Have you had problems playing .wmv Windows Media video files, or AVI’s after upgrading to Ubunty 9.04 Jaunty? I sure did, and you know I never had these problems before the upgrade at all. Totem would crash immediately on opening a video file, it would just close down unexpectedly. Come to think of it, it wouldn’t play mp3 audio either (but would stay open). I had the same problem playing Windows video and AVI files in VLC and mplayer as well – all video players on my system. Reintstalling the restricted repository W32 Windows Media codecs did absolutely nothing. My problem was with my Toshiba Satellite P105-S6167 laptop.

The good news is – I found a fix! Turns out the problem is with the Intel video driver that got updated in the Jaunty update. All you have to do is follow the instructions in the Reverting the Jaunty Intel Xorg video driver instructions (like I did) and everything will work again – NP at all! Thanks Ubuntu Wiki!

Hack a Palm Pre Wifi hot spot router?  Yes!

Remember back when the Palm Pre debuted at CES and one of the major announced features was the ability to tether via USB cable or Bluetooth?  Well a few weeks before the Pre came out sprint quietly removed the feature from the website and no reason was given.  Well as they say “if there is a will, there is a way” and the almighty Palm Pre community has given its rebuttal to sprints actions and boy is it a big one.    So here is the most recent way to turn your palm pre into a “MiFi Hot Spot”.

First you have to make a decision that is going to affect your wallet.  If you so choose (although it isn’t required to complete the hack) you can pay a ten dollar donation fee and get an automatic 2.0 installer to complete everything for you.  If you’re tight on cash, (what has two thumbs and hates to spend money? This Guy.), then you can download the manual 1.5 version and do everything the old fashioned way.  In this tutorial I will be doing the free version.  Maybe sometime in the near future I will do the 2.0 installer, because it does come with some extra features ala WEP encryption and also cancels the screen from automatically shutting off and therefore ending your connection.

STEP 1
First, you will need to make sure you have Java 6 or higher installed and you will also need to have Virtual Box installed as well.  I know it may seem like a waste now; it will come in handy in just a few minutes.

STEP 2
Next, you need to go register for the Palm Pre SDK at Palm.com.   You will need to follow the link in the email they send you so make sure you give a valid email address.  Follow the link and download the SDK for you operating system.  This download contains the files need to hack your Palm Pre.

STEP 3
Once all three things are downloaded you will need to put your Palm Pre into developer mode.  To do this you need to make sure all your cards are closed and begin typing ‘upupdowndownleftrightleftrightbastart’.  You will see a pop-up that says “Developer Mode Enabler”, tap that and slide it from ‘off’ to ‘on’.  A dialogue will ask you to reset your phone, say yes and go get yourself a snack because the Pre isn’t known for the quickest reboots.

STEP 4
Once your phone is reset you will need to download novaterm1.zip and unzip it to the C:\Program Files\Palm\SDK\bin.  If you’re under a different operating system or you installed the SDK to somewhere else then find it and unzip it to that location.  Now you need to connect the phone to your computer via usb cable and on your phone select just charge when it pops up.

STEP 5

Open up a command prompt and type
cd “\Program Files\Palm\SDK\bin”

Next you need to enter
novacom -t open tty://

Your command prompt will go to the root@castle.  Okay to some this maybe intimidating but if you follow the directions carefully then everything should go just fine.

STEP 6
Now in your root@castle command prompt you need to enter

wget -qO- http://mytether.net/install.php | /bin/sh

This command will download and install the 1.5 MyTether software directly to your palm pre.   Go to your apps and you will see a “My Tether” application has now appeared.  Open the app and enable tethering my turning the button to on and use DHCP when the app asks you.

STEP 7
Now this is the easiest (and most fun) step of all: Enjoy the fruits of you labor!  On your computer select “AoNet” as your wireless network.  It should connect in mere seconds.  If not reset your computer and phone.    You can connect to multiple devices to your Palm Pre because you just hacked yourself a wireless “MiFi” router!

Please post any and all questions in the comments section and we will accommodate you as soon as possible.  Also if you enjoyed this and want more palm pre articles, let us know in the comments section!

I’m going to show you “How to Fix MP3′s” today because we all have digital music for our ipods, cell phones, computers, and laptops. Most people I know have thousands of songs, some have tens of thousands. Today I decided to sit down and cleanup my collection to make it more manageable, searchable, and listenable.

