TechLifeWeb

Sites that I found interesting for March 3rd 2009 through March 5th 2009:

• Stop Firefox Resizing Windows –
• Create a Twitter Following – Entrepreneur.com
• A Walkthrough and Cost Breakdown of Brewing Your Own Beer – Don't know about it being cheaper but it is fun.

Sites that I found interesting for February 18th 2009 through February 26th 2009:

• Windows7: Changes Coming to Windows 7 Release Candidate that Weren't in the Beta –
• WebMynd · Personalized search in your browser – Firefox Extension. Enhance your Google searches with customized results from sources like Wikipedia, YouTube, and Twitter.
• Building/Customizing your own WordPress theme: Beginners and Intermediate –

Sites that I found interesting for January 11th 2009 through January 13th 2009:

• The Bumper List of Windows 7 Secrets – 30 tips to show off the new stuff in Windows 7. Must read if you are a beta tester.
• How make Windows 7 task bar to look like Vista – A 6 set how-to.
• GTDInbox – GTD, Task Management and a Better Inbox for Gmail – GTDInbox is an addon for Firefox that transforms Gmail into a powerhouse of productivity and manageability. GTDInbox gives you a better inbox.

Sites that I found interesting for December 30th 2008 through January 5th 2009:

• The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World – Consumers are flocking to blogs, social-networking sites and virtual worlds. And they are leaving a lot of marketers behind. Article in the Wall Street Journal.
• Long-term personal data storage – Digital content – both the media AND the format – can become unreadable. So how do you keep your pictures, music, videos, documents and more around for decades? Here's how.
• Gone Phishing – If you receive a direct message or a direct message email notification that redirects to what looks like Twitter.com—don't sign in. Look closely at the URL because it could be a scam.
• Marissa Mayer on the future of Google – Interview: "It's really important to move beyond just keywords"
• MD5 considered harmful today – We have identified a vulnerability in the Internet Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) used to issue digital certificates for secure websites. As a proof of concept we executed a practical attack scenario and successfully created a rogue Certification Authority (CA) certificate trusted by all common web browsers. This certificate allows us to impersonate any website on the Internet, including banking and e-commerce sites secured using the HTTPS protocol.
• Mouseover DOM Inspector v2.0 Help – The Mouseover DOM Inspector, or MODI for short, is a favelet (also known as a bookmarklet) that allows you to view and manipulate the DOM of a web page simply by mousing around the document.

Sites that I found interesting for December 11th 2008 through December 19th 2008:

• Access more memory, even on a 32-bit system – No matter how much memory you have in your PC, you may not be getting the most out of your installed RAM.
• Form Bookmarklets – Makes the browser ignore web site requests to not remember passwords.

  Some sites, including many banks and a few other sites such as Yahoo Mail and Microsoft Passport, tell browsers not to remember passwords for visitors using autocomplete="off". This bookmarklet makes the browser ignore autocomplete="off" temporarily, allowing you to save passwords even on sites that use autocomplete="off".

• Oppo Readies Universal Blu-ray Player – Value video products manufacturer Oppo Digital said it is preparing to enter the Blu-ray Disc player category in a big way, with a fully featured “universal” unit supporting, DVD video, DVD-Audio, and SACD, in addition to Blu-ray Discs with up to 1080p/24Hz output.

Sites that I found interesting for November 7th 2008 through November 10th 2008:

• Twitter Ajax Reload – GreaseMonkey script for Firefox. Reloads Twitter every two minutes using Ajax. A countdown is shown above the last status. If there is any text in the status box reloads are postponed. You can change the time if you know how to edit the script. Script is well documented so it isn't hard.
• Fixing the HD PVR BSOD – Andy's how-to for fixing problems with the Hauppauge HD PVR.
• Understanding and Aligning the Value of Social Media – While social media should be a part of any forward-thinking and transparent company, I would urge caution if you believe that you can monetize it easily or quickly. It’s also not a magic pill for traffic building.

Sites that I found interesting for October 23rd 2008 through October 24th 2008:

• CSRF Protector – Firefox Add-ons – Very nice add-on, as recommended by Steve Gibson on Episode #166 of the Security Now podcast.
• Videos from 3D Basecamp 2008 – SketchUp Basecamp was in June. Google has posted here all the videos of the event.
  Google SketchUp is software that you can use to create, modify and share 3D models. It's easier to learn than other 3D modeling programs, which is why so many people are already using it.
• How to get the Windows Media Center Sideshow Gadgets to install on TV Pack – Nice reg hacking tips for getting this to work.

