September 2003

Implemented as an ActiveX control but, hey, what the heck. http://www.spaceinvaders.de. And, if you don’t wanna play it “online” you can download clones.

and it’s at http://www.slipstick.com/rssnews/rssnews.aspx. They’ve been around for a LONG time and always have good information about Outlook and Exchange.

The 9/29/2003 Lockergnome Windows Daily has a good section on Windows Tweaks. Things like enabling UDMA66 (I didn’t know it wasn’t enabled, either!), optimizing placement of startup files and a bunch more.

Leo Laporte reports in today’s Moanday News that the security hole in Internet Explorer that was supposedly fixed back in August wasn’t. And some bright folks have come up with ways to exploit the hole to change dial-up settings so that your computer connects to one of those outrageously expensive phone numbers.

Think you’re safe because you’ve got DSL or a cable modem? Think again! It can send you to spammers sites or do just about anything else to your machine without your knowledge.

The recommendation: disable ActiveX until Microsoft fixes the problem (again!).

I’m just a geek. I like programming a firewall. Even my own software-based firewall. And Tiny’s firewall let’s me do just that. Like it so much that I bought it … even with all the free ones out there.

Leo Laporte reported in his Tuesday News Items that Google Labs is testing a new Location Search feature. Not bad but there’re more chinese restaurants around here than the 11 shown on the results.

Now that I’ve got a hard-disk MP3 player, one of the things I do is play it in the car. I’m using a casette adapter right now … plug it in to the line out port and slip it in to the car casette player and I’ve got my tunes. It’s a pain, having that wire hanging out of the deck.

With that in mind, here are some reviews of wireless FM transmitters:

http://www.themindfactory.com/Products/PLL-1_FM/AudiaX/AudiaX_Reviews/audiax_reviews.html – a review by an iPod user.

http://www.ipodlounge.com/forums/archive/topic/5566-1.html – at the bottom of the page there’s a comment by an iPod user favoring the AudiaX

http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/audiax-wireless-fm-linker-review.html – a review of the AudiaX

Doesn’t sound like the iRock performs very well. One item I’m interested in is the Arkon SF121. Haven’t found a worthwhile review comparing it to others yet but the $20 price is right.

In this article they review Intervideo’s DVD Copy, 321 Studio’s DVD Copy Plus and their DVD X Copy and Pinnacle’s InstantCopy.

The same article has links to other reviews like software DVD players and DVD burning apps.

EDocPrinter PDF Pro from ITEKSOFT. Yeah, it came out of the back of the pack to win the crown. Until you buy it, pages 4 and beyond get watermarked.

What was wrong with the others? Well, I thought I could save my Word documents in XML format and have AurigaDoc convert it to PDF but it looks like I was wrong; that AurigaDoc has its own dialect that you use to get the appropriate formatting. And at dial-up speeds, I didn’t wanna invest the time in downloading it only to be disappointed.

PDFCreator, well, I couldn’t seem to find enough information online to satisfy my curiousity so I just didn’t wanna install it.

I’ve found what look to be two very good PDF creation packages, both Open Source and on SourceForge. AurigaDoc from AurigaLogic and PDFCreator from Sector7g. I’m gonna give both a spin and I’ll let you know what I think.,