Color code your Windows Explorer folders

By Mark O’Neill

foldermarker.gif

Despite my best efforts, my Windows Explorer folders are sometimes a bit of a mess.  Files tend to get scattered around like confetti at a wedding while countless folders containing an assortment of finished work, half-finished work and random musings are all mixed together in one big jumble. My folders are so disorganised that Google Desktop took one look at it and instantly asked me to uninstall it from the desktop.

A friend of mine who suffers from the same disorganization problems suggested Folder Marker which allows you to color code your Windows Explorer folders.   So after finally sorting your files into the right folders, you can then give your work folders a certain colour, your personal documents another colour and so on.  Oh man, I can just see the neatness fanatics jumping all over this one.

You can also assign certain logos to your folders such as “high priority”, “half-done work”, “important files” and so on.   It even lets you upload a few of your own icons if you’d rather use them instead.

So it’s basically the Windows version of the office filing cabinet.   We’ll see if it motivates me to keep everything in the right folders but at least my Windows Explorer is now showing a splash of colour.    Nothing like orange folders to perk up your monitor screen.



Dell says good-bye to AMD

As early as only a year ago, AMD was the number one processor choice for computer geeks world wide. Sure, their mobile platform would suck batteries like a hoover and could melt through your desk at the drop of a hat, but they were the favorite. The underdog. The company we supported because they stood up to the bigwigs at Intel. In fact, they were kinda like Linux.

When Dell decided to start marketing machines with AMD processors about two years ago, blogs and online communities such as Digg exploded with joy. Much like when Dell announced Linux based machines.

Today, unfortunately, Dell has stopped shipping AMD based computers via their largest hardware outlet: dell.com. This might seem like the final nail in AMD’s coffin. The gaming market was their last string and since Intel took over with their newest Core 2 Duo’s, it has been all down hill from there.

Dell stops selling AMD-powered machines online [Engadget]

Tags: , , ,

DailyIdea.tv: Why a Geek Will Steal Your Girlfriend this Year

One of the most controversial articles we’ve ever posted: 12 Reasons why a geek will steal your girlfriend this year, certainly made more of an impact than we expected. Some liked it, others didn’t, but what really counts is that the most positive comments we’ve received on it so far came from the ladies. Yep, that’s right… and while being on the subject of pretty ladies and geeks, Nikki Key, the lovely host of DailyIdea.tv, featured our article in her latest web show. I invite you to check it out below, and as always, don’t be afraid to leave your comments!

Synchronize your IM chat history

By Mark O’Neill

Since I spend approximately 14 hours a day online, I tend to use instant messaging a lot. I use all of the major services via the Pidgin interface as well as Skype and Google Talk.

Which all work fine, but the one thing that really annoys me is having to find a certain message at some point in the future. I often get clients who agree with me on something one day and then deny it the next day. If you use Google Talk then it isn’t a problem as everything is logged and searchable in Gmail. But try searching your Skype chat history or your AIM chat logs, and you’ll start to see what I mean. Finding one message from say 6 months ago is like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack.

IM-History claims to be able to help you overcome that problem and so far it seems to be doing a pretty good job of taming my wild chat logs. It doesn’t support Google Talk which is actually OK with me as I have Gmail to index what was and wasn’t said. But it is doing a first-class job of searching and filtering my Skype chats for the past 2 years as well as my logs for AIM, Windows Live Messenger, ICQ and Yahoo Messenger. Since I don’t use IRC, I don’t know if IM-History supports it but I see no reason why it wouldn’t. If someone wants to test that, please let me know what you find out.

When you install it for the first time, it will access your IM accounts and download copies of your entire available chat history (assuming you have already saved these records of course). It then runs in the background and synchronizes with your IM programs so as you chat, the IM-History logs update immediately. It stores text, photos, links and URL’s and you can then filter the messages to find what you are looking for :

imhistory.png

It also supports multiple programs so if you have two Skype accounts or three AIM accounts, just add them all and when you log onto one of the accounts and begin chatting, IM-History starts updating.

It also follows the Foxmarks model by also offering your chat logs on the secure https IM-History website. So you can access your chat logs from wherever there is a computer with internet access.

