Category: ifttt

By The How-To Geek, Lifehacker – March 26, 2010 at 04:00PM

There’s any number of great antivirus tools that help protect your PC from viruses, but what about when you encounter an already-infected PC? Your best bet is a boot CD, and the free AVG Rescue CD cleans viruses easily.

The AVG Rescue CD comes in two flavors: an ISO image that can be easily burned to an optical disc, or a compressed version that can be installed to a bootable flash drive. Once you’ve done so, you can simply boot from the drive of choice directly to the AVG menu, where you can scan for viruses, edit files, test your drive, or even edit the registry. Since the bootable CD is based on a version of Linux, you can also access a number of common Linux tools to make changes to your system and hopefully make it bootable again.

The AVG Rescue CD is a free download for anybody, cleans viruses from Windows or even Linux PCs, and is a great addition to your PC repair toolkit. If you need some help setting up the bootable USB flash version, check out the Guiding Tech tutorial for the full walk-through.

By Erica Ho, Lifehacker – March 26, 2010 at 03:30PM

Windows only: McAfee Stinger banishes malware from your Windows PC, including those hard-to-get fake alert programs and their variants. The last thing anyone needs is malware masquerading as helpful.

Fake alert programs are always nasty little buggers to remove. We recently examined how to remove XP AntiSpyware, one such piece of malware, by going into the Windows registry and using Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. While it doesn’t appear to support that particular piece of malware, McAfee’s Stinger is another free alternative that aims to do the job for several other fake security malware a bit more easily.

The program is pretty straightforward, and comes with a list of malware that it can remove without too much effort. It sports basic options to tweak sensitivity, including what and where to scan. Windows XP and Vista users should note that they might have to disable System Restore to use it.

McAfee Stinger is available as a free download for Windows only.

By Jason Kottke, kottke.org – March 26, 2010 at 12:55PM

Bob Kramer’s handcrafted knives take more than a full day to make and cost $300 per inch (8″ chef’s knife is $2400). The New Yorker did a interesting piece on Kramer in 2008. (via 37signals)

Tags: Bob Kramer   video

By Lee Mathews, Download Squad – March 26, 2010 at 12:02PM

Filed under: Security, Windows

Malware infections are the most common problems I see on my workbench. While there are plenty of different kinds, fake alerts and rogue antivirus programs seem to be the most widespread. They end up on my customers’ systems with many different names — Antivirus XP, Personal Antivirus, Spyware Protect, XP Antivirus — and they’re all major annoyances.

If you’ve fallen victim to one of these nasty bits of malware, a big repair bill doesn’t have to be in your future. There are plenty of great, free, programs you can download to remove fake alert infections. A good one to start with is McAfee Stinger, which they’ve updated to clean this kind of malware.

Stinger is a free download and doesn’t require you to install anything. Save stinger.exe to your desktop, double-click the icon to launch the program, and run a scan. Once it’s done, remove any files it detects and reboot your system. That’s it! Stinger currently detects and removes more than 1,300 types of malware (including most of the common ones I remove at my day job).

It’s a good idea to double-check with another program when you try to clean up an infection like XP Antivirus (or its hundreds of variants). I highly recommend using Malwarebytes — another free program — to make sure the malware has been removed.

Clean XP Antivirus and other fake alert infections with McAfee Stinger originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 26 Mar 2010 11:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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antivirus – Malware – Download Squad – Security – McAfee

By Jason Fitzpatrick, Lifehacker – March 26, 2010 at 11:30AM

Windows: If you’re setting up a new system or helping a friend to see how much great free and open source software exists, ZeuAPP is a portable installation tool for nearly a hundred applications.

ZeuAPP is essentially an installation dashboard for 82 applications. You can navigate to application types like CD Burners, P2P apps, Office apps, and more. Under each tab are applications for that category with a “Download” and “Visit Website” button which allow you to download the application and automatically launch the installer or visit the web site for more info.

ZeuAPP is freeware, portable, and Windows only. Looking for something that’ll also quickly grab and install your favorite non-open source apps? Check out previously mentioned Ninite.

