Well as you probably already know Max OS X 10.5 or as it is better known 'Leopard' was officially released yesterday by Apple and already there are patches up that will allow you to run it on a Windows based PC.
Want to try out the amazing Mac operating system but don't want to buy a Mac well this is the way.
Good step by step instructions available here but in all honesty I haven't tried it out and won't as I am using a Mac. Now I understand the desire to try out the best desktop OS going but any of the the steps mentioned are at your own risk.
Well I did what I had sworn I would never do - I have gone back to Bell Sympatico for my connectivity.
Not that Bell had bad service or anything before but I was tired of having everything with one company - internet, home phone and cell phone. I looked around and found better or similar deals for the services. I moved my home phone to Skype, and internet to Cogeco but kept my cell phone with Bell due to the absolutely ridiculous contract breaking fees.
Anyway that is in the past. This week I got a flyer in the mail about Bell Sympatico deals and found that I could get DSL service for $19.95 per month for the first three months and then up to $49.95 a month. Not a bad deal for the first three months but $10 more per month than I was paying Cogeco for my cable connection.
I figured I would call and see what they offered. I mentioned that I was currently with Cogeco and they offered me the same deal but instead of $49.95 per month I got it at $34.95 - the same price as what I was paying Cogeco and they would throw in a free combo modem/wireless router.
OK, I was sold and agreed to the plan.
So the package arrived today and the install went smoothly and I was up and running in about 10 minutes. Everything is good so far.
Here are the problems that I found. In all of sheets and booklets of instructions they never once provided the IP address for the router so I could go in and change the default WEP encryption to a standard that a 5 year old couldn't break in 10 minutes. A quick phone call to the help desk and I got the IP address of the router (192.168.2.1) but much to my surprise it wasn't passworded!
They never mentioned anywhere in the manuals how to connect to the router or that it might not be a bad idea to put a password on the router. Granted, they at least put some sort of encryption on the wireless idea but no mention that this standard was very poor and easily broken and should be changed along with the SSID of Bell355.
More and more I am convinced that there is a huge market out there for someone to start promoting a 'secure your wireless' service.
This is another post to provide details on the SCUG General Meeting presentation that I did on October 24th on Google.
As one can imagine Google is not a topic that can be covered in great detail in 40 minutes so I limited myself to just an overview of the following Google services:
iGoogle
NoteBook
Calendar
Docs
In addition to these main areas I also briefly discussed some of the Firefox extensions that can be used with the above, namely GSpace and a Google Calendar extension called Better GCal.
I also discussed (briefly) about Firefox's ability to allow for multiple profiles. Very useful if you have more than one person using the same computer or you wish to set Firefox for mulitple tasks.
For example, I use Firefox for normal browsing and working on my sites. For the work side I have tons of extensions installed to make life a bit easier that are not required for normal browsing, so I have set up different profiles for each. I also have set up a profile for use when I am not sitting in my office and am connecting thru a wifi hotspot or other non-secure location. Beats having to continually change settings etc.
More info on using profiles in Firefox can be found in this great post on the LifeHacker blog.
For those that aren't Google fanatics like myself then there are lots of other opportunities to use online applications for just about anything. A good post about options can be found here.
As always, please feel free to add your comments, suggestions, raving compliments (but no flames please) to the comments area below.
Since you are already using Firefox as your primary web browser, I thought I would share this story with you.
LifeHack has a great article today about 15 of the coolest Firefox tricks ever. As an avid Firefox user I figured I knew all of the coolest tricks but gave the article a quick scan anyways.
I was wrong! There are some really cool tricks in that post. For example:
11. Add a keyword for a bookmark. Go to your bookmarks much faster by giving them keywords. Right-click the bookmark and then select Properties. Put a short keyword in the keyword field, save it, and now you can type that keyword in the address bar and it will go to that bookmark.
I didn't know that and it is great time saver. I use bookmarks to quickly find sites that I go to often. Now I don't need to scroll thru all my bookmarks I just enter the keyword and hit enter. Nothing could be simpler or quicker.
Check out the other tips and if you have a tip that you would like to share please add a comment to this post.
Oh, and if you are one of the unlucky ones that isn't using Firefox yet get Firefox from here and try it. You will like it!
Ok, this post is a little unusual as it really isn't a post but a quick and easy way for me to send meeting notes to members of the Sarnia Computer Users' Group who attended tonight's Windows SIG Meeting where I gave a presentation on setting up a wireless router.
As with most meetings where the audience can actively participate we veered a little off of the main topic but it was enjoyable and entertaining.
Here are links that were mentioned tonight. (If I forgot any please add them in the comments section).
- The Wireless Networking Starter Kit - this is eBook that I mentioned that is a free downloadable PDF copy of the second edition of this book by Adam C. Engst and Glenn Fleishman. You can download it here.
