Simplifying Long-Distance Tech Support

When you're the de facto tech support guy for most of your family and friends, you quickly find yourself making a lot of house calls. But if you're not being summoned to help install memory or a new hard drive, there are plenty of tools you can use to diagnose and fix computer problems from afar.

Read the article HERE.

Flash Drive Data Recovery

PhotoRec ignores the file system in favor of finding lost files, so it works on FAT, NTFS, EXT2/EXT3, HFS, and (with certain caveats) ReiserFS. And since it's looking for known file headers and using data carving techniques, more than eighty file types--among them DOC, PDF, and PPT--are instantly recoverable. Here's how it went:

Read the article HERE.

DocStoc

Need a template for your business plan, a tutorial on Python programming, or a copy of the Gettysburg address? Document sharing web site DocStoc has more than 12,000 files posted for free browsing and downloads. Registered members can keep personal "folders" on the site with links to useful docs and get notified by email when another user uploads a file type they request. Those looking for straight-up legal forms have other options, but DocStoc's wide range might make it a useful bookmark for when you just need to see an example—or you need a PowerPoint template to modify in a hurry

Looking for a sample invoice, lease, will, W-2 or pretty much anything else that can be saved as a document? Online document sharing company DocStoc has emerged from private beta. We got our first look at DocStoc last month, and the service is easy to use, and most importantly, useful.

There are over 12,000 documents online so far, and they cover everything from business plans to software tutorials. You can easily read documents online, download them, or embed them on a web page.

Take a look HERE.

Top 10 Free Video Rippers and Converters

To have your favorite clips how you want them — whether that's on your DVR, iPod, PSP or desktop — you need the right utility to convert 'em into the format that works for you. Commercial video converter software's aplenty, but there are several solid free utilities that can convert your video files on every operating system, or if you've just got a web browser and a quick clip. Put DVDs on your iPod, YouTube videos on DVD, or convert any video file with today's top 10 free video rippers, encoders and converters.

Take a look HERE.

Convert your PC into a Media Centre

If you've purchased a new Windows computer in the past few years that's running Windows Media Center Edition or Vista Home Premium or Ultimate and you aren't taking advantage of its baked-in DVR Media Center software, it's time we change that. Why? Because after installing a $70 capture card in your computer and a bit of freeware third-party software, you've got all the tools you need to record television shows on your PC's built-in Media Center, extend that Media Center to your Xbox 360, schedule recordings and stream TV over the internet.

Take a look HERE.

Cheat the Music Industry

Despite the continual legal pursuit of music file-sharing "criminals" by the "RIAA ( )"<>, the ability to find great music and create a significant music library at virtually no cost is still quite feasible. So we'll start by dividing this into categories and giving a few examples of what we know. But it's up to you to fill in the blanks.

Take a look HERE.

Where to Hear Music for Free Online
Wired's How To Wiki [above] serves up a compilation of web sites where you can hear music, whether streaming or downloaded, for free. But this item at Lifehacker is worth looking at just to see the number of other options available [see comments for more links].

Take a look HERE.

YouGetSignal

The port forwarding tester is a free AJAX utility you can use to identify your external IP address and detect open ports on your connection. This tool is useful for finding out if your port forwarding is setup correctly or if your server applications are being blocked by a firewall. It is important to note that some ports, such as port 25, are often blocked at the ISP level in an attempt to prevent malicious activity.

Take a look HERE.

Your Home Page, Reorganized

I recently have been experimenting with Homepage Startup, a Web page that organizes your favorite sites into thumbnail links. It’s a nice idea: You can go to any predefined site more quickly when you can see it right in front of you. And there’s a Google search field at the top. You can set up different Homepage tabs for different purposes (as in my “Main Pages” and “Freeware Blogs” in the example below). Here’s how mine looks right now.

Source : Jonathan's Tool Bar & Grill