By Tim Lenahan, MakeUseOf – March 25, 2010 at 05:31PM

When spring is upon us, the time has come to make our way back to the backyards.  Most of us have been cooped up in the cold and are ready for some fresh air and a project to keep us busy.  Why not start that garden you’ve been meaning to get to?  With the help of the Internet you can have that green thumb you’ve always wanted.

There are several types of places on the Internet that can help you in your gardening pursuits such as online garden planners, social networks of like-minded gardening types, informational sites, and more!  Let me share some sites and tools that should help.

Garden Puzzle – Create Your Design In 5 Minutes

Mentioned in the MakeUseOf Directory, Garden Puzzle is an online tool that makes designing your garden simple.  In 4 easy steps you’ll have a design that will help you figure out how to start a garden.  Just upload a photo of your garden area, indicate what kind of climate and soil conditions you are dealing with, choose plants you want to add (they also suggest some for you), and create visuals for each season you deal with.

Garden Planner

Unlike Garden Puzzle, Garden Planner gives a blueprint-type aerial view giving you a good view of the layout.  In fact, it is very similar to a blueprint home design program.  There are many plants and objects to choose from and you can even even download it as a program to your Windows desktop (the desktop version is a 15 day trial).

iBotanika – Discover, Connect & Share Your Life In Green

iBotanika is a site for anyone from the beginner gardener to the profession botanist.  It is a place to catalog your gardening progress, find needed information and connect with other plant enthusiasts.  Unlike some of the larger social networking sites, iBotanika is a focused community that is specific to plant growers.  You can upload pictures of yourself and your plants, indicate the location of your plants and get your own greenhouse (virtual).

MyPlantID

My wife and I just bought a house and this spring will be the first time we will be working on the yard and the gardens.  I can see MyPlantID being useful as we seek to find out what plants are already planted.  This site offers a user generated database which helps in the identification of plants.  You can either search for your plant on the site or submit a photo of your plant for other users to help in the identification.

Here are a few more sites that can help you with your gardening needs:

• The Garden Helper
• About.com: Gardening
• About.com: Landscaping
• OrganicGardening.com
• National Gardening Association website

And even more from the blogosphere:

• Home Gardening Blog
• North Coast Gardening
• Sprouting Off

See, the Internet can be useful for the every day things such as gardening!  You can find tools, sites and even blogs that help you with every part of the gardening process from plant identification, to gardening social networks and even blogs to follow and gain advice from.

Since the Internet is so large, I am sure there are more tools, sites and blogs that other people find useful in their gardening pursuits.  If you have a site, tool or blog that you often consult when gardening, please do share them with us.

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By John Biggs, TechCrunch – March 25, 2010 at 05:00PM

While I’m not sure what I think about the name, I do like WhiteyBoard’s game. WhiteyBoard is an “instant” whiteboard made of plastic that weighs less than two pounds and slaps right up on your wall without screws. Instead of those standard, crazily heavy and expensive whiteboards you’re used to, you simply buy a 18-inch, 3-foot, or 6-foot WhiteyBoard, slap it up, and start brainstorming.

By Sean Michael Ragan, MAKE – March 25, 2010 at 01:00PM

Interesting Instructable from member Tool Using Animal (best ID ever) about how to buy red oak from the big orange store and turn it into a decent bow. He reports a 55-lb draw. [Thanks, Tim!]

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By HateRocket, spaceghetto – March 25, 2010 at 11:37AM

By Nicholas Deleon, TechCrunch » Gadgets – March 25, 2010 at 08:00AM

Hello, Earth! Can you believe that this photo was taken by a man who attached a digital camera to a balloon? Madness.

There’s actually not too much involved here. You take a helium-filled, high-altitude balloon, strap a digital camera to it, and off you go. The camera goes up (that’s 22 miles above the surface of the planet), takes a photo every five minutes, then it comes floating down to Earth on a parachute. A simple GPS, not too different from the one in your car right now, gives the location of the camera when it comes back down.

It’s the space-photography equivalent of macaroni glued to construction paper.

Total cost? Around $750. That’s less than what I spent to build the PC I’m writing this post with. Clearly Robert Harrison, the UK chap who put all of this together, is cooler than I’ll ever be.