Tech N Life » tech-n-life

And Tech N Life Has Moved To A New Home!

Konrad Walsh-(admin) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 01:05:35 +0000

OKAY, honestly, that wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, a lot of websites made out that moving from one server type to another was very difficult.

I moved from an IIS Windows server to a Linux based server and did it in 4 steps.

I just have some last bits of tweaking to do and then its ready.

UPDATE

Thats all I can do for now. There a few bugs and missing images. Please let me know if you find any. I will fix them asap. Hopefully you find the site a little faster from here on in.

Tech N Life Closing Whilst Being Moved

Konrad Walsh-(admin) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:21:30 +0000

The time has finally come to move to a steady host. By the time you read this on your RSS readers and emails, the blog will be offline and hopefully moved to a new host.

With 500+ visitors per day, my little home server cant hack it. Well, it can if I stopped downloading torrents, but thats another story. It has gotten so bad that to write even this post, took about 10 attempts to load the page.

Victim of its own success I guess…

Anyway, talk soon…..

Support Sunday: How To Set Up And Optimize uTorrent

Konrad Walsh-(admin) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 22:30:00 +0000

Many people use uTorrent and never actually set it up for their type of connection or needs. So here we are going to delve into it in a little detail to get you your way. Hopefully , you will be able to get faster and more reliable results with this information. Bear in mind, it is not supposed to be an exhaustive walk-through, but rather to suit novices.

Torrents? uTorrent?

Without being overly technical, I want to explain this in simple terms, explaining just enough for you to get going. A torrent is a really small file that contains the link back information to the original file/program/movie/show/album that you are looking to download. The torrent file is conveniently label abc123.torrent. The file contains the name and sizes and more importantly the location of the files out on the internets. FYI- downloading torrents is NOT illegal. Downloaded pirated software etc., is.
A magnet link – is and I quote Wikipedia:

Such a link typically identifies a file not by location or name, but by content; more precisely, by the content’s hash value.

Since it refers to a file based on content or metadata, rather than by location, a magnet link can be considered a kind of Uniform Resource Name, rather than the more common Uniform Resource Locators. Although it could be used for other applications, it is particularly useful in a peer-to-peer context, because it allows resources to be referenced without the need for a continuously available host.

As far as you and I are concern, its a faster, more direct way to download with peer to peer.

So first of all, download uTorrent here. Run through the setup installation accepting the defaults, except that last option. This offers you the Ask toolbar. Make your own decision here bearing in mind that accepting it supports the free uTorrent. If you don’t like, uninstall it after.

Now we’ll get started

Start up uTorrent by clicking on its icon or find it in the start menu.

When it opens a one time only pop up appears called a speed guide. It is designed to help you choose your speed settings that will optimize the running of uTorrent. In the first dropdown box, you have a list of speeds that say xx/256, xx/512 etc.

You want to choose the one that suits your UPLOAD speed. I have a 7 meg line at home and an upload of 512. So I chose xx/512. You can choose accordingly.

Next is the port number. This is very important to get decent speeds. As you can see in the screen shot, it automatically chose 34999 for me. This is fine, however, I need to go to my router and create a port forward to my desktop/PC IP address for that particular port. Next Sunday, I will write about how to configure your router for port forwarding. When that’s done, I will update this post on getting a green icon in uTorrent. In the meantime, ask in the comments below and I will answer you.

Click use selected settings.

Now go to Options > Preferences.

Rather than me writing this out word for word, just follow the screen shots from here and copy each screen and make it identical to your setup. I will circle my changes:

Click the Associate Button and Start with Windows

Now head to UI Settings:

I like being able to double click files to start/stop them. Saves extra right-clicks

Move on to the directories tab:

Do this, because it makes finding and organizing everything a lot easier later on. However, these are up to you.

Now the connections tab, but you have this part done earlier.

The blue messy bit is my actual port. You chose this earlier.

Bandwidth Tab:

These are my settings. You can see my Upload is a max 10. This means it will upload slower, but won't choke your network so much. My download is 350 which allows me to still browse the net comfortably whilst downloading. This is on a 7 meg line. You need to reduce these according to your connection. If I had a 1 meg line, I would reduce my download speed to 50.

The rest of the settings are up to you. The queuing area is how many concurrent downloads will happen at once. If you leave that low, you generally have a better experience.

Hope you have fun with this and follow on to this post tomorrow on how to download a torrent and use it -

How To Download Movies And TV Shows Torrents

___________________

[ad#banner2]

Image Swirl – Find Specific Images On The Web Faster With Google

Konrad Walsh-(admin) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:22:33 +0000

As a Tech ‘n’ Life writer, I have to search for images regularly. In one month alone, I have added 300+ pictures and images to Tech ‘n’ Life posts. There is one tool I use for this – Google Images. If you have not used it, it’s like regular Google search, but instead of websites, you get related images. It works extremely well. This is what Google Image Search normally looks like:

Click for larger view

They have just announce Image Swirl which brings this to a new level. It works off the same idea, but displays the results more effectively. It displays specific types of images that match you search:

A Search For Washington Returns This

When you click on one image to get more that look similar:

Similar Images To The One Clicked

I am looking forward to its full release. For now you can click here to play with it – Google Image Swirl

Do you think it is something you will use?

_________________________

[ad#banner2]

Sell Your Stuff On Facebook – Facebook Marketplace, Who Knew?

Konrad Walsh-(admin) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:23:42 +0000

OK, I use Facebook a lot, but I don’t know how this slipped by me. I have heard of Craigslist in the states and wondered by something like that hasn’t taken off over here. Guess there isn’t as many people. However, one of my other favourite sites is called MakeUseOf and they have just posted an article on using Facebook Marketplace. So I decided to give it a whirl. And it’s seems quite useful. That is of course, if people start using it. Its like a regular Facebook app, you have to give it permission to access your profile etc.. You then head to the sell something section and fill in the details and an image. Very simple. You may notice you can look for listings within your home city and within a certain mile/km radius. This is a great feature for finding local items. Check it out over here – Facebook Marketplace or read MakeUseOf’s full post.

