Internet slow? Read why at the Internet Health Report
Submitted on October 21st, 2005 by admin
Filed under Resources and Networking
No. of comments Comments Off
While most people think the internet is something they pay their local phone or cable company for, these companies actually route your traffic through tier one internet service providers which are the real “owners” of the internet. Noticed that your internet is going a bit slower than usual and want to know why? Then check out the Internet Health Report which will show you where the bottlenecks might be. You can’t do anything if a tier one ISP is having problems, but at least you’ll know not to blame your hardware or local provider.
[Via Boing Boing]
Plazes, location-aware social networking
Submitted on October 19th, 2005 by admin
Filed under Services and Networking
No. of comments (1)
While there are many services to help you find information near the area in which you live, very few of them use the power of people to make the information useful. After all, you generally rely on friends and family to discover new things and places, so why not do the same with the web? Plazes is a pretty cool service which does just that. According to the site, Plazes is a new approach to “location-aware interaction, using the local network you are connected to as location reference. Plazes allows you to share your location with the people you know and to discover people and plazes around you.” You do need to download a small application to your computer so that Plazes can know where you are, but this is especially useful since you can travel anywhere in the world with your laptop and find the coolest venues around, or use it to meet up with friends or colleagues (yes, it works on Windows, Macs, and Linux). Oh yeah, and it’s totally free.
gDisk, use GMail as online storage on a Mac
Submitted on October 12th, 2005 by admin
Filed under Storage and The Mac Side and Networking and Software
No. of comments Comments Off
Way back in May, I wrote about GMail Drive and GMailFS, two applications for Windows and Linux users which allowed you to use a GMail account for online storage. I did quite a bit of searching for a Mac equivalent but found nothing until now, and the application is called gDisk.
The best part about gDisk? It works. The application was released very recently so Google has not had a chance to lock it out of their service. It’s completely free and requires Mac OSX 10.3 or later. Get it while you can! Who wouldn’t want to have two extra gigs of online storage space for free, right?
Call SIP numbers from your home phone
Submitted on October 11th, 2005 by admin
Filed under Resources and Networking
No. of comments (2)
As voice over IP grows in popularity, you may want to contact some of your friends who are using it from a home or mobile phone. Usually, VOIP users will pay for a service to call out, or receive calls from any phone, but what if they don’t? SIP is one standard used by services such as Gizmo and Free World Dialup. Users of these services receive an SIP number which they can use to call other SIP users, but not regular phones. SIPPhone has a list of access numbers so that users of PSTN phones (landlines) can call SIP users. It is a little inconvenient, but useful nevertheless.
[Thanks Jay]
Adium IM Dashboard widget
Submitted on October 10th, 2005 by admin
Filed under The Mac Side and Networking and Software
No. of comments (3)
Every time I go searching for some cool Dashboard widgets to share with you guys, I get jealous of all Mac users. Sure, Windows users have Konfabulator, but we don’t have nearly as many cool widgets. Today’s widget of choice is AdiumList which lets users of Adium, a popular multi-protocol IM client, put their buddy lists in the Dashboard. Why bother doing this? Sometimes, you may want to save some desktop space, so this way, you just put that pesky window away until you actually need it. AdiumList is free and requires OSX 10.4 or later.
Free SkypeOUT calls, no catch
Submitted on October 10th, 2005 by admin
Filed under Networking
No. of comments (4)
I dropped my landline for a Skype account over six months ago and have been enjoying the service tremendously. One thing that always bothered me though, was that even 800 numbers took up Skype minutes. Recently, Skype announced calls to 800 numbers would be free, so someone wised up and is using the Free 411 service (800-373-3411) to get free SkypeOUT calls. Just call Free 411 from your Skype account and using the directory assistant, find the person or business you wish to call - for free.
[Via VOIP Blog]
Supercharging Firefox with FasterFox
Submitted on October 6th, 2005 by admin
Filed under Browsers and Networking and Software
No. of comments (5)
A few months ago, I wrote a quick post on Firetune, an application which tweaked certain Firefox settings in order to improve page loads, and page rendering. While it works well, and is very easy to use, there is now a better option in FasterFox.
FasterFox is a Firefox extension which does some very cool things including prefetching links which makes for faster page loads, some network tweaks to increase the number of simultaneous connections to servers (read: faster page loads), and the ability to finally block those hard to block Flash popup ads. Additionally, you’ll get a little timer installed on the status bar which will show you how long, in milliseconds, a page take to load. There are tons of options to play with, and I can guarantee you’ll see some nice improvements, particularly on broadband connections. FasterFox works with Firefox 1.0 and higher (including the latest 1.5 beta).
[Via digg]
Share your media with Grouper
Submitted on October 4th, 2005 by admin
Filed under Networking and Software and Windows
No. of comments Comments Off
When most people think of peer-to-peer applications, they thing of sharing illegally distributed files on software like Kazaa or eDonkey (R.I.P.). There are perfectly legitimate uses for P2P software though, such as sharing home videos, documents, or photographs between family members and friends, and you can do this easily with Grouper. Unlike traditional P2P applications, when signed into Grouper, not just anyone can access your files. Instead, you create networks of trust people by inviting them to join your group. In this way, you can keep your personal files safe from prying eyes, and can avoid some of the problems of other networks, particularly, fake or corrupted files.
Grouper is free and currently only available for Windows. If you and your family like to exchange files all the time, this is one easy way to do it.
Book Review: Steal This File Sharing Book
Submitted on September 26th, 2005 by admin
Filed under Books and Reviews and Networking
No. of comments Comments Off
File sharing is more and more common every day for a lot of users. For some, it’s almost second nature. A lot of people use file sharing networks to trade music, movies, and other files, but some use these networks for legal purposes. Steal This File Sharing Book goes over all the different networks, explains how to use them, and how to be safe in the process. Wallace Wang goes over everything you need to know about the history of file sharing, being safe, and exposes the abundant free files online.
Access Google Secure Access on OSX
Submitted on September 24th, 2005 by admin
Filed under The Mac Side and Networking and Software
No. of comments Comments Off
When Google released their Google Secure Access, they forgot all the Mac users (as usual). If you’re wondering what Google Secure Access is, it’s a piece of software which makes your Wi-Fi connection more secure by creating a private network between your computer and Google’s servers, meaning it will make your wireless connection just a little more secure. So you want to try it out? Kevin Stock has come up with a nice piece of AppleScript which will connect your Mac to Google’s servers. You can get it at the original posting, right here with full instructions on how to use it.
[Via KevinStock.com]
