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Be sure to send us feedback, you can do that via email or leave us a voicemail. But if all that is too hard then a comment is tops!

Show Notes

Welcome

Tech News

• Free software for sale
• Defective GPU’s
• Good-bye 3.11
• Last.fm Supports Artists and Gives then Cash
• 128 Solid State Drive
• Cait is Right about twitter
• Artificial DNA
• No Dog
• Exploding Fridge
• Huge GGP Breaking News

Promo Spot – The Extraordinary Everyday Lives Show

Applications

• Meebone (AIR): Take Meebo out of the browser
• FormatFactory: Convert multimedia into just about any format you care to name
• USB Image Tool: Image any USB device to a file, and handy restore function as well
• Windows Steady State: Preserve your computer’s sanity

Firefox Extension

• FireFTP: FTP Client right in the browser, fully featured and very functional

A Word from Knightwise

GGP Mac Lab Rat

• Tierprogramm
• Ant Commander

Sites and Services

• FavThumbs: del.icio.us links awesome interface that allows coverflow viewing
• Fichey: View del.icio.us popular links as they happen, have to see it
• Privnote: send a private note that only one person can read, think Inspector Gadget
• simplynoise: white and pink noise generator
• ThisIsSand: drop sand… very cool flash toy

Updates

Feedback

Farewell

• Dave’s Blog
• Cait’s Blog
• Keith’s Blog

Featured Music

Matt Nathanson
“Gone” (mp3)
from “Some Mad Hope”
(Vanguard Records)

Buy at Matt Nathanson Store
More On This Album

See you on the flip side geeks

Please let us know what you thought of the casual, take it easy show this week as we enjoyed the show and would like to know what you guys thought

Be sure to send us feedback, you can do that via email or leave us a voicemail. But if all that is too hard then a comment is tops!

Show Notes

Welcome

• Where’s Keith?
• Cait feel like crap
• Dave gears up for the new job

General

• Extension Update
• Car Rego, geek style
• New Toys
• Dell
• Vista
• IMAP (damnit)
• Gmail and IMAP: IMAP Behavior Chart

The Micro Blogging War

• identi.ca: Open Source twitter platform
• Dave’s FriendFeed
• Cait’s FriendFeed
• If Keith has one it should go here
• 62% of Dial up users like it slow and don’t know what they are missing
• Firefox Record
• California Mobile Fine

Community Service Announcment

• Fake Identity Creator

GGP Mac Lab Rat

• iGTD: Get things done on your Mac
• Project Track: Project management tool for developers and others
• Menu-Eclipse: Hide your menu bar (click on Software then MenuEclipse)

Updates

Feedback

Farewell

• Dave’s Tumblr Blog
• Rooster’s Rail
• Cait’s Blog
• Keith’s Blog

Featured Music

ABC
“The Very First Time” (mp3)
from “Traffic”
(Borough Music)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Napster
More On This Album

Great show this week and we had a ton of feedback. Special thanks this week to The Herne and Eric for their MyChingo messages, listen in for that and more on the GGP number 88. And yes Firefox is fuzzy – let us know what your experience of Firefox 3 is…

Be sure to send us feedback, you can do that via email or leave us a voicemail. But if all that is too hard then a comment is tops!

Show Notes

Welcome

Tech News

• Bye Bill
• ICANN Makes Some TLD Changes
• Firefox 3
• Mac and Malware
• Microsoft XP
• Justin.tv Nabs Thief
• AP Makes their Own Copyright Laws
• WTF?

Promo Spot – The Wii Show

Applications

• Portable Start Menu: A start menu for your portable apps USB Drive
• Types: Change file associations easily in XP and Vista
• Web Forum Reader: A central application for reading and posting to forums
• Firefox 3 Portable: Firefox on the Go
• Timekeeper: Customize the system clock

Firefox Extensions

• Hide Unvisited: Deletes visited sites from awesomebar indexing on deletion of your private data
• Weave *experiemental*: Synchronize all your Firefox data between computers and instances of Firefox

GGP Mac Lab Rat

• Tofu: Split text into columns for easy reading
• Disk Aid: Turn your iPod into a portable drive across platforms

