Tuesday, 15 June 2010

Phones and iPhones


Choosing a new mobile phone is always a daunting task. The choices are so many! You have all these brands, different features, regular mobiles, smartphones, with or without GPS, different types of screens, it's a whole new world out there! As a gadgetolic, I have always carefully looked at all the specs and reviews available before committing to a phone. For years I preferred having a mobile and a PDA as separate devices, the logic was, if one brakes, I will still have the other and won't have to go without any of them. Also, this was when the first

Tuesday, 26 January 2010

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

Saturday, 16 January 2010

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

Wednesday, 13 January 2010

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:

Tuesday, 12 January 2010

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

Monday, 11 January 2010

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

Friday, 8 January 2010

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 -