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At first glance, today’s hard drives are quite large. But as hard drive grow, so do the ways to fill them. Remember when AOL fit on a single floppy? Programs are really huge these days, and many people have collections of videos and music than can easily eat away 100 or more gigabytes.

This one is for you Windows users who need a little extra space on your drive, but don’t want to sacrifice anything in the process.

(Oh, and, as always – proceed with caution, as with anything like this it’s your own risk)

First line of defense: Disk Cleanup Utility

Disk Cleanup Utility is a tool intended for PC novices. It’s designed to will help the user remove some unused files. It’s handy because it’s an all-in-once place to see how much room your Internet cache (temporary files) and so forth are taking up. You’ll also be able to flush out temp files, and junk setups left behind. This tool runs automatically if your drive starts to fill up, or you can launch it from Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup

The big one

This is something I do any time I install a fresh copy of windows. You can save literally gigabytes by doing this one, harmless, step. Right-click My Computer, choose Properties and click on the System Restore tab.

System Restore is a feature that will basically backup your system files so if something breaks your ability to startup, you have a fail-over. If you check the box to disable system restore, you get all that space back. (And it can be a gigabyte or even more.)

Of course, you may want the piece of mind that if something you install breaks Windows, you have a fall-back. My recommendation is find a backup program you like and backup to DVD or CD instead. Besides, System restore isn’t truly a backup. Broken programs are still broken, etc. If you need to boot up to undo a change you made to your system – well that’s what safe mode is for anyways. So to me, System Restore is a pointless waste of a LOT of space.

Swap it out

The Windows swap file is hard disk space that is used when programs need extra memory. For example, if you have 2gigs of memory installed and you are running 3 programs that each require 1 gig, swapping will occur and the extra 1 gig will be used on your hard drive. So your swap file can be pretty big.

Unless you have a LOT of memory (or a SSD drive) then turning swapping off completely isn’t exactly the best idea. Back in “the day” I used to used a fixed size swap file as this would keep the disk activity down from having to grow/shrink the swap file. This also helped prevent the disk from getting fragged. But now, that’s not really the issue. You can reduce your swap file size if you want the room, but that’s not really idea. To manage your swap file, right click My Computer, choose properties, click on the advanced tab, then under performance click Settings. Now, under the Advanced tab of this pop-up you should see some settings for your virtual memory / swap file. You’ll see how big your swap file is, perhaps 2gigs or such. If you click on change you get full control over how your swap behaves.

I’ve run into the situation before using virtual machines where I make a drive that is smallish, maybe 2 gigs – which of course Windows will fill up quickly. I could easily make a new drive that’s 20 gigs, but I don’t want to lose my stuff on my 2gig drive. So, what I’ve done here is create a second “helper” drive – a place to put stuff. I also put the swap file on this drive. So now, I’ve freed up several gigs on my primary drive, and the swap file has room to breathe. Most programs allow you to install in any location, it’s not insanely difficult to set a different location up as the Program Files directory.

Compression Method

Well this one I’ve been slow to warm up to – I have memories of Windows 95 disk-doubling which compressed everything and made everything slow. I’ve heard people use disk compression in XP and are completely fine, but normally I just compress some things that I know I won’t use. The Disk Cleanup utility can help you compress old and unused files.

As far as controlling disk compression, go into My Computer and right-click the hard drive you want to compress. Under the initial General tab, you should see a checkbox to enable disk compression. Compressed files from here on appear blue in explorer, and you shouldn’t notice much difference in accessing them. The only exception might be if you compress files needed by a game, etc.

More swap savings

The goal of this is to avoid having to re-install Windows, so here’s another idea of how to save some space. Remember earlier how I mentioned you could relocate your swap file to make space on your primary drive? Well some newer (cheaper) computers don’t provide you with re-install CDs. Dell/Compaq I’m looking at you. What they do usually now is make a “restore” partition – so if your Windows poops the bed, you can start from this partition and perform the restoration. Well what happens if your drive fails, that’s gone too, right? Well often you can call the manufacturer and request a CD. If you have a CD to reinstall Windows then there is no need for this restore partition and you can reclaim it for your stuff. Since we’re trying to avoid having to reinstall Windows you could simply format this partition and use it for your swap/temp files. Usually it’s only a gig or less, but it might be enough for this purpose.

Feeling lazy? Have a couple of Macs around the house? This one’s for you!

Being able to remote control a computer is nothing new, and the Mac OS has supported it for a long while. But with 10.5 it’s never been easier. But before we set up a remote controlled Mac, let’s talk about some of the ways this work.

