Silverlight Facebook Client

For all you Facebook fans, here's something sparkling new that will make Facebook look great on your desktop. Microsoft has just launched a beta version of a new Silverlight Clent for Facebook, and it looks really, really cool.

If you want to try it out go to

How to build your own NAS – Part 4

Now that you have your NAS up and running you may need to make changes to the share setup, install updates, etc. and since you don't want to have a display, keyboard and mouse attached to it, you will need a way to remotely administer your NAS. That's where Webmin comes into play.

Webmin is a web-based interface for

How to build your own NAS – Part 3

Now that you have familiarized yourself with your Ubuntu Linux box, let's get the NAS bit to work!

To start, you need to install Samba (no, not the Brasilian music style) and configure it. To accomplish this log in with your username and password and go to the "Accessories" menu on the desktop and open a "Terminal" session. You now need to switch to the Administrator account by typing the following in the Terminal windows:

How to build your own NAS – Part 2

Now that you have all the required hardware, this is what you need to do:

Install the SATA card on an available PCI slot in your computer. Leave the old HDD in the computer, connected to an IDE port. Connect the new HDDs to the SATA controller with a SATA cable. Connect the power cable to the new HDDS if these have one of the old power connector sockets or, if not, you'll need an adapter for each SATA HDD. Close the box!

As I mentioned earlier, you will ideally have

How to build your own NAS – Part 1

For those of you who have a growing collection of digital pictures, movies and documents and have more than one computer at home, both the availability and security of those files are a concern. As discussed in a previous blog, "To NAS or not to NAS", the purchase of the right Network Attached Storage (NAS) device may be the solution, but the prices of these handy little devices is often prohibitive, especially in times of economic crisis as the ones we are going through.

One of my favourite NAS options is the

Windows 7 God Mode Part 2

If you like to play around with new features and tweaks, here are a few other special folders you can create in the same way as the previously revealed "God Mode":

Default Location - {00C6D95F-329C-409a-81D7-C46C66EA7F33}
Biometrics - {0142e4d0-fb7a-11dc-ba4a-000ffe7ab428}
Power Settings - {025A5937-A6BE-4686-A844-36FE4BEC8B6D}
Notification Area - {05d7b0f4-2121-4eff-bf6b-ed3f69b894d9}
Manage Credentials -

Top 10 Certifications

In this world of quick changing technologies, where what was in the realm of science fiction just a few years ago becomes reality every day of our lives, one of the ways to stay on top of things (and keep your techie job!) is to continuously update your knowledge and achieve certification on your field of work.

Now, having said that, there are hundreds of different

Open Office 2007 documents on Office 2003 or XP

Sometimes I need to send a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet to someone, and often enough I get a reply from that person saying they are unable to open the document I sent. I use Microsoft Office 2007 and many are still using Microsoft Office 2003 or even Microsoft Office XP. As you probably have noticed, documents created by Word 2007 end with the extension .docx instead of the familiar .doc from previous versions, and Excel 2007 files have the extensions .xlsx, instead of .xls. Of course it is

Windows 7 “God Mode”

Remember Doom and Quake "God mode", where you could play without your character dying or run out of ammo? Well, someone thought it would be nice to have such a mode in Windows 7!!! Unfortunately, this so called "God Mode" in Windows 7 doesn't do much, as all it really does is put all your control panels in one standard class view folder. It gives you some added control over Windows 7 features, but don't think