11. Total Security 2009
12. Windows System Suite
13. Antivirus BEST
14. System Security
15. Personal Antivirus
16. System Security 2009
17. Malware Doctor
18. Antivirus System Pro
19. WinPC Defender
20. Anti-Virus-1
21. Spyware Guard 2008
22. System Guard 2009
23. Antivirus 2009
24. Antivirus 2010
25. Antivirus Pro 2009
26. Antivirus 360 and
27. MS Antispyware 2009

OK so I am assuming that you have one of these infections and you want to use Remove Fake Antivirus to fix your machine up. Let’s see how we can do that. First we start by downloading the application from here. That is a direct link because the download page is polluted with Google ads and confuses users as to what to download. The author’s site can be found here.

Run the application and you will first see its welcome screen listing the nastiness it can deal with and then you will see this screen:

Go ahead and hit ‘Yes’ and it will start scanning  your local machine for the fake applications listed above.

You can go ahead and click Show details to get a closer look as to what is going on:

As it goes through each possible infection you will see it listed on the console. Don’t be alarmed, this does not mean that your PC has the infections.

Up until now my only solution was Malware Bytes demo version. But now it looks like Remove Fake Antivirus 1.35 is going to be my go-to program. It took 6 minutes to run the full scan. I had originally located this application while battling Antivirus 2009 yesterday. And it worked like a charm!

Once the application has completed you will see this screen:

Click Yes and all the files that Remove Fake Antivirus could not remove because the files were in use will then be kicked to the curb. The author’s site also serves up suggestions for how to deal with and prevent these types of infections. Among them is to set the UAC prompts to the highest levels – I guess I should not have mine disabled, eh?

Remove Fake Antivirus – Download

For more information about fake antivirus software, read Ryan’s post “Detect Fake Antivirus software & Spyware Removal programs“. How do you deal with rouge or fake antivirus or spyware applications? Do you have policies that keep this type of stuff out of your corporate environments? What do you do or use? Please share with us in the comments so we can learn from each other!

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Do you want to add a window switcher that will knock your socks off? Well despite it’s name, Vista Switcher makes your Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 machine switch screens, real slick-like.

The 270KB 32 bit download page is located here and wow, there is also a 64 bit download for you serious 64 bitters out there.

After downloading and running Vista Switcher, you will have a new icon in your system tray. It resembles an X in a box. The icon looks like the image to the left:

If you either hit that icon or you just push the control and tab keys together, it will launch its interface that allows you to not only select the screen you want to go to but it shows you an awesome preview of that screen.  There are hot keys that we will get to a little further in if you want to leave your default alt tab functionality.

Check out the program’s interface below:

You can still see your desktop through the transparent window and it does not go away if you release the keys. You can mouse over each item and it will show you a preview. Click on it to switch to that active window.

The application smoothly switches between screens and has a bunch of options which we explore below.

On the general tab you can first off switch your default program language. If your language is not available you can click the Find more translations to do just that. You have the check boxes for Auto starting Vista Switcher, to show or not to show the icon in the system tray, do you want to replace the alt tab action with Vista Switcher and (or) replace the right mouse button plus the wheel to Vista Switcher, and you can set hot keys if you do not want to use the combinations they provide.

This screen above is all about looks, you can change themes, fade out animations, task numbers, items allowed to be shown and preview style.

Next up we have the behavior window that allows you to modify the position of the window if you hate for it to be shown dead center. You can have Vista Switcher disable when you release the mouse and you can also have it show only tasks that are active or not with the last check box.

The exclusion list allows you to exclude specific windows from the switcher. You will see what is actually running on your machine from here.

I love this application and I have installed it on my Windows XP desktop as well as my Vista laptop. Are you using an alt tab replacement? If so we would love to hear about it in the comments!

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Have you ever seen an image with only one portion or one object in color and everything else is in black and white?

That is the effect we are going for here – to make an item, object or person stand out by black and whiting (is that a real phrase?) the rest of the image.

You can see a good example of what I am talking about in the shot below or in the article’s header graphic above:

The girl and her clothes are in color and everything else is not. What do your eyes fixate on?

You can find more example photos prepared using the application, or filter tintii, on their Flickr photostream. If you’re on Flickr yourself, tag your photos with “tintii” to have them included in the stream – more views for you!

Tintii is offered as a plugin for Photoshop and Corel’s Photo application but it does also come with a standalone application to make your color manipulation a little easier (and free for those of us who cannot afford Photoshop!)