Sites that I found interesting for October 16th 2008 through October 22nd 2008:

• A Robot Network Seeks to Enlist Your Computer – In a windowless room on Microsoft's campus here, T. J. Campana, a cybercrime investigator, connects an unprotected computer running an early version of Windows XP to the Internet. In about 30 seconds the computer is “owned.”
• DroboApps: exactly what it sounds like – DroboApps, a collection of applications that run on Drobo which have been cooked up by the community since they launched the SDK a couple months ago.
• Absolute Need-to-Have Firefox Plug-ins – If you develop for the web you need these add ons for Firefox.

Whether you just bought a new Vista machine or rebuilt your current one, you need a list of the software you had installed. Everyone has their own unique blend of software they just have to have on a machine to make it truly their own. I have been carefully crafting Windows based machines for a long time so I thought I would publish the list of software that I use. You can build a very functional machine and not spend a dime beyond the original purchase price. I do have some commercial software listed here that some people will tell me has free alternatives. I know, I have tried them. The stuff I spend money on just works or saves me a ton of time on configuration because it is the best in its class.

So here is the TecLifeWeb Blend. I’ll try to keep it updated. You’ll find links to all the software so you can build download and blend your own.

• AVG Anti-Virus
• Firefox – Best web browser and the following add-ons
• • GreaseMonkey Add-on
  • Double Click Relinker Script – Script I wrote to prevent your click from being hijacked by Double Click
  • Google Secure – Make sure Gmail and other Google services are accessed by https
  • Old Bar – Cleans up the way the URL Bar (aka Awesome Bar) presents results. Makes it more like Firefox 2.
  • IE Tab – Embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Firefox
  • Better GMail 2 – Add useful extra features and skins to Gmail, like hierarchical labels, macros, signatures, file attachment icons, and more.
  • Shareaholic – Lets you post links to all kinds of social sites include del.icio.us, digg, facebook, etc.
  • Tab Mix Plus – tabs on steroids and a whole lot more
  • Video DownloadHelper – for downloading clips from YouTube and elsewhere
  • Foxmarks – Foxmarks is a free add-on for your Firefox browser that syncs and backs up your bookmarks and passwords across multiple computers and more.
• Silverlight (this also checks what version is installed to be sure it is up to date)
• Flash
• 7-zip – MUCH better and faster than the native unzipping tool
• Foxit PDF reader (light weight and very fast)
• CuteFDF Writer (Printer driver to print to PDF)
• OpenOffice (Open Source MS Office alternative)
• ISORecorder – Create CD/DVD from ISO images. No need for Nero or others
• VLC (Cross-platform media player and streaming server)
• Picasa (Google’s photo organizing software)
• Java – You also get Java with Open Office so no need to download separately.
• Dropbox – Sync files between your machines

Codec Setup
Install these 2 and follow my instructions an you’ll be able to play any video file type in Vista Media Center or Windows Media Player

• Ffdshow (Latest stable build /ffdshow_beta5_rev2033_20080705_clsid.)(Instructions)
• Haali Media Splitter – Lets you open files so ffdshow can play them. For Matroska, MP4, AVI, OGG/OGM, MPEG TS.

Commercial Software

• Video Studio 11
• Adobe Photoshop Elements
• Quicken
• Neat Image – noise reduction for scanners and cameras
• Text Aloud and voices – Best text to speech and voices that don’t sound realistic
• Video Redo – For editing mpg2 and dvr-ms files

Optional

• Virtual Box – Virtual Box is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software.
• EAC-Exact Audio Copy – follow download link on the left hand side (Setup Instructions)
  • LAME encoder 3.97
• AutoIT3 – Scripting Tool
• Daemon Tools – For mounting iso images as virtual optical drives. People are getting best results with version is 4.12.3. Especially with blu-ray ISOs.
• The Levelator – For audio recordings. Levelate a wav file before you compress to mp3 or other. Good for podcasters.

Don’t forget to set these things up
VPN
Network Printers
Fix the tabs in Firefox – not needed as much if you use the tabmixplus plugin.
10 Tweaks to Vista

Sites that I found interesting for October 16th 2008

• SanDisk Releases $20 slotMusic Player, Dozens of SD Card Albums – The tracks are 320Kbps, DRM-free MP3 files, the SD cards are reusable and the screenless slotMusic players costs next to nothing. Major label albums are priced at a competitive $15, and can be played without the need for transfer from a computer, though you can load other SD cards with up to 16GB of music and play them, too.
• First look: Firefox 3.1 beta 1 officially released – The beta includes Mozilla's new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, which uses tracing optimization to deliver a massive performance boost that makes it faster than Google Chrome's V8 engine. Although it still falls short of Apple's recent Squirrelfish Extreme project, the Mozilla developers say that TraceMonkey still leaves plenty of room for additional optimization.
• 10 interesting Google products you don’t know about – Google has so many different products that it becomes pretty hard to keep track of them over time. Some are worth being reminded of, though, because there are several useful Google products that are flying below the radar, unknown to the vast majority of users out there.
• Flickr Guide: How to Do Everything with Flickr –