by ·Comments Off on Free Video Converter 1.0

I have a smart phone that saves video in .mp4 format.  I can play them back on my phone, but when I copy them to my PC, Media Player can’t to play it.  So I have two option–I can find a player for my PC that can play back .mp4 files, or I can find a video file converter which can take a .mp4 and convert it to something Media Player can read and play.  

I opted to get a converter, and I found Free Video Converter 1.0.  With this program, I was able to covert the 10 minute  .mp4 file to a .wmv–problem solved!

For a free program, Free Video Converter comes with a lot of features.  I has the capability to convert almost every known video format, and it is able to do it in a very short amount of time.  For example, the 10 minute video only took less than a minute to convert.

I certainly recommend Free Video Converter 1.0, for something free nothing can beat it.

by ·Comments Off on Looking to create a social network site?

If you’re like most people, you don’t know nor do you care how the Internet works.  All you need is that your applications and web applications work.  And if you are looking to create a social networking site for your club or any niche interest, and you aren’t too worried about having to buy or own a domain, then Ning.com is for you!  Although I’ve been surfing the net since its boom in the 1990s, I don’t ever remember seeing ning.com.  I heard about it just a few months ago at a technology conference for education where one of the guest speakers established a learning social network through the web services of ning.com.

This platform for a social networks has many potential uses–one of which is a family web site.  I setup my own family website, and because I didn’t want just anyone to see what we have there, I set it to be private.  Thus you have to be invited to get inside my family web site.

If you have a club and want to establish your web presence and also have a means to share with your members, ning.com is perfect.  It is basically a custom myspace.com for your own group.

One very interesting thing with Ning.com is that you can create one account, and through this one account you can setup multiple social networks.

Give it a try.  You got nothing to lose.

by ·Comments Off on Bogus Computer Anti-virus
WARNING: Bogus Alert!

WARNING: Bogus Alert!

Just recently I noticed something very interesting on my wife’s laptop.  I noticed it because I’m normally the one who install her anti-virus (AV) and other programs.  This one was obvious because there appeared to be another AV program reporting that laptop is being attacked or hacked and that I must purchase it in order to protect the computer from this attack!

The bogus AV is called Spyware Guard 2009.  This one is categorized as a parasite–meaning that it is one heck of a program to remove from your computer.  It is one destructive and nasty parasite because it does the following:

  • Prevents you from going to the Internet
  • screws up the user profile…meaning that if you log out then login, it will tell you that your user profile is missing; effectively you can’t get back to your desktop

It does more, but I didn’t wait too long to find out.

Most users would be easily scammed and overwhelmed by this, but fortunately I’m not most users.  Even then, it was one heck of a parasite to remove.  How did I do it?

I did a lot of searches on the Internet (using another computer).  Most solutions I found provided free scans to find the problem but wanted me to pay to remove.  However, I found a solution that allowed me to scan an remove.   It is called Malwarebyte’s Anti-malware.

It allowed me to scan and identify registry entries and files that were part of this parasite.  Then it gave me the option to remove them.  It couldn’t remove about 5 of them, even after a couple of attempts.  I knew then that I had a relatively new or different strain.

Fortunately, MalwareByte Anti-Malware clearly identified which ones it couldn’t remove.  I tried removing them in Windows safe mode, with no luck–system reports that they cannot be deleted.

As a last resort, I booted using ERD Commander and deleted the bad files and registry entries.  And FINALLY got rid of that parasite.

The last thing I did was removed the administrative rights of my wife’s account.  This should help prevent any future major infection.

I hope this is helpful to others who read this.

by ·Comments Off on Blue Coat K9 Web Protection

I’ve been using the BlueCoat K9 Web Protection product for some time now.  It’s purpose is to help keep you or your kids from going to inappropriate web sites.  The degree of inapropiateness you disallow is dictated by how you configure the filter and what site categories you allow.

Note that if you have kids, this is a perfect companion for your home computer.  The product is free; all you have to do is register to get your free license key.  Download the  product here:

by ·Comments Off on Malicious Web Site Protection–AVG Linkscanner

As you may know your standard anti-virus (AV) software cannot generally protect you from malicious websites.  Although the big names in the AV market have implemented such features in the past, those solutions have gotten so bloated that they pretty much make your computer run like a snail.  That is why I’ve pretty much have given up on most of those solutions and have used a more lightweight solution from AVAST!.  AVG provides a lightweight solution as well, and they’ve recently made public their link scanner–called AVG Linkscanner.

This linkscanner is supposed to protect you from malicious web sites by blocking or informing you of a site’s reputation before you even go there.

You can get an online demo of  AVG Linkscanner here:

I’ve installed it at home.  It’s free; let’s see how it does.

by ·Comments Off on Can’t get use to MS Office 2007 Menu/Ribbon?

If you are like me, and you’ve been using MS Office product for years, getting used to the way the user interface is setup on MS Office 2007 can be very very difficult.

Fortunately, there are plugins out there to get us that MS Office classis 2003 look. You can download it from here:

This plugin simply shows the classic menu in the Menus tab, and leaves that other tabs in tact.

by ·Comments Off on Free Online TV–Hulu.com

Some folks are probably aware of this online TV service called hulu.com.  But if you’re like me, you won’t hear about it until someone metions it.  So here it is, I’m mentioning it.

Check it out at http://www.hulu.com.

This is like TV on the WEB.  The best thing about it is that you don’t have to worry about when something is on.  When you’re ready to watch, just select the show and watch!

by ·Comments Off on avast! Home Edition (Free AV)

Your Anti-Virus (AV) software starting to bog down your computer?  I’ve seen and have experienced this personally.  What did I do?  I uninstalled my AV software and installed something more lightweight like avast! Home Edition. 

Give it a try, I’ve been using it, and I have been very happy with its performance.