Device Lock – Peripheral Port Locking
Roudybob found an interesting product that I could have used last week. It is called DeviceLock and it allows administrators to deny I/O access to USB, Firewire, and Bluetooth ports on a PC to prevent unauthorized copying of files. It’s AD integrated and manageable via Group Policy! Thanks, Bob.
RIP “Nice Guy Eddie” Chris Penn dead
Not that I was a huge fan, but sad news all the same. He was a likable character and will be missed.
Lighting your house with the sun
My wife and I live in a 50 year old, brick, ranch style home in the midwest. We have been looking at either retrofitting our house with newer technologies or building a new one with several “green” upgrades in mind. We would like to limit the amount of gas and electrical energy that we use, but solar, wind, and water power are not currently an option for us. The cost of implementation exceeds the payoff (there is not enough sun year-round to support our energy needs/ we have a lot of tree cover).
Himawari makes a nice solar collector that collects sunlight and transfers it through the house via fiber optic cable and does a nice job at it! Studies have shown that natural lights provide many health advantages (and since we typically have 3 months of rain and 3 months of snow, we spend a lot of time indoors). This is definately on the list of upgrades, maybe even replacing the skylights/ solar “bubble” lights that we had planned to use.
Hamachi VPN as a service on any version of Windows
I have some buddies that play online a lot and have had to deal with VPN issues in the past. They highly recommend this solution.
Here’s a good article on how to install and configure Hamachi to run as a service that automatically connects on Windows 2000, XP, and 2003. It lays out all the necessary steps in one place.
Beautiful Images of Decay
I stumbled across this site last summer and came across the most beautiful digital photographs of a ship graveyard. I revisited today as I was updating my bookmarks and there are a whole slew of great photos on display. Mr. Motts is a very talented photographer with a keen eye for subject matter. Check out his site.
Best (most useful) list of windows utilities I have ever seen
This is bar none the best list of windows utilities I have ever seen. OK, I already knew about approximately half of them and the list is from 2005 but the ones I was not aware of are golden. I know people are tired of these lists but just check it out and see. My apologies if this is not news to you.
- Must check out Paint.net, NetPing, so many cool apps I never knew about!
New iMac Reviewed
Ars Tecnica has posted a review of the new intel iMac.
Awesome firefox XUL example!
Searches amazon… you must see it to believe it!
I used this and it ROCKS! So much faster than going to Amazon and browsing around!
Sorry, only works with Firefox…but why wait for IE7? Get tabbed browsing, RSS feeds, and a load of search engine options now with Firefox 1.5!
Run your own FM radio station from your PC
An alternative to running a streaming server and the ability to listen to your mp3s without being tethered to a PC. Nice!
Ever fancied running your own radio station, or perhaps just broadcasting your own music around the house (and maybe a little beyond)? PCI MAX 2005 is a software-controlled FM transmitter on a PCI card with a 15W max output (with the optional booster)
No doubt you’ll check all the legal angles before using this!
