Better spam management for WordPress
Submitted on May 8th, 2007 by admin
Filed under Blogging and Security
No. of comments (2)
One of the things I did before I decided to start blogging again on TipMonkies was to beef up the security around the site. While a blog is still young, you may not have many problems, but as its popularity increases, so does the chance of receiving mail and comment spam. WordPress comes with the fantastic Akismet plugin which does an amazing job at catching comment spam, but it can sometimes mislabel legitimate comments. Enter Simple Spam Filter, which allows a blog administrator to easily sort through comment spam based on common keywords found in such comments. Definitely a worthwhile addition to any running a WordPress-powered site.
[Via UneasySilence, thanks Jason!]
9 Reasons Not to Upgrade Firefox
Submitted on October 30th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Browsers and Security
No. of comments Comments Off
The Mozilla Foundation recently released the latest version of its Firefox browser to many praises, but is version 2.0 as great as everyone seems to think? I came upon 9 reasons not to upgrade Firefox over the weekend, which offers some interesting points as to why you may be better off waiting for 3.0. While I don’t necessarily agree with everything in the article, there are some good points made.
Microsoft releases Defender
Submitted on October 29th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Software and Windows and Security
No. of comments Comments Off
I wrote about Microsoft AntiSpyware back in May of last year, while the product was still in early beta stages. Since then, Microsoft has changed the name of the application from AntiSpyware to Defender, and after many, many months in closed beta, has finally released it to the public.
Microsoft Defender is a fantastic application and actually works quite well, maybe due in part to the fact that it wasn’t developed entirely in-house, as Defender is the result of Microsoft buying out antispyware company GIANT. Regardless, Defender is quite polished, and for the months that I used the product, I never had to worry about any kind of spyware invading my system. Thanks to its integration with Windows, Defender also blocks popups and keeps you informed of security updates, all for free.
Bypassing Genuine Windows Advantage
Submitted on October 29th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Storage and Resources and Windows and Security
No. of comments Comments Off
Windows Genuine Advantage (or WGA) is a piece of anti-piracy software that Microsoft has started using in their applications and software updates to verify that those who wish to install the software are using legitimate copies and not pirated ones. While this may seem good and dandy, WGA has caused problems even for users who actually bought copies of Microsoft software, so you may find that you need to bypass it. There are some products on which WGA can be bypassed with a piece of software called Orca. Open the installer with Orca, then select CustomAction, then on the CHECK_WGA action, select Drop Row. Next, look for the CheckWGA dialog and change the value from 2 to 0 and save. Now you can run the installer WGA free.
Get rid of ads in Safari
Submitted on October 29th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Browsers and The Mac Side and Security
No. of comments Comments Off
If you’re a Safari user, and want to get rid of website ads, then here’s a simple hack using a stylesheet.
[From Sam Critchlow Blog, via Digg]
Fight spam with SpamAssassin
Submitted on October 29th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Email and Resources and Security
No. of comments Comments Off
Spam is a huge problem affecting anyone with an e-mail address. Some of us have managed to keep our inboxes relatively free, while others have had the misfortune at times of receiving hundreds of spam messages a day. If you’re in the latter group, you may want to have a look at SpamAssassin and this guide over at Web Design Discussions entitled How to Stop Email Spam with SpamAssassin. The whole process is relatively simple as SpamAssassin will do most of the work. The one catch is that you must be able to have access to your e-mail server, so if you only use a free e-mail account, this may not be of much use.
Create a software list and use it to restore your Ubuntu install
Submitted on September 28th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Resources and Linux and Security
No. of comments (1)
Backing up your system is very important so here’s a quick and easy way to make a list of all your installed applications in Ubuntu, and use that list to bring your system back up to how it was before the (potential) crash with some simple Terminal commands. Head on over to nixCraft to get all the fresh details, and if you’re an Ubuntu Linux user, you’ll definitely appreciate this tip.
File in use? Free it up w/ Unlocker
Submitted on September 26th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Software and Windows and Security
No. of comments (1)
There are times when working under Windows when you may notice a couple of different errors pertaining to files or resources being in use. You may see it while trying to access new files, or maybe while trying to remove unnecessary applications. If you’ve ever gotten one of these errors, check out Unlocker. Unlocker adds itself as a Windows shell extension so you can right-click a file and select Unlocker to kill the process. It’s all free, and all Windows.
Quick security guide for Windows
Submitted on July 21st, 2006 by admin
Filed under Windows and Security
No. of comments (1)
Looking to keep your Windows installation nice and clean? Then check out these great tips over at Keeping up with the Joneses, a site run by one of our savvy readers 
Reinstall Windows without losing important data
Submitted on July 21st, 2006 by admin
Filed under Resources and Windows and Security
No. of comments (2)
Once in a while, you might want to reinstall Windows, especially if your system starts to get bogged down, or if you’d had a catastrophic loss from a virus attack. The problem is that reinstalling Windows will delete personal files and data, so what do you do? Check out this article over at InformationWeek which offers a step by step on the process complete with videos of each step.
You could always do constant backups of your system (NOTE: if you have never performed a backup, start now!), and even if you are, this article is a fairly valuable resource in order to keep your data safe and secure.
