Tag: software

  • Monthly Backups: Have you started yours?

    Before I start, a friendly remind­er that you only have 2.5 days left to enter the con­test for a free Click­free Trans­former backup sys­tem. Tell me a backup hor­ror story. One thing I like to do is, at the end of every month, veri­fy that I’ve got a full backup of what I like to call…

  • Spring’s on its way. Backup now — before you’re too busy.

    I’ve writ­ten a lot about back­ing up your data over the years. But even though backups are import­ant, some­how they’re always 2nd or 3rd on the pri­or­ity list. ‘Some­thing to do when I get time’. And as Spring approaches, time is one thing that there’s going to be less of as pri­or­it­ies shift from inside…

  • How to easily edit home video with free software from Microsoft

    Back in the day I used to be a news video­tape edit­or. This was before cam­er­as were digit­al — think back to the days of VCRs, Beta and VHS. Yep, that was the media of the day to record music and video. That was called Analog. The reas­on I bring that up is because edit­ing…

  • Did the Monkey steal the crown?

    Last year I del­cared Song­bird, the multi-plat­form media play­er and organ­izer the Best Music Play­er Ever. Now, there’s a chal­lenger for the title, at least in the Win­dows / PC arena; Media­Mon­key. …more This post is an excerpt from one of my weekly posts on the Future Shop Techb­log. Check out the full post here.

  • eRadio? It’s coming.

    By now you’re pretty tired read­ing all the ‘2010 is the year of the eBook’ art­icles out there. But what about eRa­dio? It’s more pre­val­ent but do you even know what it is? …more This post is an excerpt from one of my weekly posts on the Future Shop Techb­log. Check out the full post…

  • Space. The final frontier.

    Winter in Canada means cold winter nights — nights that, if you’re on the prair­ies, are usu­ally cold, crisp and clear. Which means per­fect even­ings for star­gaz­ing. But if you’re tem­per­at­ure chal­lenged, live on the ‘wet’ coast, or are loc­ated in much cloud­i­er environs, then per­haps these two astro­nomy soft­ware applic­a­tions can help. Bonus points…they’re…

  • Things to do with your new iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone

    Black Fri­day has come and gone, and you’ve likely got a new gad­get, gizmo or toy — I’m going to assume it’s an iPod Touch or iPhone — which is a per­fect oppor­tun­ity for me to dig into my archives and pull out a few posts that may help you and your new baby. 5 favour­ite…

  • Friday the 13th: Refuge in the backup

    Ok, it’s a lousy title for a movie, but it is a great remind­er to review and execute your data backup strategies, both at home and online. Why Fri­day the 13th? Simply, it’s a day-date com­bin­a­tion that hap­pens infre­quently, almost ad-hoc. When it does occur, you can eas­ily plan to take time out to per­form your…

  • How to easily install essential applications on a new Windows 7 computer

    It does­n’t mat­ter if you’ve upgraded from Vista or XP, or if you’ve bought a new Win­dows 7 based com­puter, you’re going to need to install some basic and essen­tial applic­a­tions on your new baby. And this awe­some web­site makes it so, SO easy. 4 easy steps: Vis­it the site Select which applic­a­tions you want Press the but­ton to…

  • 2 More Simple Home Backup Solutions

    photo cred­it: nick­wheel­eroz With the fin­an­cial crisis swirl­ing around this week, I took anoth­er look at ways I keep my data safe. To best achieve this, off­s­ite backups are a must. Should my com­puters become dam­aged or stolen, my data is still secure. I’ve writ­ten before about Mozy, an effect­ive auto­mated online backup sys­tem, but…

  • Fast, free and effective Palm Pilot backup with NVBackup

    Earli­er this morn­ing I had des­paired; my Palm Pilot had fallen and could­n’t get up. It had crashed. Hard. I had to force a Hard Reset to even get it back to the fact­ory default condition. I’d lost my ebooks, sched­ule, con­tacts, everything. Sure, it was backed up on my com­puter, in a backup folder,…

  • Latest Ubuntu release unleashes my laptop

    As some of you may know, my house­hold serv­er and my age­ing Com­paq Pres­ario R3230CA laptop both run Ubuntu. Well ima­gine my sur­prise when the latest upgrade to Ubuntu (7.04 Feisty Fawn) activ­ated the dormant WiFi hard­ware. Pre­vi­ous Ubuntu ver­sions did­n’t sup­port the Broad­com 802.11g wire­less, but judging from my happy res­ults, the Feisty Fawn…