Various cool software and more

Commercial gathering

light11Every once in a while you tend to come across something really cool, today was such a day..

A while back I added a “Commercials no thank you!” on my mailbox (in Denmark most companies respect these), and what a relief 🙂  earlier I would carry 1-2 plastic bags down to the recycling bin every week filled with commercials, and I actually only read a fraction of these.  On the down side, now the few commercials I actually DID read I have no access to any more 🙁  so it was a bitter sweet victory.

Along with a random browsing for whatever came http://minreklame.dk/ and THIS is smart, someone has actually taken the time to gather electronic versions of the printed commercials and put them on a central site, and furthermore made them search-able.  Clever clever stuff.

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GPS surviliance for the family

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Want to keep track of your car, kids, wife or whatever, well there are tons of solutions for this today.  I just read about one called www.inanny.de (www.inanny.dk for Danes), this seem to be quite an organized setup and thus perhaps more reliable than some of the discount solutions on the marked.  So if you are in the marked for some GPS tracking, maybe the www.inanny.desite is worth a visit. I how done no research into pricing (the unit seem cheap enough however ther may be some monthly fee or what not)..

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Uptime – when was a server restarted

Ever wanted to know just how long a Windows 2003 server has been running (or rather when it was last restarted)?  In unix and many other os’s you can simply type uptime and hit enter and viola you have the answer, however not in Windows 200x…  But winding time back to the good old Windows NT4 days, Microsoft actually thought of this and created a small commandline that would do just this, however afterwards it was abandoned or forgotten…

But it’s actually still there (if you know where to look), so download it here and put it on your Windows box, and then you can simply goto a command prompt and type uptime 🙂  nice..

Download here;
http://download.microsoft.com/download/winntsrv40/install/uptime_1.01/nt4/en-us/uptime.exe

UPTIME, Version 1.01
(C) Copyright 1999, Microsoft Corporation

Uptime [server] [/s ] [/a] [/d:mm/dd/yyyy | /p:n] [/heartbeat] 
[/? | /help] server  Name or IP address of remote server to process.
/s  Display key system events and statistics. 
/a  Display application failure events (assumes /s). 
/d:  Only calculate for events after mm/dd/yyyy. 
/p:  Only calculate for events in the previous n days. 
/heartbeat  Turn on/off the system's heartbeat 
/? Basic usage. /help  Additional usage information.

Source;
http://frankdzedzy.com/2008/06/06/check-windows-uptime-stats-w-uptimeexe/

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Addthis – yes sir…

2009-06-20_0148So I wanted to implement some easy way to share content from my blog, and came across www.addthis.com and just by adding a few lines of code to my php pages it was up and running..  They have a plugin for WordPress, but that is really not nessesary – you just add a few lines of code  to the right places in your .php pages and it’s up and running.

The service is free and it seem to have an ok gui and work fairly well.  So give your blog a Facebook etc. overhaul 🙂

 

 

 

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Geographical IP information

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maxmind_logoInterested in working with identifying where an IP originates from geographically?  Maybe for your website (you could localise the display or whatever) or maybe for your applications?  Actually I heard about this in connection to how the Conficker worm/virus works, Conficker actually use this database to orient itself, yeah I know it’s a crazy world out there 😉

Both a free and a payable version is available, I haven’t looked into the API yet – but if you are into web development then this is not likely to ruin your day.

http://www.maxmind.com/app/geolitecountry

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Aiptek PocketDV AHD 300 – quick review

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aiptekI always wanted a video camera, but to be honest have had very little use for one..  But some day I came across IronGeek.org’s site and was intrigued by this cheap HD camera, and as it proved to be even cheaper in Denmark and I had just received a small bonus check from my insurance company on just that amount, well I ended up buying one..

So how is it really?  Well it’s small very light weight and I’d say good value for money, it lack optical zoom and the sound could have been slightly better (but it’s not bad at all)..  I’ll see if I can’t record a small demo video and put it up here for you to see some time in the future.  Recording is done in .mov format and thus you need to convert it if you wish to transfer it to DVD, but computerplayback works like a charm with Apple Quicktime (which also let you stick to HD)..  Recording of 1h full hd is 4gb, so I added a 16gb sd card which leaves plenty of space for recording.  All in all I am satisfied.

A few links to news/reviews;
http://www.product-reviews.net/2008/08/12/new-aiptek-pocketdv-ahd-300-1080p-camcorder/
http://www.aiptek.eu/index.php?option=com_product&task=view&productid=162&Itemid=278

And I bought mine here;
http://www.mobiludsalg.dk/pi/Aiptek_PocketDV_AHD_300_11694_.aspx
Which was the cheapest store at the time (DKK 1.000,-  €133).

Update; I had some minor problems with video’s I transferred from this camera (they would ‘pixelate’), I actually thought the camera might have been broken – but it turned out to be quite a trivial matter see the explanation here  https://readmydamnblog.com/?p=813  now video’s transferred from the camera is crisp and sharp..

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Opdaterdinpc.dk

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If your native tongue is Danish, and you are somewhat a newbee to securing your pc, then this page may be a good place to begin – it will give you the option to have your pc scanned and offer general suggestions to improving your online security.

www.Opdaterdinpc.dk

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Moblin for Netbooks

Got a Netbook?  WinXP seem to slow?  Well maybe Moblin could be the answer, Moblin is a small (fast) linux distribution for atom based netbooks..  It looks interesting, maybe I’ll see if it can be fooled into installing on my old IBM X31 (Centrino not Atom)..  I never really tried any of these linux distributions, maybe this would be more than enough for browsing the net (which is mainly what I do on my IBM X31)..

Get it here

Update; I tried installing on my IBM X31 but sadly the chipset was not supported 😐 bummer..

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Ipod/Iphone audiobooks

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abc_ss_small_shdIf you have a bunch of Audiobooks lying around and want to use them on your Ipdo/Iphone then it’s an advantage to convert them to .M4B files (then your device will remember where you left off the last time you listened, and not as .MP3 where you have to use the slider to get to where you were)..

I found this free util that will assist you, it’s not perfect – but it works most of the time and it’s free 🙂

http://www.freeipodsoftware.com/

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Connect to Facebook

facebookEverything these days is about social networks (it’s all a bit too virtual to me, I still like the ‘personal’ contact 🙂 )..  But I’m not immune to the media, and hence I may be looking into ways of making my blog social network aware.

I found this webcast on making your blog Facebook ‘aware’, sadly it’s not all that compatible with the way my contact form work, but I’ll look a bit further into it some time in the future;
http://mashable.com/2008/12/11/facebook-connect-blog/

Here is some info on WordPress implementation;
http://dentedreality.com.au/2008/12/implementing-facebook-connect-on-wordpress-in-reality/

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