Wallpaper of the Week (#13)

Now here is a wallpaper that is unique… This one was designed to advertise the Fabreze Pet Odor Eliminator. If you love dogs, this one is a sure grab.

You can grab this wallpaper from [ HERE ] . When you arrive at the site, scroll down and you will see the various screen sizes.

Need wallpaper software to show off your wallpaper collection? Try one of these:

John’s Background Switcher

Walyk Wallpaper Changer

Wallpaper Updater

Windows 7 Users: If you are using Windows 7, did you know you can create a desktop background slideshow to show off your pictures and wallpaper images?  To learn how to use this feature [ CLICK HERE ] .

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Video: Take A Ride In The Dragon Lady to the Edge of Space

James May from Top Gear rides in a U-2 spy plane

The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed “Dragon Lady“, is a single-engine, very high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated by the United States Air Force and previously flown by the Central Intelligence Agency. It provides day and night, very high-altitude (70,000 feet / 21,000 meters), all-weather intelligence gathering. The aircraft is also used for electronic sensor research and development, satellite calibration, and satellite data validation. [Source: Wikipedia]

This is an awesome video that demonstrates just how capable technology and man are. A related article is the recent post “YouTube Movie: First Orbit” .

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A Successful Data Recovery Story Using Some Desperation Moves

A friend recently came to me with an old IDE hard drive that was determined to be dead by a computer tech. He had held onto the drive, which was several years old, with the hope that someday the data on the drive could possibly be recovered, without costing him an arm and a leg. Typically, professional data recovery can be very expensive and there are no guarantees the data can be fully recovered.

As a challenge, I opted to take a shot at recovering the data on the drive. I placed the drive in an external drive enclosure, powered it up and connected it to my PC. The first bad sign was the clunking noise being generated from the drive and the drive not spinning up properly (which indicated a mechanical problem); AND the second bad sign was that my computer could see the drive but was unable to pull up the file/folder structure (which indicated a potential drive sector or partition issue).

At this point, I had to agree with the original tech’s assessment of the drive; however, it hit me to try a couple of things out of desperation. I put the drive in a ziplock plastic bag and placed it in the freezer for a couple of hours. The theory being that this would cause contraction of the metal parts in the drive. Following the deep freeze, I quickly connected the drive to the PC and I could tell immediately that it was spinning up and the clunking noise had dissipated. My PC could see the drive; however, the sector/partition issue was still looking me in the eye. What I did next was really out of desperation. I started thinking, I can see the drive and if I can see the drive can I format it?  My plan was to do a “quick format” then use data recovery software to extract the data on the drive.  Guess what?  It worked!

Using data recovery software (called Power Data Recovery) I was able to extract every single bit of file data from formatted the drive ( a total of 21 GBs of data). Using the Power Data Recovery software, the data recovery process took over 8 hours to complete.

Several points this article:

• The Hard Drive Freezer Trick – I do think there is something to this!
• Data Recovery – Don’t ever think by formatting your drive you are wiping the data from the drive! It can be recovered…
• Backup Your Files – If you have files on your PC that is close to your heart and soul, make sure you back them up.  Hard Drives do and will fail.

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Learn About eBooks and eReaders vs. Kindle

Tech Paul at Tech-for Everyone put up an article this morning that brings into perspective all this hype about ebooks, eReaders and the Kindle.  Do you really need these eReader devices?

To check out his article, “eBooks and eReaders – There is more than Kindle, you know”.  visit Tech-for Everyone [CLICK HERE] .

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YouTube Movie: First Orbit

YouTube (and Google) continue to raise the bar when it comes to online video content. Typically, it features a repository of short video clips and now they are working toward featuring longer, higher-quality video content on its website. Google, which owns YouTube, plans to invest millions into developing “original content”.

On that note, YouTube is featuring a premiere video (hour-and-half-long) called First Orbit. The video is a real-time recreation of Russian astronaut Yuri Gagarin’s first 108 minutes long orbit of Earth in 1961.

