10:37 AM
TheEpicChocobo
This blue glossy theme or android phones is pretty sweet. Designed by parsh a professional designer it stands a bit above other themes with a sleek look. It can be used with CyanogenMod and MetaMorph. He also offers up all his backgrounds and icons in a zip file. My favorite part of this theme is the clock widget, it’s got a steam punk mixed with Star Trek look and feel to it.
11:55 AM
TheEpicChocobo
So I was going though some of my stuff here and realized I have a new unopened PS3 Monster Gamer 8’ Component Video/Audio cable. Not really sure when or why I got it, I don’t even own a PS3, but I was thinking of what to do with it. I figured why not give it away to some Bauer-Power readers. So that’s exactly what I’m doing. The contest details are below. I have made it as simple as possible for people to enter. There is only one entry per person and a winner will be chosen at random at the end of the contest. The winner will be notified on twitter and given a contact email address to collect name and physical address for shipping. This is 100% free no shipping fees or anything.
How do you enter? Well that’s easy, just send out the tweet HERE or just send the tweet “@FreedomChicken I want to Win a PS3 Monster Gamer 8’ Component cable! #freestuff” and that’s it. You don’t even have to follow me on twitter. Of course you can if you want and that would be cool.
Who is eligible? Anyone in any of the 50 the U.S.A. that tweets the message. Sorry everyone else. I don’t really feel like dealing with customs.
When is this going to end? The contest will end on October 1st 2010.
What is a PS3 Monster Gamer 8’ Component cable? A quick lookup on amazon.com for the best description and info so as to not have to paste it here reveals that would be one of these.
Why do I want this? Well if you have a TV that does not have HDMI inputs or those are being used up and you have some HD Component connecters free. It will give you better quality than your S-Video or Composite connections you’re probably using now.
1:00 AM
TheEpicChocobo
First lets start off with what Lunascape is. Well it’s a browser. I know what most of you are saying already, “OMG not another damn broswer” or “I’ll never move off my Firefox, Never!!” or maybe even “WTF there are enough ‘My browser is better than yours’ blog posts out there. I’m out of here.” and even possibly may be thinking, “Grobnar just ate a cheeseburger, how did he do that without a mouth?” But I tell you this, Lunascape really is awesome. They’re not trying to create anything new really. They are just taking the best features of everything and adding it all to one place and taking a lot of nice features and making them native to the browser itself so no need for add-ons.
How Lunascape works is that it’s a browser that renders in Trident(IE, Avant), Gecko(Firefox, Flock) and WebKit(Safari, Chrome). So say you use Firefox and IETab add-on. Well there’s no need for that here it’s built into the browser. You can also split view to say put up a website you’re working on side by side with IE and FF. Again no add-ons required. Other features that are built in and set as default is that when you type in the address bar you don’t have to create a new tab. Just type your URL and go and it’ll make a new tab for you. It also supports all Firefox add-ons when rendering a page in Firefox view it will have access to all of them and you can also manage and install them as well.
Other features Lunascape has is that it you can set a rendering engine with a host, page(and subpages or different subdomains of that pageName) or specific address. There’s also a nice little toggle button next to the address bar to switch between them. Another thing I like is that it doesn’t dumb it down in the terms it uses on the browser. Meaning that instead of just saying, IE, Firefox, Safari it actually lists the rendering engine instead. Just nice to see stuff like that in applications. It also has a huge array of browser options on top of being able to set the options for each rendering engine. Also the search bar can double as an internet search or a find/highlight on page. It can handle RSS, podcasts and even has a news ticker to use some of the empty space on your tab bar if you only have a few open. Last but not least I would like to also bring up the fact that it can be set to sort your favorites either by rank of the ones you use the most or by title so as to help make them easier to find.
1:00 AM
Paul B
Oh and looky here.... It found some problems:
1:00 AM
Paul B
1:00 AM
adufbsoifnvokdansoiou
So, getting a degree can be sketchy, but how about just plain learning? Well you are in luck. Lecturefox provides links to free course lectures that are either video, audio or notes from some top schools around the US and other prominent English language schools. Another site for getting actual courses from schools around the world in many languages is the Open Courseware Consortium and is well worth a look for a wide variety of languages.
1:00 AM
adufbsoifnvokdansoiou
Now I hear you saying "Get to the good stuff", so that will be the next stop on this review. The charts and graphs on Mint are absolutely fantastic. Even with the sometimes cryptic names that show up on your bank statement, you know like 45 Main Street, you can usually figure out most of the purchases that aren't automatically categorized and Mint will remember that for future occurrences. They don't have a category you're looking for? Simply add your own. This was for me the best part of the service.
