Newbie Computing: What to Do When Somethings Wrong with Your PC

You can’t always rely on those technical support guys because sometimes taking your PC to a computer store is just too much trouble. Remember these tips and reminders so that you’ll never have to depend on boys when your PC is having system errors.

Ask about the warranty. The standard warranty for a unit is one year. Make sure you clarify this information with your salesperson before finalizing your purchase. If you can save up on your PC maintenance, you can use the money for new shoes!

Keep your original installers and drivers. Don’ throw them away after you have installed these programs on your PC. You might need them when your PC crashes unexpectedly. This way you don’t have to buy new installer CDs or borrow from someone else.

Log on to updates of your software packages and check out the fixes online. There are free updates and fixes you can get from the internet which you can use to keep your programs up-to-date.

Prepare for sudden electrical spikes. It happens. Right in the middle of your computing, electricity goes bye-bye and you lose what you were just working on. To avoid this very likely circumstance, buy a UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) so that you can still properly shut down after saving your files.

Have a PC place. Keep your PC in a particular space in the house where it is safe — away from the dangers of food and drink spills or rain showers or kids’ clumsiness.

When a problem is really a problem. Don’t go tinkering with the hardware if you’re not sure what to do with it. Instead of risking damage and functionality, have your PC checked by a technical person.

Don’t download or visit unknown and suspicious sites. The possibilities of information you can find on the net can bring harm of your system. In the process of surfing through suspicious sites, viruses and harmful programs can penetrate your system in a split second. Take time to visit trusted anti-virus sites to read their updates on the newest threats.

We rode-test the latest fitness gadgets. Hi-tech body blitzers

By Hannah Ebelthite, 30/05/2029

Reckon the only way to get healthy and honed involves sweaty exercise classes, smelly changing rooms and, well, pain? Research has found that 60 per cent of people give up their regular gym routine six months after joining, but don't worry, a host of new fitness gadgets claim to tone and trim without you hitting the treadmill.

And, says personal trainer Stuart Amory, they can give good results. "These gadgets are a fun way to get active without it feeling like a chore," he says. Some are wacky, some are weird, but all promise to banish wobbles. We put them to the test...

If you want: A FLAT STOMACH

Try: The Flexi-bar, a 5ft-long, weighted fibreglass stick that you hold in the middle and wobble while you exercise. It uses the same concept as the Power Plate - the wobbling creates vibrations that work your deep core muscles.

Our tester: "I used it at home and followed the videos on the Flexi-bar website," says Lydia Sanchez, 34, a jewellery maker from Hertfordshire. "It felt weird, but it was easy and I saw the results within a few weeks. My abs and arms are much more toned and my back is stronger."

Our expert: "A brilliant addition to any workout,' says Dean Hodgkin, fitness expert at Ragdale Hall Health Hydro (Ragdalehall.co.uk). "Any exercise you do while holding the bar is more effective. It's great for core strength, toned arms and shoulders and fab abs."

Where can I get one? The Flexi-bar costs £69.99, including two workout DVDs. Visit Flexi-bar.co.uk. 9/10

If you want: TONED LEGS

Try: FitFlops - the 'flip-flop with the gym built in'. They claim to improve your posture, and tone your legs and bum while you walk.

Our tester: "My legs feel the workout but they never ache," says Kate Adams, 34, a digital publisher from Dorset. "I wore the FitFlops for three months and I've seen an improvement in my cellulite."

Our expert: "They put your feet in the best position for walking and improve posture," says Kathryn Harrold, a podiatrist at Shuropody. "They're no substitute for a proper workout, but I can see how they'd improve muscle tone."

Where can I get some? FitFlops cost from £36. Visit Fitflop.com. 9/10

If you want: A PERT BUM

Try: Lipo Contour Elite. The makers claim these skin-tight leggings help cellulite and excess inches melt away, using the principles of massage, heat and pressure.

Our tester: "I've worn them for four hours a day and lost over an inch from my bum and hips and two from my waist," says Polly Devenish, 31, a full-time mum from Woking

Our expert: "These are just a pressure garment," says plastic surgeon Fazel Fatah. "They're a great quick fix, but any drop in size will be temporary."

