Leaning with Intent

Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

Alexa is a site which monitors the number of daily visitors to websites based on the Alexa toolbar. While there are some problems with this tool, it is believed to be accurate for the top 100 websites. However, it does not work reliably for measuring sites which are about technology. This is because visitors to technology sites tend to have Alexa toolbar installed on their computers, as opposed to non-technology related sites. In any case, I was not surprised to notice that search engines were among the most popular websites in the world. Among them was yahoo.com, google.com, and live.com. I believe that the reason that search engines are so popular is the fact that information is very valuable in our times, and search engines are considered the best way to obtain it. You can easily obtain information about recent events, movies, books, or anything you want. Search engines allow you to search for products which you want to purchase, and they are usually less expensive than those in than brick and mortal stores, as online merchants have lower costs. The best search engines in the world are even capable of correcting spelling mistakes, so that if you make a mistake, you will not have to enter the whole search phrase again. All of the things that I mentioned contribute to the fact that search engines became the most popular websites in the world.

Formatting is a process of erasing data on specified partition. For example, you may want to format partition ‘C’ or ‘D’. Sometimes an operating system like Windows can be unstable and you should format your hard drive in order to install Windows from scratch. What is important and what you should keep in mind is that you should try to to avoid losing any important data. Fortunately, there is an easy solution to this problem. You will need to divide your hard drive on two partitions, let us say ‘C’ and ‘D’. Partition ‘C’ should be quite small, not larger than 15GB, and you should only install Windows there. On the other hand, partition ‘D’ should be a place where you will install all the programs and store data. This way when Windows goes will stop working, you can simply format partition ‘C’ and still have all of the data stores on partition ‘D’. Formatting is a very important thing to do, and every serious computer owner should format his disk from time to time in order to keep his computer working properly. I have been formatting my disks for many years now, and I never lost any data unexpectedly. On the contrary, all my data is safe; and I can be sure that whenever I am formatting my disks, nothing will go wrong with my sensitive data.

It is true that torrents serve as a way to share demos, manuals, free eBooks, and many more. If you do not have experience with tv torrents, you will appreciate a short guide and a few tips that will make downloading torrents a lot easier. Downloading torrents is actually quite easy. It might seem a little bit daunting in the beginning, but the more you do it, the easier it will become. Before downloading any torrent you will need a torrent client. If you do not want to spend any money on torrent clients, you can find clients that are free of charge, user friendly and that are small. Most importantly, you will want to find a client that is free of malware and viruses. Once you already have a client, you will need to find a place from which you will want to start downloading torrents. Before doing that, you might want to look at the options menu in your client. You might need to set your router so that your firewall will stop blocking the torrents.

A few years ago almost nobody heard about social networks, or at least they were not as popular as they are today. Currently, social networks are among the most popular Internet sites in the world. I think that is because talking with other people is a lot of fun. That is why phone cards are so popular as well. Anyway, millions of people who would otherwise probably not use Internet that often are spending many hours in front of their computers. Social networks allow people to make friends with others who live very far away, possibly even in other counties. Social networks are also used to communicate with those who we know in real life. With so much recent success of these networks, the question is whether they pose any danger. After observing people socializing on the Internet, I have to say that there might be a danger that since people are anonymous, they might say things they would not dare in real life.

The most popular social networks in the world are MySpace, Facebook, Windows Live Spaces, Habbo, and Friendster. Some social networks are popular only in specific parts of the world. For example, Friendster is no longer that much popular in the Western world, but is very popular is Southeast Asia. Hundreds of millions of people are part of various social networks and this number seems to be growing.

Both games and movies are one of the most popular forms of entertainment. Additionally, they are not necessarily aimed at a different audience. That is why it would be a wise decision for movie and gaming studios to try to make some money based on that fact. One of the best ways to accomplish this is to make games based on movies, or movies based on games. For example, Lost was one of the most popular drama shows recently. It follows the lives of plane crash survivors on a mysterious tropical island. The plot and the storytelling is very interesting according to the TV audience. That is one of the reasons why Lost won many industry awards including Emmy and the Golden Globe.
No wonder that programmers decided to create a video game based on the show. The game is available for PC, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3. The price ranges from $30 to $60, depending on which system you plan to play this game. The game features many flashbacks, a parallel storyline, many dialogues from real actors, occasional fast-paced arcade-style chases, and a large area to explore. I think it would be fair to mention that unfortunately the game is not really rated very well, which means that it might not appeal to everyone. However, I am sure that the fans will get a blast by playing this game. It is really interesting to see that there are more and more games based on movies.

