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 »

I do!  Or should I say, did.  I am not a huge IM (Instant Message) junkie, but I do have friends and family that I communicate with that way.  This means that I have several different IM accounts, because no one can seem to agree on just one.  Many people reading this are nodding in agreement sharing my frustration right now.  Until recently, I have used Trillian on Windows because it spoke all the different IM languages (AIM, YIM, MSN, ICQ, IRC, etc) so I was able to consolidate all of my separate clients into one.  Lately though, I have been having some troubles with Trillian crashing a lot, so I went on the hunt for a new client to try out.

One thought that I had was about Linux, and the fact that on Linux I used GAIM, and IM client that was much like Trillian in that it talked to everyone.  One thing I liked about GAIM (among many things), was that it was fast, lightweight, and powerful.  It just ran really well.  On a whim, I searched for GAIM for Windows and low and behold, I found that not only did the name change (it’s now called Pidgin), but it’s setup for many different operating systems with Linux and Windows being two of them.

I decided to give it a try and I haven’t looked back.  It’s very much like the GAIM I am used to on Linux, and it’s very slick.  It looks good, it runs good, and hasn’t crashed once! :)  So far, I think I have found my IM client of choice and I highly recommend it to anyone that is looking for a robust cross platform and multi protocol client.  Check it out here on Wikipedia, and download a copy from the Pidgin homepage to see for yourself!

Valve Software, the folk that brought us the Half-Life family of games, has something new and (from my experience) pretty different out. It’s a game called Portal, and it’s unique in that it’s a first person shooter type of game, from the perspective of the player and the controls, but it’s purely a puzzle game. You don’t shoot anything (so far anyway, I haven’t finished it yet), but you do use “portals” to maneuver through test chambers and make things happen. So far, it’s been quite fun, rather addicting, and challenging too. Half-Life is great, Half-Life 2 is awesome and truly groundbreaking, portal is ingenious and fun, I recommend checking it out!