Backup your entire Hard Drive to a bootable Virtual Machine for $30.00 American

Most of the time I just make a backup of my data and if I have to rebuild my system or move to another system, I can get to a working state as long as I have that backup. However, there are times it would be desirable to make a complete backup of the Hard Drive and have it remain a bootable image either for a Virtual Machine or one that could be restored to a physical Hard Drive.

Winimage (http://www.winimage.com/winimage.htm), answers that need, for $30.00 you can make a complete working image of your Hard Drive. The resulting image can be either a VHD for booting under Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Virtual Server, or a VMDK which is compatible with VMware.

The product also offers all kinds of options for working with Disk images and ISOs. I have used it on and off for these purposes and it has always been a trustworthy solution.

Sony eBook Reader (PRS500) as a Podcast Player

I travel a lot, and my wife was kind enough to buy me a Sony PRS500 eBook reader, just because. I have to say that I really enjoy the device for reading ebooks from the Sony store or from Michael McCollum (http://www.scifi-az.com), but I also like to listen to Podcasts.

As it turns out the PRS500 will play MP3s and will accept up to a 2GB SD Card. I decided to install MyPodder from PodcastReady.com on the SD card and download some Podcasts. I placed the SD Card in my laptop to execute the software and then after all the Podcasts are downloaded, I placed the SD Card in my PRS500. It works exceeding well. I get great sound quality and even the gray shaded album art shows up nicely.

This especially pays off as I can now carry several large books and a Podcast player all in one small bundle.

There was just no interest in Ubuntu – Linux ignored

Excerpted from the article at ComputerWorld:

People shouldn’t read anything into the fact that of the three laptops set up for last week’s “PWN to OWN” hack challenge, the only one left standing was running Linux, said the security expert who oversaw the contest.

“There was just no interest in Ubuntu,” said Terri Forslof, manager of security response at 3Com Corp.’s TippingPoint subsidiary, which put up the cash prizes awarded at the contest last week at CanSecWest. “A contest such as this is not a measure of relative security between operating systems. It’s not an accurate barometer.”

- End Excerpt -

In fact none of the OS’s got hacked, it was via applications hosted on the machines. Personally I think many of the contestants were drooling over a MacBook Air and so it topped their list, after all they got to keep it once it was hacked.  In my opinion the contest also proves Leo Leoporte’s contention that Safari is not a secure browser when compared to Firefox or IE7. The tools are simply not present in the Mac world to do the level of security testing that is taking place on the Windows platform these days.

It is also pretty clear; there is more money and press to be had from hacking a Windows machine or Mac than hacking an Ubuntu desktop that has less market.

Get the whole story at ComputerWorld:

http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=security&articleId=9074102&taxonomyId=17&intsrc=kc_top

Free Software Pick: HoverSnap

If your still running Windows XP and need an excellent Screen Capture utility (that also happens to be free), check out HoverSnap from Design Technika ( http://hoverdesk.net)

It supports full screen, Window, or just a custom area. In fact it’s the Custom Area function that I like the best. You press CTRL + PrintScreen and bang! You get a cross hair to select a custom area. After selecting the area, HoverSnap automatically saves the capture as JPEG to a custom location with a custom header and time stamp. This is especially a nice feature if you are walking through a process and need to take screen shots of each step.

HoverSnap = Highly Recommended – 5 Stars!

Review: Motorola MOTOROKR S9 – A2DP Bluetooth Headphones

I decided that my life would be easier and I would enjoy my many conference calls better (Sound Isolation from the rest of the world), if I had Stereo Bluetooth Headset. So I ran down to the local RadioShack and purchased one of these.

I kinda like it, but I mostly don’t, in fact – I just can NOT recommend it. It has some good features:

• Supports acting as a standard Bluetooth headset
• Supports A2DP – Stereo playback for Bluetooth. (FYI – both devices the player / phone / whatever and the headset must support this for stereo to work)
• Can be paired with something like eight devices at once
• Recharges via mini USB adapter – very nice

But it’s the annoyances that bring it down and makes it in my opinion unusable:

• Don’t even bother wearing a collar with this thing. The back of it hits your collar constantly and is very annoying
• You can wear sunglasses with it, but it is not easy. You have to sort of fight with the sunglasses and the headset to get them on your ears
• Surprise surprise they don’t support stereo during a phone conversation. This is probably by design with the intention of preventing car accidents or something, but I would prefer it simply duplicate the mono signal on both speakers.
• Putting this thing on is a two handed operation. Don’t plan on being engaged in an activity (like say driving), that requires at least one hand and using the other hand to put these on. It will not happen.
• They are uncomfortable – try as I might to stretch them, change out the black rubber ear buds (It comes with a set of two – one small, one large), it was never comfortable.

Bottom line, don’t buy them and let me know if you come up with anything that is comfortable and works well.

