December 1, 2007

Lifehacker has published a two-part article on everything you need to know to start using your new digital SLR camera effectively. Among the lessons are the proper use of the flash, which ISO mode to use and when, maintaining proper white balance, controlling shutter speed and aperture size, composition, and the proper use of priority modes.

October 17, 2006

YourCreditAdvisor just published an excellent guide to preventing identity theft from happening to you. The guide details which information can be given out freely, which information has medium sensitivity, and which information has high sensitivity. In addition there are many useful tips for preventing your personal information from falling into the wrong hands.

October 16, 2006

Softpedia has published a review of the three most popular free anti-virus software packages for Windows. They include Avira's AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic 7, Grisoft's AVG Free Edition 7, and Avast! Home Edition 4.7. The review features dozens of screenshots depicting all the functions of each software package.

August 19, 2005

O'Reilly Digital Media has published a instructional guide on building a MythTV digital video recorder system using off-the-shelf PC parts, Linux, and the MythTV open source software.

August 6, 2005

MacDevCenter has published an informative guide to using the Flickr online photo management and sharing service. Find out how to create an account, upload photos, categorize groups of photos, and use the Flickr API to build cool web applications.

August 6, 2005

O'Reilly Network has published an article that takes a close look at the Skype VOIP platform. For those who don't know, Skype allows you to make free telephone calls over the Internet. The article explains how Skype works, looks at many of the extra features like SkypeIn, SkypeOut, and Skype Voicemail, and details some of the limitations of Skype.

August 6, 2005

O'Reilly Digital Media has published an informative article explaining how to get started with Vlogging, or video blogging. The article goes over the basic steps, including creating a video, posting a video, and syndicating a video.

June 19, 2005

ONLamp has published an article showing how to use replication to perform a clean backup of a running MySQL database without having to bring the database server down. This is done by setting up a separate server as a replica and then once a day turning replication off to make a clean backup. After the backup, replication is restarted and replica automatically synchronizes with the master in order to obtain any changes. This article gives you the commands and scripts to get this working quickly and easily.

June 15, 2005

WindowsDevCenter has published an article explaining how to use the new version of MSN Toolbar to enable tabbed browsing in Internet Explorer 6. This is a great option for IE users while they wait for IE 7 to be released.

June 13, 2005

PC World has published an article with 30 things you didn't know you could do on the Internet, containing many tips and tricks that will help you solve problems and save time. These include the Wayback Machine, GoogleX, PubSub, Streamload, Mail2Web, ManiaTV, Kayak.com, Sharpmail anonymous e-mail, Bubbler, the Tech Support Guy, the Constant Contact e-mail newsletter service, GoToMeeting, the Where's George money tracker, CafePress custom printed items, RemindMe.com, self-publishing on demand from Lulu.com, Konfabulator, and many more.

June 11, 2005

An article over at Informit.com explains how to use Linux Virtual Server (LVS) for load balancing web, e-mail, and streaming media traffic. Using LVS, you can scale your web site using a cluster of servers using network load balancing. LVS is the free alternative to paying tens of thousands of dollars for a commercial solution like Cisco's LocalDirector. Another advantage of LVS is that, unlike Microsoft network load balancing clusters, LVS allows you to add nodes running any operating system, not just Windows.

June 11, 2005

Informit.com has published an article explaining how you too can become an Internet radio broadcaster using the free Winamp software and the free SHOUTcast service. With this combination, you can easily broadcast a mixture of live audio and MP3 playlists to listeners all over the world.

June 9, 2005

PC World has published an article containing dozens of TiVo tips and tricks, some well known, others not so well known. These include a number of navigation shortcuts, advanced commercial skipping, sorting of recorded shows, sound system control, adding unlisted channels, enhanced TiVoToGo functionality, replacing the internal hard drive with one that is larger, and many more. The article also contains links to a number of TiVo enthusiast sites, which contain even more TiVo tips and tricks.

June 6, 2005

The Register and Gizmodo have published instructions on how to change Windows XP Home to Windows XP Pro just by editing two bytes on the installation CD. You don't get all the functionality, but you do get useful things like Remote Desktop, User Management and enhanced security features. Also, you cannot install Service Pack 2 after the installation, although it might be possible to merge SP2 into the installation CD. This seems like a nice hack, but don't be surprised if one day Microsoft sends you a nasty Windows Update as a reward for attempting such a stunt.

June 4, 2005

Informit.com takes a look at Goal Oriented Retirement Planning (GORP), a straightforward technique for planning and saving for your retirement. GORP breaks down the complex process of retirement planning into small simple digestible steps. The five major steps are: commit to the process, collect information, develop a plan, implement the plan, monitor and update the plan.

May 25, 2005

MacDevCenter has published an article looking closely at the Spotlight search technology in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. This article looks at how Spotlight works, the role of metadata, ways that Spotlight can make your life easier, considerations when saving documents, integration with Safari bookmarks, advanced searching in Finder, using Smart Folders, adding Spotlight comments, privacy issues with Spotlight, and much more.

May 23, 2005

Informit.com has published a very useful introduction to broadcasting video over the web. The article looks at various requirements and methods for successful web broadcasting. Among the different formats discussed are Microsoft's Windows Media, Apple's QuickTime, Macromedia's Flash Video, and RealNetworks' RealVideo.

May 21, 2005

MacDevCenter has published a three-part article showing you how to get useful things done in the Terminal application of Mac OS X Tiger. For Mac users not familiar with Unix shell commands, this article is a great introduction to getting behind the scenes of Mac OS X.

May 21, 2005

Informit.com has published a very informative article explaining RSS in great detail. Learn how to use RSS aggregators, see how an RSS feed is constructed using XML, and learn to create RSS feeds from your own web applications. In addition, the article explains the differences between the various versions of RSS like RSS 0.91, RSS 0.92, RSS 1.0, and RSS 2.0.

May 18, 2005

WindowsDevCenter has published an article on boosting the performance of Windows XP. Tips include adding RAM, disabling transitions and fades, optimizing your hard drive, removing spyware and adware, disabling unnecessary services, tuning your pagefile, optimizing NTFS performance, and more.