Category: ifttt

By Whitson Gordon, Lifehacker – April 29, 2010 at 05:00PM

Windows: When Windows’ Device Manager just can’t seem to give you information about a piece of hardware, free, open-source utility UnknownDevices will point you in the right direction, allowing you to find the necessary drivers to get it up and running.

Screenshot from AddictiveTips.

Generally, when you install a new device, you know what it is and where to find drivers, but if you’ve just done a clean install of Windows, for example, it can be difficult or time-consuming to determine what your many “unknown” devices in Device Manager actually are. Luckily, UnknownDevices is a portable app that can quickly give you more information about the manufacturer and model of those unknown devices to help you on your hunt for the necessary drivers.

Unfortunately, all my devices are communicating just fine with my computer (even the weird ones I dug out of the closet)—so I couldn’t test this one out myself. Software blog AddictiveTips says it worked great for them, though, so if you try it out, let us know how it worked for you in the comments!

UnknownDevices is a free download, Windows only.

By Jason Kottke, kottke.org – April 29, 2010 at 02:35PM

Or so says Errol Morris. It’s certainly the most honest advertising I’ve ever seen.

A bouncer in Birmingham hit me in the face with a crescent wrench five times and my wife’s boyfriend broke my jaw with a fence post. So if you don’t buy a trailer from me, it ain’t gonna hurt my feelings. So come on down to Cullman Liquidation and get yourself a home. Or don’t. I don’t care.

(via fimoculous)

Tags: advertising   Errol Morris   TV   video

By Lee Mathews, Download Squad – April 29, 2010 at 01:31PM

Filed under: Utilities, Troubleshooting

One thing I’ve found with a number of the malware infections that come across my workbench is that they do their best to make it difficult to run cleanup tools like MalwareBytes and SmitFraudFix.

In typical malware author fashion, however, their application-blocking abilities are lazily programmed and pretty easy to sidestep. Here’s what I do when an infection won’t let me run my favorite tools: find the tool I need to run and change its extension from .EXE to .COM.

Windows still knows how to execute .COM files, but most malware isn’t smart enough to intercept this less-used extension. Make the change, and you’ve got an easy workaround to let you run Malwarebytes and some of the other tools you need to clean even a heavily-infected system.

To change a file’s extension, open any folder on your computer and go to tools -> folder options (you can also find Folder Options in the Control Panel). Click the view tab and remove the check mark next to hide extensions for known file types. You can now click on the file (mbam.exe above), replace the exe with com, and launch your app despite the malware’s best efforts to stop you!

This won’t work with every infection, of course, but it has helped me out of a jam on several occasions.

Got another malware-thwarting tip? Share it in the comments!

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Change file extensions to outsmart pesky malware originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Malware – Microsoft Windows – Control Panel – Download Squad – Filename extension

By Kevin Purdy, Lifehacker – April 29, 2010 at 08:00AM

An oldie-but-goodie post from entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki directly addresses the kind of problems the military has with complex PowerPoint decks—boring read-throughs stuffed with too much on-screen text. His parameters for preventing audience paralysis is dubbed the 10/20/30 rule.

Photo by alice_c.

Kawasaki, who we have no doubt has sat through his share of boring pitches, suggests that most people can only appreciate about 10 explanatory slides at most, and that’s only if each slide speaks directly to solving a problem or a key aspect of something to learn. The 20 is a time limit—you may have an hour, but between setup, late-coming viewers, and the very important Q&A section, you’ll want to limit yourself to 20 minutes.

The 30 means 30-point fonts—a smart creative constraint, and one that directly speaks to the U.S. military’s nightmare slides.

The reason people use a small font is twofold: first, that they don’t know their material well enough; second, they think that more text is more convincing. Total bozosity. Force yourself to use no font smaller than thirty points. I guarantee it will make your presentations better because it requires you to find the most salient points and to know how to explain them well. If “thirty points,” is too dogmatic, [then] I offer you an algorithm: find out the age of the oldest person in your audience and divide it by two. That’s your optimal font size.

ReadWriteWeb also points to Alexei Kapterev’s manifesto Death by PowerPoint, itself a very good presentation that we’ve previously posted. What constraints do you put on yourself to ensure your own presentations don’t turn your audience into very, very diligent email checkers?

By Whitson Gordon, Lifehacker – April 28, 2010 at 05:00PM

Firefox: Ever wanted to send a message to a bunch of people, but with a note tacked on the end for just one of them? Firefox extension Bccthis adds this feature to Gmail, saving you from writing multiple messages.

The extension adds a second collapsible text box to the bottom of Gmail’s compose view, allowing you to add another message that can be sent to any number of the message’s recipients in the to, cc, or bcc section. Gmail will then send two copies of the message: the original message, and an additional message to your Bccthis recipients with your secret message, so you don’t have to compose two yourself. Plus, for messages where you don’t need the extension, you can easily minimize the text box so it doesn’t take up so much space. It’s very useful for prompting follow-ups from one co-worker, tacking on impromptu “love you” post scripts to your significant other, or planning mutinies.

Bccthis for Gmail is a free download, works wherever Firefox does.

By Rich Whittle, Business Opportunities Weblog – April 28, 2010 at 11:05AM

Readers Digest reports that blasting through a decaying tooth to reach a cavity can involve “drilling out healthy parts of a tooth to get to a small area of infection,” says Wayne Flavin, director of scientific affairs for DMG America, a dental-materials company.

Enter Icon, the company’s new treatment for early cavities, which works by injecting liquid resin into the tooth. The quick-flowing resin reaches the inner “lattice” of decay faster than traditional metal or composite fillings can.

Once inside the problem spot, it solidifies and stops the cavity from progressing. “Patients love it because there is no anesthetic and no drilling,” says John Rowe, DDS, a dentist in Jonesboro, Arkansas, who has been testing the product for more than a year.

Already on the market in Europe, Icon will be widely available in the United States this year.

Photo by TV program ‘The Doctors.’.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

By Kevin Purdy, Lifehacker – April 28, 2010 at 08:00AM

FamilySearch, the online arm of the Family History Library, has a new beta search service that lets the public dig around to find documents and facts on their relatives and ancestors. It’s a pretty huge index of data, and it’s free.

The library contains a vast amount of historical records and tallies from all over the country and world. Census data, birth and death certificates, church parish tallies, military enrollments, and many, many more data sources. If you’ve ever been intrigued about those who came before, but don’t want to invest your time quite yet in a family tree app, taking a peek around FamilySearch might pay off

It’s a service run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and it’s free to browse and use.

By Drea, Business Pundit – April 28, 2010 at 05:22AM

New Scientist has a fascinating infographic all about spam:

By (author unknown), Gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine – April 28, 2010 at 12:56AM

A few years ago, while searching for a suitable product to help his severely autistic son Callum adequately express himself, speaks4me creator Steven Lodge came up with the idea for a computer-based interactive communication tool based on a successful and popular autistic learning system, but the technology to support the idea was not readily available. That’s now changed…
Continue Reading Speaks4Me turns images into speech

Tags: Communicate,
Disability,
Speech

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• US$230 Handheld Translator speaks 12 languages
• A Computer for the world’s 4 billion illiterate and poor people

By John Baichtal, MAKE – April 27, 2010 at 09:00PM

Need something to do with those pesky 3-liter bottles, cinder blocks, and lumps of dry ice lying around? Combine them! [Via EMSL’s always-excellent linkdump.]

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