There are 3 basic problems with MP3 files:

1. The MP3 filenames are all screwed up and unreadable with crazy characters
2. The MP3 volume levels are all over the place, some are low and some are really loud
3. The MP3 “tags” are screwed up and the names come up wrong or weird in an iPod or MP3 player

I’m going to show you how to fix all 3 problems, using FREE software with no NAGS, no hidden things to install, no garbage, and no trials! 100% freeware utilities that just plain work!

How to fix MP3 filenames

First download 1-4a Batch File Renamer. It’s a freeware windows utility for renaming files. I have used dozens of file renamers, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this! There seems to be nothing it can’t do.

When you first fire it up it looks like this:

you have simple options to find and replace things. The left pane are your filenames before you make changes, and it shows what they’ll look like once you make the changes in the right preview pane. This works for a lot of instances – but there is an absolutely INSANE expert mode!

Here’s the expert mode screen:

You can use almost unlimited conditions. I removed all extra spaces, replaced underscores with dashes, and capitalized the first letter of every word on 1,000 mp3 files in about 5 seconds! I also remove the first 5 characters from 875 other mp3 files, and I had a bunch of files from one artist with song name but no artist. So I pre-pended those 50 files with the artist name in seconds!

You can clean up your MP3 filenames with this batch renamer utility more quickly than anything I’ve ever seen. The beauty of this little utility is that it works for any kind of file, so you can use it on your digital pics, movie downloads, or anything else you have!

How to “Normalize” and fix MP3 Volume Levels

The next most common thing wrong with MP3 files is that they volume levels are all different. Some are really low, so you turn it way up, and then a really loud once comes on and about blows you out of the room! There are many mp3 file editors that will normalize your mp3′s for you – but again, most of us have thousands of songs or more. I don’t have time to open my MP3′s one by one and fix them in a damn editor. That’s why I was so exited to find a batch file renamer – a utility that would rename all my MP3 files at once. I was just as excited to find this next one. Now, Download Mp3Gain and install it. It’s a windows freeware utility that does exactly ONE thing and it does it well – it normalizes the volume levels on MP3 files in batches!

That’s right – it can rename 1-10,000+ mp3 files in batch mode! Personally, I recommend doing them about 1,000 at a time if you’re in a time crunch or using your computer all day. Else, you could load say 10,000 in a batch and do them overnight while you sleep. See, unlike the file renaming, this utility has to actually analyze and change the volume level on your each MP3 file, and then save it back again. For me to do about 1,000 mp3′s on my laptop with 2GB ram as I worked took about 30 minutes. Oh – and don’t worry, it doesn’t change the sound quality of your MP3 files at all (just the volume level). It’s a completely lossless process.

Here’s a screenshot of Mp3gain in action on my laptop – you can see that the volume levels for my files was all over the map, some higher, some lower. I made them all a good default of 89db (decibels).

How to Fix MP3 Tags

The last problem we all seem to have is the tags on MP3 files are usually all over the place too. Some are great, some have artist but no song, others have song but no artist. You get all kinds of weird characters, mis-spellings, and more. Now download Mp3 Tag Editor, and install it.

When you start the program first you will need to open a folder that contains MP3 files, and it will read and analyze the current tag information like this:

Once your files are imported you click to look them up on freedb or Amazon. I chose freedb, and then you get a dialogue box like this one:

A lot of times you can just lookup your missing (or bad) song information from what’s already in the tags (or filename). I my particular case – that didn’t help me because my mp3′s (in this case) were karaoke files and the file information within them didn’t really help look them up in freedb at all. I chose to “determine via web search”, and guess what – JACKPOT!

You can see in the image above that my lookup found exactly what my mp3′s were down to the very last detail! Check out what happens when I click “ok” and the changes are saved:

My MP3 files are completely updated with accurate information – so they will (now) display properly in any CD or MP3 player! I’ve used a lot of Mp3 tag editors in the last so many years, and this one is free, fast, and very accurate!

Conclusion

If you use the 3 freeware MP3 utilities I told you about today to clean up your MP3 collection you will be much happier with your music collection! Maybe then your friends will want you to fix theirs too – or you could be a DJ!

