Geek Squeak (#112): Tech Thoughts is A Geek Squeak Trophy Winner

Bill Mullins’ Weblog – Tech Thoughts is worthy of the NEW What’s On My PC – Geek Squeak Trophy.

There is no method or madness to the trophy selection, but is typically given to those who exemplify the world of computers, information technology, and blogging.  More awards will be forthcoming…

If you are a regular reader of Bill’s blog, Tech Thoughts, you may have noticed on the sidebar of his blog (on the right side) an achievement like no other I’ve seen when it comes to blogging. This guy has had over 3 million visitors to his blog since January 1, 2008. This is phenomenal and is symbolic of his dedication to the subject which he is so versed in. Blogging is hard work and requires an endless thought process.

Bill’s blog primarily focuses on system and internet security; however, he throws a surprise at us once in awhile. He is an expert at it and it shows in the number of articles he pumps out on a daily basis. If you comment to any of his articles or have a question, you will get a straight forward answer that you can bank on. Also, a real plus to visiting Bill’s blog is his Tech Thoughts Daily Net News where you will get a daily rundown on what is happening out there in the world of technology.

On a personal note, Bill has been a personal supporter of What’s On My PC and I take great pride in knowing him. I thank you for your hard work and dedication.

If you want to learn more about information security, system security and internet security, I encourage you to bookmark  Bill Mullins’ Weblog – Tech Thoughts.

Reflected below is a sampling of some of Bill’s recent articles:

Who’s Tracking Your Internet Browsing? – Find Out With Ghostery

Mark Russinovich’s ‘Zero Day’ – Fiction Or Fact?

If You Need To Be Convinced You Need A Wi-Fi Password This Story Will Do It

Billions Set To Watch The Royal Wedding On TV & Online

Advanced SystemCare Free – Version 4.0 Blasts Off Today

The Importance of Real-Time Server Monitoring

Fix Up To 50 Windows 7, And Vista Problems, With Free FixWin

Kate Middleton Nude – As If!

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An Online Desktop Wallpaper Tool

With the advent of the bigger computer monitors and the differences in screen resolutions, it can be a challenge to take a desktop background that you may like and make it fit properly on the screen.

To help resolve that issue there is an online application, called Desktop Wallpaper Tool,  that will automatically adapt an image to your screen resolution.

Images are adjusted either by cropping the part of it or by scaling when the resolution of the original image differs from your desktop resolution. You can define the crop region and the screen resolution yourself.

What is neat about this app is that you do not need to install anything.  Simply visit the Desktop Wallpaper Tool site in your web browser and either upload an image, drag and drop an image onto the app, or enter a web URL where the image is located.

Article of the Day

Facebook Gets Scolded By Security Firm

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Off Topic: White House Releases Birth Certificate

In all my years of being a citizen of the United States, I have never been more embarrassed… I was brought up to respect whomever was the President; whether it be Democrat or Republican. Today, we as U.S. citizens, fueled by “politicians, hate and the media circus” are teaching our younger generation that it is OK to be disrespectful toward our leaders. People will believe anything and the media and our congressional representatives know it. Folks, we are being dumbed down and made to feel angry toward each other. We cannot even set down and comfortably debate issues with friends without anger being expressed.

I try not to get caught up in this sort of thing, but when you turn on the TV (which I try to avoid) you see nothing but propaganda to sway our thought processes and keep us away from the real problems.

If I must, The President released his birth certificate for all to see.  What’s it going to be next?

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Quick Post: Get WinX DVD Copy Pro for FREE (Today Only)

Digiarty today joins hands with thewindowsclub.com to bring you WinX DVD Copy Pro giveaway. Click the Download button to get the installation file and license code. Valid for 24 hours starting from 10am GMT, on April.27 2011.  The WinX DVD Copy Pro with the license code must be installed and activated prior to April 30th.

WinX DVD Copy Pro is designed to bring you all-new DVD backup experience. This up-to-date DVD copy software can help you decrypt & backup DVD to DVD disc, DVD to ISO, as well as copy DVD to single MPEG2 file with original video tracks and original surround AC3 audio.

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Restoring Your Contacts List or Address Book In Gmail

Google’s Gmail has been a very popular online (web) email client for years; and, rightfully so. It continues to improve and offer features that you would typically find in email software that you would install on your PC. As a matter of fact, I no longer use email client software on my PC at all and have come to rely on my Gmail account for my email communications.

When it comes to email software, the most important component that people fail to backup is their contacts list (or address book). The contacts list is a cumulative database of peoples names, email addresses, phone numbers, work and home addresses, etc… that continues to grow and ends up becoming a vital component to your email communications. Lose your contacts list (or address book) and I will guarantee that you will not be a happy camper. I can personally attest from experience, using email software, there are no easy ways to backup your contacts list (or address book); OR least a method that is easily understood to the everyday computer user.

One feature that I really like about Gmail is the built in backup versioning feature of the contacts list. Gmail actually does the backup of your contacts list for you in the event you make a change and you need to undo the change. As a matter of fact you can go back in time up to 30 days to do a restore from a previous version of the contacts list.

You can restore your contacts from a earlier saved version in instances such as; when accidental deletion occurs, a sync failed, an import failed or a merge failed.