Where can I get some? Lipo Contour Elite shorts cost £79.95. Visit Lipocontour.co.uk. 5/10

If you want: AN ALL-OVER WORKOUT

Try: EA Active Personal Trainer for Wii. This new game promises a 'personal trainer in a box'. You use the console controls and a resistance band, plus there's tips and support on screen.

Our celebrity tester: "This is great fun and doesn't take two hours out of my day like going to the gym," says singer Alesha Dixon, 30. "I can do 20 minutes in the morning and evening. It's a brilliant way to motivate yourself."

Our expert: "Games consoles are great if you have kids or are too body-conscious for the gym," says personal trainer Stuart Amory.

Where can I get one? EA Active Personal Trainer for Wii costs £44.99. Visit Eagames.co.uk. 8/10

If you want: THIGHS OF STEEL

Try: The iJoyride, a mechanical horse that works your core muscles in the same way as horse-riding does. Use the machine for 15 minutes twice a day and you'll burn up to 200 calories, strengthen, tone and shape your stomach, thighs and buttocks. In eight weeks you could drop a dress size.

Our tester: "The machine has different speeds so you can trot, canter or gallop," says Brigit Grant, 38, a writer from London. "I felt daft riding a bucking bronco in my bedroom, but the thigh-grip required to stay on was intense and the more I leant back, the more my stomach muscles and thighs tightened. After having my baby two years ago, I haven't worn low-slung jeans, but after two weeks, my nightly iJoyride in front of EastEnders has reduced my overhang."

Our expert: "It takes a surprising amount of energy for your body to maintain stability, so this is good for calorie burning," explains fitness coach Mark Bailey. "It constantly moves your centre of gravity so you need to use energy to keep yourself stable."

Where can I get one? The iJoyride costs £399 from Ijoyride.co.uk or call 020 7788 6668. 6/10

A Few Tips on Reformatting Your PC

Yesterday I faced the daunting task of cleaning out my PC. And there’s nothing like a freshly reformatted OS drive and a newly installed OS (with a clean and neat registry) to boost its speed back to like it was brand new. I’ve done the process so many times already that it feels like it’s muscle memory. As I was going about the task, I was going through a mental checklist on what I was doing. Anyway, I’d like to share it with you.

• Remember where you put your OS’ Product Key (Hint: If it’s a Windows PC, there’s a sticker on your CPU case).
• Take note of what’s relevantly installed in your PC.
• Backup all your documents, profiles, and bookmarks to another drive, partition other than the OS, or best, back them up to an external device/burn them on CDs/DVDs.
• Get hold of all your driver installer CDs and installer CDs/DVDs of your needed apps. If you’re afraid you lost them, better use this to back up your drivers.
• Set the BIOS settings to boot from the CD/DVD on higher priority than the hard drive. Booting from a Windows XP installer CD would bypass the OS currently installed in your PC and straight to the installation process.
• Format your hard drive partition where you’ll be putting your OS. Remember to use the file system that your PC has been running on just to be safe.
• Set-up the user account for your OS. Take not of the administrator passwords you put in.
• If your installer CD doesn’t come with integrated service packs, install the service packs manually.
• Install your motherboard’s device drivers.
• Install your video and sound device drivers.
• Install all the other peripheral drivers.
• Install a firewall.
• Install your Anti-virus.
• Install all your other apps.
• Run updates.

This process mostly works for a Windows XP PC. For some other articles on generally handling PC reformatting .

I’m proudly writing this through an Ubuntu partition by the way. If you’re planning to make a dual-boot Windows-Linux PC, read this. For installing Ubuntu, read this.

Australia: the man who boxed a kangaroo is lynched on the web

The fight between a kangaroo and an Australian, won by the latter, divides the web. Some believe that man has purposely hit the animal while others view it as a "savior".

You've probably seen pass on your Facebook newsfeed or received in your mailbox. Broadcast December 4 on YouTube, the video (below) showing a young man to a straight right to the face of a kangaroo to release his dog, has been viewed over 34 million times in a more 'one week. The scene, filmed close to the town of Condobolin, in the state of New South Wales (South Australia) had ended on this note, leaving behind a few kangaroo little disoriented but not injured.