Handling dangerous files is definitely risky. You might receive such dangerous files through email from someone you do not trust. However, there are things that you can do to greatly limit the risk. The thing that you should be worried about is whether the file contains a virus, spyware, or malware. You can make a scan with your own antivirus software, but most people do not have a good antivirus program, and scanning with only one antivirus might not detect a potential threat anyway. If you would be completely sure that a particular file does not contain any malware you would need to scan it with at least two or three antiviruses. Since buying multiple antivirus programs would be very expensive, you might be wondering at this point what I am going to suggest. My recommendation is to visit a site like virustotal.com, and upload the file so that it will be automatically scanned by 33 best antivirus programs available. You do not have to pay anything, and you get the best protection. What else could you ask for? The only disadvantage is that each time you want to scan a file you will need to upload it, but that is not a problem if you are uploading small files.

You do not have to store all your data on a disk to have access to it at all times. It will be even more convenient for you to store some of the more important data online. If your computer refuses to work or something else happens, you will be able to access your documents quickly from any other computer from an Internet cafe. To do this, the easiest way is to store your data in your email box. All you have to do is send an email to yourself. I have confirmed that it works with Gmail. Just click on Compose message or New message, type your own address, attach the desired files, and your email is ready to go. However, there is still another way you can protect your data. You do not have to necessarily attach them to your emails thanks to add-ons like Gmail Drive. Gmail Drive is a special add-on that you can have installed on your computer, and it can be quite useful in various situations. By copying your content to your Gmail Drive folder, the add-on will automatically send all its new content to your email account. There is absolutely no need for you to do it manually, as the add-on will take care of everything.

Intel and AMD are the most important players in the processor market. Both of the processors are high quality, and there has been a long debate which one is a better choice to buy. I think that you cannot go wrong with any choice, however, there are some differences. First of all, AMD processors are generally regarded as CPUs that provide a bigger bang for a buck. Usually, AMD processors are slightly cheaper than the Intel counterpart. That is why if you want to save some money you may want to go with AMD. On the other hand, Intel processors are sometimes considered to work faster with some programs like advanced graphical applications or some games. As you probably noticed it is not that easy to decide which processor is better to purchase.

Anyway, when it comes to buying a new processor it is important to know what processors are compatible with your motherboard. For example, a motherboard which is designed to work with AMD processors, will not work with Intel processors. Secondly, it is important to check what socket your motherboard has, and based on this you can usually say what CPU it will support. Let us say we are looking at the ASRock 939NF4G-SATA2 motherboard. The socket in this case is “939” and it supports AMD Athlon 64/FX/X2 processors. You should only buy such processors as those are the ones compatible with this particular motherboard. You can get the information of supported CPUs for a particular motherboard from your manual or from the Internet.

All of us value our privacy, but the Internet made it rather difficult to hide confidential information. Did you know that based on your browser history it is possible to estimate your gender? That is because each website you visit has a specific male-female ratio, thus knowing that ratio and the browsing history, you can say with high probability what gender an Internet surfer is. You can check if the script will guess what your gender you are by visiting this link:

http://www.mikeonads.com/2008/07/13/using-your-browser-url-history-estimate-gender/

This is a very fun script, but keep in mind that the results will be the most accurate if you do not share your computer with anyone. I also recommend accessing the script with Firefox, unless you are really patient.

Our keyboards tend to be the dirtiest of all our computer appliances, and there is a reason for that. Our hands come in contact with all sorts of things over the course of a day. Consequently, bacteria will spread to the keys we push so much. Since we have so much contact with our keyboard, it is not a surprise that keyboards have the most bacteria of all appliances. Now that I got your attention, I would like to give you some advice on how to clean a keyboard in a proper way:

1. Before cleaning, disconnect the keyboard from your computer. It is a good idea to disconnect peripherals before cleaning them.
2. Compressed air is very efficient when it comes to cleaning hard to reach areas. This includes gaps between keys.
3. Dampened cloth might come in handy when removing dust from the keys.
4. You should try to avoid eating or drinking near while your keyboard.
5. Consider switching to a rubber keyboard that can be washed under water. Even if a coffee will get spilled on such a keyboard, it will not get damaged. However, you should keep in mind that it may not be that easy to type on rubber keyboards very fast.