4:35 PM
Paul B
Ever since I jumped on the Twitter bandwagon, and got hooked on it, I decided I needed something for my Blackberry device so I can easily update my status and see what everyone was up to. For the longest time I was using Twitterberry, which worked great, but lacked some features that other clients, like Twhirl, on the desktop provided. You know, features like Retweet!
Recently I replaced Twitterberry with a different Blackberry Twitter client called Ubertwitter, and I do not think I will be looking back. Ubertwitter has a lot of great features found in most modern Twitter clients, but also has the following features:
Here is a screenshot of Ubertwitter’s timeline:
So far I really like Ubertwitter. To me it is the most like a regular desktop app that I have found for Blackberry. One thing I don’t like though is that when I close it, and let it run in the background, all of the updates keep coming, yet my cursor stays on the last tweet I read so I have to scroll up to the newest tweet manually every time I open the damned thing. If they had an option to automatically move to the newest tweet, that would be awesome!
What do you use for Tweeting on your Blackberry? Know of something better than Twitterberry or Ubertwitter? What do you like/dislike about your app? Let me know in the comments!
1:00 AM
Paul B
I saw a tweet from @hispong_elbayne mentioning a new service called BackupMyTweets.com so I thought I would check it out. I never really thought about backing up my Twitter ramblings before, but hey, some people might. According to that site, Twitter only keeps your most recent 3,200 tweets. If you want to keep them longer, then you need a backup service.
It all looks pretty cool. They give you a free 1GB if you tweet about them. If you don’t want to Tweet, then they charge you about $10.00 per year. Not a bad deal. Send a tweet, and get a free GB. They also offer some other services that sounded a little more useful to me.
Those of course are not free. Each of those services costs about $20 per year. Obviously it costs more if you need more space. Makes sense right? If you ask me, $20 isn’t a lot of money to backup some of the most important items you may ever have, certainly the pics and the email are worth it.
What if you don’t want to spend money though? What if you are on a tight budget? What if you are a cheap ass bastard like me? I certainly don’t want to have to pay to backup my blog, or my tweets. If you are like me, then I found a free solution at least for your blog and your tweets.
The first one is for your blog, it is called BlogBackupr. Here are some of it’s features:
What do you use to backup your blogs/twitter? Know of any free backup services for your pics or your email? Hit me up in the comments!
1:00 AM
Paul B
I have been using Entrecard for a while. It doesn’t provide server crashing traffic, but it does help one important aspect of marketing which is “Branding.” A lot of SEO’s and bloggers understand some aspects of marketing, but one thing I rarely see talked about is the old fashion art of branding.
Ask yourself, how many times have you seen a product in the store, but didn’t buy it because you had “never heard of it” so you took a few steps to the right and purchased the well known BRAND? You see? It really does work! The idea is to get your name and logo out in as many places as possible to create a recognition for your brand. That is where Entrecard becomes handy. You can place your logo on hundreds of blogs to get your brand out there and in the minds of those surfing the interweb.
I have good news though! I got the idea, and the code to make an Entrecard dropper program to help you drop cards on other blog sides quicker. The idea and code came originally from Alfred over at the TechiePortal.com. Please check out his site and subscribe to his RSS feed. He has lots of great tools and resources there.
My version can be downloaded here: (Bauer-Power Entrecard Dropper)
A lot of people got banned a few months ago for making “Auto dropper” scripts and websites. This utility is NOT an auto dropper! All it does is allows you to open up Entrecard user blogs one site at a time using a hot key (Windows + Z). That’s it! Therefore it doesn’t violate Entrecard Terms of Service.
Full instructions are included in the Readme file.
What Entrecard tools do you use/know of? Do you use Entrecard? What do you think of them getting bought out? Let me know in the comments.
1:00 AM
Paul B
In my profession it seems that I am always taking screenshots. Lots of my friends love Snagit. In fact, I might go as far as to say they are the industry standard in screenshot software. The only problem is that it isn’t free. If money isn’t an object, then by all means buy it. I mean, it is a great product.
If money is an object however, then step right up. There are lots of free screenshot programs out there. Most of them, however, do little more than the built in ctrl+print Screen function built into Windows. Tools like Snagit allow you to capture a Windows, a region, or the whole screen, then add shapes, arrows, text etc to the captured image.
