2006 April

Based on our Volkswagen TDIs article the other day, we had a few diesel fans submit their feedback. Here’s a few of the more interesting Gnomie stories:
Gabor Kovacs: In Hungary, we already have a law PROHIBITING biodiesel! Smart guys discovered about a year ago that common household corn oil (used for frying food) is as […]

Cain and Abel is a password recovery tool that enables network administrators to test network security or home users to recover a variety of stored network passwords. The program reports sniffing and recovery of most popular protocols, including FTP, SMTP, POP3, HTTP, mySQL, ICQ, Telnet, and others. It can also recover passwords hidden behind asterisk […]

Gmail Drive enables you to use your Gmail account as a virtual storage drive that is accessible from Windows Explorer. It adds a drive icon to My Computer that allows you to access your storage space like any other folder, and upload files via drag and drop.
The uploaded files appear in your Gmail inbox […]

I love watching video online. Streaming technology has been rapidly improving, and the online viewing experience is a lot more tolerable nowadays than it was even a year or two ago. Since the barrier for entry into producing and distributing online video is so small, wannabe directors and actors have been filling up servers with […]

Should those of us on Windows 98 upgrade to XP or wait until next year when Microsoft releases Vista?
Microsoft announced some time ago that it intended to discontinue support and updates to Windows 98, 98SE and Millennium Edition (ME) by June of 2006.
When the original plans were announced, the expectation was that Vista (now scheduled […]

Before you install Windows XP or any other Windows platform, you should verify that the hardware in your computer is compatible and that it meets the minimum hardware requirements. Hardware requirements are usually not an issue for new systems. If you are installing on an older computer though, verify your hardware before installing.
Microsoft used […]

Some computers contain motherboards that support Serial ATA (SATA) hard drivers. The motherboards may have a separate dedicated SATA controller. You can determine if your computer has a dedicated chipset during the POST because a second screen may appear identifying the SATA hard drives.
When you install Windows XP, you may need to inform setup that […]

Recent urban development in Los Angeles is less scattered than recent development in Boston. Miami is America’s most compact big city and Pittsburgh is most sprawling. Changing the number or size of municipal governments in a metro area has no impact on whether or not urban development is scattered, but controlling access to groundwater does. […]

Some of our most precious childhood memories are those of the family games we played. Of course, I’m an old-timer, so I recall playing with rocks in the cave while Dad drew pictures of mammoths on the wall!
But seriously, folks… Games like Monopoly, Sorry!, Skip-Bo, Scrabble, and one I particularly fondly recall called Probe were […]

I’ve seen 1080p content displayed on a 1080p HDTV set. Couldn’t tell you if it was any better than 720p or 1080i, but I believe it is better - for tomorrow, not necessarily for today. I’m not just spewing forth random numbers, folks - these are formats, one being progressive lines (720p) on a television […]

Help a young baker show big bad business who’s boss in this fast-paced treat!
When the retail behemoth “Mega-Mart” moves in, Jill’s beloved family bakery is forced to close. But she’s determined to get the business back on its feet with delicious sweets.
Help Jill open her own bakery, bring in customers, and earn enough […]

Time Travel is a date calculator that allows you to calculate the differences between two dates in days, weeks, months, or years. It offers advanced options that let you skip certain days of the week, and include or exclude weekdays or weekends.
You can calculate retroactive dates (e.g. how many days since you were […]

Although it can be very tough sometimes, it’s vital to help keep families together. It’s truly a shame if you can’t look to your family for support. One of the main reasons why the family structure disintegrates over time for some people is because of a lack of communication. If the various members aren’t making […]

Infopackets contributor Keith Greenhalf writes:
Is Microsoft spying on you?
The Redmond-based company will soon release a major update to its ‘Windows Genuine Advantage’ (WGA) program. The update will include an alert mechanism that informs users if they are using a pirated copy of Windows software. 1
Once installed, the Windows Genuine Advantage program beams popup notifications directly […]

If you thought hacking was just about mischief-makers hunched over computers in the basement, think again. Wallace Wang steps back into the fray with Steal This Computer Book 4.0: What They Won’t Tell You About the Internet (No Starch Press, May 2006), wherein he explains that hacking can also mean questioning the status quo, looking […]

Man, I LOOOOOOOOOVE to cook! Around my house, I do 75% of the cooking. That’s MY idea, not Briana’s!
So it’s natural that today’s Family First site is cooking-related. It’s called Wacky Recipes.
Now, don’t worry. The recipes aren’t what’s wacky. What’s wacky is that there are hundreds of free recipes that you can peruse. You can […]

I’ve been a Canon PowerShot fan for several generations now - dating back to the G2. Before that, I was a Sony digicam man (starting with their floppy-driven Mavica). I’ve owned several PowerShot digital cameras over the years, skipping most of the sub-compact models because they lacked features. Well, I learned that through regular usage, […]

Anyone who regularly uses the computer or downloads files from the Internet will find DupeWatcher a must have utility. This smart companion will help you to housekeep your system with ease.
Features include:

The ability to delete duplicate files
The ability to move duplicate files to the recycle bin or a specified folder
The compression of such […]

How many times have you looked at your list of bookmarks and thought that you needed a better way of managing them all? There aren’t too many bookmark managers that are not integrated with the browser in some way, shape or form. StorURL is one of the few that are not, and it […]

One of the most complex decisions that you’ll ever face is in direct relation to real estate. Trying to find that perfect house in that perfect location for that perfect price can be very difficult, and it is sure to wear you out. There are likely hundreds (if not thousands) of listings in your area, […]