PC Wizard

I have a great download for you today called PC Wizard! This program is made for taking a deeper look into the performance of your computer system. With PC Wizard, you can look at all of your hardware and find out how well it's performing, compared to what it should be doing. And the best part is how easy it is to use. Let's take a look!

Right after you install the program, best natural viagra it will scan your system and let you know what all types of hardware you have. You can then look at each of those devices individually and see the technical information about how they run.

After having some fun with that, go ahead and click on the Benchmarks button, located in the bottom left hand corner. That will allow you to do a performance test on all of your hardware and see how it compares. PC Wizard is also great for finding hardware on your system that may be lacking or needs to be replaced.

And those two features are just half of the information this great program will provide for you. Feel free to surf around. There surely is a lot to discover!

PC Wizard is absolutely free and you can download it for yourself right here. Enjoy!

February 5th, 2008

Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes @ 9:33 am

Q:
I have my own personal Web site and I was wondering if there was any way I could find out which sites use mine as a reference or any that just mention my site. What's the easiest way to do that? Please help!

A:
That's a very good question! If you maintain your very own Web site, whether it be for personal use, for a business or whatever, wouldn't it be interesting to find out what other Web sites link out to your homepage? Then let's do it!

Often times, other Web site administrators will come across your site and see something they would like to include on theirs. For example, this happens a lot with WorldStart's wallpaper. We get e-mails everyday from people asking if they can include our wallpaper on their Web site. Fortunately, we are very open to letting other people use our material, as long as they give us proper credit. So, if you have a business Web site and you have a daily business tip (or something similar), other people may be interested in using that on their site as well. (as long as proper credit is given!)

This type of thing is very common. Most people seem to like it, because it gives their site more recognition and it helps get the word out to more places. On the other hand, some of you may not like your material being used on other sites. That is, of course, perfectly fine, because it is your Web site. You own it, you run it and you can do what you want with it!

Either way, this next little trick I'm going to share with you will help you see which Web sites have links to yours, which in turn, anyone can see. If you like the recognition, you can always go and check to make sure the site is giving you proper credit and if you don't like the situation, you can always go to the site, look up the administrator's contact information and you can e-mail them and ask them to remove your material from their site. They have to comply with you, because it's your property! But, all in all, you can see this tip is good for either side of the track. Alright, here we go!

This trick is for the Google search engine only. alternatives to viagra Go to Google's homepage and in the search box, you're going to type a simple line: link:yoursite.com. When you're done, just click on Search.

You will, of course, change the "yoursite" part to your Web site's address. For instance, I wanted to check out how many sites have WorldStart's information linked. So, I went to Google and typed in link:worldstart.com. Several entries came up, which didn't surprise me, but it was neat to see all of them! I also tried doing one for MySpace, so I typed in link:myspace.com and even more came up for that.

By Annalee Newitz, AlterNet. Posted January 29, 2008.

If only the government would warn you when it was recording your conversations, like Google.

Say what you want about Google being an evil corporate overlord that steals all of your private data, turns it into info-mulch, and then injects it into the technoslaves to keep them drugged and helpless. There are still some good things about the company. For example, Google's IM program, Google Talk, sends you a warning message alerting alternative to viagra you when the person on the other end of your chat is recording your chat session.

Just the other day I was chatting with somebody about something slightly personal and noticed that she'd suddenly turned on Record for our chat. I knew everything I was saying was being logged and filed in her Gmail. In this case I wasn't too concerned. For one thing, I wasn't saying anything I'd regret seeing in print. I'm used to the idea that anything I say on chat might be recorded and logged.

What was different about this experience was that Google warned me first — told me point-blank that I was basically under surveillance from the Google server, which would automatically log and save that conversation. I appreciated that. It meant I could opt out of the conversation and preserve my privacy. It also meant that other people using Gtalk, who might not have had the expectation that all of their chat sessions might be recorded, would be enlightened.

It also reminded me forcefully that Google is a far more polite and privacy-concerned evil overlord than the United States government.

Right now members of Congress are trying to pass a law that would grant immunity to large telcos like AT&T that have been spying on their customers' private phone conversations and passing along what they've learned to the National Security Agency. The law, called the Protect America Act, would allow telephone and Internet providers to hand over all private data on their networks to the government — without notifying their customers and without any court supervision of what amounts to mass wiretapping.