VNC

VNC - this is a standard that can be found on Linux machines as well as Mac OS. Essentially one computer acts as a VNC server an a VNC client connects to observe or control the server. The Mac OS can run as a VNC server out of the box. In 10.5 this feature can be found in the sharing control panel. One Mac VNC client I’ve used in the past is “Chicken of the VNC” a quick google should turn up a download for this app, if you’re interested

A BETTER WAY

Apple Remote Desktop is a swell way to remote control Macs on your Network, however it’s not free. It is an application designed for a system administrator to monitor or control a bunch of machines. The lite version that comes with 10.5 can be found in iChat - the screen sharing feature! The cool thing, and the hack I’m getting to, is using this screen sharing service to remote control your Macs with the same elegance the full version of Remote Desktop gives you. It’s all there - just disabled!

1) Look in your hard drive in /System/Library/CoreServices - you should find “Screen Sharing” - the application which will allow you to remote control the machines. I put mine in my dock.

2) If you load it, it asks where to connect. You can use the IP as provided by the sharing control panel, but there’s an easier way. Hop into terminal and type this: defaults write com.apple.ScreenSharing ShowBonjourBrowser_Debug 1

3) Now when you load Screen Sharing, you’ll see a more detailed window with a list of computers on the network using bonjour and remote management in the sharing control panel.

WHY?

This is useful if you have a desktop Mac in the house - you can connect to and control it from a laptop. It’s also fun for pranks The ScreenSharing solution is also nice because it will scale the higher resolution desktop to fit on your laptop’s screen - Chicken of the VNC doesn’t do this. Most Linux distributions have a VNC client as well so you can get at your desktop Mac from pretty much anything or anywhere. That’s right - if you’re confident with exposing your machine to the world, you can share out this service to the internet and get at your home computer anywhere in the world.

Speck case from back

Remember the original iBook when it was available in a variety of different colors? I kind of miss that, I mean personalization’s big, but Apple isn’t really into it now. Well, at least there are tons of aftermarket personalization options - such as skins and cases. Here’s a quick rundown on my Speck MacBook case.

HEAT

A big concern of mine was if putting my computer in a case would cause more heat to be held in. I’m sure most people wouldn’t even consider this - but I really push the machine, so it’s pretty important. I haven’t done an official temperature before/after type test but I can say I haven’t heard the fan come on any more than usual - so installing this case doesn’t seem to affect cooling.

WHERE TO GET IT

They have the Speck case at the Apple store and some BestBuys… however I found it brand new on Amazon for less than half the price. (19.99 instead of 49.99 at Apple) Plus ordering online allowed me to pick the color I wanted.

THE GOOD, BAD, AND UGLY

Well, if you like the way it looks then I’d say go for it. It snaps on perfectly (be sure though to get the case designed for your model. I doubt the new unibody MacBooks and mine are the exact same dimensions.) You may notice it bumps a little opening it all the way. This is probably the single biggest downside, that it won’t open all the way. But again, it’s probably fine for most people, and as picky as I am - I can deal with it. Otherwise the ports line up fine, everything plugs in ok, it fits in the bag still, not much thicker, and even the power light and Apple logo still shine through.

OVERALL

So I’d give this a 4/5. If you like customizating your gear, then this is probably one of the nicer ways to do it. It adds a splash of color and should protect the case fairly well. It’s attractive and functional. The only reason I don’t give it a 5 is it prevents the computer from opening all the way. Granted, my machine may be a little bent up from dropping it down the stairs

Speck case - open

This photo was created with 10 snapshots

A picture might be worth a thousand words, but sometimes you want even more. At Epcot, the World Showcase is a massive attraction that isn’t easily captured with a single photo. In this example, I’ve stiched together 10 photos with a regular digital camera to create a huge panoramic. It’s quick, easy, and painless… here’s how to do it.

The process is called photo stitching where you take regular, overlapping/adjecent photos and the computer finds similar features (The corner of a building, or a drain in the road, for example) on the photos and merges them together. Additionally, to make up for the different lighting values of the photos - blending is performed to make the panoramic seamless.  Let’s see how to do it…

The EASY way

If you have a newer version of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, creating a photo panoramic is just a couple of clicks. Using a bunch of adjecent photos, load up Photoshop. Under File choose Automate and then “Photo Merge” I beleive Elements includes the Photomerge feature directly under file. In the window that opens, use the browse button to pick the individual adjecent photos you’ve taken. In this window you’ll see several layout modes with samples so you can help the program perform the mergeing in a way that will look best - but sometimes experimentation is the way to go. You’ll see a checkbox to blend the image. The blend process just fades the pictures together so you can’t see where they meet (you know, the lighting could be different in each - for instance) When you click OK the process will start, and can take some time. My 10 pictures from my 10 MP camera ate up almost 20 gigs on my sctrach disk - so having free space for this is a good thing. If you run into a problem you can shrink down your originals and still get a decent product.

