Ammyy Admin

So you're having fits with your usual way to connect with someone at work.
Or at home, trying to help some lost friend who at least has an internet connection and can logon to his email.
Ammy Admin has saved my assets on many an occasion.  Another one I can't believe I haven't posted earlier.

Free Commander XE Beta

So I'm trying to find a file on the network and I learned something new and obnoxious about Windows 8's File Explorer.  When you search, you can't select whether you want to search inside the objects.  After reading this thread on a Windows forum, I threw up my hands and installed FC.       

Windows 8 Start Button

So I've been using windows 8 since November 5th.  Having gone from XP to 8, it was a bit of a shock.  Call me a Luddite, but I can't stand the Metro tiles on a non-touch desktop format, so it's nice to have the desktop option. Also missed the Start button and found out about Torch's app.  CNet had a positive review on it as well.  Tried it out and it's pretty sweet.  I'm happy with Pale Moon so I didn't install the browser.  Did install the Media Player Classic, will mess with it later as I prefer VLC. 

CCleaner

Looking over the blog posts, can't believe I've never included CCleaner.  The sweet bomb for temp file and registry cleanup.

Pale Moon

I appreciate FireFox to no end and found a tweaked-for-Windows version called Pale Moon.  Have been using it for at least two months now.  No issues with any of my addons, to include Sky Pilot.  Definitely snappier than regular FF. 

How to Imbed a Link in a Blogger.com Post Title

If you're frustrated with the new Blogger.com publishing interface, join the club. The old Dashboard had a field where you could copy and paste a link to imbed in the post title. To do so in the new interface, this is what I put in the post title field to get it to work:
<a href="http://www.url.com">Post Title</a>

Windows Installer Cleanup Utility Update

[Sigh] Microsoft decides to remove a perfectly good utility. Thanks to Softpedia for posting it for download.

Mac Flashback Trojan

Of *course* there are Mac viruses in the wild, just not the boocoo that MS attracts. But this one looks like the proverbial major pain in the whereever. Many thanks to Gizmodo.

Angry IP Scanner

For network scanning, Angry IP Scanner is a sweet little program that does the trick. Cross-platform, has nice internal options, and if you know Java, you can write your own plugins.

Darik's Boot and Nuke

Darik's Boot and Nuke, DBAN, is what you use on hard drives when it's time to whistle taps over the PC, laptop, whatever. The only thing that's better than DBAN to wipe a hard drive is to physically melt down the hard disk platter in a furnace.

Gadwin PrintScreen 4.6 Freeware

Nice freeware utility for screen capture. Easy to configure, nice options to include capture the mouse arrow.

eBay-FireFox Description Display

FYI for eBayers who use FireFox and would (imagine that!!!) like to see the item description. You can surf private browsing, use No Script, and have the pop-up blocker enabled so long as you have in Tools - Options - Content: www.ebay.com in pop-up blocker exceptions and all three Advanced JavaScript Settings allows checked.

Edit: 2012-03-27: Also found the description blocked after logging on.  With Ad Block Plus, can't have ||vi.ebaydesc.com/ws/* as a filter.

Ammyy.com Remote Admin Tool

For remote admin with users who have a working internet/LAN connection, this is the bomb.

CNET: Disable Mobile Geotagging

CNET drill on how to disable GPS geotagging with Android, iPhone, and Blackberry devices.

Smartphone Pictures Pose Privacy Risks

When you post a photo taken from a GPS smart phone, it can contain location information. Not good when posting family-kid pix.

Sync Toy 2.1

Sync Toy is the bomb when it comes to keeping folders/files on various storage devices up to date.

Digital Copiers Retain Info

Has dated info, but... a hard drive is a hard drive, be it on a PC or a copier.

SkyPilot is Flying Again

My favorite FireFox theme is alive and flying again. Many thanks to Jivko Evgeniev

MS: No IE 9 for WinXP

MS's done it again to those of us who are perfectly happy with XP. The only reason I occasionally use Internet Explorer is because certain web sites require it. If I had my way, the buggy and shoddily secured piece of whatever would be gone from my computer.

Wireless BT Mouse Loses Connection

The wireless mouse connects to BlueTooth ok, but after a minute or so, it loses the connection. Problem comes from the power management setting on USB hub. Got this from a MS web link.

1. Click Start, click Run, type Devmgmt.msc, and then click OK. The Device Manager window opens.
2. Expand Universal Serial Bus controllers.
3. Right-click a USB Root Hub in the list, and then click Properties. The USB Root Hub Properties dialog box is displayed.
4. Click the Power Management tab.
5. Click to clear the Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power check box, and then click OK.
6. Repeat steps 3 through 6 for each USB Root Hub in the list.
7. On the Action menu, click Scan for hardware changes.
   Windows XP recognizes the new device.
8. Close the Device Manager window.