You will not find any email client software that I know of that will give you this bailout in the event you lose your contacts.

To restore your contacts to a previous version, just follow these steps:

1. Click Contacts.
2. From the More actions drop-down menu, choose Restore contacts.
3. Choose the time you’d like to revert your contacts list to (e.g. 10 minutes ago, one hour ago, one week ago, etc). We suggest that you also make a note of the time that you restore your contacts, in case you’d like to return to where you started.
4. Click Restore. You’ll see a confirmation at the top of the screen when the rollback is complete.

To undo a restoration:

When the operation completes, a notification bar will appear that gives you the opportunity to immediately undo the restore. This notification bar will disappear if you leave Contacts or make edits to your contacts.

If the notification bar is no longer there, you can always re-run the Restore Contacts tool to take you back to where you started. Just set the tool to take you to the time just before you started the whole process.

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An Instant Data and System Recovery Kit

If you have been a long term computer user I am sure somewhere along the line you may have experienced a failure of sorts; whether it be from operating system errors, a mistake you made, a malware attack or from good old file corruption. I have always said that computers were made to fail; and, fail they eventually will.

I know, I know; I hear it all of the time, “I have nothing important on my PC and I am not worried about losing any important files!”. Well, let me tell you, when disaster does hit don’t be surprised that a shockwave overcomes you. Those family pictures, tax forms, your music collection, emails, software you paid for,  etc… that you thought were not important, all of the sudden become very important. I cannot stress enough how important it is to backup your personal files.

However, In the event you run into a desperation issue where your PC will not boot, and you need a way to recover file data, an option to look at is Paragon’s Rescue Kit.

The catch here is that you have to create (or burn) the rescue kit onto a CD or DVD before disaster hits. Don’t worry, it is easy to do and you will be walked through the entire process of creating the rescue kit CD/DVD after you download and run the rescue disk file.

Creating the rescue kit CD/DVD is basically a 3-Step process:

1 – The first prompt you will see is the “Unpack and Burn Wizard”, so it is important that you have a writeable CD or DVD in the drive.

2 – The second prompt is the Registration Key screen. You will be required to click on a link that will take you to the Paragon web site to complete a registration form (very easy). You will then receive, via email, the registration keys. I received my key within seconds of completing the registration.

3 – The third prompt will give you the option to burn the rescue kit image to CD/DVD or to save the rescue kit file to your computer. Here you want to burn the image to the CD/DVD.

If you followed the above steps and created the rescue CD or DVD, you now have a tool that you will use to boot up your computer in the event disaster hits. Now that you have created the Paragon Rescue Kit, what is it able to “rescue”?

Easily Fix Boot Problems

Boot Corrector option resolves various problems you may encounter during the system boot process. These problems may be caused by program errors, user mistakes, or become the results of boot virus activity. Boot Corrector allows you to cure the majority of boot problems for Windows Operating System and gives you access to your data!

Rescue Your Data

In case of a system malfunction, caused either by a virus attack or file corruption, you can retrieve valuable information from your disks and copy it to another local drive, partition or save the data to CD/DVD. The File Transfer Wizard helps you to export data as easy and convenient as possible.

Undelete Partition

When simply deleting a partition (without additional wiping) disk management software only removes the references to it in the Partition Table, thus leaving the possibility to recover it later. The Undelete Partitions Wizard enables you to find and recover these partitions. A restored partition will be fully functional, as long as other partitions were not created, moved or exceeded the disk space.

Don’t wait for disaster to hit. The Paragon’s Rescue Kit is definitely a tool to keep around in the event all else has failed.

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FREE DVD Authoring Software

Looking for a FREE way to create home video DVD’s from that camcorder you own? OR Looking for a FREE way to convert other video formats to DVD? If so, take a look at WinX DVD Author.

Using WinXDVD Author to create personalized DVD’s is a 3-step process:

Step One
Add video clips by clicking “Add File” button.

Step Two
Create DVD menu and chapter menu to personalize your DVD by entering DVD and Menu Compiler clips.

Step Three
Convert and burn video to DVD by entering DVD Disc Burner, and then click “Start”

Powerful DVD Authoring Ability:

Supports almost all video formats converted to DVD, like AVI to DVD, MP4 to DVD, MKV to DVD, M2TS to DVD, 3GP, FLV, MPEG, H.264, DivX, Xvid, WMV to DVD, etc.

Batch conversion supported- this free DVD author permits you to burn two or more videos at a time.

Fully compatible with DVD+/-R, DVD+/-RW, DVD DL+R, DVD DL+/-RW.

Support all types of burner devices in current market.

Edit Videos before Burning DVD:

Add background music & picture with this free DVD creator.

Create DVD subtitle (*.srt) to DVD with ease.

Create DVD chapter menu and DVD menu with just one click.

Burn video and save as VOB files or DVD folder on the hard disk.

Other Features:

Support all current hardware interfaces (IDE/SCSI/USB/1394/SATA).

Support 16:9 widescreen TV and 4:3 standard TV.

High video quality and fast converting speed. Less than 1 hour for a full 4.2 GB DVD.

Multilingual DVD languages supported: English, French, Chinese, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, etc.

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