The FREE way

Photoshop is a must-have program as far as I’m concerned but if you don’t have it you can still do photo merges - it’s just harder. There are plenty of programs online that will do the stiching besides photoshop, many rely on a common photo-stiching library. Perhaps a good place to start is here: http://www.all-in-one.ee/~dersch/

These process using these tools is similar, just manual. The separate photos are warped, stiched, aligned, blended. You may even find different programs you are comfortable with for different parts of the procedure - just do some googling.

More tools: Autopano, which can be easily found on google. PTGui is another (http://www.ptgui.com/) Another is AutoStitch (http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html) — what it comes down to here is to google, try, and see which you are most comfortable with. Many are available for Mac/Linux/Windows.

Well I got my grubby little mac-loving hands on Windows 7 beta, I was very eager to check it out. Most people feel that 7 is going to be important for Microsoft as it will either save them with a splash, or reconfirm their incompetence. I will try as hard as possible to be fair, ok here we go! (Screenshots at the end)

• Installation process exactly the same as Vista - fresh install is about 9-10 gigs.. yikes
• Elegant startup, with firefly lights that form the Windows logo. Overall the design is less in your face. I hated the greens and aquas coupled with the laser effects that vista had. 7 is very “aqua”
• My first destination was into the Windows system folder, I had no warning about “display these files” which was refreshing.
• There is far less nagging, but still more than I like. It asked me to install anti-virus, nags if you REALLY want to install something, and asks for administrative privileges to move some files. There is a setting for naggy-ness. Also, no gadgets by default… keeps things out of your face a bit more
• The WORST aspect I’ve encountered though is the new Mac-ripoff taskbar. It tries to be like the dock, but it’s majorly confusing. For instance, I opened a My Computer window and minimized it… where’d it go? Aparently  they all get tucked together in a weird document library icon. It’s very odd. Same thing goes for any other program - if you minimize it, it goes into the program icon. So if I minimize a web page, it goes into IE. I understand what they’re going for - but it’s going to confuse the absolute hell out of some people. Also gone is the quick launch, you can now pin icons to the taskbar similar to the way Application icons can be kept in the Mac OS X dock. It’s one of those clear rip off things and now Windows users too will have that inability to determine what programs are actually running and which are just “there” … trust me it’s weird
• I’ll end my little review on a sort of good note, I think it’s a little nicer looking. My VM did not have 3d acceleration enabled so I got the basic non-glass looks. It’s just like Vista only a bit cleaned up. No more freakin’ lasers, just nice solids, blues, crisp angles. The dock is a bit ugly, but otherwise the “looks” is an improvement.

My overall reaction is simply that I was hoping for something a little more, it’s very VERY similar to Vista. As far as I’m concerned Microsoft just wanted to shed the Vista stigma so they threw 7 together. It’s just an update.

Performance wise, it’s hard to tell as it’s in a VM - It does not run anywhere near as fast as XP. The biggest PRO is the cleaned up interface, the biggest CON is the taskbar/dock.

I will play around with it some more, I’ve only had a little time to mess around. But my feeling is just that is very similar to vista with some things better, some things worse. Not a giant step forward by any means.

some of the attacks are shown here

Sorry, it’s just not. Mine isn’t either. There’s really no way around it. This article will describe several popular router configurations and how to break through them.

1) Out-of-the-box.

For instance, consider a family using a Linksys router to share their high-speed to their laptops, etc. Most likely the log in is 192.168.0.1 with user “admin” and password “admin” - with that alone you could wreak all sorts of nasty havoc on their network or lock them out entirely. Not good. Never use the defaults, and update your passwords. This isn’t just linksys routers either - it’s very simple to determine what time of router your are seeing and then you can easily google the default passwords to log into it. Vonage, Verizon, Dlink users - I’m looking at you.