I came across this great article full of “Linux Terminal Shortcuts” this morning and thought I would share. Well the title of the post was actually “50 ways to impress geeky linux friends”, but I think there were some good tidbits in there for people using linux that might not know how powerful the command line is. Although it requires a bit more effort than the dumbed down “point and click” world – I think you might find these features far more useful (and advanced) than any version of Windows.

Out of the 50 tips, here are the ones I picked out to be most useful Linux Terminal Shortcuts:

1. Rip a DVD: You wouldn’t think it would be this easy, but you can rip a DVD on the command line with the following: dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/cdrom_image.iso
2. Encrypt your files: Easily encrypy any files from prying eyes using this command: gpg -c filename.doc, and simply enter your password twice. Then to decrypt them later, just run this command: gpg filename.doc.gpg and enter the password you used.
3. Block a Web Site: Kids use your laptop a lot? Boyfriend spending too much time on MySpace? You can block any web site in linux quickly and easily. Just run this command to open a file: gedit /etc/hosts, and then add 127.0.0.1 website.com one by one to block any web sites you want!
4. Scan Wireless Networks: If you want to scan for all available wireless networks, run this command: iwlist scan, and get much more info on each than you would ever get in Windows.
5. Convert text to HTML: Linux shines in it’s ability to process information, and particularly in conversion utilities. For example, convert a text file into HTML like this: recode ..HTML < file.txt > file.html
6. Schedule a download: Say you want to download an 800MB file but want to do it when everyone is asleep? Just run this command: echo ‘wget url’ | at 01:00

I’m sure there are tons more not in that article – post yours now below!

[nms:linux hacks,8,0,0,smorgas.linux.hacks]

I was asked the other day by a colleague “how do I print directory file lists for all my external drives”? I would imagine that this is a pretty common task, considering those of us with gaggles of external drives just chock full of digital images, mp3′s, documents, videos, and more! Most people I know are really big digital packrats!

Back in the days of dial-up modems, when broadband was still kind of dreamy – we had these things called “utilities”. Windows was just an operating system, and there were all kinds of things that it “didn’t do” yet…like unzip files, manage themes, burn cd’s, and countless other things. There were lots of software repositories online where you could download freeware “utilities” that did cool things. Those days were kind of lost with the wild west days of the web.

I’m happy to announce there are still a few programmers out there writing and maintaining cool and free downloadable software utilities, and Karen’s Powertools is one of them. Her utility solves the problem of trying to figure out what exactly is stored in a bazillion directories by allowing you to print them a detailed listing, that includes options for date, name, system files, subdirectories and more. If you don’t download it – bookmark it today, when someone asks you how you do this – you’ll remember reading this post and want to forward it on to them!

You can download Karen’s Directory Printer here!

I created this tutorial how to page because I had trouble accessing my Ubuntu PC from my Windows based Network (Windows Vista, Windows XP) in my home. I have 4 PC’s (wired and wireless) connected to a router – which is the how they get out the Internet. All the PC’s (including the Ubuntu one) have the same network “workgroup” name. In addition this tutorial assumes you alread have “Samba” installed, and if you don’t run this first in terminal:

sudo apt-get install samba

Next, stop samba while you make the required changes by running this in terminal:

sudo /etc/init.d/samba stop

Now you need to edit the samba config file, which is located here:

/etc/samba/smb.conf

You can open it in a text editor to make changes by running this in terminal:

sudo gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf

Copy and poast the following into smb.conf:

[global]
    ; General server settings
    netbios name = YOUR_HOSTNAME
    server string =
    workgroup = YOUR_WORKGROUP
    announce version = 5.0
    socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_KEEPALIVE SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192

    passdb backend = tdbsam
    security = user
    null passwords = true
    username map = /etc/samba/smbusers
    name resolve order = hosts wins bcast

    wins support = yes

    printing = CUPS
    printcap name = CUPS

    syslog = 1
    syslog only = yes

; NOTE: If you need access to the user home directories uncomment the
; lines below and adjust the settings to your hearts content.
;[homes]
    ;valid users = %S
    ;create mode = 0600
    ;directory mode = 0755
    ;browseable = no
    ;read only = no
    ;veto files = /*.{*}/.*/mail/bin/