Sites and Services

• When is Good: Set up a convienient meeting time – simplist solution yet
• Acronym Finder: Find out what that acronym stands for
• TinyPaste: Tiny URL’s for text
• Wirewize: Get that home media set up humming with the right cables in the right spots for the best results
• fasteagle: Quickly look up the best that web has to offer
• Wordle: Create some stunning tag clouds
• LaunchSplash: Custom splash screens for the up and coming launch of your site
• HelloQuizzy: Take tests – time waster, but cool

Feedback

• Link to Eric’s find of a Second Life client for mobiles

Farewell

• Dave’s Tumblr Blog
• Cait’s Blog
• Keith’s Blog

Featured Music

The Lodger
“The Good Old Days” (mp3)
from “Life Is Sweet”
(Slumberland)

Buy at Napster
More On This Album

One of the things they were shown was the vault full of every LEGO set from the 1950’s to now. Wow! Some of this stuff is amazing. The video is viewable on site and well worth a look.

See how many sets you recognize and remember. I saw a few that my brother had and I remember being launched across the bedroom But they are a real treasure and brought back lots of those memories.

The other thing is check out all the videos and stories from Gizmodo’s LEGO trip, very cool. Great write up as well.

Share your happy memories in the comments!

Hope you guys enjoy it. There may or may not be a show this coming week as I have had to make a rushed trip to Sydney. Just have to see how thins pan out.

Be sure to send us feedback, you can do that via email or leave us a voicemail. But if all that is too hard then a comment is tops!

Show Notes

Welcome

Tech News

• Yahoo! Runs to Google
• Australia Rules on eBay
• Official Release Date
• Firefox Mobile Concept Video
• SPORE – Site
• Logitech and Last.fm
• WWDC
• Dell’s Take on XP
• The truth Behind the g
• Porn Inspectors Complain

Promo Spot: The Extra Ordinary Everyday Lives Show

Applications

• Docstoc One Click: Email attachments without an attachment – uploads to docstoc
• Macrium Reflect Free: Disk imaging and backup
• Shrink-O-Matic (AIR): Quick and easy image resizing
• TumblWeed: Tumblr blogging client (Dave’s Pick)
• Wipe File: Simple, secure file deletion (Wipe Disk), by the same company)
• AceBackUp: Back-up utility, lots of features and options
• John’s Background Switcher: Change your wallpaper automagically (Cait’s Pick)

Firefox Extension

• Seo Quake: Get SEO data on the fly on web pages and search results
• Google Browser Sync Notice
• Cait’s Mission for PMOG Users
  
• PMOG: Passive multiplayer game for Firefox (very cool)

GGP Mac Lab Rat

• Periscope
• Isolator
• SuperDocker

Sites and Services

• MoodStream: Describe your mood, watch listen and be inspired
• Plurk: micro blogging service
• syncplicity: web based back-up solution
• inSuggest: Using a del.icio.us ID makes suggestions for bookmarks
• SafeManuals: Lost a product manual? You might find it here
• vewzi: Visual search engine that changes the display of results based on your selections
• Bomomo: Unique mouse doodling for when your on hold

Updates

Feedback

Farewell

• Dave’s Tumblr Blog
• Cait’s Blog
• Keith’s Blog

Featured Music

Blackstrap
“Repulsion” (mp3)
from “Steal My Horses And Run”
(Tee Pee Records)

Buy at iTunes Music Store

Buy at Napster

More On This Album

The call went out to geeks across the globe, download Firefox 3 to help set a world record. Great job guys!

It’s not over yet and there’s over five and a half million downloads according to the Map stats. Before Firefox 3 was even available, Mozilla’s servers were feeling the burn. There’s a bit of time left, so it’s not too late to download, with Download Day 2008 starting at 10:00 a.m. 17 June 2008 (PDT or San Francisco time in the United States), and finishing at 11:16 a.m. 18 June, 2008 (PDT or San Francisco time in the United States). The current PDT time can be found here if you want to check it.

For those who have yet to see it, I’m a huge fan of the about:robots easter egg in Firefox 3 and the awesome robot art that goes with it. Lifehacker has also released the Power Users Guide to Firefox 3 already, with lots of great tweaks and tricks.

