Archive for the 'Recommended Web Sites' Category

YouGetSignal.com - A collection of uncomplicated, powerful network tools

I heard about YouGetSignal.com from Chris

The best way to learn about the tools is to visit the site and try them. The reason why we came across the site is that we were trying to determine what sites were on a web server (to determine how loaded or overloaded the server is). The tool is the “Reverse IP Domain Check”. For instance, I did a search on my PCIN.net domain, and found that the IP address of my server (66.98.222.18) has 177 different sites hosted (seems excessive to me!).

30 Skills Every IT Person Needs

From IT World Canada:

An IT manager’s guide on how to be better at what you do, no matter how experienced you are.

TypoBuddy - Find Misspelled eBay Auctions

I previously posted about e Boo Boos. Now Download Squad has posted about TypoBuddy:

TypoBuddy, like previously reviewed TypoTracker, helps you find deals by searching for misspelled variations of the items you search for. Why?

Because most people that search for a particular item will try to spell it right - meaning that listings with typos might go unnoticed, and you’ll wind up getting a sweet deal just because some seller was careless enough to not check his or her typing.

FormatFactory Kicks Media Conversion

From Download Squad:

What could be better than a program that will convert audio, video, and image files from and to just about any format you can think of? How about one that does it all batch-style with minimal clicking? FormatFactory doesn’t care what files you want to swap in what order, just feed it your sources and watch it go to work. Unlike a lot of similar apps, this one doesn’t limit you to only video or audio, or even to one file at a time.Dump in as much as you want of whatever you want, and FormatFactory will do all the heavy lifting. It even supports the iPhone and PSP, and 3GP as well - making it a great way to cram multiformat goodness onto your favorite portable player.

This posting is from almost a month ago, and I finally got around to trying it last night. It’s great! It converted a video for me in just a few seconds. I also tried a WAV to MP3 converstion and it only took a few seconds as well.

None of the download links on the site itself worked, so I did a search for the program and found it easily.

Drivers Update Software by RadarSync

The latest issue of Windows Secrets newsletter had some information about driver update software. Several paid products were mentioned, but RadarSync has a free version. I’ve tried it and it seems to work well enough. There isn’t much to say about it other than it determines what hardware you have, the current driver version, and it then checks to see if there are updated drivers. I ran it on my desktop and laptop, and it did find drivers that were not the most current.

Waterford Game & Activities

The Waterford Press has a lot of activities you can print out for the kids to do. The site isn’t very fancy, but there are probably over 100 PDFs that you can print that have word searches, name scrambles, quizzes, and more.

Japan’s 10 funniest tech-related ads

From ITBusiness.ca:

Even the most culturally sensitive among us has to acknowledge that Japanese commercials are… well, strange. First of all, most Japanese commercial actors hail from the Randy “Macho Man” Savage school of advertising whereby they look directly into the camera and shout the product name as loudly and excitedly as they can.

100 Best Products of 2008

From PC World:

After a good deal of–ahem–lively discussion, the editors at PCWorld have completed this year’s list of the 100 best technology products available today. How did we do it? After nominating hundreds of devices, apps, sites, and services we knew to be good, we rated each one on its design, functionality, performance, and impact; the ones garnering the highest total scores made our list. Note that we chose not to rate products specifically on their price or value, focusing instead on their overall quality. After the scoring was over and the dust had cleared, we had a list that served, among other things, to remind us of what an exciting time in tech this truly is, with game-changing product development happening on many fronts.

Celebs and Tech: Odd Endorsements of the 80s

PC World has a nice summary of celebrity endorsements of computer products from the 1980s:

When personal computers entered the mainstream in the 1980s, the American public was understandably uneasy. Most people didn’t know much about using a PC, or how to choose a good one. Where could they turn for advice? Marketers hoped they would turn to on-screen role models, heroes such as Alan Alda, Roger Moore, and William Shatner. Understandable, perhaps. But really, would you buy a computer on the advice of Dom DeLuise or wrestler “King Kong” Bundy?

UChannel

A co-worker sent me a link to a part of the Princton web site called UChannel:

The UChannel (also known as the University Channel) makes videos of academic lectures and events from all over the world available to the public.

You can download all sorts of talks, seminars, symposiums, etc.