2) WEP Protection

Supposedly WEP is “good enough”. Well, maybe… it’s a deterrent I suppose. These are very very common password protected networks. The Geek Squad will set it up for you, that sort of thing. Here’s how to break in with KisMac…

• First, if the network is hidden - see #3 first.
• Ok, now follow the screenshot - run a authentication flood. This will create unique IVs, which you’ll need over 100k (that’ll take 5-10 minutes to capture) you can speed this process up several ways, such as performing a packet reinject (that menu item)
• Keep an eye on the unique IV’s - and whenever you feel “lucky” you can try one of the attacks, weak scheduling vs a 40-bit has worked for me in the past. I mean… for testing purposes, of course

3) Hidden ESSID

This is a “hidden” network where typically you don’t see the network’s name come up on your computer as an available network. BestBuy in Seekonk, MA hides their “BestBuy” network this way. Quite simple to just type in and access. But you of course, have to know the ID to even get there. Now, BustBuy was easy to guess. But what if it was something a bit more random like B3stBu7 - well we might not guess that. 

Breaking in: If you can guess the name, that’s all you need. If you are running something that identifies a hidden network the way of getting the name is to hit it with a De-authenticate. First, set your program to sniff on the channel you found the hidden essid on. Next, perform the deauthentication.This is built into KisMac, and extremely ease to use. Deauthenticate is under the network menu in KisMac. What this does is basically fools the router. When performing this attack your computer will pretend to be the router and all the clients on the network will need to reauthenticate themselves. In the confusion, the name of the network will be revealed to you - and you’re in. You can see an example of a hidden network in my screenshot.

4) WPA

Well now things are getting tricky. Locking down your wireless with WPA involves a complicated process with both parties in the connection performing a super double secret handshake to even talk to one another. If neither likes the other, it’s no go - this is why people choose this protection. But it can be broken, with time.

KisMac features several means under the crack menu. Most involved blowing tons of words “a wordlist” at it to try and get it. Just choose it from the menu. As you capture packets listening in on the network, KisMac is smart enough to use portions of the keys it finds in the packets to help get it. So, this is why it’s a time-consuming trial and error sort of thing. Maybe 20-30 minutes or more of trial and error with this menu will get you there… eventually.

5) MAC filters

I used to advise people that this was a good means of protection. I did so under then philosophy that nothing is %100 safe, and a MAC filter is a great deterent. Basically a MAC filter means that the router only allows connections to computers that it knows. Every network device has a MAC address - a unique identifier. This is hardware-based so the router really only talks to computers that you physically know about. Well… sort of.

To crack it you basically need to just pretend to be one of those computers it will let it. Which ones will it allow? That’s easy - any computer that’s currently on the network. So using any sort of network profiling too - I’ll use KisMac again as an example but certainally others would work too. View the clients on the network, and use one of their MAC address.

How do you do that? This is called MAC spoofing, where esentially you pretend to have a different MAC address. There are a bunch of ways to do this. Here are a few ideas, none are gaurnteed to work, but have in the past in some form or another…

• Using linux or Mac OS X - you can check out what your MAC address is in your config files. This has worked on an older red hat distro - where these config files were saved some place like /etc/network-scripts … something like that, you’ll have to google it. 
• Here’s a fun way to do it - use Virtualization! Grab virtual box or something like that (maybe vmware fusion, haven’t tried though) inside your virtual machine there’s yet another glorious configration file with … you guessed it… the MAC address which you can freely change (to something on the network, in our scenario)

Other considerations

• This stuff is pretty serious, I’m relaying it for ethical purposes. Don’t go be a douche and cause trouble.
• Working in a Virtual environment is good, that way it’s not your computer if things get nasty. Try it out though - see if you virtual MAC address appears on your router, it’s quite possible you’ll only see your computer’s as by default many virtualization environments treat the vm’s as a private local/sub network - with your computer as the access point.

Be safe and ethical! Happy hacking!

Here’s a bit more detail on setting up your Palm Centro smartphone to play video games. The program we’re using is LJP (available here: http://www.little-john.net/) 

What you’ll need

• A Palm smartphone
• A micro SD card to store the games
• A reader and/or adapter for the SD card

First off, download and install LJP. Pop in the SD card into the reader. You’ll have to either put it in the /palm/launcher folder, or use the installation process that comes with Palm Desktop.