Laparoscopic surgery takes a lot of skill. Not having the sense of touch and working from what you see on a monitor is totally different from “open” surgery through an incision in the skin. In fact some surgeons don’t do any laparoscopic surgery at all because it involves a whole new skill set which they have not developed.

So I was impressed at this video as a demonstration of skill with the da Vinci robot in the making of an origami crane. It may not look impressive at first until you see the size of the result. But I would argue that it is probably easier with the robot than free hand without the robot. The robot means that every move is smooth and steady, by hand there is far less precision. But still this is awesome and I could really appreciate the difficulty and skill involved.

No doubt the conference will take twitter out of action. But it is OK apparently the folks at twitter have been gearing up for the rush. Another strategy that they are falling back on is the progressive “oh-shit” measures. That is as demand grows they start switching off features. This from the twitter blog:

We have isolated and created on/off switches for many Twitter features.

They are also claiming that they have made some server tweaks that should make things a little more robust. Sorry but I am not holding my breath. I am not going to even say what I think about the idea that you can support a service by killing off features.

That said one of the best summaries that I have seen of where to get your Apple fix can be found at Read Write Web. They did a good job of letting people know where to go. There are a range of goto places including FriendFeed rooms, twitter, blogs and sites. So you can pick and choose or really test twitter and have them all open plus use the ReloadEvery extension for Firefox. That extension will automatically refresh a page at an interval that you specify.

I was a bit disappointed not to see more utilization of live blogging services such as CoverItLive. There have been a bunch of these services released in the last few months, shame they are not being used more. Maybe they are, if you find one then throw it in the comments. I would guess that if you had a poke around you’ll be able to get something on services like uStream, Qik and seesmic.

Personally I am going to let the bloggers and commentators sort the wheat from the chaff and review the feeds tomorrow. My life is noisy enough already and this will also make the juicy bits float to the top. No doubt the Lab Rat will have something on it in the next show as well. But then if it is all hype and no content we will give it a miss entirely. Anyway as you guys know I am a feed junky anyway.

Have fun people and remember no eye gouging, name calling optional and feel free to pay out on Knightwise… he is Belgian after all and the fact that I ruffled his feathers on the last show.

Our feed is valid and working on all other services that we know of. The feed was working fine before the TPN servers started playing up. Enter non responsive servers last month. This coupled by the fact that the servers went down totally and NewsGator was getting no response from our servers.

Turns out that if a feed is not updated or has a fatal error and does not respond multiple times then NewsGator temporarily blacklists the server and or feed. I can understand that, it saves resources. But on the other hand it stays this way until a manual ping is done. Better would be that NewsGator set up some kind of scheduled periodical ping to see if the server is active again and if so reestablish regular indexing of the feed.

So the process for “forcing” NewsGator to recheck a previously “blacklisted” feed. Especially useful if you have feeds that don’t appear to be updating as they should (Matt):

1. Log into NewsGator Online you have an account automatically if you use FeedDemon
2. Go to settings on the top right
3. Select the “My Feeds” tab
4. Find the feed that is the problem
5. Manually ping the feed to force NewsGator servers to check the feed

The ping button is a little obscure in that it looks like a “refresh” symbol, it is on the far right. But it is the manual ping button. Hit that and if the feed is valid and updating it should fix the problem. It only took about 30 minutes and I was receiving the latest posts from the GGP blog, including the latest podcast.

Just note though that this only works with feeds that are valid and working. There is no point pinging a server for a feed that is borked. I think that is obvious but worth mentioning.

I am very pleased that our recommended feedreader is now updating our own site. Please let me know if you are using FeedDemon and it is working again for you as well.

Recommended reading is an article about what NewsGator does by the CTO of NewsGator Greg Reinacker. The article is well worth the read. For publishers check out NewsGators ping endpoint details.

Many thanks to Nick Bradbury for his assistance in sorting this problem and letting us know about the new ping functionality. Nice work on FeedDemon Nick, it is still our recommended feedreader and one tool I could not live without. Thanks.

Oh, and we are short one Lab Rat this week… if you know where he is let us know or post him back He did FTP his segment in though.