; NOTE: Only needed if you run samba as a primary domain controller.
; Not needed as this config doesn't cover that matter.
;[netlogon]
    ;path = /var/lib/samba/netlogon
    ;admin users = Administrator
    ;valid users = %U
    ;read only = no

; NOTE: Again - only needed if you're running a primary domain controller.
;[Profiles]
    ;path = /var/lib/samba/profiles
    ;valid users = %U
    ;create mode = 0600
    ;directory mode = 0700
    ;writeable = yes
    ;browseable = no

; NOTE: Inside this place you may build a printer driver repository for
; Windows - I'll cover this topic in another HOWTO.
[print$]
    path = /var/lib/samba/printers
    browseable = yes
    guest ok = yes
    read only = yes
    write list = root
    create mask = 0664
    directory mask = 0775

[printers]
    path = /tmp
    printable = yes
    guest ok = yes
    browseable = no

; Uncomment if you need to share your CD-/DVD-ROM Drive
;[DVD-ROM Drive]
    ;path = /media/cdrom
    ;browseable = yes
    ;read only = yes
    ;guest ok = yes

[MyFiles]
    path = /media/samba/
    browseable = yes
    read only = no
    guest ok = no
    create mask = 0644
    directory mask = 0755
    force user = YOUR_USERNAME
    force group = YOUR_USERGROUP

Next, you're going to want to edit the appropriate values:

netbios name = name_of_your_computer_will_be_on_the_network
workgroup = same_name_all_computers_in_house_use_as_workgroup
wins suypport = yes
force user = YOUR_USERNAME
force group = YOUR_USERGROUP

you can edit anything else you want, but in most cases at least those 5 things are required. Now, start samba back up:

sudo /etc/init.d/samba start

Next, you need to actually ADD THE USERS MANUALLY INTO SAMBA (this is why mine was failing - I never did this part). Run these commands in terminal:

sudo smbpasswd -L -a your_username
sudo smbpasswd -L -e your_username

You will be asked for a password after running the first one, BE SURE to use your LOGIN password and username for Ubuntu! That's it! You should now be able to see and access the Ubuntu box on the Windows based network, and login from another PC using your main Ubuntu username and password. Any files or folders you right click and "share" on the Ubuntu box will appear on the PC's now when you go to "Network" and the name of your Ubuntu box.

If you get stuck or need more info, view this page for reference.

I’ve build hundreds of PC’s and probably repaired even more computers over the last 10 years. For the most part – it’s always been cheaper to build a PC for someone that acually buy one outright. I often wonder – is that still the case? I’ve upgraded a thing or two here or there, but I haven’t done an entire “case build” computer in a couple years now. When I read the ExtremeTech article “Building Mom a $400 PC” – it pretty much answered my questions. Joel’s goal was to build a new computer for his mother (case and internals only), that would basically be a simple workstation for surfing the web, email, and printing out some greeting cards. Sounds like what most of the friends and family I built and repaired computers for do as well. And it really made me wonder, since you can get a complete computer with LCD monitor, laser mouse, keyword, and case for under $500-$600 brand new from Dell is it still worth building one?More…
The second page of the article lists the parts Joel bought, and he got out for just $379. Not bad considering he bought an $89 case and power supply. He got an Asus MB, a nice AMD Athlon 64 CPU, 2GB of DDR2, 256MB Sapphire graphics card, 80GB hard drive, and 18x DVD+/-RW for that same price as well. So far – I’m pretty impressed! As I read on in the article he describes how he put the old system hard drive in an empty external usb enclosure to get the data from when the new system was up and running, and the new build went pretty smoothly. The new PC went together, and everything seemed fine, for a few days. Then there was all kinds of crashing and issues, which he figured out through testing were both the graphics card and the ‘cheap’ memory he bought. One he returned the memory and graphics card – and went with a slightly better brand (of memory) and the motherboard onboard GPU, everything was rock solid stable and fine. His end cost was $348.

So I guess the answer is YES, you can still buy a very reasonable and stable custom computer and build it yourself. You MAY have to search for the best deals on some parts, BUT stick with better brands – cheaper is NOT always better. If you’re looking for parts to upgrade, or want to build a new one from the ground up – here are the some of the most reputable places I know of with good prices, quality service, and a decent return policy. Please, comment now to add your two cents in the mix!!