While many users have placed the author of Greig Tonkins punch a hero, some animal rights associations have decried. This is the case of Australia PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), which wants the Australian will be prosecuted. "Hitting a kangaroo face is neither funny nor courageous. It is illegal, as the harassment of wild animals by dogs, " wrote the association on Facebook , before continuing:" Not only is this man assaulted a kangaroo, but he has endangered his dogs using them to hunt. "

A hunt for their sick friend

Behind this comment, hides in fact the cause of the fight scene. Greig Tonkins and some friends had organized last June a battered boar to make the last wish of Kailem Barwick, their friend with a terminal cancer, who died on 1 st December. At that moment, when he saw the altercation between the two animals, Greig Tonkins intervened to prevent them from getting hurt. "The blow stopped the kangaroo and left him dazed, giving the dog owner and the animal time to escape facing this large wild animal. [...] We laughed at the absurdity of this situation and how it was unfortunate for the dog and the kangaroo, " explained the author of the video which reacted to charges laid against his friend.

This justification has not convinced everyone. The Australian presenter David Campbell called the dismissal of Tonkins Greig, who works as a guard at Taronga Western Plains Zoo. "He knows he is filmed. Once the dog is released, his first reaction is not to escape but to face the animal and hit it, "he said. On Facebook , the zoo's management defended its employee, "We do not condone violence against an animal, or some circumstances but we want to thank all those who gave their support to Mr Tonkins and confirm that we have no l intention to dismiss him. He is a passionate guardian and a valued member of our team for six years. " 

Web Raid: Create Face Sketches

Here’s another site to pass the time. Just visit this site - Ultimate Flash Face. It’s a Flash-based face sketch site where you can just mix and match preset parts of faces (hair, head, brows, eyes, nose, lips, jaw, and facial hair). It allows you to tweak the scales for a custom fit. Voila, instant realistic sketch. Great for those who aren’t good enough at realistic sketching.

Well, the result looks like a police sketch. Come to think of it, it works just like police sketch software. So that may even be a practical application for this amazing application.

Here’s one I just doodled (no, it’s not my face).

How to Choose Matching Colors (Plus a Mac OS X Widget)

Not all of us may be gifted with that artistic sense. Choosing colors is an art but at least for us art commoners, we can approach it as a science. Knowing what colors go well together goes a long way - choosing paint for your house, picking wallpaper and accents, even with designing your website. Choosing colors that match would at least make things look a bit better, even if you’re not a certified art ace.

If you never paid attention to art appreciation/theory classes (if you ever had any), then this web-based tool is just for you. Color Jack: Sphere is a tool that lets you choose matching colors based on different color schemes. You can choose from schemes like analogous, complementary, split-complementary, triadic, up to six-tone schemes. You can manually pick the colors and the color wheel will adjust automatically for you choosing the best colors for your scheme.

What makes this tool just even better, is that you can choose settings fordifferent types of color blindness. More plus points for letting you choose from the normal spectrum to web-safe colors.

Now from better to best - it lets you export your generated scheme to differentswatches applications like Photoshop or Illustrator.

Visit Color Jack: Sphere here.

It’s also a downloadable widget for Mac OS X! Great for designers. I recommended this to two artist friends of mine and it’s become staples to their dashboard.

Download the widget here.

PS: Another site, ColorBlender offers much of the same except that it doesn’t recommend schemes for color blindness (Accessibility is the thing today!) . You might want to visit ColorBlender if you want a tool that matches for Pantone colors.

Windows Tip: Read Text E-books Like a Real Book

Project Gutenberg has helped a great many of us obtain open domain texts. Practically free books online (some priced at $20 in print, take five books and that’s a good hundred bucks). But reading plain text can be really a bore.

Here’s yet another good freeware that lets you read those plain text e-books book style - eTextReader. It allows you to read text files, Project Gutenberg ZIP files, RTF and HTML e-books. For a more customized feel, it also allows you to change the font and size, change the font and background color. You can even set set bookmarks and margins. It also comes with a search feature.

What’s also really great about it is that it needs no installation. Just download and you’re good to go. Perfect to kept in a USB thumb drive along with your e-books on the go.

Tech News: Corel Releases WordPerfect Lightning Beta… Free

Yet another turn in office productivity suites. Corel’s long-running word processor (which has long been overshadowed by Microsoft Word in terms of popularity) meets a milestone in its release of WordPerfect Lightning Beta.

