Best Bit Rate to Rip or Encode CDs or DVDs

According to Tech Guy Labs….

“Apple’s AAC is better than MP3, [but comes down to personal preference.]

Start at 128kbps. But go at least 160kbps, even with AAC. Makes a significant difference, but only takes up 25% more space. Patrick Norton [of Revision3] says that 320kbps is the max you can encode and hear a difference, . Leo says you can’t really hear any difference above 192. But Leo is older than Patrick.

Use Variable Bit Rate encoding (VBR) will waste less space and is an option in iTunes.”

Best Bit Rate for Ripping/Encoding CDs or DVDs

According to Tech Guy Labs….

“Apple’s AAC is better than MP3, [but comes down to personal preference.]

Start at 128kbps. But go at least 160kbps, even with AAC. Makes a significant difference, but only takes up 25% more space. Patrick Norton [of Revision3] says that 320kbps is the max you can encode and hear a difference, . Leo says you can’t really hear any difference above 192. But Leo is older than Patrick.

Use Variable Bit Rate encoding (VBR) will waste less space and is an option in iTunes.

How to Start a Blog

There are many FREE websites that offer the ability to start a basic blog, be it for personal use to let friends and family know what you’re up to, or for professional use, to help get your company coverage online.

Here are a few websites that are very easy to use, and require no knowledge of programming or coding…

MULTIPLY.COM-Multiply makes it easy to create, share and discuss your blog, photos, and videos with more of the people you know, and fewer of the people you don’t.

VOX.COM. Done by TypePad, but free. Has three levels of privacy – public, friends, and family. Take the tours of all the new ones and see which one you like.

BLOGGER - A blog is your easy-to-use web site, where you can quickly post thoughts, interact with people, and more. All for FREE.

WORDPRESS (the gold standard). And all of these are template driven so all you need to concentrate on is content.

WINDOWS LIVE SPACES – Microsoft’s blogging and Social Networking platform. The site was originally released in early 2004 under the MSN Spaces name to compete with other social networking sites. Windows Live Spaces received an estimated 27 million (27,000,000) unique visitors per month as of August 2007.

What is Phishing?

Phishing scams are also a big problem. A good example is when someone sends an email that appears to be from your bank, but when you enter your information in the fake web form, the scammers steal your data.

Another definition describes it as a form of social engineering, characterised by attempts to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords, or credit card information.

According to Symantec, these are the ways to protect yourself from Phishing attacks…

• Be wary of emails asking for confidential information—especially of a financial nature. Legitimate organizations will never request sensitive information via email.
• Don’t get pressured into providing sensitive information. Phishers like to use scare tactics, and may threaten to disable an account or delay services until you update certain information. Be sure to contact the merchant directly to confirm the authenticity of their request.
• Familiarize yourself with a Web site’s privacy policy.
• Watch out for generic-looking requests for information. Fraudulent emails are often not personalized, while authentic emails from your bank often reference an account you have with them.
• Never submit confidential information via forms embedded within email messages.
• Never use links in an email to connect to a Web site. Instead, open a new browser window and type the URL directly into the address bar.
• Maintain effective software to combat phishing. [many anti-virus programs now] automatically detect and block fake Web sites. They may also authenticate major banking and shopping Web sites.

Spam Management

According to Tech Guy Labs:

“The longer you use an email, the more SPAM you will get. The easier your email is “guessable” by spambots, the more spam you’ll get. The more listserves you’re with, the more SPAM you’ll get. Leo, for instance, gets over a million spams a month!

Leo’s 3 stages for Spam management:

1) use an external service. Leo uses MailRoute.net. There’s also onlymyemail.com. These are for pay services that block out spam.

2) Use Spam Assassin on your server.

3) Finally, a local solution like Mail Washer.”

Another option, when using services like Hotmail or Yahoo, in recent years, have spam-catching services that seem to catch most, if not all, spam or junk email. You can also have the junk email filter spam to specific folders. Microsoft Outlook has similiar options. You can also use a Junk Email Senders List, and filter to specific folders as well.

In Outlook, right-click email, choose “Junk E-Mail”, and “Add to Blocked Senders List”. From that point on, Outlook filter those emails to the Junk Mail folder. You can also right-click messages and “Create a Rule”, so the message is automatically filtered to the folder you designate.

How to Disable Memory Dumps (Physical Memory Dumps)

according to Tech Guy Labs….

The memory dump is a behavior that’s set in XP’s system control panel under advanced system properties. It happens when you suffer a crash. And it’s rather useless unless your a programmer. Just turn it off.”

Memory Dumps often happen suddenly and are evident with a Blue Screen of Death, usually with an error code such as “***STOP: 0X00000008E(0XC0000090, 0X004B4BD8, 0XEE25885C, 0X00000000)”.

These dumps can be caused by a faulty piece of hardware or a bad driver. Reinstall the drivers with the most current from the manufacturer’s websites or Windows Update.

To DISABLE Memory Dumps:

1. Right-click My Computer -> Properties
2. In the Advanced tab -> Startup and Recovery -> Settings button.
3. System Failure -> Write Debugging Information -> drop down list select None.
4. Click OK

To learn how to prevent the computer from restarting when a Blue Screen of Death happens, go here.

IRQ Not Less or Equal

What is an IRQ?

There doesn’t seem to be any direct cause of this Blue Screen of Death error message. The most likely cause seem to be faulty or bad RAM. So, make sure you’re grounded, open up your computer case and make sure the RAM is properly seated. You should not be able to see the gold contacts. If you bought cheap RAM, you may want to return it and buy from a well-known company, such as Kingston.