Last year the Electronic Frontier Foundation sued AT&T for violating the Fourth Amendment when a whistle-blower at AT&T revealed that the company was handing over private information to the NSA without warrants. That case has been working its way through the courts, and making some headway; in fact, it was starting to look like AT&T would be forced to pay damages to its customers for violating their rights. But the Protect America Act would stop this court case in its tracks by granting retroactive immunity to AT&T and any other company that spied on people for the NSA without warrants.

The whole situation is insane. First, it's outrageous that telcos would illegally hand over their private customer data to the government. And second, it's even more outrageous that when its scheme was discovered, the government tried to pass a law making it retroactively legal for AT&T to have broken one of the most fundamental of our civil rights: protection of our private data from the government.

Imagine what would happen if the phone and Internet systems in our country had the same warnings on them that Gtalk has. Every time you picked up the phone to make a call or logged on to the Internet, you'd get a helpful little message: "Warning: the government is recording everything that you are saying and doing right now." Holy crap.

The good news is that it's not too late. The Protect America Act must pass both houses of Congress to become law, so you can still alert your local congress critters in the House that you don't want retroactive immunity for telcos that are logging your private conversations for the NSA. Find out more at stopthespying.org.

And remember, everything you say and do is being logged. This polite message has been brought to you by the surveillance state.

As you have probably figured out, living in an electronic age has its downsides, with one of them being swamped by unwanted e-mail in our Inboxes. Those who indulge in such an act are called spammers and they are growing by the minute, making our lives much more difficult. There are several different kinds of spam going around the Internet these days, but one of the most recent is instant messenger (IM) spam. What that means is that even if you prefer to be invisible to everyone in an IM program, spammers can get you anyway. Now, even if you can’t completely eradicate such a menace, there are ways of bringing down their frequency. Here are a few simple steps you can follow to secure yourself from this new type of spam brigade!

Yahoo! Messenger

First of all, you need to set your profile to "Adult" and remove yourself from being listed on Yahoo!'s public directory. This is how you do it:

1.) Log in to your profile by visiting this link.

2.) Once you're there, click Sign In and log in using the same username and password you use for Yahoo! Messenger.

3.) Click View My Profiles and then click Edit, located next to your Yahoo! ID.

4.) Next, click Edit Profile Information on the next page. At the bottom of that page, put a checkmark next to the option of "Designate this profile as an adult profile" and uncheck the option that says "Add this profile to the Yahoo! Member Directory."

5.) Click the Save Changes button when you're finished.

How This Strategy Works

When you set your profile to "Adult," spammers will have to physically log in to Yahoo! before they can harm you, so it acts as a good deterrent for spammers. Similarly, taking your profile off the Yahoo! Member Directory will make your 100 mg viagra profile almost invisible to spammers. And that's exactly what you want to do!

Windows Live/Hotmail/MSN

Based on the same anti-spam principle of Yahoo!, here your job is to change your profile from "Social" to "Just Me." Follow these easy steps to do just that:

1.) Go here and sign in with your Hotmail/MSN/Windows Live e-mail address and password (which is the same as your messenger log in).

2.) Next, click Profiles on the sidebar to your left. Go to the next page and click "Edit your shared profile." Then on the next page, click Social and next to Permissions, click "Anyone on the Internet."

3.) Checkmark the option of "Just Me" and then click the Save button to finish.

All Other Instant Messengers

Pidgin is a cross-platform multi-protocol instant messaging client that allows you to use all of your IM accounts at once. Pidgin is able to connect to every other chat service that exists in cyberspace. Some of them include AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, ICQ, IRC, MySpaceIM, Sametime and Zephyr, among many others.

Now, what you can do to protect yourself from being spammed over these instant messaging networks is to download Bot Sentry, which you can do right here. Bot Sentry is a Pidgin plug-in that allows you to ignore instant messages (IMs), unless the sender is in your Buddy List, in your Allow List or the sender correctly answers a question you have pre-defined, such as "How do you spell the number five?" If the answer is wrong, such users cannot contact you ever again. This works with all chat services that are connected to Pidgin.

There you have it. I hope this one helps eliminate some of your IM spam problems. Be safe!