Quickly re-name your files with Mess Rename

Mess RenameBy reading the title of this post, most of you probably thought “Why the hell is he posting about that, does he think we’re idiots who can’t rename a file?”, and normally, you would be right to think this. But when I stumbled on this utility, I knew everyone would love it, especially those of you who take billions of pictures every week with their digital camera.

Mess rename is a cool little renaming tool that takes 3 seconds to download, 2 to install and 1 to use… no manual required. The only thing the software does is take a bunch of files and rename them according to certain rules. Remember the 600 pictures you took at that last party you went to? Remember how painful it was to rename every single picture file to make them sound significant after dumping them on your hard drive? With Mess rename, you won’t have to do this anymore. Renaming those P039*.jpg files to something like party2008_(1,2,3…).jpg will now take you seconds.

Do you know about any similar tools? Which one do you use? Let us know in the comments!

[Via La Chronique de Nelson [French]]

Is Second Life really a haven for terrorists?

By Mark O’Neill

Second Life
“Oooh…hello, my legs seem to be stuck together here. Can you help me out please buddy?”

The name is Hultcrantz, Edmund Hultcrantz….at least I was last year when I tried Second Life for all of 30 minutes. Since then, I have heard lots of positive comments about the online virtual world. But today marks the first time that I have heard it being described as “seedbeds for transnational threats“.

The “intelligence community” (in other words, the good ol’ CIA) is apparently concerned that terrorists could use Second Life’s anonymity to move money around and also recruit new members in “virtual training centers” (which are seemingly untraceable). So if you’re in Second Life and a dude in a loud Hawaii shirt and an Afro haircut comes up to you, be cautious because he might be collecting donations for Al-Qaeda.

The concerns have been heightened as Second Life begins to grow at a staggering rate. Corporations and government agencies are opening virtual offices, economies are growing inside the virtual world and real money is being made. In fact so much money is being made that the IRS is concerned that there might be a bit of tax evasion going on.

But this line caught my eye when reading the article : “the intelligence community has begun contemplating how to use Second Life and other such communities as platforms for cyber weapons that could be used against terrorists or enemies”. Plus the CIA has apparently created a few virtual islands for “internal use”.

Typical CIA. Everyone gets a virtual gaming world going and the CIA immediately gate-crash the party to have virtual gun battles and secret code sessions.

** Note : the Washington Post article link in the first paragraph requires online registration to be able to read it. If you don’t have an account with them and you don’t want to register, you can bypass the registration page by using log-in details from Bug Me Not **

Time to Upgrade Your WordPress Blogs

Yesterday, WordPress released a new version of their popular blogging software in response to a security issue. Apparently, there is a concern about the parsing of the xml remote procedure call. It seems specially crafted requests could allow anonymous, unauthenticated users to edit posts or even potentially deface a blog.

The bad guys would likely use this exploit to distribute malware or bomb Google with false information, thus driving hits to malware-hosting sites, and spreading botnets.WordPress also wanted to remind everyone to change site passwords regularly, and software updates or upgrades are good reminders to make that important, internal security change.More on this here at WordPress’ Dev Page.

On another note, has anyone else seen the enormous spike in blogspam over the past few days? The amount of spam I see has more than tripled.

Most of the spam comments were designed to pull search engine hits away from authentic, reputable Web sites (such as auto dealers) to new sites hosting malware. This represents a shift in tactics employed by phishers.

In light of this, you may want to exercise caution when visiting sites resulting from search requests. If you haven’t already done so, download and use McAfee’s SiteAdvisor utility. It is free and will validate search results, ensuring the sites you want to visit are not malicious before you click on them. It keeps me from visiting sketchy sites every day.

Heat up your hot drinks with the USB mug warmer

By Mark O’Neill

USB mug warmer

It’s important to get your priorities right in life.   The biggest priority is making sure you have a fast broadband internet connection.   The second priority is making sure your tea or coffee stays hot at all times.

That’s why every self-respecting geek needs the USB mug warmer.    As the name suggests, it is a warming platform which plugs into the USB port of your computer.    But if you are reluctant to give up one of your USB ports for this, fear not because the warming device has four extra USB ports which you can use for your other external devices.

But I think the sales page has a serious typo.  It says that the device will warm your drink “up to 80 degrees celsius”.  Shouldn’t that be 80 degrees fahrenheit?   80 degrees celsius is 176 degrees fahrenheit!

That is one hot cup of coffee!!