- ShieldsUp - The Internet's quickest, most popular, reliable and trusted, free Internet security checkup and information service. And now in its Port Authority Edition, it's also the most powerful and complete. Check your system here, and begin learning about using the Internet safely. Access it here.
- Mozy Back Up Software - I use this software to automatically back up my files. Great software easy to use and best of all very cheap @ $4.95 per month. Home page here.
- WEP vs WPA encryption - Here are a couple of links that talk about the differences between the 2 and why WPA is much more secure. Link 1 (PCMag) and Link 2 (Wifi Alliance) and Link 3 is a video from YouTube showing how to set up a wireless router. You can watch it below.
Here is a new link on the BBC website talking about how broken WEP actually is.
We also talked a bit about password managers and here is a link to the one that I use on the Mac side. For those of you on that other platform, I did a quick search and found these:
1 - Password Agent is an easy-to-navigate password management program that allows you to store all your passwords, secret notes and data snippets in a single, secure database. Commercial
2 - I found this link which shows many different freeware applications to manage your passwords.
3 - The link that Paul mentioned at GRC (the same people that bring us ShieldsUp).
Ok I think that just about covers it. If there is anything that I missed please add a comment using the link below so that we can share the info among all members.
As a follow up to my post about the excessive pollution in the Sarnia-Lambton area of Southwestern Ontario last week, I wanted to highlight what the Ontario government is doing in the area of alternative energy sources.
The Ontario government has given approval for the largest solar farm in North America and one of the largest in the world. Once complete in 2010 it will produce 40 megawatts of power which is enough to power between 10,000 and 15,000 homes on sunny days.
The current world record-holder is the 12-megawatt Erlasee solar park in Germany, though another 40-megawatt park is under construction in the same region. The largest U.S. project so far announced is a 15-megawatt solar system to be built at an air force base in Nevada and last fall, the Australian government announced funding for a proposed 154-megawatt solar power plant to be built in Victoria state and expected to be fully operational by 2013.
The Ontario Power Authority has agreed to purchase the electricity under a 20-year contract that will see the clean power go into the provincial grid. But compared to coal, nuclear power, even wind, solar's squeaky-clean image comes at a high price. OptiSolar is selling the electricity to the province under its new standard offer program, which pays a premium for electricity that comes from small-scale renewable projects. In the case of wind, it's 11 cents per kilowatt-hour. Solar fetches 42 cents per kilowatt hour, nearly four times as much.
The premium may seem high but is justified given the environmental benefits. Solar power is clean power with no harmful emissions created during the production unlike coal or nuclear power. Publicly stated costs of nuclear power and fossil fuels never reflect environmental costs, health impacts, and industry subsidies.
This project represents only a small part of Ontario's total energy consumption. Last year, Ontario had a peak demand of 27,000 megawatts but it is a start in the right direction.
There are currently over 8800 blogs signed up to post on that day about the environment. I still haven't finalized what I will be posting about but I found it interesting that the Toronto Star posted an article about how terrible the Sarnia area is for smokestack emissions. In fact, Sarnia is so bad that it produced more than 16.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents in 2005 alone. This represents more than one fifth of Ontario’s total industrial greenhouse gas emissions and more than the Province of British Columbia for the same period.
If that isn't enough, the study also claims a cluster of petrochemical plants in the Sarnia area released more dangerous chemicals in 2005 than all the industries in Manitoba, New Brunswick or Saskatchewan. The findings include a high rate of asbestos-related diseases among Sarnia workers and a leukemia rate among young women that is double the provincial rate.
I also find it a little co-incidental that this study was released less than 1 week before a provincial election and helps highlight one (of many) hot button issues that the current government has to deal with. They had promised that all coal burning plants in Ontario would be closed by 2007 - a campaign promise from the 2003 election. One fifth of Ontario's electricity supply is generated by burning coal.
So it seems that I am spoiled for choice when blogging on the environment in respect to the Sarnia-Lambton area and Ontario at large.
Make sure to check back next week and see what I finally decide for a topic.
Ok, I am guilty again of not keeping this up to date but in my defense I have been very busy!
Not only have been able to get rid of 4 garbage bags of old and unused clothing to Goodwill, go to Spanish lessons 3 nights a week, go to the YMCA every day, bowling once a week but I have also created two new websites. One directed at anyone into crafts such as quilting, rug hooking, working with beads etc at The Craft Directory. The other site is an add-on area for one of my existing sites (Latest Lottery Numbers) to detail and assist other lottery players find and use the best tools out there for reducing the odds against them at Lottery Tools.
This month doesn't look to be any slower. In addition to the normal stuff mentioned above I already have another site in the works dealing with travel (more on this site later), I have to a presentation for the local computer user's group on Google and it's many applications. Not to mention that with the 2 new sites created last month I have increased my work load just keeping them up to date and increasing their search engine rankings.
My major goal this month is keep this blog up to date and to start using Twitter more to keep people informed on what is happening. If you haven't heard of Twitter before there is a really good primer posted by Robin Good over at his blog.
