OK, so I am late on this bandwagon, and I probably don’t have to tell you about it already. However, on the off chance that you haven’t tried or even don’t know what it is, let me tell you about something cool that I have been playing with. If you hadn’t guessed it already, it’s called Skype. Skype is a Voice over IP (VoIP) software package that allows you to not only text and talk from one computer to another (Skype to Skype), but also to call land and mobile phones and talk as well.

Not everything is free, Skype itself is free and Skyp to Skype communication is free, but calling real phones costs you something. Right now I am signed up with a plan that gives me unlimited minutes to the U.S. and Canada for $2.95 per month … how about that?

OK, let me give you the goods. First, how does it sound? It sounds great, I honestly cannot tell it from my regular phone and neither can those who I have called so far. Naturally this will depend heavily on the speed and quality of your Internet connection, but the technology itself seems solid.

Second, how much does it cost? Well, I have already mentioned the $2.95 for unlimited U.S. and Canada calls, they also have great rates for over seas and more. Outbound calling is quite reasonable it seams. If you want a number that people can call you on, and voice mail, that costs extra but the costs are not bad, especially if you have a subscription with them instead of simply paying as you go. Depending on where you live, availability of local numbers might be an issue.

The only downside is that you need to use your computer, so you are tethered to it. But wait! You can get a VoIP phone for under $60 that let’s you use it just like a cordless phone. Of course, you can spend more and get something fancier too.

All in all, I am liking my Skype experience, I’ll share more as time goes on but I suggest you check it out if you have any need to VoIP, chat or video chat software.

Let me start this post by saying that I am a game addict, and not just video games either. Yep, years ago I was a pen and paper RPG nerd, and still am although I don’t really play much anymore. I love the books though, I love the stories, and therefore I have gravitated to computer games. What does this have to do with this site? Well, when I find something really cool, especially if it has to do with computers and/or related technology, I want to share it.

I played both Diablo and Diablo 2, including the expansions, and I don’t think anyone can argue that the Diablo series set the bar for many other games. How often have you seen games out there that were pretty much blatant Diablo rip-offs? From the GUI to the gameplay, they were trying to ride that same wave and catch some of the masters glory. Never seemed to work, did it? Just like World Of Warcraft is setting the bar for MMO’s with plenty of copy cats to follow, Diablo did the same thing years ago.

Well, now it’s doing it again. I got a chance to watch the HD gameplay trailer for Diablo 3 today and I was blown away. It looks like Blizzard is redefining this type of game all over again. The trailer was graphically awesome to be sure, but the gameplay and new features were insane. I wanted to play this game so bad I could taste it. Trust me, it will be a very long wait for this title to come out. Let me say too, I don’t see this is hype or vapor, this trailer is simply the game, and someone playing it narrating what is going on. Very cool.

Here, I have a link to the trailer that you can download in chunks. The whole trailer is almost 600MB and you can get it at FilePlanet [Link], but for those that don’t want to bite off all that at once, you can get it here in 12MB pieces. There are lots of places on the net to get bits and pieces of the trailer, but I can tell you that the entire HD trailer is an awesome thing, I highly recommend grabbing it. Then you can sit back, fire it up and just get lost in this magnificent game.  Grab the smaller chunks here.

In this post, I’d like to do two things.  First off, I want to plug a really cool site called PortableApps.com that has some really cool software in the form of … well, portable apps.  What these are, are common widely used applications that have been transformed in such a way that they can run right off of your thumb drive, no install necessary, hence the term portable.  They have lots of cool stuff that you can download, absolutely free, and use right off your thumb drive, or hard drive, or anywhere really.  It’s nice being able to have firefox and open office (and much more) with you, no matter where you go, even with all of your own settings and customizations.  That’s hard to beat!  Go check it out, you won’t be disappointed I am sure. Read the rest of this entry »

Also known as, the best little firewall in … well, anywhere! I have been using SmoothWall (the free, open source version) for years. I have used it with modems for dial-up access, as well as with cable and DSL connections. It’s a great product that is robust, feature rich, easy to manage and above all, very secure.

Not familiar with SmoothWall? Read more at http://www.smoothwall.org

I used to run an ISP and the majority of our customer base were dial-up customers. Even now, there are a majority of dial-up users out there still. SmoothWall is a great tool for dial-up users because it is essentially a hardened Linux distribution built solely to be a firewall/router. The IP stack in Linux is more efficient and much faster than Windows, so even on dial-up, you will get a performance boost running SmoothWall, plus the added security of a top notch firewall.

For all of the broadband users out there, you will get a tremendous performance boost when comparing it to the White Box store Linksys products. I am not knocking Linksys or anything like that, but in my own tests, I got almost double the throughput from my SmoothWall box versus my Linksys router. Plus, the SmoothWall box has loads more features and version 3 has even more piled on.

With built in features like this:

• Bandwidth usage graphs
• Transparent caching proxy server
• VPN support
• Anti-virus scanning of incoming pop3 email
• Dynamic and static DNS support
• QoS and more

There are really tons more features than I can list here, the ones listed above are just some highlights. Best of all, this wonderful product is free. Yep, that’s right, free. They do have commercial versions if you have a need for that, but they still maintain the open source GPL release that is absolutely free. So, all you have to invest is the cost of an old low powered pc that has been laying around the house anyway! I very highly recommend you check it out if you have a need for a good firewall product.

I wanted to write up something about the latest WordPress release, version 2.5. I have updated all of the WordPress powered sites that I manage which is more than ten and the upgrade went flawlessly on all sites. Each upgrade was the same, no variances. Why do I mention this part of the process? Well, because I have seen many instances (*cough*Win*cough*dows*cough*) where the same upgrade went very differently (and sometimes even failed) on different computers, even though they had been built or imaged or the application installed off of the same baseline. So, when I can install all of the WordPress upgrades and every one of them not only works, but operates as expected, that’s a big deal to me. This has been the norm in the past as well, not just in this last upgrade. Read the rest of this entry »

It seems that the folks at GraffitiCMS, who make a competitor to WordPress, are aligning with Presidential hopefuls and slinging mud to promote their product even though it isn’t out of beta yet. I found the article here, I am not going to give them the satisfaction of linking to the original. Let’s take a walk though their arguments, shall we?

Read the rest of this entry »