Wednesday, March 14, 2007

New Tools Roundup

Tech News Website - TechMeme

Tip of the Day site presents UnDelete Plus

Undelete Plus is a quick and effective way to retrieve accidentally deleted files, files removed from the Recycle Bin, in a DOS window, from a network drive, from Windows Explorer with the SHIFT key held down. And, it’s FREE.

MSN Screensaver
With the new MSN Screen Saver (Beta) you can:

* Personalize with background photos and news and weather information from MSN® or any RSS feeds from websites you choose.
* Search the Web and click news headlines directly from the Screen Saver.
* Stay connected with MSN Hotmail®, MSN Messenger, and MSN Spaces. Track how many unread Hotmail messages and current Messenger conversations you have, and display blogs and photos from your friends’ MSN Spaces.

GeekBrief Podcasts - Geeky vlog

MoBuzz TV Tech vlog - cute presenter!

WallStrip - stock culture meets pop culture

Unofficial Office Stuff - Pixel Squeezing - reducing picture size in powerpoint shows

Robin Good - Visual Communication And Online Image Editing Tools - The Best From Sharewood - as it says - a comprehensive list along with mini reviews of image editing software.

Delicious Bookmarks
This extension integrates your browser with del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/), the leading social bookmarking service on the Web. It does this by augmenting the bookmarking functionality in Firefox with an enhanced experience that offers the following advantages:

- Search and browse your bookmarks
- Access your bookmarks from any computer at any time
- Keep your bookmarks organized with tags
- Share your bookmarks with friends or anyone on the Web
- Import your existing Firefox bookmarks

Slipstick - Outlook 2007 - whats new
Outlook 2007, formerly known as Outlook 12, is scheduled to be released later this year and has a number of cool new or improved features that should prove popular with users. The following is a list of my top 10 favorite Outlook 2007 features and the reasons I like them, in no particular order.

Gliffy.com This is a pretty cool collaborative diagramming web 2.0 tool.

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Posted by: Jethro | 9:43 PM |

Thursday, August 10, 2006

How fast are you?

Our children will never appreciate the handshake of a 300 baud modem. The thought of transferring anything at 1200 baud is unthinkable even if we invoke the sacred z-modem. Now-a-days you are more likely to talk about megabits per second (a data rate) instead of baud (a symbol rate).

I find it amazing how our data communications have increased in such a short time. We used to drool over a T-1 connection (1.544Mbit/s). Since only businesses could afford such luxuries, people would plan weekend gaming sessions at their work place or stay late to download and surf in ways that the average home user could only dream possible. Now, your cable connection is likely faster than a T-1. Comcast advertises 6Mbit/s standard with 8Mbit/s for some extra money and is currently testing 16Mbit/s in Richmond, VA. The near future promises even better (28Mbit/s)!

What is your speed? Online testing services such as http://www.testmy.net/ and http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/ can help you see if you are up to snuff. Your internal networking equipment can cause slowdowns so by-pass your router, hubs and other gear by plugging your computer directly into your cable or dsl modem when speed checking. You may need to power cycle the modem after connecting directly. http://broadbandreports.com/ (aka DSL Reports) is a fantastic resource when troubleshooting or investigating network speeds.

Your system software can influence speed. Tools like SG TCP Optimizer can greatly improve your Internet connection by adjusting network settings you may not even know exist.

See also It's the latency, stupid for more understanding of speed issues. Read about hacking the Linksys router and Linksys Blue Box Router HOWTO.

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Posted by: Doug McCaughan | 12:31 PM |