KSFO's Web Wanderer

The Links for April 10, 2004

Newsmap - Dudley

Dudley says: "Newsmap is a large graphic that shows the top headlines from Google News size-adjusted and color-coded to reflect the importance of the news story. It is based on the concept of treemaps. There are links to references relavent to the stories."

From the site: "Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap's objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe."

"Newsmap does not pretend to replace the googlenews aggregator. It's objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media. It is not thought to display an unbiased view of the news, on the contrary it is thought to ironically accentuate the bias of it."

The Newsmap has these general categories:

It's a very nice way to glance at news items. Some text is too small to read, but a mouse-over on the text pops up a readable window. Very cool.

Great find - thanks, Dudley!

Neszis' Definitive Guide for Capturing and Compressing Videos for the Pocket PC - Solinas

Once again, I find flash memory prices getting lower, and a movie released I'd like to watch. It's a perfect time to dump it to my pocket PC!

This guide mainly tells you how to get movies on your pocket PC. The main uses it focuses on are:

This site tells you how to do it - both technically, and what software you need. There are convenient links to all of the software.

Every Pocket PC user should do this at least once, to better appreciate what your machine is capable of.

Check it out.

Mini-Itx - Wine Country Larry

Wine Country Larry found this pretty techie site.

The Mini-ITX form factor is a computer motherboard limited to 6.7 inches by 6.7 inches.

Because they are so tiny, people are building Mini-Itx computers into a variety of strange objects, including: My personal favorite is the "Windows XP Box" - fitting the PC into the box sofware comes in.

The site is dedicated to the strange, and very fun, projects that people are doing with these PCs. It's a fun read!

Thanks, Larry!

Eagle Computers - Ranman

Ranman is a fan of this site - great prices!

The prices are excellent! Items are often 50% off, with a good selection. The site sells pretty much everything: desktops, notebooks, pdas, monitors, printers, accessories, and softare.

Not always the state of the art stuff, but getting a notch down is considerably cheaper, and much cheaper if you buy from these guys.

Check it out.

Thanks, Ranman!

The Subservient Chicken - Solinas

This is the strangest thing I've seen in a long, long time. The Subservient Chicken is a man, dressed in a chicken suit, who does what you tell him to do by typing in a text box on the page. Want him to dance? Hokey Pokey? He'll do it.

Bizarre.

The site owner is Burger King, who is offering a chicken sandwich now. Get it? Chicken? Have it your way? I can hear the groans now.

Very odd - show this one off at work.

Free For All!

"Free For All" picks are hot, FREE items or services. It can be software, online services, you name it - but it's got to be free, with no strings attached.

Port Reporter - Ron in San Bruno

Ron in San Bruno says: "Want a cool new (FREE) tool to track what goes on in your TCP and UDP ports? Port Reporter does this and its from Microsoft (see KB article 837243).

"Sometimes it would be really nice to have a way to track TCP and UDP activity on a Windows system. The Port Reporter does exactly this and it comes as freeware from Microsoft."

"The program runs as a service on Windows 2000, XP, and 2003. It produces three log files containing system state information, port activity, and more detailed info on the ports, process, modules, and user accounts involved. The port activity log file is formatted as a comma separated list to make it easily extracted and analyzed via Excel, etc."

McAfee Stinger - Santa Rosa Steve

Santa Rosa Steve says: "In bygone days I always carried F-Prot Anti-Virus on a floppy disk. Today, I carry a USB flash drive with McAfee AVERT Stinger on it. Stinger is an emergency virus detection and disinfection tool, it is not a substitute for full-time virus protection."

Using Stinger is simple. It is ready to run (installation is not required). Download it, then run (double-click) it, and press the "Scan Now" button.

"Stinger is a stand-alone utility used to detect and remove specific viruses. It is not a substitute for full anti-virus protection, but rather a tool to assist administrators and users when dealing with an infected system. Stinger utilizes next generation scan engine technology, including process scanning, digitally signed DAT files, and scan performance optimizations. The current version includes detection for 41 common viruses/worms.

"I like Stinger. If you are a "floppy person, you'll be pleased to know that it fits easily on, and runs fine from a diskette. I've used Stinger on Windows 98 SE and Windows XP. See below for more opinions."

From Windows Support Center: "Normally you wouldn’t catch me ever recommending a McAfee product. But this stand-alone antivirus utility, targeting and removing a few dozen current viruses, has become a mainstay in the antivirus war. It doesn’t embed itself in the system, so it doesn’t corrupt Windows like most McAfee product known to me. It’s a terrific light-weight emergency utility. It’s updated periodically, especially when a new virus wave hits. Stinger may become your most-relied-upon removal tool. By Network Associates." --James A. Eshelman, Microsoft MVP

SNAPFILES AWARDS 5-STARS (TOP RATING): "Stinger is a stand-alone utility used to detect and remove specific viruses. It is not a substitute for full anti-virus protection, but rather a tool to assist administrators and users when dealing with an infected system. It utilizes McAfee scan engine technology, including process scanning, digitally signed DAT files, and scan performance optimizations. It detects more than 40 viruses, trojans and variants. The interface is simple and straightforward, just select the drive or folders to scan and click a button. You can choose an action to perform if a virus is detected (delete, prompt, quarantine or rename) and also configure which types of files to scan."

Sounds great! Thanks, Steve!

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This page, and all contents, are Copyright (C) 2004 by Michael A. Solinas.