You also need to put the libraries for the emulators in the correct folders on the SD card, the documentation describes this: “Download the ZIP archive, unzip and put the .ZEM files in “/Palm/Programs/LJP” and the .prc file in main memory. ROMs go in /PALM/Programs/LJP/[system]/roms/, where [system] is SNES, NES, GB, WS, NGP, SMS, GG, etc”

The last bit is to put the ROMs in the appropriate folders on the SD card as well. As you’ve seen above, the folder structure is pretty organized for each system. NES for NES, etc. Check their very detailed documentation if this doesn’t make sense so far. It’s not THAT bad. Here.

Ok - now to play, you just have to fire up LJP on the Palm and pick a system/game. Be sure to set up the controls in preferences to whatever is most comfortable.

Now there is a problem that I’ve experienced where the phone will randomly reset. I am not sure what the cause is, but nothing will work until I delete the configuration file. I recommend getting a copy of FILEZ for the palm to do this - that way you don’t need your card reader and computer every time you have to fix it. The configuration file I am referring to is: /palm/programs/ljp/ljp.ini

GOOD LUCK

The Palm Centro is a Smartphone by Palm which can be used on most major networks: Sprint, Verizon, AT&T - for those of us without an iPhone - I say it’s the next best thing!

Hack #1 - Custom ring tones

One of the stupidest things cell providers do to us is make us pay $2.99 or more for 30-second ring tones of songs we probably already own. It’s like they print money. Well the Centro is your phone and you can make YOUR own ringtones. Here’s how. First grab MiniTones here: http://software.palminfocenter.com/product.asp?id=11197 - Now, copy whatever MP3s you wish to use as ringtones to a micro SD card. MiniTones on your Palm will walk you through cropping and installing the mp3s as ringtones.

Hack #2 - Playing GOOD games on your Phone

Well, you can pay $4.99 for Bejeweled or some crap like that or get tons of free games for Palm - just do a little googling for palm os games, and you’ll find some real jems. My personal favorite time waster is LJP -Little john plam, available here: http://www.little-john.net/ - the process is download & install this app to your phone. Be sure to read through their documentation to, you’ll have to do some of the installation manually. Once it’s set up, copy your video game roms to appropriate folders on your SD - and you’re good to go. (Stay tuned for more in LJP)

As you may have heard, apple has announced a DRM-free iTunes. That’s GREAT NEWS! Unfortunatly, your current music will still be locked down - if you bought it through iTunes. So how do you make these songs work like normal MP3s?

Well there are dozens of ways to go around it. The ones that I’ve found that work the best usually involve playing through the song and recording loop back. Here are a few methods though…

* Using a CDRW, make a music CD of your locked iTunes songs. Then, import the CD with “mp3″ as your selected format in perferences - this should allow for almost perfect quality.

* Using a loopback cable (double-ended headphone cable) and Audacity. The program audacity can record stereo input as your songs play. Kind of a hackish solution.

* Recording stereo mix - if your soundcard supports it. Kind of tough, but you could digitally dump what your soundcard is producing this way.

GOOD LUCK

A new category has been added for product reviews. To start things off, here is a short list of products from 2008 that are worth getting geeky over…

#4 Palm Centro

You’re probably realizing this is a list of toys, but oh well. The Palm Centro is by far the best cell phone I’ve had. As a Verizon customer I am discouraged by the crippled software they’ve had on most of their phones. But with the Centro, it’s all open - free to add your own images, ringtones, mp3s, games - all FREE FREE FREE. The phone itself works well, the keyboard isn’t terrible - and it’s reletively reliable. But hey, it doubles as a portable nintendo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A1VhnjHgD4 — that video of mine has over 8000 views and climbing - it’s certainaly a hot item! Also check out the inMotion mobile audio kit by Altec Lansing.

#3 iPods

Well of course. The iPod touch has become quite a nifty little gadget with the App store. I am still a fan of the iPod classic too, which is one of the few devices capable of holding my 100 gigs of music. Games, movies, podcasts - it’s heavenly!

#2 Eee PC 900

The Eee PC 900 is a great little computer. The pros are the price, the size, and the fun. The cons are the performance and Xandros - the lame OS that is ships with. Throw on Xubuntu and maybe a little ram, and you have yourself a good little machine that’s fun to tinker with. I wouldn’t recomend it to everyone, but if you’ve got some geek in you - go for it!

#1 MacBooks

As a lifelong Apple diehard, it’s hard to review the MacBook in any sort of unbiast way. Simply put, my 13″ MacBook is the best computer I’ve ever owned, but I hope that’s saying a lot. Not only is my machine feature-packed, it’s dependable. It’d been dropped down stairs, left in the car, and brought everywhere. It’s also easily upgradeable, which is big for Apple.