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UltraVNC SC – Easier Remote Tech Support with Reverse VNC Configuration

Published on June 28th, 2007
Category: Cool Stuff, Utilities
3 Comments

Being the most computer savvy one in the family is a tough life. Sure, it has its advantages like usually being the smartest one and feeling validated by the fact that your loved ones “need” you. However, that need should only go so far. Friends and family tend to solely rely on the computer guy for their technology needs that they never try to actually do the tasks themselves. Their computer skills stagnate and they turn into technology babies. Did I mention that I hate kids and babies?

Imagine receiving late night phone calls with vague questions like, “Where did my music go?” or “Why can’t I connect to the Internet?” I don’t know how those technical support agents do it, but kudos to them. I am in awe at their patience in diagnosing and fixing problems over the phone without even being on site (or seeing the computer screen for that matter).

Well, I’ve had enough! I just don’t have any time or patience for that. I’m tired of people asking me, “Does this sound like a good deal on eBay?” I’m tired of people requesting me to remotely diagnose their computer problems over the phone. At the very least, I need to see what you are seeing. First, I need a screen!
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Dr. DivX – Seemlessly Convert Any Video Format File to DivX

Published on May 16th, 2007
Category: Audio and Video, Entertainment, Utilities
16 Comments

Take a look around in the cyber underworld. Search and download a video file with uTorrent or Gnutella. What do you see? I see DivX everywhere. Online video piracy takes a couple of forms. You have the *.flv Flash format popularly seen at YouTube. Of course, you will find the uncompressed, mammoth *.iso files directly ripped from DVDs. Then, you have the smaller compressed versions of the *.iso files as various MPEG formats. Sometimes they are in the highly-redundant, DVD-native MPEG2 format or the cross-compatible MPEG1 format. Other times, they are in one of the newer types of MPEG4. DivX, Xvid, and other MPEG4 formats have become staples in both the cyber underworld and the mainstream Internet. Out of all these variations of MPEG4 formats, the most popular is undoubtedly DivX.
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Xenu’s Link Sleuth – Find 404 Broken Links on Any Website

Published on April 25th, 2007
Category: Design and Publishing, Internet, Utilities
1 Comment

As a web designer and administrator, there are certain routine “housekeeping” tasks that you have to perform with your server. These tasks can include data backup, traffic analysis, and server log audits. But there is one job that website administrators often fail to do, link checking. In this era of Web 2.0 and blogs where content has evolved from static and unchanging to dynamic and volatile, it is very important to make sure that your anchor tags (<a>) are intact.

Not only is link validation an important monthly routine task, it is a crucial, mission-critical operation when moving web servers or changing domain names. When I moved this website from http://freeware.art-app.com to http://www.freewarereview.info, it was literally hell in cyberspace. Even with my carefully hand-crafted .htaccess 301 redirects, my readership dropped and my server logs were filled with 404 error messages.
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