WordPerfect Beta Lighting offers built-in access to online services which includes collaboration and storage that free users from browser dependence. It offers to be the middle way between Google’s online dependence and Microsoft’s desktop dependence.

WordPerfect Lightning is made up of four major components:

Navigator is an Explorer type interface where you can arrange information.

Viewer is a document-reading tool that can view files in Word, PDF, and WordPerfect formats.

Lightning Notes is a “lite” word processor that can handle text and images. It can also be used note-taking .

Connector is a suite of Web-based applications for collaboration - e-mail, calendars, address books, and file storage.

How to Convert Animated GIF Files to AVI (Yes, That Includes Your Pivot Stickfigure Animator GIFs Too!)

Here’s a valid question from a reader. I previously posted the freeware Pivot Stickfigure Animator and and he asks:

“How do you put your Pivot videos on YouTube? Whenever I try it says invalid format. I want to put it on.”

To answer that, first of all, Pivot Stickfigure Animator can only save animation as an animated GIF its native file format, PIV. Both of which are will not be accepted by YouTube. But here’s a work around to do it - you have to convert the animated GIF to a valid video format like AVI.

Now there are a lot of GIF to video file converters out there but I personally use this one - Beneton Movie GIF. It’s not exactly a file converter since it’s an animation tool all by itself but a simple workaround using it can work.

Here’s how:

Save your Pivot Stickfigure Animation as an animated GIF.

Load your GIF sequence into Beneton Movie GIF

Export it as an AVI file

Voila! Now you can upload the video to YouTube.

Word of warning though, exporting your Pivot file to GIF makes it lose quality so you have to consider that.

Firefox Tip: Add Beefy Security with NoScript

Malicious websites and hackers exploit the browser’s capability of running apps and scripts like Java, Javascript and other executables to wreck havoc on your computer.

Here’s a helpful Firefox add-on to help you stop malicious scripts from running -NoScript. It allows you to filter from which trusted sources your browser will allow to run scripts (mostly for those concerning transactions like payment and banking services).

Now novice users might wonder what scripts are for so better read the FAQ before using it. But it’s perfect for intermediate and advanced users.

Download: Create Quick Funny Pictures with Distortit

Sometimes some good clean fun can be made with your own pictures and a photo editing software. Now this one’s more than a toy rather than anything else - Distortit.

It’s pretty much similar to the sphere effect in Photoshop where a section of the photo’s magnified, creating a “bulging” effect.

It functions from a stand-alone EXE file so there’s no need for installation processes that might leave garbage in your PC’s registry.

Not much features but it’s a small freeware tool that could have you amused for a short while. It works with Windows 98 to XP.

Download: Teach Kids Art with Tux Paint

Kids and computers go well with each other nowadays. And many software are really designed for them featuring kid-friendly intuitive interfaces complete with bulging buttons. Anyway, here’s a paint tool that’s designed for kids - Tux Paint.

It’s got enough features to keep kids interested ages 3 and up. It has paint effects, bucket filling, text, shapes, rubber stamp, and kids can even undo (best for kids who can get frustrated real easy).

It’s even available in different languages, and platforms (Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X).

Let’s face it, MS Paint is such a bore and GIMP and Photoshop are a bit complex for a kid to use.

How to Start a Podcast (Hardware and Software)

I’m not really a sound engineering but I like audio. I did a few mixes myself and done some voice acting. I still play the guitar when I can. And if there’s one thing that I’ve learned from all of that, talent is one thing, but equipment counts. I’ve done some personal recordings using a cheap headset microphone and as a novice, found them okay. But as soon as I got to try out pro audio stuff, I realized that quality doesn’t come cheap.

And for aspiring podcasters, you really have to invest on some equipment if you want to have a quality cast, not one filled with hisses and pops and varying volume levels. So here are my takes on a starter set-up (emphasis on “starter”).

