PreparedPC
Your PC. Prepared for Anything.
Virtual Desktops: Divide and Conquer with “Desktops 1.0″ from Sysinternals
Sep 4th
Even with a decent-size screen, if you’re running many applications at the same time, it can be time-consuming toggling through all those windows using Alt-F4 or the taskbar. Wouldn’t things be easier if you have one screen just for email, another for word processing, another for editing graphics, etc.?
Enter Desktops 1.0
Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell recently released Sysinternals’ Desktop 1.0, which allows you to create up to 4 “virtual desktops.” A tiny (62 KB) download, you simply install it and run it. You can choose which key combinations you’ll use to switch between the virtual desktops.
Desktops Options
Now you can switch between your desktops using those key combinations, or by right-clicking on the Desktops icon in the system tray, where you’ll see a screen like the one below:
Choose a Desktop
Takeaway: Desktops 1.0 is a free and simple way to segregate whichever applications you’re currently running into their own virtual desktops.
It’s just one of many free utilities that Sysinternals offers. Many of these will give you insight into what’s happening “behind the scenes” of your Windows operating system. You might just find a utility here that you’ll use every day.
Upgrading to Firefox 3? Backup First with FEBE
Sep 2nd
If you’re a Firefox browser user, backing up your browser’s settings is a good idea generally. If you plan to upgrade to the current version, Firefox 3.0.1, it’s critical that you have a backup on hand, just in case one or more of your favorite add-ons don’t work properly.
Why Upgrade Firefox?
If everything’s working well, why should you upgrade? Mozilla, Firefox’s maker, will continue to support Firefox 2.x until December, 2008. So why upgrade now? There are a number of new features, including better speed and security, that could make an upgrade attractive.
Also, some add-ons, such as Perspectives, are designed for Firefox 3.0 or above. If you’re interested in using add-ons like this, you’ll need to upgrade. More >
Check Slickdeals If You’re Looking for a New Computer
Aug 28th
Slickdeals bills itself as “the most frequently updated and complete deal site on the web,” and it is worth a look. It is a “one-stop” site that lists the latest “buy one, get one free” offers for fast-food restaurants, rebates, and how to get a “free” razor in exchange for your personal information.
More importantly for you, Slickdeals also shows current deals for computers and computer accessories from Dell Small Business, Newegg, and an assortment of “big box” stores.
More >
TinyURL Shortcuts – Look Before You Click!
Aug 25th
TinyURL is a handy service for creating shortcut links from long web addresses (Uniform Resource Locators, or URLs). For example, you’d like to email a very lengthy URL, such as MapQuest directions to your home. If you paste the link in an email, it may look OK to you, but for the person receiving the email, the hyperlink could be broken into multiple lines. This could be inconvenient or confusing to the person you’re emailing.
Instead, you could use TinyURL to create a “shortcut” to the original link. Because this URL is short, the person you’re emailing should be able to click on the TinyURL link with no problem.
How To Be Kind When Sending Shortcuts… More >
Tame Flash Animations with Flashblock Firefox Add-on
Aug 20th
Despite the “cool factor” that Macromedia Flash animations bring to a web page, you might want to limit Flash on your PC. You may have a computer with only a small amount of RAM that you don’t want Flash animations to gobble up.
Perhaps you’ve read about (or seen!) “malvertisements,” maliciously-designed Flash animations that display seemingly-helpful screens that say, “Your system is infected” or prompt you with a phony “System scan” option. Those fooled into clicking these convincing screens could end up infecting their computers with malware.
Flashblock, a free add-on for Firefox, prevents all Flash content from loading, except from the sites you specify. More >
WordPress 2.6.1 Released
Aug 16th
WordPress announced the release of the version 2.6.1 of its software, which includes a fix for the category description bug that many of us experienced after upgrading.
Interestingly, the blog announcement for this version says:
If youre happy with 2.6, however, keep on using it. You need not upgrade to 2.6.1 if 2.6 is getting the job done.
Takeaway: Now that 2.6.1 is out (and the category bug fixed), take a look at the original 2.6 announcement to get an idea of the new features. Our favorite feature is the “preview a theme without activating it” — very slick. Composing posts is improved. Rather than clicking a button to edit HTML, you actually write in “HTML mode”, so you can see exactly what’s going on–no more surprises.
If you’re ready to move to 2.6.1, backup your current installation and get ready to upgrade.
NebuAd CEO Asked “Have You Stopped Beating the Consumer?”
Aug 14th
Bob Dykes, CEO of NebuAd, was recently questioned at a House subcommittee meeting by Rep. Edward Markey (D – MA), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. NebuAd is one of the advertising companies which use deep packet inspection (DPI) to examine the (unencrypted) web traffic of the customers of the internet service providers (ISPs) who partner with them.
Kansas-based ISP Embarq is one of NebuAd’s partners. At issue was a data-gathering test conducted earlier this year by NebuAd against 26,000 of Embarq’s customers.
Embarq did notify its customers about the test, noting that customer’s web surfing data would be retained, and that they could opt-out of the test if they wanted.
Rep. Markey encouraged Mr. Dykes to offer an opt-in model, instead of the current opt-in option. More >
Protect Your Eyes: Use OpenDNS’s Free Web-filtering Service to Block Adult Sites and More
Aug 11th
We recently mentioned that you can point your router or browser to OpenDNS‘s DNS servers to protect your computers from the DNS Poisoned Cache vulnerability brought to light by Dan Kaminsky. While many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have patched their DNS servers, others have not yet done so.
There is another reason to consider OpenDNS, as you can use it as a free web-filtering service. How-To Geek posted a well-written tutorial describing this in detail.
What is Web Filtering? More >
Giving that PC Away? Use DBAN to Wipe That Hard Drive Clean
Aug 8th
Photo by Jeff Epp
If you’re going to donate your old PC or sell it, make sure you don’t leave any personal information on the hard drive. The open-source [free for personal use] DBAN (Darik’s Boot and Nuke) will completely and securely wipe your computer’s hard drive.
Another occasion to use DBAN is to completely destroy a virus. While this is a drastic measure, there are some cases when a computer can be infected with a virus so pesky that it can survive a hard drive format. In other words, if you’re dealing with a nasty virus and decide to simply format the drive and reinstall Windows, you might still be facing that virus after all that work. If you’re going to go to the trouble of reinstalling Windows, use DBAN to completely wipe the hard drive clean first.
Preparing Your DBAN Media More >
DNS Exploit Code “In the Wild”; Are You Vulnerable?
Aug 5th
UPDATE: After Dan Kaminsky’s Blackhat presentation, Steve Friedl posted the specifics of the bug in An Illustrated Guide to the Kaminsky DNS Vulnerability.
As we mentioned last month, security researcher Dan Kaminsky discovered a serious exploit in the Domain Name Server (DNS) systems used by the thousands of internet service providers (ISPs).
- The good news: In an unprecedented cooperative effort, Mr. Kaminsky led a team of engineers from many vendors who secretly worked together to create patches to fix the exploit. The patches were simultaneously released in early July, 2008.
- The bad news: Since then, code that demonstrates how to take advantage of this exploit has been found “in the wild”
- The really bad news: Many ISPs still haven’t patched their DNS servers.
What Does This Mean to Me?
If your ISP’s DNS is not patched, and they are attacked using this exploit, you may unknowingly be redirected to a phishing site. For example, you may think you’re browsing to www.MyBank.com, but actually your browser is redirected to a look-alike site. If you enter your user name and password, these could be stolen, and the bad folks who created the look-alike site could access your account and wreak havoc.
What Can I Do? More >