This free program I found does that too, and is completely open source. It is called Greenshot. Here are it’s basic features from their website:
Here is a little screen shot I took real quick:
| Capture Region | Print Screen |
| Capture Last Region | Shift + Print Screen |
| Capture Window | Alt + Print Screen |
| Capture Full Screen | Ctrl + Print Screen |
What screen capture software do you use? Is it free? If not how much is it? Post a link to your favorite in the comments.
9:41 AM
Paul B
I ran into a little application today that I thought was interesting. Lately I have been doing a lot of file transferring, copying etc. In fact, the other day I wrote about a file copier that does bit level copying and is a Windows port of rsync called DeltaCopy.
What if you need to just do a simple one time copy though? Just copy and paste right? Sure, if you have all day. What if you need those files copied faster? Then I have the tool for you. It is called FastCopy, and like most things I write about, it is 100% free!
Here are a list of features from their website:
What I like about it is the fact that you can carry it around on a USB stick (Don’t you just love portable apps?) or you can install it. It doesn’t matter!
Here is a screen shot of it. In this I am copying files from the local drive of one server to a file share on another:
Unlike regular copy and paste, you can also change the way you copy as well. Such as file sync, differential, overwrite all, etc. If you have to make regular file copies, FastSync has command line options as well for scripting goodness!
Know of any other fast file copy utilities? What software do you use to move large amounts of data around your network? Let us know in the comments!
1:00 AM
Paul B
One of the many tools my company uses to backup file share from remote servers is a pretty awesome program called SureSync. It is pretty cool, you have a server with a number of relations, and it lets you do bit level file synchronization across the network, or in our case, across the country. If bandwidth is an issue, like it is with my company, it also allows for file compression.
If you are a Linux admin, this may sound like a familiar Open Source program called rsync right? Basically yes, except with SureSync you have to pay for the server license, as well as a license for each client you have to backup.
Well, we are currently maxed out at my company. We are backing up 21 file servers across the country with SureSync, but it so happens that I need to add a few more. The only problem? No money! That’s when awesome open source comes to play.
Our network is mostly Windows, so I needed something like rsync. How about an rsync port for Windows? I found a program called DeltaCopy that provides a Windows wrapper for the tried and true rsync program! Here is a description from their website:
In general terms, DeltaCopy is an open source, fast incremental backup program. Let's say you have to backup one file that is 500 MB every night. A normal file copy would copy the entire file even if a few bytes have changed. DeltaCopy, on the other hand, would only copy the part of file that has actually been modified. This reduces the data transfer to just a small fraction of 500 MB saving time and network bandwidth.
Here is a list of features:
On a basic level, DeltaCopy does everything I currently use SureSync for including sending me notifications of successful jobs as well as failures.
Do you currently use a program like SureSync or DeltaCopy? I want to know what you guys use to sync files across the network? Robocopy perhaps? Let us know in the comments!
3:02 PM
Paul B
I have came across tools out there that use proxy lists to artificailly boost your Youtube views. Why would you want that to happen you may ask? The idea is that the more views your video has, the more “popular” it is, and the more real people will see it, and also better Google search results come from the higher views.
Here is a quote from a non-free software company called Tube Increaser that makes a proxy based tool to beef up your views. They say:
YouTube search ranks videos according to how many views a YouTube user has. In other words – the more views you have, the more exposure you will get over the other videos that have the same keywords and content. Another important aspect of video marketing is google search. If your YouTube video views have high views, your google ranking of the specific video will increase!
By having sufficient youtube video views daily, you can now compete with big time YouTube celebrities. This is an important part of creating more exposure for yourself – being able to be seen with high views and highly ranked is one of the key components of becoming successful on YouTube!
Now I am not an expert on Youtube, but that seems like it makes sense. If you know more about Youtube rankings, let us all know if the above is true, or B.S in the comments!
Anyhoo, Tube Increaser sounds cool, but I am all about free so I decided to look for a free alternative to Tube Increaser. That is when I found ViewTubeTrain. It is completely web based, and doesn’t require proxies. It doesn’t require proxies because you are swapping views with others on the internet!
All you have to do is post the Youtube link to your video on their site, then sit back and watch other peoples videos! There is also an option called Automatic train that automatically takes you to the next video when the one you are watching is done. This is where the shadyness comes in. You can turn it on, then mute your sound and minimize your browser and just rack up the points!
I am trying it out right now on my new NinjURL.us commercial I just filmed:
Do you know of other similar Youtube boosting tools? I am interested in both paid and free ones. Post your links in the comments!
7:18 PM
Paul B
My wife is an amateur photographer. She has been aspiring to go pro, and perhaps start making a little money on the side. She frequently has people asking her to take their family photos, wedding pictures, baby pictures, school pictures etc. Most of the time, she does this as a favor to friends and family, but eventually she wants to branch out.
