Typer Tappers

This is a amazing little program and one of my favorite 3D effects on Windows, it gives you a effect like Beryl from Linux but it’s on Windows which tops if off for me.

It allows you to have four different desktops so this means you can switch from one to the other for an example on one you have Word open and on the other you have Photoshop open because your on the second desktop you can’t see Word is open until you flick desktops again you get four different desktops which looks amazing when you switch them.

It’s a brilliant tool and easily setup, if you’re used to using different desktops in Linux this is for you its compatible with Microsoft Windows XP and Vista

On my computer I find it runs slightly slow which I guess is because I’m on a very slow computer (no money) 1.8Ghz with 512mb RAM and 256mb graphics, just incase your below that spec this might not be for you but it just about runs for me.

Have fun it really is a amazing program.

Website: Yod’m 3D

Okay there is a lot of people out their using Wireless access points because their so easy thanks to Microsoft, but are they really safe you might have asked yourself before purchasing one of these in my opinion nothing can beat wired networking in your own house, but you might have a laptop and want to move around well then I would say you do need wireless.
So what security issues does wireless face?
Simple a lot you might of heard of these so called war drivers, these people drive around in their car trying to pick up wireless signals especially unsecured ones once they’ve done this they will begin to sniff your ‘traffic’ passing through your wireless connection this means everything you’re doing is being logged into their computers so lets use a example, your looking at a shopping site like amazon.com while your shopping the war driver is logging things like pages you visit to your login details, once they’ve done that it is possible to do things like change your delivery address then you wont get your stuff and someone else might get it, this can be a pain when you get your bill and find that you’ve lost thousands of pounds, because of one person and their laptop.

If you have a wireless access point you might of heard of WEP the most popular encryption out their no its not secure I remember hearing a while ago that this protocol was used for testing your network (I’m not fully sure) but was developed into a encryption, which to this day is not secure and can be cracked in a matter of minutes by professional hackers to just script kiddies, now war drivers might target you because that is easy to crack even if it’s a encryption protocol.

What is secure you might be asking at this point?
One of my favorite methods of securing my self when at a café with wireless is using SSH tunneling using a program called Putty there are literally thousands of tutorials out their explaining how it works so I wont go on about it, but this can be used for your home network or just when you want to use it at a café.
WPA you might of heard of this encryption method you should find it comes with your access point if not check the manufacturers site for firmware upgrades so you can use it, if you need to upgrade you might find you can even use WPA2 which is even better, when using an wireless network I always preach to people about securing it using it, this is a much more secure encryption protocol and for the moment at least you wont get script kiddies hacking you.

Is that it are you finished yet?
Nearly one of the most important things is changing your access point name, it you have a default name I would laugh at you as this is the most dangerous thing you can do out of everything and you will be purposely targeted so lets say your default name is Linksys on your linksys wireless router, this means you more than likely haven’t changed your default username and password if you haven’t you NEED to check your DNS setting if their not yours write them down and consult someone preferable your ISP or if worst comes to worst the police you may have been pharmed meaning they have redirected all your traffic to their servers once this happens and you put in yourbank.com into your browser you would be redirected to their server with a fake website, it is very hard to notice the difference and I doubt you would, so now they have stolen all your login details you may of lost a lot of money so please change the default name and login details for your own security!

Their can be many reasons to block websites from your computer such as you want to keep kids from going onto malicious sites or you just want to stop yourself going onto sites, for me I blocked a bunch of shopping websites so I don’t spend any money such as ebuyer.com, play.com and amazon.co.uk.

To block the websites I used something called the host file you will find this in “%SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\” for XP machines for other machines you might need to look for it.

To open the file you can double click on it and open it in notepad you will get examples in it showing you how to use it but some people don’t always understand it.

Once inside it you can type in at the bottom of the page “127.0.0.1 example.com” the 127.0.0.1 is your local machine which you are on right now and example.com is the site that you want to block from your machine, so try it out and you will find that the list slowly gets bigger and bigger.

If you want to edit it often I recommend making a shortcut to the file right click on it and click create shortcut and drag it anywhere you like.

All I need is a USB flash drive 1gb+ now I go through a lot of USB flash drives as you have to keep up with the new technologies inside them now my current favourite is the U3 this is a brilliant invention its like having your own little start menu running from your flash drive.

From this I can fun Opera, Firefox, Putty and trillian so I can keep up with my emails on Opera or surf the net using Opera or Firefox, or if I need to talk to someone fast I can boot up trillian and log into AIM.

Inside the menu you have a Download option allowing you to download new programs from software.u3.com for example you can download a new version of Skype, the best thing of all if your using the download option in the menu it will download it then install it in one go.

Now if you haven’t got a U3 flash drive their are many other options out their one of my personal favourites are portable apps these have a much smaller ammount of programs as it isn’t on a bigger scale of U3 but it is well worth it you can have open office, firefox, putty, Gaim and a couple more just check out portableapps.com

untill I have fixed the previous theme I will put up the old one

Thanks.