______________________________

[ad#banner2]

Get Higher Grade Security From Your Webcam(s) – With Vitamin D

Konrad Walsh-(admin) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:36:10 +0000

Here is a great piece of security for getting the most out of your web-cam. If your like me you have one or more of these and have never ever video chatted with any one nor recorded a video. However there are plenty of uses for them if your creative. (No!.. not those kind). You can use it for security. Lets face it, your PC is probably on all day. Its a great opportunity to keep an eye on things. The problem is that most software out there is clunky and well, rubbish. And even if it does work, the annoying thing is searching through hours of videos to fine 30 seconds of necessary video. Well all that has changed with some software called Vitamin D. Simple to use! Free! And very good!

It’s not motion detection, it’s people detection
Motion detection can be triggered by swaying branches, pets, or even light changes from clouds. Professional-grade security systems track objects but cost thousands of dollars and require expert calibration and tuning. Vitamin D Video uses a revolutionary form of intelligent computing, based on how the brain works, that can outperform state-of-the-art systems in many real world cases.

This video explains it better:

Feature List:

If you are interested in general home security and/or monitoring but don’t know where to start, a few examples of what you can do are:
- Record who comes to your door while you are away
- Help your neighborhood watch group by monitoring the street or your backyard while you are out.
- Send yourself a notification when your child comes home from school.
- Set up a schedule to record inside your house while you are at work or on vacation.
- Monitor activity at a second home when you are absent.
- Catch if there are kids in your pool, or find out who (or what) is knocking over your trash cans.
- Watch the backyard or a room where your pet is supposed to be (or not supposed to be!).
For small businesses or retail locations, a few examples of what you can do beyond having an archive of video are:
- Monitor a back door or unattended lobby area.
- See who goes in and out of a specific room or secure area.
- Figure out who is littering in front of your store, writing graffiti on your walls, loitering suspiciously after hours, etc.
- Help verify if an alarm is false, before the police arrive (and potentially fine you).
- Set up some very basic flow analysis (“retail analytics”) for your store, e.g., quickly scan to see how many people lingered in front of an end cap or entered a section of your store.

Check it out over on there site: Vitamin D

__________________________________-

[ad#banner2]

Google Docs Not Ready Till Next Year – Googles Honesty

Konrad Walsh-(admin) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:53:01 +0000

In a year, most enterprises will have the choice to “get rid of [Microsoft] Office if they chose to”, suggests Dave Girouard, president of Google’s enterprise division. Girouard, one of the company’s four presidents including founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, said in an interview with ZDNet Asia that he expects Google’s online document application, Google Docs, to reach a “point of capability” next year that will serve the “vast majority’s needs”. He acknowledged that Docs is currently “much less mature” than Google Mail or Calendar. “We know it. We wouldn’t ask people to get rid of Microsoft Office and use Google Docs because it is not mature yet,” he said. But, this is expected to change in a year, when the company’s introduces some “thirty to fifty” updates to Docs to beef up the SaaS (software-as-a-service) office suite. These will include updates to features and performance, Girouard said. “That having been said, I don’t think Office will entirely disappear,” he added. Instead, Microsoft’s offering will become a specialized offering for office workers who need its additional functions, akin to Adobe Photoshop, which is targeted at skilled workers, said Girouard. Microsoft Office is “an overkill tool for most people”, he noted. Microsoft recently released Exchange 2010, the first product to be updated within its Office suite, and announced price cuts to its SaaS Office offerings. Girouard admitted Google Docs is “not perfect” at retaining the intricacies of other document formats imported into the platform, but he said it “will get there”. Eventually, he added, market demand will push vendors away from proprietary formats entirely, making this barrier less of a likelihood in future. This story was first written over at ZDNet.

__________________________

[ad#banner2]

End Of Week Review – Thank You Readers

Konrad Walsh-(admin) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:07:38 +0000

Well, its the end of week four and the end of our first month online. We saw even more growth and hit new peaks.

We also saw a dip in visits.

That was my fault and my fault.

1. I was sick with the flu – Sorry there were so little posts this week

2. The server crashed twice. Because I was sick I didn’t notice. I have notifications set up now in case it happens again.

Here are the stats…

Amazing to have hit 2,331 visits in four weeks. Its great!!
Last Saturday was our busiest day and I didn’t even have a competition running.

These were the top 10 posts for the week

Title	Views
A Guide To Google Wave By Lifehacker	27
How To Organise All Your Movies And Tv Shows – Media Companion	27
Android Watch	25
Imagine Not Having To Open All Your Websites and Log In – ZooLoo Imagines	25
How To: Organizing Your TV Shows Using TV Rename	20
Warning Facebookers: Are You Playing Scamville – Sorry, I Mean Farmville?	19
Support Sunday – Quick Tip: Increase The Speed Of Vista Or 7 On A New Laptop	16
Google Android and The HTC Hero coming to Meteor	16
Photoshop Going Too Slow On Your PC? What To Do About It….	15
How To Install Ubuntu 9.10 As A Virtual PC In Virtualbox – Step By Step	14

Thank you very much for stopping by and I look forward to another week.

The Hero review is almost complete.

_________________________

[ad#banner2]

Ever wonder whether u want a mac or windows 7

Konrad Walsh-(admin) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:21:26 +0000

Engadget and Lifehacker are both running stories on the difference between the two… A test run by CNET.. Stilll… I am a windows man either way