How To Open Ports

AfterDawn.com: Forums: Windows - P2P software: "TUTORIAL: How To Open Ports and Forward them to your Router "

Styled Com

XAct Communication:

A sleek and easy to use internet telephone
Seven Mile Professional Two-Way Radio
Digital Spread Spectrum Cordless Headset Telephone

P2P tools

AfterDawn.com: Forums: Windows - P2P software: "Windows - P2P software
Got questions about P2P tools? Want to know what is the best P2P tool right now? Searching for tips how to improve your download speeds? This is the right place to discuss about file sharing, P2P networks and P2P software."

Portable Satellite Radio

ReGo Portable Satellite Radio Receiver/Recorder
More than a dozen new satellite radio receivers were on display at CES, including a trick little invention called Xact ReGo. About the size of a pack of cigarettes, ReGo (short for "record and go") stands out because it can store songs on removable flash cards. Punch in what stations or music you like, pop in a flash card and let the fun begin. Since the music is converted to MP3 format, hundreds of songs can be written to a single card, and they can be transferred to a computer or plugged into the ReGo for future play. It even has different adapters to plug it into your car stereo, home theater or headphones. The price will be close to $300. www.xactcommunication.com

hosted storage

File access anywhere, anytime and from any platform

Omnidrive is what you expect hosted storage to be - easy to use, accessible from anywhere and unrestrictive. Omnidrive will make your life easier by allowing you to store, access and stream your files from almost any web connected platform.

You can store files in your own private encrypted storage area, share and collaborate within your organisation, share with your friends, or publish to the general public. All this from a lightweight application that integrates with your host platform and gives you nothing new to learn.

Omnidrive will free you from being fixed to a device - it's virtual hosted storage that will work for you.

concept Tablet PC

Lenovo concept Tablet PC wins design award

Show original item

Lenovo has won the reddot design award for a concept Tablet PC they have produced that I would love to see.

The Yoga uses a super thin convertible form with a detachable keyboard, no doubt to keep size and weight down to a minimum.

Great design and I think this should be possible with technology available today so go ahead, Lenovo, set the Yoga free.

The yoga epitomizes the BOBW principle found only in Tablet PCs. Channel 9 guy to the first reader to guess that acronym in the comments.

anonymize web browsing

Tor: An anonymous Internet communication system

Tor: An anonymous Internet communication system

Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people that want to improve their safety and security on the Internet. Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and other applications that use the TCP protocol. Tor also provides a platform on which software developers can build new applications with built-in anonymity, safety, and privacy features.

Your traffic is safer when you use Tor, because communications are bounced around a distributed network of servers, called onion routers. Tor's technology aims to provide Internet users with protection against "traffic analysis," a form of network surveillance that threatens personal anonymity and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security.

Instead of looking at the content of your communications, traffic analysis tracks where your data goes and when, as well as how much is sent. Tor aims to make traffic analysis more difficult by preventing websites, eavesdroppers, and even the onion routers themselves from tracing your communications online. This means Tor lets you decide whether to identify yourself when you communicate.

Tor's security is improved as its user base grows and as more people volunteer to run servers. Please consider volunteering your time or volunteering your bandwidth. And remember that this is development code—it's not a good idea to rely on the current Tor network if you really need strong anonymity.

Deploying Vista

BitLocker Drive Encryption Step by Step Guide.doc	171 KB
Deploying Vista Step by Step Guide.doc	213 KB
Managing Group Policy ADMX Files Step by Step Guide.doc	150 KB
Migration Step by Step Guide.doc	151 KB
Performance Monitoring and Tuning Step by Step Guide.doc	209 KB
Print Management Step by Step Guide.doc	254 KB
Step by Step Guide to Controlling Device Installation with Group Policy.doc	1.1 MB
Trusted Platform Module Services Step by Step Guide.doc	155 KB
User Account Control Step by Step Guide.doc	146 KB
Windows System Resource Manager Step by Step Guide.doc