Thanks for your patience this week, been a rough one.

Be sure to send us feedback, you can do that via email or leave us a voicemail. But if all that is too hard then a comment is tops!

Show Notes

Welcome

Tech News

• Adsense and RSS
• Twitter Disclosure
• Revision3 gets Revised
• Mozilla Records
• Amazon and Movies
• The Belgian’s are at it Again with Google
• Bacteria that Love Plastic
• Martians
• The ISS Call the Plumber

Promo Spot: Box Office Weekly

Applications

• Desktop Media: Shortcuts to your hardware devices only while they are plugged in
• CloseWin: Instantly close all open windows or create profiles of windows to close
• Feedalizr (AIR): FriendFeed client
• Start Killer: Get rid of the “START” button and reclaim some taskbar real estate
• Zindus: Sync your Gmail contacts with Thunderbird

Firefox Extensions

• No-NSFW: Warns when a link might not be safe for work
• Tab Counter: Lets you know how many tabs you have open
• Peers: Displays real time search results as you type in the search bar

Mac Lab Update

• NameChanger: powerful file renaming tool
• jfSnip: text/code snippet manager
• Weather Satellite Widget: satellite weather without the evening news
• KidiFree: OS X freeware resource

Sites and Services

• TweetSmart: Aims to group links from twitter with categories
• tinySONG: Quickly share music with your friends here is the one I said I would share: http://tinysong.com/5z4
• SensibleUnits: Convert regular units into something you can relate to
• MyTimeZoneIs: Update your timezone through twitter and have a widget that updates with it
• SuperLame: Super fun with images and cartoon speech bubbles
• Tag Galaxy: Search flickr tags in supreme style OUR PICK OF THE WEEK
• When twitter is Down: Humor for when twitter is on the blink

Updates

Geek Project

• Desktop Fan

Feedback

Farewell

• Dave’s Blog (Second Life: Rooster Rubble)
• Cait’s Blog (Second Life: Knowledge Tomorrow)
• Keith’s Blog (Second Life: Maezik Darwin)

Featured Music

Lennon
“Where Do I Fit In” (mp3)
from “Damaged Goods”
(John Galt Entertainment)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Napster
Buy at Amazon
More On This Album

• Sunday: recorded the show and finished about 1am
• Monday: Worked the late shift; 1430hrs till 2300hrs, in the morning I finished a job application and helped the wife clean the house.
• Home Monday night and did an hour of editing, but had to sleep as I was a 0730 in the morning.
• Tuesday; Late shift again; 1230hrs until 2100hrs. Edited in the morning for about 1/2 hour but had to go an d fix the driveway on our property as it is gravel and we had over 100mm of rain over night and some of the driveway was on the road.
• Got home Tuesday night and had dinner. Had some domestic paperwork to do for the extension. Edited the show for an hour after that but fell asleep at the keyboard… Thought I needed to go to bed.
• Wednesday (today) , 10 hour shift – 0700hrs till 1800hrs. I actually worked until 2100hrs due to an emergency at work.
• Got home, had dinner and then I had to return a phone call.
• Tomorrow I have another 10 hour shift…

I had every intention of getting the show out tonight. But as you guys know I work in the medical profession and sometimes you just can not walk out of the place.

My kids have not seen me for 4 days. I am absolutely buggered beyond reason. But I am going to work on the show tonight. I need to get the show out and I am trying.

But thought to share that with your guys so that you knew what the go was and that I am doing my best.

Stay tuned it is coming!

But I will say that we had a great time recording the show this week and there was as usual some very funny moments. In addition I am very pleased with the edit and mix, creatively I am pretty happy with it. I hope that it is all that you want it to be.

See Herne begging will get you everywhere

Be sure to send us feedback, you can do that via email or leave us a voicemail. But if all that is too hard then a comment is tops!