Download and install the correct version for your PC, Mac or Linux box as you can see below:

Then select what you want to install:

The first object is un-uncheckable as it is the main application and the standalone application we are covering. The plugins for Photoshop and Corel Paint Shop Pro are able to be unchecked.

When the application is fully installed, launch it from your start menu and you will see this screen:

From this screen you can open your image by hitting the open button on the top left hand portion of the screen.

I choose a picture of me lying out in Aruba (before the baby). It takes me back to a calmer much more relaxing time…

The above shot is using the defaults just opening the image, Next up I will select each of the four images on the left side. They each activate another color or layer in your image. Click them and check it out. Here is the first item selected:

You can see I hit the greenish yellow button on the top and that activated the grass behind me. You can either uncheck the item after you use it or combine multiple effects. I will run through each of them unselecting the last.

The dark blue icon is selected and just my dark blue swim trunks are colorized.

The light blue icon activates the light blue color of the beach chair’s cushions. You can see it activates the chair I am sitting on and the one to my left. It activates anything the same color.

That last icon makes my tanned body show up. This looks very cool with me colored and everything else being in black and white.

Here I selected the grass and both blues together effectively coloring everything except for my body.

Now if these options are not enough for you feel free to tweak and tinker with the slides on the left. If you figure out how to use them effectively leave us a comment below. If you get the itch to register and install the plugins let us know how that goes as well!

Do you know of any other similar apps that achieve the same thing?

Download: Tintii

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You do not have to sign up or register to enjoy SketchFu to create drawings online, contrary to popular belief. But if you want to save your doodles or submit them for others to see, you will need a free login and password. I did not do that for this article.

Let’s see how it works.

Navigate on over to SketchFu and you will be greeted by this screen:

They have up a basic doodle showing what you can do with the application with a little imagination. You can see drawings other users have created on the right hand side. You can click on them and see what the users created. You can also “cheer” it or comment on it if you have an account.

To create a drawing online yourself (why else would you have gone to the site?) all you have to do is hit the New button at the bottom of the home page. There are 5 colored arrows pointing to it and a circle saying try it. Hopefully you will find the button!

The drawing interface you see above is all there is to it! You can choose the color of your brush and your brush size… That’s it! The other buttons at the top let you undo or play back your drawing, stroke by stroke, anywhere from twice to 256 times. Check that out after you are done drawing – a very cool feature and it can show others how to create your image from scratch!

Above you can see the color picker which is activated simply by hitting the black box next to the word color at the top of the interface. You can either type in a color’s hex code or choose from the chooser.

Next up we see the different brush sizes that we can use. You select the one you want by clicking on it and then drawing. There are 6 different sizes ranging from teeny tiny to whoa that’s fricking big!

You can see I drew a line with each one below:

After finding the site I decided to draw a little. Show everyone how awesome I am with a paint brush….but oh wait! I can’t paint! So maybe you will get a laugh out of my SketchFu sketch as you can see below it is on par with my 2 year old’s skills

Now that you all had a good laugh at my expense let’s take a look at what talented people can do with this application:

So that is the top bunch of sketches that have been cheered on by the community. It is really amazing what some of these artists can do with a simple application like this! Here is my favourite - you can click on it and watch how the artist drew it line by line. This is sooo cool!

I am very impressed by this site and it’s contributors – do you know of another similar site to create drawings online? We would love for you to tell us about it so we could check it out!

SketchFu

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Well that is about to change. I downloaded a little 15MB application called PhotoFilmStrip (actually they send you to Sourceforge to grab the installer.)

Install the application and allow it to associate PFS files with itself and you are on your way to creating your first picture slideshow filmstrip! This application does render the pictures and transitions into video (which you can choose the quality of) so it does take some time to render. My 15 picture set took about 7 minutes to work so you can figure around 45 seconds per picture in a environment like mine.

You can start by either dragging and dropping your pictures onto the top left portion of the screen which you can see in the screenshot below:

You can also hit Tools – Import Pictures

While the photos are loading into PhotoFilmStrip you will see a standard status bar letting you know where you stand (and how long you will wait!)

Then finally after all your images are in the program you will see them appear in chronological order on the time line at the bottom of the interface… Kind of like a film strip. (Hindsight: after ruining the first render I realized I need to resize that box to cover my subject. Simply manipulate it with your mouse for each one. This will get the focus and not the floor or ceiling! Hopefully this will save you some time!)

