Sunday, June 17, 2007

Rainy Day Linkfest

Yep.  Raining again.  Hard.

Had Alvis unplug the laptop from the wall and switch to battery power just to be safe since it isn't usually plugged into a surge strip.

Lotsa linkage I've been sitting on this past week.

Get out you rain-gear.

Last Exile to Start Airing on AZN Television June 25 - via Anime News Network.  I've already got the video set on DVD but if you haven't seen this yet, AND if you get AZN on cable I highly recommend watching this series.  We like it! AZN Last Exile air schedule.

DNS outages are not Comcastic - OpenDNS blog.  I love OpenDNS.  It is great and fast and reliable. Seems that Comcast customers experienced some fights with the Comcast DNS servers last weekend.  They kept getting EULA challenges while browsing.  Bummer.  While those using OpenDNS instead didn't even notice.  Wonder if that will be an issue down here for the TimeWarner/Comcast user swap next week...

How To: Use Google Earth or Virtual Earth to Visualize a New House Lot - Part 1 - Scott Hanselman proves once again why he is such a cool and clever guy.  Scott figured out and then wrote a fantastic How To on overlaying a new house (subdivision plan) in Google Earth or Visual Earth where one doesn't currently exist.  Thanks Scott!

Word Processor Review - via DonationCoder.com.  This is an EXTENSIVE comparative review of most of the major players in word processing software.  Each included item is given a nice overview with screenshots.  They have even broken then into categories to keep the lighter ones from having to directly compete with the office suite battleships.  You probably have your own favorite by now, but you may want to take a look and see if maybe there isn't another product that might fit your needs better, anyway.

Protect Your USB Drives NOW! - via Daily Cup of Tech.  Lots of great reminders and tips on how to secure our USB drives and the data that's on them.

TestDisk - CGSecurity - still running well after my recent hard-drive hiccups.  I'm keeping a renewed eye on boot-disk based repair tools for hard-drives.  Just found this one last week.  I haven't had any time to play with it yet, but the multitude of boot-environment options it provides seems to warrant giving it a close look-over.  I'll post a follow-up once I get some drive-time usage with it.

Security : Inside Windows Vista User Account Control -- TechNet Magazine, June 2007 - Mark Russinovich gets all over, under, and inside the Vista User Account Control for our joy and education.  Well worth reading and trying to digest if you are still working on getting an understanding on how UAC actually works and how it does (and does not) keep the system safer from malware and rouge applications.

HP laptops vulnerable - heise Security. Turns out the HP Help and Support software pre-installed on many HP and Compaq laptops with Windows XP may leave users vulnerable to web-page code-injection exploits.  Lavie's Compaq laptop was so loaded as well, so I have uninstalled that feature (don't use it anyway) for now or if you think you still need it, go get an updated version.  Looks like this has been an issue for a while judging by the version release date.

I've been using minimalist's Explorer Breadcrumbs for a while on all my XP systems to mimic Vista's folder navigation "breadcrumbs" layout.  It works well, and speeds my folder navigation in Windows Explorer. Now Quizo comes out with a slick version of their own: QT Address Bar.  This one is more Vista like.  More over at CyberNotes: How to add Breadcrumbs to Windows Explorer in XP - CyberNet News.

GoogleBlock - Google occasionally catches behavior that it's systems interpret as "suspicious" activity.  When this wire is tripped, users can get blocked in the process.  Seems that this can also extend to gMail logins as well.  While I don't normally read the "sensational" stories from The Inquirer, this post does have some interesting information: Google suspects users are not human.  The VirusList Analyst's Diary picks it up some more: GoogleBlock - Analyst's Diary

Be informed.

--Claus

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