Show Notes

Welcome

Tech News

• Reselling Software
• ASUS to Release Desktop EeePC
• A Little Bit of History
• MS Office to Support Open Document Format
• Google Domain Blunder
• D&D Goes Digital
• Napster Reinvents Itself, Again…
• Save XP Petition Update
• Good Gaming Badges
• Apple Store for Vancouver

Promo Spot – The Comic Review Weekly

Applications

• Dup Detector: Locate duplicate images
• Snackr: RSS ticker on the AIR platform
• Folder View: Add recent and favorite folders to Windows Explorer
• Fractal Explorer: Fractal Generator and manipulator for Windows

Firefox Extension

• PMOG: Gaming while you surf the net (I am sure Keith was playing it for 1/2 the show)

GGP Mac Lab Rat (Dave’s Wee Stop)

• Fluid
• cfxr
• iTubeX
• iBench and System Info Report

(Links Finally Added — The Lab Rat was being what Dave would call a Slack Bastard)

Sites and Services

• Eureka Science News: Algorithmic based science news aggrigator
• Remime: Reminder service for all those important dates
• Penzu: Simple note taking/ Journal service that your Mum could use
• YouTomb: Find out why that video was taken down from YouTube
• TweetBeep: Google Alert type service but just for twitter

Updates

FeedBack

Farewell

• Dave’s Blog (Second Life: Rooster Rubble)

• Cait’s Blog (Second Life: Knowledge Tomorrow)
• Keith’s Blog (Second Life: Maezik Darwin)

Lennon
“Infinitebeat2 Mix” (mp3)

from “Where Do I Fit In : REMIXES”
(John Galt Entertainment)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Napster
Buy at Amazon
More On This Album

i can haz sleep now?

Image courtesy helmer.sfe.se

It’s an amazing piece of engineering, yet so simple in concept.  Janne has provided a bunch of other pictures on his website.  They’re worth a look.  A perfect example of function over form, and simply doing what’s necessary to “make it work”.

While the video focuses on startup marketing and getting noticed, I think that there are some really good ideas and information for everyone. There is also talk about users, community and social networks. There is also a 10 minute question time at the end. One of the questions is “How do you recover from bad press?”. Quite funny, but some really great strategies for doing so none the less. Also including some details and interesting insights from Arrington about what social media to use in order to market yourself. This stuff applies to the aspiring blogger not just the multi-million dollar start-up and A-list blogger.

One thing that really struck home for me is the value that media producers and bloggers need to have in their community. That is your audience and for us that means you guys. I can honestly say that one thing I value more than anything here in our community is the Eric’s, Herne’s, Knightwise’s, Ape’s, George’s, Doug’s, Brie’s, BlogSlut’s and all the rest that I have failed to mention. Thank you for all your support and being active contributors – without you the comments would be boring and we would feel like we were talking to ourselves.

OK now you can have your opinion’s back and love him or hate him.

via: Orli Yakuel

Me I want to know how he toasted 1,500 hard drives just modding XBoxes!!

Chunk B features the GGP Mac Lab Rat, Sites and services, the updates and all the feedback we could muster.

As usual the second half of the show is a lot of fun. We lost Cait for a while but managed to find her, Keith got a bit tongue tied and Dave stepped out.

Thanks for the feedback so far on Chunk A, let us know what you think about Chunk B.

Be sure to send us feedback, you can do that via email or leave us a voicemail. But if all that is too hard then a comment is tops!

Show Notes

GGP Mack Lab Rat

• 4 Free Automator Applications to Increase Productivity

Sites and Services

• CUBESCAPE: Drop cubes and create diagrams of your garden, pictures, 3D models and more
• SomethingStore: Spend $2 and get a cool mystery gift
• twitbuzz: Techmeme for twitter, also check out twitturly
• DailyLit: Have books and Wikipedia tours delivered in chunks, just like the GGP
• TwitterSnooze: Quiet that drunken twitt your following, for a time
• Manbabies: WTF Mate?

Updates

Cait’s Instructable: Robot Invasion

Feedback

Farewell

• Dave’s Blog (Second Life: Rooster Rubble)
• Cait’s Blog (Second Life: Knowledge Tomorrow)
• Keith’s Blog (Second Life: Maezik Darwin)

Featured Music

Bill
“Good as Gold” (mp3)
from “End of the Hits”
(Contessa Records)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
More On This Album

This is chunk one of a two chunk show. In this chunk you’ll get the Tech News and the Applications segment. So please enjoy and be prepared for the next chunk in the next few days. Enjoy. Man it is nice to be back!