To mark this historic flight YouTube has teamed up with the astronauts onboard the International Space Station to film a new view of what Yuri would have seen as he travelled around the planet.

If you are interested in watching this move, [CLICK HERE] .

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An Ever-Growing Collection of FREE Online Jigsaw Puzzles

If you love jigsaw puzzles then you will be surely entertained and challenged with TheJigSawPuzzles.com. There is nothing to install.  Just visit the site in your web browser and select your puzzle background from over hundreds of puzzles. You can even select how many puzzle pieces you want to scramble.

The cool factors with TheJigSawPuzzles.com is that once you select your puzzle, you can go full screen, pull the pieces sidewards, change the background color, turn the sound on and off, get hints, pause the timer, move the edge pieces for an easier start and can select multiple pieces by dragging the mouse around the pieces.

You can sign up for an account; however, not necessary. By signing up you can make your own puzzles from your own pictures. You can upload up to 8 megabytes at one time. No individual file may be larger than 2 megabytes. I know that does not sound like a lot and it’s not; however, from my testing when I uploaded a large picture file, the site automatically scaled down the image to a kilobyte size without affecting the clarity of the image.

TheJigSawPuzzles.com is one of the best online jigsaw puzzles I have experienced.  Here’s to hoping that it continues to get better.

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Use UltraVNC to Manage the PC’s in Your Home

UltraVNC is a powerful, easy to use and free software that can display the screen of another computer (via internet or network) on your own screen.

If you have a home network setup, UltraVNC is an excellent way to manage all of your PCs from one main PC.  For example, I currently have a wireless network setup of three PC’s in my home consisting of a desktop PC (Win7), a netbook (WinXP) and a Home Theater PC (Win7). The cool factor here is that UltraVNC will work over a wireless network. In this scenario it is not uncommon for me to have all three PCs running at the same time. With UltraVNC I use my main desktop PC (Win7) to remote into into the other two PC’s to perform routine maintenance, updates, transfer files or to simply have another computer resource available (for super multitasking purposes). In other words I can bring up the screens of the other two PCs on the screen of my desktop PC and work on them as if I were sitting in front of them.

Setting this up is pretty easy… When you install UltraVnC you will see that it consists of a “server” and a “viewer”.  Do not let these words scare you. The “server” is what you want to install on the PC’s you desire to control. The “viewer” is what you want to install on the PC that will be controlling the other PC’s. If that sounds pretty confusing let’s use my network setup as an example. I installed the “server” on the netbook and the Home Theater PC and installed the “viewer” on my main desktop PC. I use the main desktop PC to “view” the other PCs. You can get specific install instructions [HERE] .

UltaVNC is pretty powerful remote software and can be used for many types of application. When I was managing a business network, UltraVNC was my go to app to remote into other PC’s to perform help desk tasks and to perform maintenance routines.

UltraVNC was specifically designed to answer the needs of:

• Help desk (Internal & External)
• IT departments
• Remote Computer Support companies
• Remote Computer Access
• Remote demonstration
• eLearning, classroom control
• Individuals that want to help their relatives and friends, or access their home PC from work or cybercafes
• If you are looking for a way to easily manage the PCs in your home and keep an eye on your kids; then, UltraVNC will get the job done.

Key features: File transfer, Video driver, Optional Encryption Plugins, MS Logon, Text chat, Viewer Toolbar, Java Viewer with File Transfer , as well as Auto scaling and Server Side Scaling, Multiple-Monitors-support,Repeater/Proxy-support, Auto reconnection, good performances and tons of other functionalities.

UltraVNC runs under Windows operating systems (95, 98, Me, NT4, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, Windows 7…). Its embedded Java Viewer allows you to connect (and make File transfers) from a simple Web Browser on any system supporting Java   (Linux, Mac OS…) to an UltraVNC server.

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