Now we can take a look at our options for creating them into a hot picture slideshow video. I did not go this far with my experiments but you can add an audio track or subtitles to your new piece de’resistance!

When you are all done hit F9 or the Tools menu option and then Render Filmstrip. This is the magic that makes your video out of the still images and anything else you imported.

After starting the process you will see your options for creating your video. Among them are the quality of the video profile. There is VCD all the way up to HD video. Obviously the better the quality the longer it will take to render and the larger the final output file will be.

You can set the length of the video and if you are going that route you can set up an audio file to play along with the video. This can be music or synced up video – either which way it is as simple as pointing it to the right file. You can play and test the audio file using the play and pause buttons.

On the bottom of the screen is the output settings. You can change the MPG2 video to be Xvid and you can choose your output directory. Hit start or batch job to run multiple projects. And you are off to waiting. Be prepared to wait a while depending on the amount of pictures and the size of them -you know go smoke em if you got em!

After outputting my video I realized that I needed to go back to the beginning and mark the center of the images where the subject is instead of just leaving them alone. Some of my shots then only focused on the top of the pictures.

We would love to see what you created – hit us with some youTube links in the comments!

Download: PhotoFilmStrip

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Yes it would not only be freaking cool but it would be awesome as computer mouse control for handicapped people that do not have the ability to use their hands to control the mouse.

One of the MakeUseOf authors hit me with an awesome piece of software yesterday that I quickly downloaded and ran. You do need a web camera for tracking purposes and some time to be amazed.

You download the application from here. We grabbed version 1.1 and it weighed in at a shocking 2.5MB. You do need to make sure your web camera works before beginning. If it does not work with its native application or within another application it will not work with eViaCam. So get that straight first.

Fire up the application and you will see a screen similar to this:

Hit the green check mark (it was already clicked in the above shot as the red x is now available to stop it). If everything is set up with the defaults you will be able to move your cursor with your face. Even the slightest movement is recognized and moves the mouse. You can stare at an object to click on it and set other options as well.

Here is a quick video before we go further…

Now let’s see what we can configure:

Clicking on the configuration menu and then options will give you the following choices. We will start with general options:

That is where we can modify what camera to use, language and profile settings so more than one person can use this application seamlessly.

Using the first motion tab you can play with how smooth and how fast (acceleration) the mouse moves and picks up speed. Feel free to mess around with the options. Hit OK and see what works best for you.

The click tab shows how long you need to stare at a item before it clicks. You can also have it beep on click and allow for multiple click (double or triple click). The Click windows behavior I found worked best on Fast mode. But your mileage may vary.

The Startup tab speaks for itself and simply allows you to set startup options.

The advanced tab allows you to have the application find your face automatically or to make you choose it manually with your mouse. Automatically worked flawlessly for me. The bottom selection lets you choose a different on-screen keyboard than the one bundled with Windows. This allows you to type with your mind as well!

I love this! I don’t know how practical it is for me to use on a daily basis but it is awesome! Do you have suggestions on how to use this? We would love to hear about it in the comments!

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How do you convert that PDF to text? You could print it and try and scan it back into your machine using a free OCR software or you could grab this awesome little application called PDF Text Extractor.

We have covered several applications for retrieving data from the confines of a PDF document but this application concentrates on the text. If that is what you need – your text and nothing but the text – then this is the program for you.

Let’s take a look at it and how it can convert a PDF to text.

I started by downloading and installing the program. It was a quick process and the MSI installer file was about 1.13 megabytes. When I ran the application this is what I saw:

This is a really easy layout and graphical user interface – simply select the PDF you would like to convert to plain text. Then you select the folder you want the converted plain text file written to. You can type in a full path for each or hit the button next to the blank field to browse.

When you are ready your window will look something like this:

Now our PDF document that contained our text – the text that we need to reformat and put into a manual is in a file. That file looks like this before we begin:

7 full pages of text, text and more text. That would be a lot of typing for poor Betty our departments secretary. So I went Googling and found our little application. I fired it up and hit that magic convert button. Literally it took 2 seconds and then a window popped up that said it was complete:

I went looking in my d:\ drive for the file. I actually realized I had no idea what it was called or what the extension would be. I sorted the files by date created and found what i was looking for:

I opened the text file up and as you can see above the files name seems to always be TextFile.txt. The contents of the text file were just that….all of the text that I needed! Yeah!