Be sure to send us feedback, you can do that via email or leave us a voicemail. But if all that is too hard then a comment is tops!

Show Notes

Welcome

Technology News

• The anniversary of the Laser
• Zoho Opens it’s Doors even to Strangers
• HBO and Apple Make Friends
• NIN Internets Legends
• Firefox 3 RC 1
• Mozilla’s New Stealth Data Project
• twitter Does Earthquakes
• Microsoft Rethink Active X
• Swiss Birdman. You Have to See the Video! His Website is equally very cool
• The Finns Become Victims of their Own Laws

Promo Spot: The Extra Ordinary Everyday Lives Show

Applications

• ReadAIR: Google Reader comes to the AIR platform
• WildRename: Powerful File Renaming Utility
• WP Post Columns: Give posts columns, just like the newspaper
• MSConfig Cleanup: Permanently delete rather than disable start-up applications
• Purrint: Give that Print Screen Key some functionality
• PalmOS Games Going for Free

Firefox Extension

• DashBlog: Quickly collect videos, images, text/quotes, songs and screen-captures from any web page and publish them to your blog (word press, blogger/blogspot, tumblr) and/or twitter.

The Thought Criminals
“I Want To Be a Celebrity” (mp3)
from “Smash Hits”
(Ninthwave Media)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at eMusic
Buy at Napster
Buy at Amazon
Buy at GroupieTunes
Buy at mTraks Download
More On This Album

End of Chunk One

Case 1: The up and coming new Indiana Jones Movie “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull“. The movie is due for release here in Australia on the 22nd of May (IMDB). But just how he snagged Harrison Ford to interview for seesmic I don’t know! There is nothing on seesmic accept the videos, nothing on Loic’s Blog so I guees we will find out in due course.

So Harrison Ford has his own username on seesmic and there are a couple of videos up there of an interview with him. Looks like the interview has been broken up into questions with each one making a new video post. Harrison seems relaxed and quite candid, which you might expect – he is a bit of a veteran at this stuff.

So far there is one video on his Fave Indiana Movie:

Plus one on the stunts, which I think is a great response:

I am guessing that these are going to be filtered out over the next week in the lead up to release. What a fantastic idea. I love the fact that Harrison has appeared for seesmic and it “feels” a lot more personal and laid back. As opposed to some stuffy mainstream media interview. Bloody fantastic, I think Loic really does understand this space and the users that are a part of it.

But as jjprojects states; to really pull this one off it would br great if we could ask the questions! So how about it Loic? Seesmic is about the conversation right? So how about letting the users in on that conversation. How cool would it be to have Harrison Ford responding to users of seesmic? Damn, now that would be cool.

Who would you like to ask questions of on seesmic?

Update: Maybe Cate Blanchett? That means this is the run of the mill mass interview by the media of stars. Still I don’t retract my statement that I think it is a great idea, but lets take it to the next level.

Got a surprise when I saw in my feeds that FeedDemon just updated, which I am downloading now. It has not filtered down to auto updates within FeedDemon as yet and when I tried the “Check for new Version” nothing happened. So we must be in early. There is nothing up on Nick Bradbury’s blog either. Mind you he has been in Denver. So I am figuring a minor release with bug fixes and minor changes you would be hard pressed finding.

Kick over to the homepage and check out FeedDemon 2.7. I will no doubt let you know on this weeks show what the go is.

Something that is worth checking out at Nicks blog is how to tweak FeedDemon to search FeedFriend and tweetscan right in FeedDemon. Most excellent. Check out Nicks Tutorial on extending FeedDemon detailing how to do this and where to put the code that the post links to. Great stuff Nick! Hope to hear about the new release notes on FeedDemon 2.7 soon.

See you all this week when we will be podcasting from inside your head.

That better Lurch?