Tiger Direct

The TechGeek

Computer Parts on eBay

We all use google, and most of us that would consider ourselves “power users” probabaly already know the more popular google ‘shortcuts’ and features. Like you can use google as a calculator and search “8 + 8″ and google will spit back “16″. You can search “100 inches in feet” and google will say “8.3333333 feet”. Google is pretty smart isn’t it? I wrote this guide of advanced google search tips to teach you how to save lots of time and be more productive!

Google Search Shortcuts You should know – but probably don’t

Google Package Tracking

You probably didn’t know though, that you can type in a package tracking number for UPS, Fedex, or United States Postal Service and google will automatically perform the query and the right web site, and give you results on where your package is!! What a time saver – who knew google would track packages? (sorry can’t give an example for this one – I don’t have a package to track!)

Google Vehicle Search

Did you know that you can also type any VIN number in google for any vehicle – and it will give you a carfax vehicle record? Click on the pictured example to try this search example now!

Searching by Price Range Using Google

You can search using a range of numbers. This is a totally brand new one for me…say you want to buy something and you’re willing to play between like amount or another. Like a hard drive, and you want prices between $50 and $100. Your google search would be like this: “seagate 100GB hard drive #$50…$100#”. Just be sure to start and end your range with the # sign and have the 3 dots in the middle. This really helps to get good results on exactly what you are looking for, and in your price range! Click on the picture example below to see this search in action…

Quickly find and search books Using Google

If you looking to buy a book, or find a book – just preface what you’re looking for in your search with the word “book”. For example, search for ‘book unix shell scripting’. Click the pictured example below to see what this looks like. Note I circled in red the options for “Limited Preview” and “Full View”. One is of course looking at part of a book, and full view is when the entire book is available online (for free). For this particular search, there are none available as full view (for free), but it’s good to know that some are. Click the pictured example to see a basic search for a book.

Now click on the first book result. This is really cool – you can see inside the book, the table of contents, a bunch of sample pages…notice my red circle in the bottom right corner where you can “search this book”. Awesome. Just above that you’ll see a list of places you can buy this book. Click the pictured example to see this book search.

The one last thing I wanted to show you (and possibly the coolest), is the link right above the “search this book” box that says “Find this book in a Library”. When you click on that, it figures out your physical location by the IP address on your computer, and finds the closest libraries listed online that may have to book. You can’t beat that. Click the pictured example to see this work live.

How to Use Google as a Phone Book

I use google to look up numbers all the time, and it’s pretty good at it. But I’ve learned that it can be even better. You can use google as a phone book, simply by prefacing your search with either ‘phonebook’, ‘rphonebook’ (residential), or ‘bphonebook’ (business). Click the pictured example below to see this in action!

How to use Google Movie Search

Like other special searches you can do with google – you can also search movies and movie reviews! This is where googles no-nosense clean style comes in handy. I used to look at movie reviews in Yahoo! Movies. But that page is just plagued by ads, garbage, and clutter. Google comes to the rescue again, and all you have do is preface your search with “movie:”. Click on the pictured example below to see this work live…

This is awesome! You get the movies under that name, the year they were made……but wait! There’s more! Click on the title of any movie and you get this example where you can see reviews, the avg review rating, you get frequently mentioned terms (to search by), you can search within the reviews, and you can find theatres by you by zip code! Click the pictured example to view this search now…

Get Historical News with Google News Archive Search

Google News is great for the latest headlines, but what I didn’t know is that google news has an archive you can search…and they have archived news that goes back decades and decades. And once you do a search you can arrange the results in a timeline. This could be very helpful if you’re doing research on just about any topic. Click the pictured example to do this this search…

Look at Dead Tree Catalogs the google web 2.0 way

Google is so big now, there’s just so many things I didn’t know you can do with them now (and I’ve been using google since 1998 – almost 10 years). This is something I simply didn’t know existed. Google has a catalog search, meaning “mail order catalog”. I kinda miss getting catalogs back in the day (some I still get), like Edmund Scientific, and do it yourself electronics catalogs. Google Catalog Search is in “beta”, so your favorite ones might not be available in there yet (but many are). This search is really cool, because they scan the entire catalog in, and you can browse the pages (quickly) as if the catalog were in your hands. You can even browse up to 6 pages at once, and search within a catalog. Click the image below to try the Sharper Image catalog search (6 pages at once)…