Freeware reviews

Freviews

Reviews, articles, and more on free software

Blog auctions

Buying Blogs: The Blog Buying Checklist | Performancing.com

Buying Blogs: The Blog Buying Checklist

15 Search Predictions for 2006

15 Search Predictions for 2006: "John Battelle posted his predictions for next year, so here are more"

HOWdesign.com

HOWdesign.com - Links - Links to Graphic Design Firms, Design Resources, and more: "Top Ten Web Sites

flat-it.com
FLAT-IT
Japanese designer Ryoichi Tsunekaw has designed a bunch of fonts and he wants to share them with you.

www.alvinlustig.org
The Alvin Lustig Archive
An online archive dedicated to the life and work of Modern design pioneer Alvin Lustig. Includes over 400 examples of book jackets, architecture and more.

www.asmithillustration.com
asmithillustration
London-based illustrator Andy Smith specializes in hand-rendered type with tons of personality.

www.bargarrletterpress.com
Bargarr Letterpress
This letterpress shop in Texas prints posters, invites and everything else on big flat-bed presses with lots of handset wood and metal type.

www.clairetown.com
clairetown
This illustration site features the work of artist ClaireRobertson, who is even better known for her blog LoobyLoo.

www.darrenbooth.com
Darren Booth Illustration
Painterly/collage illustrations of hand-lettering, portraits, humans and animals by Canadian Illustrator Darren Booth.

www.designers-who-blog.com/
Designers who Blog
Designers who Blog collects design blogs from around the internet. Once a day it features the cream of the blogs.

www.devonbowman.com
Devon Bowman Illustration
Smart, conceptual illustration, which is also fun to look at! Apparently there are a ton of amazing illustrators in Canada. Awesome!
"

hard to find 800 numbers

Lifehacker, the Productivity and Software Guide

Get hard to find 800 numbers
READ MORE: Customer Service, Phone support, Tech Support, Top
phone-support.png

Website Hard to Find 800 Numbers does just what it sounds like. It’s a great resource with an excellent credo:

Our sole purpose is to help customers reach companies whose numbers are often buried deep within a large corporate site.

With 800 numbers to support of companies like Amazon, Ebay, PayPal, Yahoo, Microsoft, and many more, Hard to Find 800 Numbers is a great go-to resource when you’re sick of waiting for a return email.
Hard to Find 800 Numbers

Firefox Blog extension

HOW TO: Using Performancing for Firefox | Performancing.com

Performancing gives you an easy way to blog about the webpage you are viewing.

License feed

The End of Software as We Know It
Will hosted services replace boxed apps?

Mesh wireless

A study from ABI Research estimates the global market for 802.11 mesh products to be $116 million and that it will soar to $1.3 billion five years from now. Much of that will be spent by municipalities or service providers to offer low-cost wireless Internet access, says Sam Lucero, ABI senior analyst.

Troubleshooting is more complicated in a mesh. "The route [for a client's packets] is more complex, and it's constantly changing," he says. One major upgrade during the beta test was the introduction of a GUI for the network-monitoring software. The display can now show a network administrator the path that a client packet has taken through a mesh.

Finally, the beta test revealed wide differences in how 802.11 client adapters cope with variable signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) that can occur outdoors. "Some don't respond if the SNR is not as 'friendly' outdoors," Archibald says. "Some are rock solid."

Mathias doesn't expect mesh networks to take over in carpeted offices. "But there are plenty of cases where you don't have any wiring, such as loading docks or warehouses; concrete, not carpeted sites" he says, "and campus nets where you have a hybrid of outdoor and indoor wireless."

GPS on cellphone

::: Navizon :::

The first Peer-to-Peer Wireless Positioning System.

that successfully blends GPS + WiFi + Cellular signals
together into one accurate and powerful Mobile Geo-Location System.

Navizon users with a GPS device and a WiFi and/or Cellular enabled Pocket PC PDA can collect, use and share accurate geographic positioning information about their favorite cities, neighborhoods, places, routes and journeys with other Members of the Navizon Network.

Do you BPL?