• have files in which there may be spyware, viruses (no difference in my mind) or potentially harmful applications
• send unsolicited email or share your email address with 3rd parties without your consent

This image was altered to protect people from themselves

According to Yahoo this is in direct response to users stating that security and privacy are the top concern for users when online. Thoughtful of Yahoo to also include the two extremes in your preferences you can select to turn the feature completely off and have zero filtering. Secondly you can select the search results to totally remove any link with a warning. Nice one Yahoo.

I would add to that that if people are that concerned about their privacy and security they should do something about it. While this is a good move by Yahoo and wise, it only serves to protect the stupid and for them there is probably no hope anyway. I have been taking advantage of Site Advisor for about 2 years now. It is available as an extension for Firefox and *cough* IE. Users need to be proactive about their security and privacy and yeah it takes a bit of effort to do so; but so does locking your car. I am glad if only it adds some protection for the rest of us that do put the effort into keeping ourselves clean and private.

I am not about to knock these features, it is a great thing and helps to protect users from themselves. If you are a “bit” serious about your security and privacy then these are my quick tips:

1. Don’t use Internet Explorer: sorry but it remains one of the primary vectors for malicious software on the web
2. Install a decent anti-virus: I use Avast! and set it to update automatically.
3. Have a decent Firewall: I use ZoneAlarm Pro, but also highly recommend Comodo Firewall
4. Install Site Advisor: Gives you the same features that are at Yahoo! across all the major search engines. One of my “can’t live without” extensions. It becomes automatic to check it.
5. Don’t click links in IM and email: If you don’t know where it goes and you don’t know the sender then don’t click it, simple
6. Don’t open unknown email attachments: The promise of a Paris tit-fest is a lure you idiot, so wipe the surprised look off your face when your newly installed decent Anti-virus is screaming at you that it has found a nasty thing on your computer
7. Click Ctrl + Alt + Del Once in a while at start-up: learn what all those weird apps are that start when your computer does, a search on Google will be helpful and there are some great search engines dedicated to the cause, like ProcessLibrary. Then you’ll start to recognize when something might be there that should not be.
8. Check the SSL Cert: When your shopping online take the time to take advantage of that “View Certificate” in Firefox and make sure that the domain matches the site and that the certificate is valid and not expired. Piece of mind is a good thing.
9. Common sense: Yes plain and simple THINK! Use your head and think, think think – Whinnie the Pooh does it now you have a go. If it does not add up then it probably doesn’t! Looks dodgy? Probably is! Simple eh? So why don’t users do it?
10. Keep your system and software patched: this includes all your apps/OS and your online stuff like that install of WordPress with your precious blog on it. If you are using old software versions and platforms, don’t be surprised when you wake up to check your blog stats and you see a giant ad for penis enlargements or the Russian hackers association!

These are just a few things off the top of my head that I do daily, there are more but I thought 10 was a good number to stop at. I am constantly thinking about security you can not be any other way and be a part of the web and have a clean PC and intact privacy. Not to mention the fact that the whole penis enlargement thing woudl be hard to explain to your boss.

I got burned once with a zero day virus. A particularly nasty drive-by one that wrote to my boot sector. I lost everything. But I learned a great deal and swore that it would never happen again. I got serious about my security and taught myself to get with the program.

Oh and back-up, back-up, back-up… cause sometimes it doesn’t matter what you do something borks.

Let us know in the comments your tips on what you do to protect your security and privacy.

Don’t use IE, please… Doug! talk’in to you buddy!!

via: Yahoo! Search Blog

The blog is working as you can see, we were even going to have a show out this week. But late last week we found a major problem. It would appear that our RSS feed is dead. That means that anything we post here is not getting to our loyal listeners. You won’t get this post unless you visit the blog.

This also means that the show won’t make it to iTunes or peoples RSS readers. So there is not much point producing a heap of material that few people will get to hear. We want everything to be right and working.

The tech team is working on the problem and that is as much as I know right now. As Cam says in the latest from the TPN blog, there are going to be bugs with the new servers and it will take a bit longer to sort them out fully. Please be patient and rest assured that we have not abandoned you.

We would like to take the opportunity to thank all listeners that have dropped us a comment or email, tweet to say hello and where the heck are ya? Thanks, we appreciate the support and we are looking forward to be back podcasting and blogging more regularly soon.