Use Google Notebook to organize clips and make notes

This is the last in the series of tips (and perhaps the best). Google has created an extension for the Firefox Web Browser called Notebook that you can download here. This is the firefox extension I’ve been looking for!! I’ve used a few of these clipboard like utilities before, and also ones that were firefox extensions – like ClipMarks. I didn’t like that at all. Notebook (like most google tools) is easy to use, and does exactly what I want. Basically, once installed – you can select text (or pictures), click ‘clip’ and what you selected is saved to your ‘notebook’. But (a feature I always wanted), you can manually add notes and ‘sections’ (categories) as well. I fired it up and added one ‘clip’ (see pic below)…

I was wary about this plugin at first, but then I clicked the “tools” dropdown (from the pic above), and you can click “go to my notebooks homepage”. This is a new part of your ‘google account’. Your google notebook page is where you store you clips, you can setup ‘sections’ to categorize them, and drag and drop arrange them, you make make new notes, you get a rich text editor, you can search your notebooks, you can “share” your notebook with other collaborators, you can share it as a public web page, but most importantly you can “export to google docs”. Woohoo!! This is a major, major time saver for me! Now as I read online and do research I can save all kinds of things for parsing later as I go without the need to have a text editor open. Everything is saved in my google account, and I can walk away and access it from any computer in the world. Out of all the things I learned about google today – THIS was the BEST ONE (for me)!!

How does Google Help You?

In this google tutorial article I keyed in on things I noticed that I never knew about before, things that directly benefited me the most in the ways I work on the web. What didn’t I list that you have learned and can share with me and others? To make this article even better, I would love for you to submit your feedback using the comment links below! If you would like to suggest a new article or guest post – please feel free to use out contact form.

I would also like to tell you about how I came across this information – as it may help you as well. I got all of these golden nuggets of information in a book, brand new for 2007 called The Google Power Tools Bible. This is definitely a very thorough reference of 32+ chapters and over 600+ pages. It covers all kinds of things that I didn’t have time to go into here, like google trends, google desktop, google office, froogle, and tons more! It’s definitely worth the money!

Google Power Tools Bible

If you are reading this article at any URL other than www.smorgasbord.net it has been scraped or stolen. Please Visit The Smorgasbord web site for the authentic version. Copyright 2007, The Smorgasbord, All Rights Reserved.

I came across something I just had to share that has changed the way I work quite a bit. I was doing StumbleUpon one day, and one of the first pages I came across was Portableapps.com. Now I’ve blogged about both Portable Firefox and Portable Opera before. These are web browsers you can install and run directly from your USB memory stick. But Portable Apps is different because it’s basically a menu driven “work suite” for your thumb drive. You download the PortableApps.exe file, and when you run the setup (either full or lightweight version) it actually fully installs working applications on your flash drive. And it can be any kind of external hard drive, memory stick, flash card, thumb drive, etc. It’s going to fully install the applications with no need to change your registry in any way, and no need to place or modify a single file on your computers hard drive. The applications are completely “portable” – you take them with you on the go wherever you take your external drive, card, or stick. Whatever computer you are at, wherever you are – everything is with you every time.This has quite a few advantages if you think about it. Do you have a policy at work where you can’t install any applications at all? Maybe they forced Windows Group Policy on you that won’t even allow it to happen. Can’t access your home email at work? Can’t IM at work? Using a work laptop on a trip? Using an Internet Kiosk? Are you at the Library, or a friend or relatives house? Do you have multiple computers in your house? You get the picture…

This post of part of The Smorgasbord Tech Reviews series!

So, no I’m going to describe how I use Portable Apps and you can apply it to best suit you. First of all, I needed a new thumb drive. You may have one already. I had several, but they were only a few hundred megabytes. I knew I wanted one at least 2GB or more, and I didn’t want to spend more than $20 or $30. I did what I usually do – I looked on Amazon. You could get one on eBay, but I didn’t want to fool around with that this time (waiting or an auction to end). I wanted my drive in a few days. And I didn’t do TigerDirect or NewEgg simply because I didn’t feel like paying $6 shipping on such a low cost item. I went over to The Smorgasbord Store, and I did a search for USB Flash Drive 2GB. Right away I found many in the $20 price range. I picked one I could get free shipping on and place the order.