So my fist product I started looking at was a modem so I could run my phone like through my PC, if you remember the good old days when we was using a dial up connection that is what I’m looking for you can get them pretty cheap now so I just searched modem in amazon.co.uk and found one for around a fiver (Trust MD-1100 56K modem) link is at the bottom of the page with my other products.

So now I’ve brought my modem I need a cable to plug into the modem so unless you have one stashed away in your attic theirs a link next to the modem.

Now my favorite product and most expensive, I want something so I can walk around my house on the phone so it got me thinking about mobile cell phones, they have wireless headphones for sale all around the place using blue tooth so I looked for a wireless blue tooth headset for my PC, so I found a Belkin Bluetooth Headset for about £30.

Overall the total of this buy was just a little bit over £40, was it worth it we shall see when my stuff arrives and if I can actually get my computer to be a telephone.

Next post will be my reviews on the products.

Below are my items I’ve ordered from amazon.co.uk check them out if you’re interested.

I want to find out how much easier it is to use my computer as a telephone rather than using a regular telephone but what’s my aim?
Simple I want to be able to:
Record telephone conversations.
Have a answer machine.

That’s pretty much it, yer yer I know you can get this on a regular telephone for $10 from your local shop, but what I really is to be able to use a very small headset like the blue tooth ones you have for mobile phones, so go on complain to me about keeping my computer on all the time, unless I use the Wake on LAN function what’s this you might be asking well on modern motherboards in your BIOS you have something called Wake on LAN meaning if you have a modem you can plug it into your phone line if your computer is turned off and you receive a phone call it will boot up.
This is not a tried and tested method as I don’t get have a modem.

So tomorrow I will post the items I have ordered, and then I shall review the items and finally tell you (hopefully) how I’ve setup my computer phone.

If anyone reading has done anything like this I would love to hear comments on it and what products you’ve used for it.

Thanks.

How can we prepare for summer, this year in UK is supposed to beat the year of 2003 when a lot of people died because of the weather. So we should be prepared!

Keeping your house cool, this is one of my favourite methods of keeping your house cool in summer, if you own a car you might have a cover that you use for your car or something to cover your window screen you can put this over your house windows if you have very thin curtains I would not recommend doing this if you have a black cover but shiny grey or just shiny is brilliant to use.

Simple but efficient opening windows at night, now because you have covered your windows it should trap the cool air in but you need to first get this cool air in you can do this by opening your windows at night and your attic door.

Closing doors you don’t do this at night as you want cool air to circulate now closing your doors will allow you to keep cool air in each room now as the day progresses its good to move from room to room. If you have all the doors the heat you produce will be spread around the house meaning you can’t take advantage of your cool rooms.

Turn off as much electrical appliances as possible, at mid day too at least 4 you want too keep your appliances off I would recommend only using one thing in a room if you want to watch TV turn off your computer so try to only have one appliance on in the whole house and if you use CRT TV’s or monitors try not to use them at all they produce the most heat.

So what can you do if you don’t want any thing turned on well if you have kids check out this website Printables 4 Kids or you can go in your loft and blow the dust off some of your board games.

If you have any more methods of keeping your house cool or keeping busy in summer please post your comments.

Thanks.

Now this is the best part for war drivers default network names, now if you looked at wireless AP’s around your are you will more than likely find Linksys name’s now NEVER use this for your name as using this means you more than likely haven’t setup any security on your wireless router meaning you more than likely have a user name and password of admin on your router.

So what you might ask?

This is a very very dangerous thing too do it means once a war driver has access to your router he can do a number of things one of the most dangerous ones too you is called drive by pharming this means someone can have access to your router and change your DNS settings linking you too one of their servers once they have done that if you visit say your banking site they will redirect it too a fake one on their server taking all your information.

There is a lot more things people can do with it and you need to change the username and password and definitely change your router’s name instead of its default one!

Well all this week I’ve been dedicating my time to checking out all about war driving so I could find out how dangerous wireless could be.

The first thing I did was check out common war driving sites to find the easiest way such as already made databases which was shocking to me the amount of unsecured networks I found a database on Wigle using the Jigle desktop tool it has thousands of access points on it.

Anyone can do something similar too this which is very scary I found a couple of peoples access points on it (which where not secure) which is just advertising your AP so hackers can come and steal your information.

Now its bad enough being on the map but what can you do to stop people hacking you?

Simple use WPA encryption, WEP encryption can now be cracked in a matter of seconds so DON’T use it, or even better you could use WPA2 these encryptions are brilliant and worth wile spending money on a new AP just to get the encryption. Please check out WPA encryption.

This week I shall dedicate my posts too wireless security, hopefully that you all will understand the problems with this technology and if your using it the best ways of securing it!