TTC Shelbyville – Technical Blog

AccuWeather and IBISEYE have excellent interactive hurricane trackers.

Google (www.google.com/realtime) has introduced realtime search that lets you see up-to-the-second social updates, news articles and blog posts (including Twitter).   Although wordpress now offers Twitter on each posts and stats, Google offers you a look at things that are happening on your blog that you may not know about.

SATA 6Gbit/sec.: Does it double your SATA speed?.

The scary side of virtualization.

After pushing forward with server virtualization, some IT executives are rethinking the security implications…

We are a fan of ComputerWorld and use their sharethis Web 2.0 to share some of their best articles.  Their annual report on the 100 Best Companies to work in IT is out.  Go take a look.

With filters and an interactive map, this article is one of the best on ComputerWorld.

Although this is a link to Paragon’s Rescue Kit Free Edition, this software is powerful enough to let you rescue your data or your operating system’s ability to boot.   Link

Although the free version or Paragon’s Go Virtual is for non-commercial use, this application is an excellent product.  It requires you to load VirtualPC, VMWare or Oracle’s VirtualBox on a computer.  Once loaded, all you have to do is Load Paragon’s Go Virtual on the computer you want, run through the wizard and it will create a VDMK file (a virtualization of the OS you are using).  Once the file is created, you can run through the New Wizard setup on your Virtualization software and point to the file and you then have your operating system virtualized.  With a 32 bit or 64 bit version available, this software will work on nearly any computer.

Benefits?

• Full Windows OS Support
• P2V (Physical to Virtual) Migration
• Migration without rebooting Windows – Hot processing of locked (in-use) hard disks lets you migrate a computer without rebooting and interrupting Windows.
• P2V Adjust OS by troubleshooting startup problems.
• Smart Driver Injector
• Performance – Paragon Go Virtual is nearly 20% faster than other utilities
• Selection of virtual hardware
• Migration of offline systems
• Allows you to have a backup of your operating system (virtually)
• Test software and tools

With my system, it took approximately 45 minutes to create the virtual file.  Here are some screenshots.

There appears to be a Linux vulnerability that has been around for about seven years.  Although a patch is coming out  soon (some patches have been released) doesn’t mean the dozens of other ‘flavors’ of LInux have been patched.

Get your updates.

Want a vulnerable Linux? Link to an unsecure Linux

Security chiefs at home: No such thing as ‘off duty’.

Excellent article we posted from ComputerWorld by ShareThis.

NIST’s (National Institute of Standards and Technology) Special Publication 800-126

Security Content Automation Protocol

Past Articles on FISMA and ISO 27000

Want to install multiple applications fast and at the same time.  Ninite Easy PC Setup allows you to pick the software you want and install by a simple installer.  Ninite doesn’t install toolbars and works with 32 or 64 bit Windows. Ninite

Over the years the QoS settings under your network settings have been controversial.     I never really tried it until tonight.  To disable QoS, don’t just uncheck it under the network adapter properties.

To change how much bandwidth is reserved for QoS (the default is 20% of your total bandwidth), do the following:

1. Log in as “Administrator” (Administrator Only).
2. Navigate to START-Run (or Search in Windows 7) and type: gpedit.msc   Hit Enter.

3. Navigate to Local Computer Policy – Administrative Templates – Network – QOS Packet Scheduler

4. In the right pane, double-click the limit reservable bandwidth setting
5. On the setting tab, check the enabled setting.
6. In the  “Bandwidth limit %”, change the value to read 0 (the numeric value of zero)

7. Click OK, close gpedit.msc

Reboot your computer.

If you disable this setting (by clicking disable) or do not configure it, the system uses the default value of 20 percent of the connection.

Before

After

At only .5 Mb/s down, it’s a little improvement that goes a long way.

Here’s another way to improve your networking even more.  Link

The above tips are for Professional or greater versions.   You can type services.msc and disable QoS in the Home Edition.



A rare symptom but if it happens, you may need to apply this hotfix from Microsoft.  Always check for spyware first.

Rick over at Whats On My PC found an excellent software ironically when i need hundreds of pictures converted and resized.  Photo Magician allows you to select an input folder, an output folder, set your options and convert.  Go over and read his review.

If you want to make your own sidebar Gadget (RSS feeds, etc.) It can be easy by first going to Widgetbox and creating a web Widget.  After creating your Widget, download Amnesty Generator for Vista (Amnesty works with 7 and supports other websites such as Google Gadgets).  Open the program as an administrator in Windows 7 .

WidgetBox (above)

Amnesty Generator (Above)

Fill in the blanks and click generate.  If the program disappears, you will find the gadget added to your gadget gallery.

Select the gadget and double click.

The great thing about Windows 7 is you can add the sidebar option and install gadgets.  Unlike Windows Vista, when gadgets and the sidebar is loaded, less resources are used.

With two gadgets loaded, my Windows 7 computer only uses 17 mb.   The same two gadgets on my Windows Vista computer use 28 mb.  With many gadgets available (over 4,000), you can customize many of these gadgets with their settings options.   With social network gadgets along with Twitter, weather, computer utilities ( cpu temp, networking and others) , religious, games, live cameras and thousands of others, you can tweak out your Windows 7 computer.

How about a bluetooth auto lock to lock your car remotely?   Search the gallery and check out each of the applications, you’ll find something useful.

Networking Gadget

Weather Gadget (Showing our Weather Station -KTNSHELB3)

Although I prefer Auslogics Defrag, here’s an alternative.   UltimateDefrag does a great job defragging your hard drive.  We have found that some defragment software work better on some systems (depending on installed applications – believe it or not).

Do you need templates for work schedules, budget planners, invoices, checkbook, calculators, payroll or dozens more?

This site helps you find those templates that help with work or day to day life.  Link

Want to see the IP packet information for your network card?

Open a Command Prompt as an Administrator

Type netsh interface ip show ipstats

The same command can be used for TCP and UDP stats

ASUSTeK CEO Jerry Shen announced that his company in March is launching a $399 10-inch tablet running on Google’s Android OS.

DailyTech – ASUS Announces $1,000 Eee Pad, $399 Android Tablet.

by shareThis