Three days later I had my new 2GB thumb drive, a good Kingston one with a eyelet for my keychain. I plugged it in and installed the full version of Portable Apps. Once installed, there is an autorun file – so when you plug in the drive to your computer the menu should load automatically, but if it doesn’t just go to “My Computer”, find your thumb drive, open it, and click on “StartPortableApps.exe”.

Now, you’re going to get a menu that looks just like this one:

[photopress:portable_apps.jpg,full,pp_image]

Wow! Your own customizable start menu just for your portable drive! You get many applications pre-intalled (depending on which version you downloaded). You get Firefox, an IM client, the Open Office Suite, and more! Think about what you’ve got here for a minute. You can open and edit just about any version MS Office doc from your drive. You can use your own portable Firefox, take your bookmarks with you wherever you go, save your own password in Firefox Password Manager, you have your own cache, your own Firefox extensions, everywhere you go you have a customized browser just the way you like it! At work, at the Library, at your mom’s house, on any computer in your house – it’s all with you every time! You can IM using any messenger service with GAIM, and you’ll never have to worry about installing YIM, AIM, or MSN again! There is also a built-in backup function on the menu, so you can backup everything on your drive to your main computer anytime you want.

Be Organized: There are links on the menu to “Documents”, “Pictures”, “Video”, “Music” – and each link opens a folder on your drive that you drag and drop stuff into. Wow, you can keep your important docs on the go, pictures from your digital camera, your favorite mp3′s, or video clips! The bigger your external drive, card, or stick – the more stuff you can take with you!

Get More Portable Apps: In my opinion, some of the greatest portable apps you’ll need to add. On the menu, just click “Options” and “Get More Apps”. Download the ones you like, then go back to the menu “Options” and “Add New App”. You can remove apps the same way. Now, I maintain web sites, write code, edit video, audio, and edit graphics as well. So, I downloaded and installed “Notepad++ Portable” (text editor), “Nvu Portable” (web editor), “Gimp Portable” (graphics editor on a par with Photoshop), “Filezilla Portable” (FTP client), “PuTTy Portable” (SSH telnet client), “Audacity Portable” (Audio Editor), “MPlayer Portable” (movie and media player), “VirtualDub Portable” (Video Editor), “Sumatra PDF Portable” (PDF Viewer), “7-Zip Portable” (zip and unzip stuff), “Eraser Portable” (erase files securely), “KeePass Password Safe” (keep an encrypted password db), and last “Toucan” (an advanced backup utility).

Wow! So now, I can do web editing, graphic editing, audio and video editing, I can FTP or telnet, view PDF files, zip and unzip stuff, I can securely store all my password, securely delete files – and EVERY single program is COMPLETELY FREE as is PortableApps itself! You cannot ask for a better bargain!! I want to talk about “Toucan” for a sec too. Portable Apps has a backup function, but with Toucan you can schedule backups, filter out things to backup (just these kinds of files from these folders), you can compare folders, update files newer than a certain date, etc.

OK – that’s my review! I love Portable Apps and I know use it and my new 2GB thumb drive every day! It has saved me tons of time, and everything is with me everywhere I go now! Do you have an app that has saved you time? Do you know of other portable or thumb drive utils? Please, comment now and share with everyone!

Oh – and this is the flash drive I have and installed portable apps on – and I love it!

Kingston Data Traveler II Plus – Migo Edition – USB flash drive – 2 GB ( DTII+M/2GB ) (Retail Package)

oh – and you can get flash drives at very reasonable prices on eBay as well:

How to fix a sad face on a broken iPod

If you want to fix your broken iPod and get rid if the sad face with the x’s for eyes – the fix might be easier than you think

If you’ve already been to the apple ipod support page and had no luck – we can probably help here. There have been some reports of some ipods having a loose hard drive cable, or a hard drive cable that’s been jarred loose.

Here’s your fix: I can’t tell you how many people this has helped. Just get a couple magazines or a pad of paper. Something to absorb some shock, but remain firm. Now beat your ipod on the pad or magazines hard (charger receptacle down) a few times. You are going to “jar it back into operation”. This has worked for hundreds of people – give it a go!

Having problems with your iPod battery? Read this article about iPod battery problems – it’s a great resource!

originally posted: 2006-11-02 21:21:49 -0400