How about dressing up your computer for Halloween this year?

Here is some free software you can have a scream with during your Halloween fun.

Halloween Desktop:  Create a ghoulish desktop theme.

Halloween Cartoon Wallpaper:  Choose between Snow White, Superman, Elvis, and more.

Monsters Screen Saver:  Watch as scary monsters take over your monitor.

Haunting Screen Saver:  After your fingers rest, the skulls and jack-o-lanterns fly around.

When copying over your digital pics to your computer, you might notice some unrecognizable file name, such as DG01, DG02, DG03, and so on.  It would be tedious to rename every one of them. 

There is an automatic way in Windows XP to apply a meaningful naming sequence.  So, you may name your first baby photos as Baby_1.jpg, Baby_2.jpg, Baby_3.jpg and so on.

Here is how to automate a naming scheme for your pics:
1.  First, open the folder and select View > Thumbnails.
2.  Click the last picture in the folder you want to rename, hold down the Shift key, and click the first picture; this will select them all.
3.  Right-click the first photo, and select Rename from the drop-down menu.

Windows XP will highlight the filename for the first photo, enabling you to give it a descriptive name. After you type in the name, click the white space outside of the photo and watch as Windows applies the name with a sequential number to each picture in the folder.

The Apple iTV has been pre-announced for an early 2007 launch. Critics have mentioned the early  announcement is to compete with holiday shoppers planning to buy Amazon’s Unbox, CinemaNow, or Movielink.

What is Apple iTV? It allows you to forgoe long lines at the movies and watch movies from your TV. Specifically, it allows you to take videos and movies from your computer or iPod and play them on your TV. The transfer is done wirelessly so messy wires will be avoided. Videos and movies may be downloaded via iTunes, YouTube, or any other software download. The device is Mac and PC compatible.

The iTV box looks like a flattened Mac mini and features a built-in power supply, USB 2.0, Ethernet, 802.11 “wireless component video”, optical audio and HDMI ports, plus regular RCA stereo audio ports. Controllable by the standard Apple remote, the iTV will come with an updated version of the Front Row interface that shares Front Row’s smooth 3D graphics, but differs in that it has a menu on the right side of the screen. It currently lists for $299.

This product will reach its peak success when movies are available for download at the same or recent time of theatre release. Currently, more movie production companies are offering video rentals during the movie premieres, as well as recent cable TV releases. The home entertainment industry is untapped, and iTV and other future products will surely take advantage of this by ensuring new movies may be downloaded for TV viewing.

Mozilla has launched its newest Internet browser, Firefox 2.0, to the market.  Its focus is to streamline the previous version 1.5 for faster and easier Internet searching.  Its biggest competitor is Internet Explorer 7.

The new browser has a different interface with glowing 3-D buttons on the tool bar.
There is more manipulation on the tabbed browsers, allowing closing of one or all of the tabs.  For Internet Explorer users, tabs are equivalent to opening up many Internet Explorer windows at once.  This is beneficial for easily going back and forth within web pages.

Search functionality has been enhanced with a feature that displays a drop-down list of suggested search terms when users begin entering a word in the integrated search box. Search engine management also has been improved, and new search engines can be added from a long list of common search engines.

Anti-phishing features have become a must-have capability for modern browsers, and we found Firefox 2.0’s anti-phishing features to be solidly implemented.

We have tested the beta version of Firefox 2.0 to find it is incompatible with some 5+ older Sager laptop video cards.  Well, the next version, 3.0, is slated to come out in 2007 to fix such bugs.

Having problems opening attachments in Outlook Express? 

With Outlook Express 6, Microsoft has added an additional feature to prevent customers from infecting their machines with viruses. Any e-mail attachment with a file type that is reported as “unsafe” is not downloaded, and access to the attachment is removed. 

If you receive this error message when viewing an email in Outlook Express, here is how to fix it: 

1.  Launch Outlook Express.

2.  On the Tools menu, click Options.  

3.  Click the Security tab, click to clear the Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus check box under Virus Protection, and then click OK. 

To better protect yourself from viruses, it is a good idea to leave this option checked unless you definitely want to open the attachment or have problems opening most or all attachments. 

For those folks who would like to buy a new computer, but cannot wait for Microsoft Vista to come out, there is a discount for you.  Specifically, if you buy a new computer that is Vista-capable between October 26 - March 15, 2006, you will receive a discount or free discount from Windows XP to Vista, and Office 2003 to 2007. 

Microsoft’s intentions are to provide goodwill to computer vendors who want to ensure the Vista delay does not dampen holiday sales.  Microsoft usually has delays in launching new products to ensure final bugs and errors are resolved.  Many shoppers may want to wait until Vista comes out before buying a new computer.  The anticipated Vista launch is now the beginning of 2007.  By providing discounts to upgrade to Vista on pre-Vista computers, computer vendors will not have to worry about dampened holiday sales.  
 

Microsoft Vista offers features like translucent desktop windows, improved performance of digital music and photography, and data backup for business users. But those features come at the cost of greatly increased demands on hardware performance. A Vista-ready PC must have at least 512MB of memory and an advanced processor and graphics card.

A mere decade ago, 1-Gbyte hard drives—considered state-of-the-art at the time—were priced at nearly $1,000.  Fast forward 10 years, and Seagate has introduced its 750-Gbyte hard drive, the Barracuda 7200 RPM 750 GB, for $590. This means that the same 1 Gbyte of storage space of yesteryear now costs less than $1. Seagate’s timing is good since music and picture storage requires more space than in the past.

The first desktop hard drive on the market to reach 750 Gbytes in capacity, Seagate’s entire Barracuda 7200.10 line of hard drives use perpendicular recording technology to reach new levels of areal density and capacity. Offered in capacities ranging from 200 Gbytes to 750 Gbytes, the Barracuda 7200.10 maintains a data density of 130 Gbits per square inch and up to 188 Gbytes per disk platter.

This drive has yet to be fully tested for length of life span, stability, and other factors.  However, its technology to reach the 750GB capacity proves to allow for fast transfer and file access.

It is battery recall mania!  First, Dell and now the rest: Sony, Fujitsu, Gateway, and Toshiba.

   Decorating your pumpkin with the typical triangle eyes can get dull.  Why not geek up your pumpkin this year?!  There are 2 ways.

1.  Take some old, non-used computer parts and carve them into this year’s pumpkin.  It is very easy to take an old keyboard, mouse, or monitor and carve into or through the pumpkin. Then, lighting up the pumpkin with the components in safe distance makes for an interesting display.

2.  Get zany and use the pumpkin as a computer case.  How?  Take motherboard, hard drive, cd-rom drive, RAM, processor, power supply, and monitor and attach them all together with the guts inside of the pumpkin.  Technical experience is required!

Happy early Halloween and enjoy a good tech fright!

Google bought YouTube. But, what exactly is YouTube and is it worth the $1.65 billion Google bought it for?

YouTube is a popular free video sharing web site which lets users upload, view, and share video clips. It is arguably the industry-equivalent of Napster when songs were able to be downloaded for free. Now, a new market exists for downloading and sharing free videos.

So, what kind of content is on these videos. They range from sport clips, commercials, home videos, and inventions. Feel free to check out one of our favorites: the robot. It is a student-created robot that moves, speaks, and reacts.

Is this a good deal for Google? Absolutely! Google has acquired several companies, such as Picasa, for picture viewing and editing. The next logical step is videos. Since the new computers can play videos with easy, this is a smart move by Google.