Massive Broadband over Powerline Rollout in Texas

In Power Line

At one point, BPL was seen as the third broadband leg: Cable, DSL, and BPL would provide robust competition in the marketplace. Instead, it's turning out to be cable, DSL, and much slower wireless today with WiMax potentially tomorrow. But BPL just got some traction with a Texas deal. Current Communications Group and TXU Electric Delivery will offer BPL to two million Texas customers by the end of 2006 in busy markets like Dallas-Ft. Worth. They've chosen the correct flavor, and that's been one of the battles. Broadband can't transit transformers directly, and the "final 50 feet," let's say, has been tricky. There have been many proposals to stick Wi-Fi transmitters on the transformers to bridge that gap; other methods, which seem superior, extract the data from the line coming into the transformer and connect it to the feed to a customer's house. The latter is what Current/TXU seems to use because customers need only plug in a device into an power outlet to use the service. TXU will pay $150 million to Current for a variety of utility-related services that the network will allow, including monitoring for line breaks and potentially remotely turning off service, which requires a truck roll now. I've heard from other utilities that remote meter reading is huge as well. Electrical meters are replaced on a regular duty cycle that can span decades, and there's always new construction. This allows a rollout of BPL-based meters to a relatively large minority of homes quickly. Because these two firms are using the direct outlet method of BPL, devices like soda machines could report their status.

Advanced PC Build-it-Yourself Guide

New for 2005 Advanced PC Build-it-Yourself Guide Not too long ago one had to be eligible for the Genius IQ Club (Mensa) in order to build a computer. That is no longer the case. Today’s computer manufacturers have made it much easier for the enterprising do-it-yourselfer to create a great system. New for 2005, an updated guide for the person considering a build-it-yourself computer system project!

What is tunneling?

Tunneling is a better answer than SSL when a company needs to make confidential all communications between two end points, as is frequently required on an extranet. As well, when a company wants to let users roam between multiple Web servers each of which houses confidential information -- without making them all SSL servers -- tunneling is the solution.

Simply put: SSL makes sense for the occassional transaction, whereas tunneling creates a virtual private network (VPN) -- a company-confidential WAN along the Internet, if you will.

What is tunneling? Technically, it is the process of putting one packet inside another, according to Bernard Aboba, senior program manager for routing at Microsoft Corp. Recalling that packets are the chunks of information into which all Internet messages get chopped, tunneling can be thought of as the act of encapsulating ordinary (non-secure) IP packets inside of encrypted (secure) IP packets.

It is sometimes more useful to think of tunneling in a less literal sense, namely, as a "tunnel" of privacy between two end-points connected by a public (non-secure) channel. This is often the Internet, but it could equally be the cellular telephone network. In a hide-in-plain-sight fashion, tunneling provides privacy by encrypting everything that goes into and comes out of a secure tunnel.

dvd tips

Beginners Guide to Buying DVD Media Tips for burning DVDs How to label your DVD/CD discs? What is media code? How to tell is you have a bad disc? What is printable DVD-R? How to print on inkjet printable DVD/CD discs? Tips To Become a Master DVD Ripper Blu Ray Discs The New DVDs Do Not Use Markers to Label CDs and DVDs

What DVD media our customers like the most? How to tell real or fake Taiyo Yuden DVD/CD? How To Quickly Fix Nagging DVD Drive Problems CD/DVD Master Preparation Tips DVD Burning Tips Which DVD media should I buy? DVD Media Quality FAQ

Boost Your Wireless Experience

Hawking Technologies'™ HAI7SIP, 2.4GHz Hi-Gain WiFi antenna boosts your wireless signal strength from 2dBi (standard power) to 7dBi.

cellphone GPS

if you depend on quickly finding your way in unfamiliar urban areas, perhaps multiple times a day, then such this ultra-portable navigation system from Sanyo and TelNav may be just what you are looking for.

jWire

Complete Guide to VoIP Services

Complete Guide to Wi-Fi Security

MIMO moves

Linksys WRT54GX4 Wireless-G Broadband Router with SRX400
Faster than a speeding bullet? Yes! And faster than 100Mbps Ethernet, too. This third-generation MIMO router will let you forget you're wireless.

Cottage industry

Regardless of your age…you’ll find the videotape memories you saved to quality DVD are worth their weight in gold.