Other possible causes include the video card (NVidia seems to be a culprit), or the sound card. Try swapping these components for others and see if the problem reoccurs.

You can also try running RAM tests using Memtest or Simmtester.com

Another cause could be overheating, and Windows may just be guessing the problem. Make sure the case has proper air flow.

You may be able to figure out the problem in the Event Viewer, Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Event Viewer.

The best way to avoid IRQ conflicts to is install expansion cards one at a time AFTER installing Windows.

Run older software/programs in Windows Vista

First Method according to CNET…

If your software application won’t install, open or work properly, right click on the application’s .exe file. Select Properties and then click the Compatibility tab. From there, pick the previous Windows operating system you were on (most likely Windows XP).

Second method from SoftwareTipsPalace.com:

“Windows Vista was designed with backward compatibility for software in mind, that is: much software was designed to run with versions of windows before Windows Vista will run just fine on Vista. However some programs my not run well or will not run at all. If you find that on old program doesn’t run correctly you can access Vista’s program compatibility wizard so you can setup windows behave like on earlier versions of windows when you run that older program. Here is how to access program compatibility wizard:

1. Click Start menu and then click Control Panel,
2. In Control Panel window click “Programs” link,
3. Under the “Programs and Features” header click on “Use an older program with this version of Windows” link
4. The Programs Compatibility Wizard appears, read the Caution note that you should not use this wizard for older virus detection, backup or system programs, there are programs installed with Windows Vista as well as antivirus and backup software which are build specifically for Windows Vista and you should use those programs,
5. Click the Next button, you can choose where the older programs is located and then click Next button,
6. Click the programs you want to run with compatibility settings and thank click Next button,
7. Now click the Operation System that the programs uses, you can choose from any version of Windows all the way back to Windows 95, in our case we clicked “Microsoft Windows XP (Service Pack 2)” button and then click Next button,
8. Select the display settings check box next to the display setting if the current display settings is causing the problems, if there is no display problems just click the Next button,
9. If the program requires administrator privilege select the checkbox “Run this program as an administrator” and then click Next button,
10. You can test your compatibilities settings by clicking the Next button,
11. When the user account control dialog windows appears click the continue button,
12. The program start and it works just fine (in our case, we hope it’s the same with you),
13. Since the compatibility settings work we will live “Yes” button selected and click the Next button,
14. Click the start application button in tool bar, if you want to send program compatibility information to Microsoft for their records click the “Yes” button, we don’t want to send our information’s so we click “No” button and then click the Next button,
15. The Wizard is completed so close the Wizard windows by clicking Finish button. Now everything is finish. You can do this every time for any programs just repeat these steps”

If after all that, your program is having trouble running in Windows Vista or refuses to work at all, you likely need to accept that and find a similiar program that will work in Windows Vista. Sorry for the bad news.

Download YouTube Videos

There are a few free programs out there that will download the video from any YouTube page, as well as MetaCafe, DailyMotion, and more. One of the more well known tools is “YouTube Downloader”. Another utility is Vixy.net, which is an online-based solution.  Another is Keepvid.com. TechCrunch also has a tool. My favorite solution is the newest version of RealPlayer (free). Once installed, RealPlayer adds a “Download Now” button to the top of every flash video. Each video downloads in FLV format, which nearly all mainstream media players will now play without the need to convert them.

YouTube Downloader http://youtubedownload.altervista.org/

Vixy.net http://vixy.net

KeepVid.com http://keepvid.com

RealPlayer http://tinyurl.com/ddn93

Can MAC read and write to NTFS drives

The Mac can read FAT32 without a problem. The Mac will read NTFS, but cannot write to it. There is a program called MacFuse, which can read and write to NTFS drives. The Mac’s file format of HFS PLUS is the best way o go.

HackZine.com goes into more detail about how to properly do this…

http://www.hackszine.com/blog/archive/2007/06/howto_readwrite_to_ntfs_drives.html

From HackZine.com…

“If you want to share an external drive between a Mac and a Windows machine, you typically format the drive with a FAT32 partition. One problem you’ll run into, however, is that you can run into a file size limit if you’re dealing with really large files. NTFS gets around this limitation, but unfortunately the OS X NTFS driver only supports reading from NTFS partitions.

Thankfully, there’s a NTFS Fuse driver which you can use with the MacFUSE userspace filesystem driver. It supports full read/write capability, so you can use an external disk to swap large files between your Windows and Mac machines.

It’s a bit of a pain to install, but here’s the quick rundown:

Download and install MacFUSE – Link
Just get the DMG file and run the contained installer.

Download and install Fink. You need this for obtaining and building the NTFS Fuse driver – Link
- run the installer within the DMG file
- drag the FinkCommander application to your Applications folder
Get NTFS Fuse driver. You need to configure Fink to use unstable packages and then install the ntfs-3g Fuse driver. Open a terminal and run the following commands.
- /sw/bin/fink configure
Use defaults, except answer YES to use the unstable tree
- /sw/bin/fink selfupdate
- /sw/bin/fink index
- /sw/bin/fink scanpackages
- /sw/bin/fink install ntfs-3g
Reboot
Mount your drive
- First, make sure it’s unmounted in disk utility (Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility – select drive – click unmount)
- Make a mount point: mkdir /Volumes/ntfsdrive
- Mount the drive: /sw/bin/ntfs-3g /dev/disk2s1 /Volumes/ntfsdrive
Replace /dev/disk2s1 with your external drive’s device. You can find this in Disk Utility.

The last step is all that you’ll need to repeat in the future to connect to your NTFS drive. After executing the mount command, the drive will appear on your desktop and you should be able to write files to it!”