If you have not already make sure you add us to your follow list on twitter I regularly tweet updates there as to what is going on.

We have all the usual segments for you and a special surprise from the Lab Rat.

The show is not hosted on the TPN servers due to instability so if you are having trouble getting it use the direct download link. Again sorry about the inconvenience.

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW HERE

The Global Geek Podcast #83 (MP3 – 31.2MB – 1:31:05)

[audio:http://adamfakes.com/GGP/tpn_theglobalgeekpodcast_20080413_083.mp3]

Be sure to send us feedback, you can do that via email or leave us a voicemail. But if all that is too hard then a comment is tops!

Show Notes

Welcome

Tech News

• Live Maps Update
• OS Updates Comparison
• Aussies get the Unlocked iPhone
• Increased Music Sales
• The Mets Rickrolled
• HP to Launch the HP Mini
• Swiss Schools go Linux
• Pizza.com… great investment
• Man Arrested over Assault with a Weapon

Promo Spot: The Extraordinary Everyday Lives Show

Applications

• WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin: Complete updating via the Plugin
• Amic Email Backup: Back up your email, settings, address book and more
• MozBackup: All in one solution for backing up Thunderbird and Firefox
• Desktopia (Mac and Windows): Automatic updating of your wallpaper with quality backdrops to please the eye

Firefox Extensions

• Configuration Mania: Make changes to your about:config via an extension in a GUI interface

GGP Mac Lab Rat

• fseventer
• Warp 1.1.1
• Teleport
• Licensed
• Front Row Remote Control

Sites and Services

• summize: Reviewed reviews and twitter search
• time machiner: send emails in the future (it worked!)
• simplebucket: Very simple image hosting
• lefora: Hosted forum solution done right
• twubble: like hunting rabbits only for twitter buddies

Updates

Feedback

Farewell

• Dave’s Blog (Second Life: Rooster Rubble)
• Cait’s Blog (Second Life: Knowledge Tomorrow)
• Keith’s Blog (Second Life: Maezik Darwin)

Featured Music

Pink Computer
“Will You Be Mine” (mp3)
from “So 80’s”
(Somekind Records)

More On This Album

Obviously the Internet is a minefield and the governments of this world are interested in what goes on in it, additionally computer and network security is a concern and one they have a priority in maintaining as just that: secure. The military interest in computer security is obvious. That said it appears they feel that their “regular members” of the military could be complimented by a different crowd.

Earlier this month Col. Jeff Kendall of the Air Force Cyber Command (AFCYBER) stated that there are distinctive challenges recruiting  in the area of “cyber warfare”.

“Perhaps we need a different kind of warrior in this domain…”

(Not sure if that is a bad pun or not)

Col. Jeff goes onto to suggest that perhaps the physical requirements the military has doesn’t quite fit for the type of recruits that they want. Read: people that spend all day in front of a computers(s) on a staple diet of coke and pizza, bad sleeping habits and have forgotten what sunshine looks like.

Other considerations are the fact that the personnel they want might not have maintained the law in quite the way it was intended and that the life of a hacker by nature means that they have probably haven’t. If you think this might block you from entering the military into the cyber warfare division then think again… they are probably willing to over look the fact that you more than likely operated outside the law to obtain your talents.

Basically I think that the military is seeing that the hacker represents someone of great skill and abilities that the military can’t replicate in it’s training. They realize that who they want probably doesn’t “fit the mold” and so they are rethinking how they can change the mold. Smart thinking in my opinion.

I guess if you think you have what it takes then go and check out the Air Force Cyber Command Homepage. I would really appreciate it if you left our blog as it is, we have had enough trouble lately. But please go and do something about the AFCYBER Homepage it is damn awful.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Col. Jeff Kendal, classic:

“…they’re not the same kind of folks that perhaps you want to march to breakfast in the morning.”

Get transcript on the Military Fellows Roundtable, where these comments were made.

We are not totally out of the woods right now but things are better than they were a week ago. Check out what Cam had to say and again we thank you for your patience and continuing support.

It ain’t easy being green, but we are learning to cope with it. Please continue to let us know of any kookyness that you might have with the network and we are doing our best to resolve issues as they occur.