Delete Your Facebook
Today I deleted my Facebook account. Facebook really has a problem with privacy. It use to be the one thing great about it is that you could let only those people you know view information about you. That’s all over. Unless you edit multiple items in your privacy setting Facebook will share your information with all sorts of commercial interest. Changing these setting is really difficult to do and you never no if they will share your info anyway. It is not easy to delete your account. You can deactivate it pretty easily but not delete it. You have to Google “delete Facebook” and you will find a official Facebook blog post about how to do it. In that blog post you will find a URL where you go to delete your account. Click Here!
Beginner’s Podcasting
Seems like everyone is getting in on the podcasting act. Tom and Veronica go over the basics of the tools, services and things you need to do required for any successful podcast.
Podcasting Audio Software. The stuff you need to record, edit and normalize your recorded audio.
- Audacity. Great free audio recorder and editor.
- Levelator. What you’ll want to use to normalize your podcast’s audio.
- Skype. If you need to record a podcast with someone who’s in a different location.
- Audio Hijack. Let’s you record audio from multiple sources like Skype. Free to try $32 to keep.
- WireTap Studio. Similar in function to Audio Hijack. Free trial and costs $69 to keep.
Uploading/Hosting Service. The location online that will be hosting your podcast.
- Archive.org. Great free hosting service that Tom and Veronica both use.
RSS Feed – Distribution/Syndication. How you’re going to distribute your podcast.
- Feedburner
- LibSyn. Combines storage and feed management and cost varies with usage. Also features advanced features like QuickCast and FutureCast.
Tracking Tools. To see how many people are listening/watching your podcast.
- Podtrac
Mount Skydrive As A Network Drive
I really like Skydrive Explorer. It creates a virtual folder so you can drag files into it but if you wished to use Skydrive to backup data automatically you are out of luck.
Here’s a method to mount Skydrive as an actual network drive. It requires what I can only call a kluge. It requires you to download the new Microsoft Office 2010 Beta (later you will need the trail download). Creating a file and saving it to the web (File, Save and Send, Save to Web, Skydrive). Once you login to your Skydrive account you will see the address of the network. Copy that address. If your using Windows Vista or Windows 7 (of course you can use Windows XP although I do not remember how to do it) right click on “Computer” choose “map network drive” and follow the prompts to enter you email address and password. You may then use your Skydrive like any real folder. You may now use SyncToy or any other backup program with Skydive.
Here are the details how to do this from Download Squad.
Windows Maintenance Tips
There is a lot of talk about Windows maintenance. What services should turn off? Which utilities should I use? To sleep or hibernate? Here’s a article from Lifehacker. It is the best article I have seen on the subject.
Here are some of the topics which I agree…
- Using “Microsoft Security Essentials” is as good as using third party security apps.
- Users should not have Administrator privileges.
- Physically cleaning the your computer can increase performance radically.
- “Registry cleaning” is over-rated. I would go a step further. Registry cleaning ranges from completely unnecessary to harmful.
TWiT Has Ten Shows On Video
Leo Laporte’s TWiT network now has many of their great programs on video. They had live streaming from the beginning and they had several programs for download for quite some time. Now they have increased the video downloads considerably. The downloadable shows are…
- This Week In Tech
- This Week In Google
- Macbreak Weekly
- Windows Weekly
- NSFW
- net@night
- Security Now
- Floss Weekly
- Dr. Kiki’s Science Hour
- This Week In Fun only available for download on the TWiT’s main site.
All but “This Week In Fun” available on on Media Fly therefore the Roku Player. All show have podcast feeds to use in your favorite podcast catcher programs…
Me Want Drobo
My first three rules of computing are backup, backup and backup. You may have heard this before?
I use Carbonite a cloud backup solution that works very well but I really should have a local backup as well.
Drobo looks like a great solution. Drobo is an external hardive based storage device that uses multiple drive in their BeyondRAID configuration. BeyondRAID is Drobos own system that allows you to hot-swap drives of any size. Drobo give you a warning when your drives are nearly full and you just snap out your smallest drive and snap in a larger one.
Drobo can get a starter kit with a “Drobo w/ 2 – 1 Terabyte harddives” for $524. You can add up to 4 drives with a total capacity of up to 16 Terabytes. The Drive are just ordinary SATA drives that you can buy anywhere. You don’t have to buy any from Drobo.
More information and watch demos by Cali Lewis of Geekbrief TV.
One Is Not Good Enough
I have a set I rules I follow when computing. The first three are backup, backup, and backup.
This poor lady came to my computer users group with a external harddrive that was not functioning. I took a look at it. When I plugged it in to the power it started click loudly. I plugged it in my laptop and it saw there was a drive but it could not be accessed. It just started clicking more. This was not a good sign. I asked her “You still have the files on your computer right?” She said, “No someone at the PC Users Group told her to backup to the external harddrive.” I told her, “Backing up is when you still have the original file but you also copied the file to some other medium for long term storage.” I did not have the tools to completely check the drive but I was almost sure it was dead. As it turns out there were photos of her deceased husband on it that did not exist anywhere else.
Microsoft Technet
Download all an use all of Microsoft’s software and use it forever without time limits or feature limits. You can download anything Windows Server, Microsoft Office, SQL Server, Windows 7 and everything else. Just get a Membership to Microsoft Technet (cost: $349 per year) and you can have all of this and a whole lot more. Software for person or evaluation use only. Not a site license!
Don’t Deal With Dell
Last weak I ordered a Dell Mini 10 portable computer with the Ubuntu operating system. I got it on April 6th. After 24 hours of nearly continuous use I could not get the computer to work the way I wished. It’s as if they didn’t test the Mini 10 with the Ubuntu OS that was installed on it. The track pad was so poorly designed to make it nearly unusable.
The next day I called Dell to return it. They informed me I could return it but since the computer was working properly than they would have to charge me a $40 restocking fee. I told the representative that the touch-pad was so poorly designed that it was almost unusable. He said, “Why don’t you get a mouse?” I said the resolution of the display was supposed to do 1024 x 600, it would only do 640 x 480. Not even close. The representative said “That’s only with Windows.” The specs said nothing about only Windows. They offered me $35 to keep the computer. The rep said, “You could take the money and buy a mouse with it.”
Dell use to be have the best customer satisfaction but I guess they traded that in for a few extra dollars. In the long run it comes back to bite you. The word gets around. I guess now I’ll buy a Lenovo like I should have done in the first place.
Lucid Lynx Countdown
The Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx is out. You can download it now.