Hardware

Given that you have a computer which has a sound card with a line-in jack or a PC with USB ports, all you need to add are some other hardware, particularly a microphone setup. I hope I wouldn’t be too technical with what I’ll be writing. And here are my picks:

• Microphone - There are two types of microphone in the market today. Recording studios mostly have condenser microphones which uses a capacitor. They have a very broad range and can really capture the softest of sounds. It also uses a heap of juice. Most of the microphones we have (including desktop mics) are dynamic microphones. These use magnetic fields to capture sound. They’re a lot cheaper than condensers.
  Now there are a lot of mics out there but you may want to try a dynamic microphone. One brand, Shure, is a trusted one for pro audio. They’ve got theSM58 to get you started.
• Pop Filter - Yes, the English language aspirates the “p”s as an initial sound. The effect? They pop in recordings because of the gush of air. To combat that, you might need a pop filter. OnScreen has some good ones. Or you can even build your own.
• Mixers - Mixers get your sound levels right even before reaching you computer. Now this maybe the most expensive piece in the set-up. Some people try to skip this and do the tweaks post-recording, but believe me, mixers make a big difference.
  Now everyone’s been hyping on Behringer mixers and for good reason. They’re quite great for the value (it’s cheaper!). And if . I recommend either the UB802.
  You have an assortment of inputs going to your computer. The most typical would be to connect to your line-in. But many mixers today now have USB or firewire connectivity. I suggest getting the USB.
• Headset - You may have great speakers but nothing beats getting to hear details better than a good headset. Now Sennheiser have a great range of headphones for you. You can try out ones listed under home entertainment, they work quite well for simple editing. Behringer’s got some good ones too.
• Packages - Heck what’s the point me writing a lengthy piece if you can get it out of the box right? Anyway, assembly’s one thing that I believe any novice should experience. If you want to get started right away, some pro audio manufacturers bundle everything for you. Behringer has some starter sets that include the mixer, mic, headset and input control.

Software

Now with the hardware settled, we now go into software:

• Editing - Hands down I’ll put in Audacity which has versions for both Mac and Windows. It’s free (better than paying for Sony Sound Forge or Adobe Audition) and it does the job. It records, it cuts, copies, splices… For a list of complete features click here.
• Instant Audio Tweaks - This one I got from Blogging Pro - The Levelator. It effectively evens out audio levels within a file by having a compressor, normalizer or limiter within it.
If anyone can suggest a better set-up pray do tell!
Thanks to the Blogging Pro for some of the ideas.

Firefox Quick Tip: Fix URL Typos

We’re all victims of URL typos. We wonder why we reached a DNS server search page even if we darn well know Google virtually doesn’t have a downtime. Then we look at the URL we typed and lo and behold it’s “google.con”

And our friendly Firefox extensions have just the right tool for such a problem. Here’s URL Fixer - a small add-on that really fixes your misspelled URL. It checks for the common .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov, and .mil, even the protocol syntax (http:, https:). It will also correct errors in country code top-level domains such as .com.XX or .net.XX. Auto-correction can be set by right-clicking on the address bar. Or it can be set to just flag you with a warning.

One con though - it doesn’t have it’s own options tab. You need to access in-depth configuration and set the options manually. Just changeextensions.checkCompatibility either to true or false to set it.

Discover Music with Pandora and the Music Genome Project

Now this is a way to discover music the Web 2.0 way. Pandora is an online music service that’s developed by a group of musicians (who knows better about music than musicians themselves) launched earlier this year. Many are saying that it is the best way to find music over the Web and the Net without supporting piracy.

Here’s what Pandora have to say about themselves:

Pandora™ is the doorway to this vast trove of musical information. With Pandora you can explore to your heart’s content. Just drop the name of one of your favorite songs or artists into Pandora and let the Genome Project go. It will quickly scan its entire world of analyzed music, almost a century of popular recordings - new and old, well known and completely obscure - to find songs with interesting musical similarities to your choice. Then sit back and enjoy as it creates a listening experience full of current and soon-to-be favorite songs for you.

All you need here is a decent computer and a broadband connection. Sign up with the service and you can then search for artists and listen a la Internet radio. It displays information about the track and the artist. It also intuitively searches for artists from the similar genre to fit your profile.

So far I’ve been trying a few of these services including Last.fm and Pandora seems to show a bit more promise since I don’t have to stream my own data to build my own profile.

YouTube Might Bring the Web to Its Knees +Happy Tree Friends - Ultimate Holiday Marathon

News flash! To those who think that broadcast quality TV can be done online right now, you might be mistaken. Internet companies have said that they’ve been doing much work just to keep the data flowing from video sites likeYouTube and Joost.

Google, who has acquired YouTube last year has said that the Net (including Google infrastructure) is not built to support streaming of broadcast quality media. Google, with a group of cable TV operators have issued this warning.