Saving Your Past Memories…Converting VHS to DVD

"Open your .avi in GSpot. Make note of the dimensions of the movie (Aspect
Ratio). For my example, I'm converting Signs, which is 576x304 (1.89:1) [=36:19].
576x304 is the info. we need to know here to move on to the next step.- Now,
grab a piece of paper lol. A little bit of simple math in this step.- The orig.
avi file is 576x304, and DVD's (for some reason) only like 720x480, so after you
encode & burn the movie, it will be stretched out, unless we do something
about it.- We're going to change the dimensions of the movie.- Here are the
formula(e) to use: width ÷ 720 = A . In my case, that is 576 ÷ 720 = 0.8- Then:
height ÷ A . Which for me is 304 ÷ 0.8 = 380- Our new dimensions for the movie
are now 720x380- Good idea -> write down the new dimensions."

formula quote taken from videohelp.com
enjoy your perfectly converted AVI's on your set-top player in VCD or DVD format.note, I recommend Canopus Procoder 2 or MainConcept Mpeg encoder to do the actual AVI to Mpeg conversion for VCD. Programs like Nero Vision Express will do all the aspect ratio conversion for you if you're going to burn a DVD instead. TMpgEnc by Pegasys is a FREE mpeg encoder, and likely results in the best video quality due to its high tweakability (did i invented that word?), but it's a little more complex to get the hang of it. the other aforementioned progs are not freeware.

Pushing WiFi performance

You're going to be hearing more about QoS (Quality of Service) in the coming months. It seems that someone has realized that all the whizzy applications such as VoIP, online gaming with voice, web conferencing, etc. sometimes provide a less-than-satisfactory user experience with the puny upstream bandwidth eked out to us by most broadband ISPs.

Bluetooth beginnings

www.btdesigner.com is the world's first web site dedicated purely to the designers of Bluetooth wireless technology products.

FREE file and folder synchronization

Good Sync is FREE file and folder synchronization software for Windows.

This software uses an innovative synchronization algorithm to synchronize your data between desktop PCs, laptops, USB drives and more. Good Sync combines bulletproof reliability with an extremely easy-to-use interface.

Date yourself

This site has tons of arcade games from the 80's all available to play for free - no quarters required (Java is required to play the games), and no need to wear out your legs standing up at an arcade machine.

via nETgIRL

Security sunrise

The Associated Press reports that researchers at Berkeley have figured out how to eavesdrop as you hunt and peck and can translate with a startling 96% accuracy rate which letters correspond to the keystrokes a user makes.

Neat trick, huh?

USB Drive Boot Procedure

Boot Windows from a USB drive
Windows emergency booting for the 21st century!

via the Guardian blog

Packets switch again.

Yahoo Messenger users will also be able to rent one or more phone numbers from Yahoo to receive phone calls through the instant message (IM) interface, said Jeff Bonforte, the company's senior director of voice product management.

Calls made from within Yahoo Messenger to U.S.-based phone numbers will be priced at 1 cent per minute, while calls to 30 other countries with heavy telecommunications traffic in Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia will cost under 2 cents per minute, he said.

Calls can also be made to over 150 other countries, and rates vary, he said. The rates are based on where the call terminates, not where it originates, Bonforte said, so it would cost someone in, for example, Singapore or Brazil one cent per minute to call someone in the U.S.

To use this feature, which Yahoo calls "phone out," Yahoo Messenger users need to prepay for the calls in chunks of either $10 or $25, but the unused credit never expires, so a user could theoretically buy $10 worth of calls and take years to spend the amount, he said.

Yahoo Messenger has had PC-to-PC voice communications for years, and it has offered users a fee-based option to dial out to a phone number using the third-party Net2Phone service.

However, this voice capability is now being tightly integrated with Yahoo Messenger and will be threaded into various other Yahoo online services in the future, he said. Yahoo views voice communications not as an IM-specific feature but rather as an application that is becoming key to interacting online in general.

"This is just the beginning for Yahoo" in the voice space, Bonforte said.

Rates, Options Well Received

Users will be able to obtain one or more phone numbers for $2.99 monthly or $29.90 per year to receive calls from regular or mobile phones via their Yahoo Messenger interface. To start, only U.S., U.K. and French numbers will be available. However, Yahoo Messenger users worldwide can get U.S. or U.K. numbers, Bonforte said. So, for example, someone living in Germany who speaks often with people in San Francisco and New York, can get local numbers for those U.S. cities. French numbers are restricted to residents of that country, he said.

Yahoo hasn't yet announced when the new Yahoo Messenger version with these phone-out/phone-in capabilities will become available.