This is what I saw:

My formatting was not 100% there but all of the glorious text was and now it is a just a matter of copying, pasting and formatting. Nowhere near as big of a job as it was before! And we do not need Adobe Acrobat Reader, Writer or any other nonsense on our machine. Just this little application and a PDF file. You can open the text file in Word, Notepad++, Wordpad or whatever your favorite editor is.

How do you extract text from a PDF? We would love to hear about it in the comments!

Download: Text Extractor

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Basically you get a map with a pull down menu of locations to locate local businesses by addresses that are near you. They come pre-populated with popular stuff but as you will see below you can add custom stuff as well. They also have a free iPhone app but I do not have a iPhone to test it out on. So we will be covering the web application today.

When we first arrive at MashSpots you will see a map like this with your location data pre-filled out like below. It also picks what you are looking for in the first field. You are represented by a little green and blue icon in the middle of the map.

You will see that you can move your icon to tell the application where you are. This will list places closest to you first. So go ahead and drag that little dude around and place him where he should be. You can also just click on your location or modify the location in the top bar.

I dragged my little dude from the middle of Linden Blvd to Sheepshead Bay, as that is where I am. I left the default groceries in the what? field and this is what it returned to locate grocery related businesses by addresses that are near me. A list of 4 spots close by and their respective information. You can click on a red dot for more information.

Let’s look at the pre-configured categories. You will see they are Pizza, Coffee, Bar (yeah!), Restaurant, Hotel, Parking, Groceries, Apartment Building, Banks, Shopping and Hospitals (hope you don’t need them!)

But you can type in something as well. We tried it with Starbucks and it worked swimmingly. Below you will see the prefilled options as they appear on the site.

Locations where you can locate businesses by addresses near you include San Francisco, New York City (woot!), Chicago, London, Berlin, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Sydney, Tokyo, Mumbai and Shanghai. Even if your city is not listed just type it in like I did for Brooklyn below.

You can make the search results show 8 results instead of 4, using the drop down menu on the left under the search results.  Below you can see I changed it to 8.

These 8 pizza places are shown on the map in relation to where I am.

Oh look my favorite Pizza place is on there! I love some Benny’s Gourmet in my neighborhood. They are a little expensive and kosher but if you can deal with no meat with your cheese it is awesome. I click on the appropriate red dot and see its information listed. I think I will order from them tonight. This is making me hungry!

Next up I typed Starbucks into the What? field and saw where my closest coffee fix is:

That is some walk so I will probably just get coffee at a corner store!

How do you locate places in a new area? Do you have another website you like? Have you used MashSpots’ iPhone app? We would love to hear about it in the comments!

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Well if you are both technologically adept you could browse on over to Missed Connections and see if the other half of that missed connection has already left a post looking for you. If not you can post your own request.

The service is ridiculously simple. It has a place to search for missed connections and leaves you the ability to leave your own. It does things Craigslist style with private messages being routed to your personal email address without giving the seeker your actual address.

Let’s take a look at how it works. I will be leaving a Missed Connection message for this beautiful, sexy, uninhibited phone I saw on the corner of my office… Yes I said PHONE! Maybe you didn’t realize I am happily married? The only flings and affairs I have are with my gadgets

Once you hit the home page you will see this:

There is a link to add your missed connection now right there on the bottom right hand side. Let’s walk through it.

The first step asks you why you arrived at their site. Pretty much seeing if you are looking for a woman or a dude and if you are a woman or a dude. Select which situation matches yours or if you are disgusted by the question check the skip this step button and hit the go to step 2 button… Only 4 steps to go..

The next question seems to be very important and that is when you missed your missed connection. They are looking for a start and end time/date. Fill it out and continue on. 3 more steps to go!

Good old Google Maps to the rescue! Type in as close to an exact address you can – Google style. Hit the locate on map button and Google will zero in on your location. The more specific you are the better your chances are of finding that special someone (something )

It located my location fairly easily and once I confirmed it was correct I hit the go to step 4 button and now only 2 steps to go! Are you excited? I am!

That is it! All I need to do now is confirm the email confirmation link that they send me and my listing will be posted! It won’t be long now before that Touch Pro2 calls me! I am sure of it!

Now if you are on the other side looking for a missed connection – hoping the other party has already posted it. Find the search box on the home page and search for your zip code like so…

That will pull up all the missed connection from your zip code for your browsing pleasure. There are also links for email updates and a RSS feed! I love RSS feeds!

Clicking on any of the links will take you to that individual post with a link to email the poster like so…

That’s it! Now I wait! Do you have another method to find a missed connection? We would love to hear about it in the comments – for real! Put us on.

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