Cool feature of Windows Media Player 11

1. Launch Windows Player 11
2. Press CTRL + 2
3. You get a miniature control window that fades out:

You can keep working, roll cursor over it and make changes.

Make sure to set Windows Media Player to always stay on top:

In full screen mode (CTRL + 1), right click the action menu | Tools | Options Player | Keep the Player on top of other windows

Sprint EVDO Rev A from Phoenix, AZ

Now I just need to get a CradlePoint and share the connection via WIFI !

http://www.amazon.com/Cradlepoint-Technology-PHS300-Personal-HotSpot/dp/B001212ELY/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1207177622&sr=8-2

Geek Jewelry gone bad

My wife just shared this link with me:

http://www.badalijewelry.com/geektags.htm

This for the mere sum of $19.95 can be yours.

Of course I explained to my wife, that a quick trip to Wal-Mart and the automated tag machine would eliminate the need to involve any humans in the production of something oh so crappy. And much more cost effective.

No, she never had intentions on buying it. No animals have been harmed in the production of this article. My apologies to anyone whose eyes may be hurting…

P.S. I did suggest the following as an alternate which I personally felt was fore more functional, if not elegant:

 

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5692938

 

Windows Vista SP1 rocks the house

 

Vista gets a lot of bad press, but much of it is underserved. Vista is a good OS that’s more than a light revision of the previous XP OS.

Lets take a step back and look at the history – Windows95 was a radical change from Windows 3.1 and therefore had a lot of headaches associated with its adoption, including the need for more memory and better hardware. Neither Windows98 or the forsaken WindowsME had nearly the headaches or issues associated with it. I know we can argue about WindowsME, but let’s leave that conversation to another time.

Then came Windows 2000 Workstation, most home users did not adapt it. It was largely ignored by the home user, and only when XP came along was a true 32bit OS adapted by many home users, and at that point the hardware was there to support it. I would also argue that XP pre SP2 was largely a logical revision of Windows 2000 and not nearly the radical change that occurred between say Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, or between Windows 9x and Windows 2000. That said why are we so surprised that Windows Vista, which has a lot of changes, moves the cheese and forces us to scramble a bit?

I have become a full Windows Vista convert, especially post SP1. Why might you ask?

I installed a copy of Windows Vista on my teenage son’s computer with no anti-virus and no parental controls. I instructed him to say no to prompts from the UAC (User Access Control). After one month of using it – it had ZERO viruses or malware. I can tell you that XP would fall in much less time, even when using an alternate web browser. My wife and I reviewed his surfing habits and decided it was time to turn on parental controls and install AVG antivirus, which we did. Everything remains secure.

In addition, I have installed SP1 on another machine and on my wife’s laptop. It has improved response time and resolved some minor niggling issues. I love it.

Things to love about Vista?

• Reliability and Performance Monitor – I was able to quickly determine that my wife’s Vista laptop needed more RAM. She was getting Hard Page Faults. This is a great diagnostic tool.
• User Access Control – I know people love to hate it, but it makes Vista much more secure, and frankly all modern OSes have this… so get use to it.
• Stack Randomization – so stack over flow issues are much harder, If not impossible to execute
• The snipping tool! Love it for capturing images from the screen…
• Pushing many of the drivers out of Ring 0 in the kernel into user mode. (This means that many drives cannot crash the Kernel)
• The search bar built into the Start Menu works great – Its easy to locate apps, and docs
• Document Preview in Windows Explorer
• Windows Meeting Space – Maybe – I have yet to use it, but it looks cool… J
• Windows Mobility Center – Awesome for adjusting things such as video output for

Things I hate about Vista?

• Who decided to rename Add/Remove programs in Control Panel? Uggh!
• What was wrong with the old UI for screen resolution, background, and screen saver?
• Note: Please Microsoft, don’t change things for the simple sake of changing things…
• Windows Mobile Device Center – I had better luck with ActiveSync, but this seems to not be the case for many

OK – fire away, I am ready.

Whats long long overdue for Windows Mobile?

A decent web browser.  If Microsoft hopes to ever compete with the iPhone this was long overdue:

Excerpt:

Updated Internet Explorer Mobile Brings the Quality of Desktop Web Browsing to Phones

The new version of Internet Explorer Mobile adds the ability to easily view full-screen Web pages and multimedia on the Web with a smartphone. By taking advantage of Internet Explorer 6 technologies and supporting established and upcoming industry standards such as H.264, Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, the updated Internet Explorer Mobile gives people a rich mobile Internet experience. The update will be available to mobile phone partners in the third quarter of 2008, with the first Windows Mobile phones using the new version expected to be available by the end of 2008.

Get the full details:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/apr08/04-01WM61PR.mspx?rss_fdn=Press%20Releases