One of the things she said she wanted to get her foot in the door, and to provide potential clients with samples of her work was an online photo gallery. I decided i would put my skills of finding cool free software to use, and decided to look into an Open Source solution for her!
What I found was a little PHP based photo gallery that ties to a MySQL back end. What’s that smell? Smells like an Ubuntu LAMP server! Well, in my case I went with a free hosting service that I wrote about a few months ago called 000webhost. Anyhoo, that is neither here nor there.
The free gallery is called Coppermine, and setup is a snap! Just create your MySQL database, username, password etc, then upload the Coppermine files to your web server. Then you browse to your website’s URL and follow the installation wizard. It really can’t be any simpler.
I plan in the future to do a number of video segments showing users how easy it is to setup some of these free PHP sites, and I plan on using Coppermine as an example.
Here is the URL to the site I setup for my wife (http://momentsbefore.com). It is still under construction, and she hasn’t uploaded any photos yet. There is one picture, but that is only because I uploaded it to show my wife how easy it is to use.
Speaking of my wife’s photography, here are some samples of her work:
Like many other free PHP CMS/website scripts out there, there are lots of free Coppermine templates available so you can put some customizing touches on your gallery. Just do a Google search for Free Coppermine Themes.
Do any of you out there dabble in photography? Do you use Coppermine? Do you use something else? If so, post your photo gallery URL’s in the comments!
6:46 AM
Paul B
Many many moons ago, when T-Mobile first appeared in San Diego, my wife and I signed up for their service because it was the cheapest thing available. For the most part we liked their services, but what we didn’t like was that every time you got a voice mail message you got an alert on your phone saying you had a voice mail, you also got a text message. They have since removed that feature, but it was sort of annoying.
Currently I am on Verizon, and their voice messaging is okay. I mean, it does what it is supposed to do. What I don’t like about Verizon’s is that when I dial in from my cell phone I still have to put in my pin number, then to play a message, I have to select “1’ or something to play it. It is rather inconvenient when I am driving, and I am supposed to be “hands free” yet I still have to look down to dial pin numbers, and menu items just to check a voice message.
All of those annoyances have gone away for me though. My buddy recommended an alternative voice messaging service, that is free to use, and has some really cool features. The service is called Youmail, and here is what they offer:
Visual Voicemail - See who called, from where, and even their pictureSetup for me was really easy, and they have detailed instructions for just about every carrier out there to switch over to their service.
Another feature they offer (for a premium of course) is speech to text, so you can just read your voicemails. Pretty cool sounding, but I am not paying for that myself.
I have been using it for a week, and so far I like it way better than the stock Verizon voicemail. It is more convenient, and if I am close to the computer, I can play my messages through Windows Media Player, and I never have to call my voicemail.
What do you think? Do you find your current provider’s voicemail kind of annoying? What don’t you like about it? Have you tried Youmail? Know of a similar service? let us know in the comments.
9:10 AM
Paul B
1:00 AM
Paul B
A few weeks ago I decided to say damn the man and install Ubuntu as my operating system at work. So far there isn’t anything I am unable to do on Ubuntu that I couldn’t do in Windows to get my work done.
Today I was a little light on the workload so I decided to browse the Ubuntu repositories to see what games were available. Of course, two that popped right out at me were some of my favorite Open Source games; Tux Racer and SuperTux!
These two games got me thinking about how much cooler the free games for Ubuntu are compared to the free games that come with Windows. I also got to thinking about how many people play solitaire and minesweeper at work.
Because of that, I decided to make this little video:
What do you think? Am I wrong on this? I suppose there are lots of free games you can download for Windows too, including SuperTux and Tux Racer, however these are available directly in the repositories for Ubuntu.
What games do you like to play on your Linux system? What free games do you play in Windows? Let me know in the comments.
1:00 AM
Paul B
Webcam recording for that Picture-in-picture touch
1:00 AM
Paul B
Microsoft TechNet is a Microsoft program and resource for technical information, news, and events for IT professionals. Along with a website, they also produce a monthly subscription magazine titled "TechNet Magazine".I signed up for mine, now I have free access to all of Microsoft's software including operating systems! I am downloading a copy of Vista Ultimate right now. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!
TechNet was originally available only to customers with paid subscriptions; however, it has been expanded to include public information, webcasts, local events, and free newsletters. They have also started an open source blog on April 6, 2006 called Port 25 to publicly explore that business model and provide discussion forums.
