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This is awesome, perhaps our current administration should listen to this.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlEqtaWpKEU]

Here’s a video of somebody showing the performance gains of Windows Vista with Readyboost enabled (Windows ReadyBoost helps make PCs more responsive by using flash memory devices, like USB thumb drives, to boost performance). Pretty incredible, it goes from taking 43 seconds to fully boot to 14 seconds!

Video at GoogleVideo

The Ulimate list of FREE Windows software from Microsoft! Microsoft has over 150 FREE Windows Programs available for download — but finding them all is extremely difficult. Until now… cheggit out!

http://bhandler.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!70F64BC910C9F7F3!1231.entry

As we all know that Microsoft Vista was originally scheduled to be released in 2003, after two years of Windows XP, but it got delayed by over five years due to various reasons. Definitely, Vista is very very improved OS over the previous versions, but the delayed in the launch has cost Microsoft, billions of dollars. Now the question at the moment is, what exactly after Vista? Microsoft can’t afford to wait another five years for an operating system. The competition is fierce. That is why, to stay at the top, Microsoft has planned a ‘Vista R2′, codenamed Fiji which will be released some time in 2008.

And after Fiji, there will be Windows ‘Vienna’. Windows Fiji, will not be a totally different OS from Vista; but it will be an add-on. Whereas Vienna will be totally different from Vista. Windows Fiji will feature a more powerful sidebar, Monaco, a music authoring tool similar to Apple’s Garageband, default playback of HD-DVD, more advanced Speech Recognition, and new themes, icons, wallpapers, games, and minor tweaks to almost everything.
While in Windows Vienna the current interface will be completely stripped, no more explorer shells, and taskbars. No start menu. Probably no toolbars, or menus and Speech Recognition will become a major input device. One thing is for certain, Vienna won�t be just an operating system, but a new generation in computing.

Read more.

PC World reviews 17 online storage solutions for your off-site backup needs and give IBackup their highest rating.

For anyone who doesn’t already have server space for backup, this roundup is a nice summary of prices and features. Using any of these services that mount as a network drive - or provide FTP access - you too can sleep well while your computer automatically backs up your data offline in case of theft, fire or flood.

Techworld also has a nice article, The Online Storage Gang. This article shares some of the same companies but has a much more user friendly description of the services.

I’ve personally used the newly free XDrive, it’s pretty decent. I’ve also checked out DivShare. While DivShare is fast and simple… I but found it too limited and simplistic for anything more than occassional sharing. Of the bunch I’ve seen, MediaMax Steamload really stands out (I have to admit that I haven’t used OmniDrive yet, which is the site TechWorld awards its highest honors).

What happens when your co-workers decide to cover your entire cube in tin foil…

“So here’s the background: a fellow designer left for vacation this past week. He intends to return the Tuesday after Christmas. What he doesn’t even know yet is that my boss, fellow designer and myself used over 500 square feet of tin foil and wrapped up EVERYTHING in his cube!

The pictures don’t do it justice… We wrapped it all — his phone, the mirror, his headphones, his hat, the action figures, the papers on his desk even the trash under it. We started around 3pm Wednesday afternoon and spent 3-4 hours wrapping. Then on Thursday we spent the entire day finishing it up.

$25 of tin foil and only 1.5 days of time … not to shabby if I may say so myself. You can view all the pictures here:
http://flickr.com/photos/vinesugar/sets/72157594432152707/ ”

They can see us, read our emails, watch our IM conversations, and now even hear us whether we want them to or not

It seems as though George Orwell hit it the bullseye again when he wrote about Big Brother and the government’s way of keeping track of the general public. It has been recently revealed that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has a way of tapping a cell phone and using the microphone to listen in on nearby conversations.

The method used for listening in on conversations held by alleged members of Cosa Nostra is called a “roving bug” and was ruled to be a legal method of wiretapping by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan. The bug was alledgedly used on two Nextel phones. It looks like all cellular phones are vulnerable to this sort of wiretapping according to CNet’s findings:

The U.S. Commerce Department’s security office warns that “a cellular telephone can be turned into a microphone and transmitter for the purpose of listening to conversations in the vicinity of the phone.” An article in the Financial Times last year said mobile providers can “remotely install a piece of software on to any handset, without the owner’s knowledge, which will activate the microphone even when its owner is not making a call.”Kaplan further added that the functionality of the roving bug was in place even when the phone was powered off — or at least when the phone looked to be powered off.� One possible method that the FBI used to tap into the two Nextel phones is by getting the network to install a rogue firmware update which gave the agency access to such features.Kaplan further added that the functionality of the roving bug was in place even when the phone was powered off — or at least when the phone looked to be powered off. One possible method that the FBI used to tap into the two Nextel phones is by getting the network to install a rogue firmware update which gave the agency access to such features.Such capability has long been rumored to exist in Motorola phones after it was discovered how the 9/11 terrorists used cellular phones to coordinate most of their activities.
Kaplan further added that the functionality of the roving bug was in place even when the phone was powered off — or at least when the phone looked to be powered off. One possible method that the FBI used to tap into the two Nextel phones is by getting the network to install a rogue firmware update which gave the agency access to such features.Such capability has long been rumored to exist in Motorola phones after it was discovered how the 9/11 terrorists used cellular phones to coordinate most of their activities.Still there are some skeptics who believe that this method does not exist and that the FBI had to have physically planted a bug into the cellular phone to monitor conversations. But with the recent boom of PDA phones and devices that support custom software it was only a matter of time before hackers, or the government found a way to exploit similar features.

Orig article link: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=5184