While most cable operators, are fearing that the web will take away their base with the abundance of video streaming sites. Google eased their fears by sharing that the large amount of data being transferred for broadcast puts a strain on the global network.

Here’s another interesting quip:

Research firm Gartner Inc. estimates that 60% of the Internet traffic that is uploaded from computers is peer-to-peer traffic, mostly from consumers swapping films and TV shows through select user groups and BitTorrent Inc.

Windows Tips: How to Find Out Exactly What’s in My Computer

Every computer owner should know what’s in their computer like the back of their own hand. But for most of us, we are a bit scared tinkering . But if you’ve ever encountered some of those snotty tech support people who would just make you feel so inadequate with talk like “Do you know what version your GPU’s drivers are? Better check what version they are and we’ll see if they’re compatible with your DirectX version so better check that too.”

If you’re just the average computer user who won’t even dare open your PC’s casing, then here’s another utility that checks what’s in your computer fromhardware to software to OS to device drivers all in a click of a button.

WinAudit gives you a complete scan of your computer and gives you a detailed report of every nook and cranny in your system. You can select which information will be contained in the report. you can also set what format it’d be saved as from a designed web page, to plain text, or even a PDF file!

What’s also great about WinAudit (aside from it’s free!) is that it’s a stand-alone EXE file that you can run even from a thumb drive or memory stick.

It’s built for Windows 95 to Windows XP.

Best Freeware List

Lifehacker pointed out a freeware list, and in the comments of the site that they point out, there is a link to Neowin’s Freeware list which has some updates, and so that is the one I am going to recommend to you all now. Check out Neowin’s Freeware list if you are looking for free alternatives to your favorite programs.

Now, looking at the list, you are probably feeling swamped with choices, and so I am going to throw out my recommendations from most of the categories in the list. Feel free to try out the ones I list, or any of the ones in Neowin’s Freeware list, as they are all great pieces of free software.

3D Graphics - Blender
Anti-Virus - AVG
Anti Spyware - Microsoft AntiSpyware
Audio Players - Winamp
Audio Tools - Audacity
Compression / Decompression - 7-zip
Desktop Enhancements - Konfabulator
Download managers - LeechGet
FTP Clients - SmartFTP
FTP Servers FileZilla
Image viewers - Irfanview
Instant Messengers - Google Talk
Internet Explorer Front-Ends - Avantbrowser
Mail programs - Thunderbird
Network Tools - WinSCP
Office Suite - OpenOffice.org
Programming - Crimson Editor
Pop-up Blockers - Google Toolbar
Video codecs - XviD
Video players - BsPlayer
Video tools - TMPGEnc
Web browsers - Firefox

How to Backup and Restore Your Windows Drivers

For every person who knows and actually does computer maintenance,reformatting your hard drive and reinstalling Windows is probably one of the most tedious tasks. Advanced users would probably have a spare or external hard drive which contains an exact replica of the fresh operating system hard drive that can be “ghosted” every time the PC needs reformatting.

But for the rest of the average computer users, reformatting your PC would mean looking for all of those CDs containing your device drivers. And by experience I know these would be a lot! And, the occasional misplaced CDs to boot!

But fret not, here’s another cool freeware that lets you backup all your device drivers before your scheduled reformatting - DriverMax. DriverMax scraps the need to search for all of those drivers. With a DriverMax backup, you can just keep one CD or ZIP file containing all the important drivers that you’ll be needing. It also lets you select which drivers to backup using filters so you can ignore the otherwise old drivers that are left in your PC.

It’s freeware with a request for free registration after 30 days. It works for Windows XP. You can download DriverMax here.

Firefox Quick Tip: Control Image Resizing

For those of you who have been using Firefox for some time now, you might have seen this behavior from Firefox. This usually happens when you open a link to an image file. When the image is too large to fit the Firefox browser display, itautomatically shrinks the image to fit your window. You only have an option to zoom in to the image’s real size.

Here’s a way to control this:

1. Bring up your about:config page. If you still don’t know how, read how to do in-depth configuration.
2. In the “Filter” field type browser.enable_automatic_image_resizing
3. As you see, it’s a boolean type so double-click it to change its value tofalse
4. Close the about:config editor. The changes take effect immediately