Dear Beeprs.. (lol)..

In order to better serve you, I would like to ask you a small favor. Please use the subscription form located on the right sidebar of this blog post to sign up for my mailing list! The idea is for me to get your permission to start informing you of updates and important issues with the latest Beep News, and PC tips, tricks and the latest urgent security issues.

For the paranoid: If you think I’m going to spam you, I assure you, I WON’T. I won’t even send frequent updates, maybe a few trial newsletters.. This may not even happen for some time. I just would like to start collecting your email addresses now, so they can be definitely counted in the list of people who say “YES! PLEASE EMAIL ME RYAN!”, and then I’m covered. You’re covered too, because once you sign up, you can easily cancel your subscription at any time!
YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE, AND EVERYTHING TO GAIN!

HA HA!

Sincerely,

Ryan Johnson

Unless you have been living under a rock, you probably know about Pandora Internet Radio by now. I have tried some of the other online radio and social music sites, and none of them quite compare to Pandora, even with my complaints I still have about the service. Pandora limits you in ways that seem a little frustrating, but I think their user interface and the overall experience of the site is one of the best around. Pandora limits the amount of stations you can create, and it your stations are inside a narrow little scroll window, these two items were my main complaints when using it in the past. They also have a good amount of large advertisements on the site, which can be annoying. Compared to other sites though, Pandora is the one with the best features and interface. They have a good deal of hardware compatibility for listening to online radio in places other than your computer’s web browser, like Pandora in the home, or Pandora on your mobile phone, which just a few other online radio sites can say they have.

The other sites I frequent for finding new artists and music to listen to include the following:
Digitally Imported (DI.FM), SKY.FM, and JazzRadio.com – These three sites, I believe are all under the same ownership, and they rock! They have the greatest selection of genre organized stations, some stations even have live DJ’s spinning on them at certain hours. JazzRadio is a newer one and so far I love it. SKY.FM includes more classical types of music, while DI.FM has more modern popular styles on it. Very few advertisements, very few negative remarks, as you can stream their stations in a number of different applications, and put the radio stream into mostly any music player that you’re comfortable with.
http://www.di.fm
http://www.sky.fm
http://www.jazzradio.com

Honorable mention sites are sites that on one hand are doing things that are fairly revolutionary, but for one reason or another, I personally just can’t stand many things about these site for regular online radio listening usage.
http://www.last.fm – I’ve been trying to use this one more lately, it is nice, but there are things I do not like about its radio features. Definitely cool for the social features, and the scrobbler application that uploads what you’re currently listening to, and displays it on your profile.
http://www.playlist.com –Playlist crawls the web for songs that are uploaded to servers. You search and if the artist/song you want is found, playlist then allows you to pick and choose what you want to play into your own custom playlists. Cool concept, poorly executed in some ways. Overrun with ads and annoying interface glitches. Upside is you can find lots of stuff, and play it immediately, if you want to hear a specific song at any given time.
http://www.slacker.com – seems like a cheap imitation of Pandora, have not used it long enough to know for sure.

Of course, you may end up deciding you want to purchase some of the music you discover on online radio. Most of these sites are also doing their part for the music industry and artists as far as offering listeners a chance to buy the music that is playing. Most music can be found on popular online music stores such as the ones below, though rarer stuff you may have to go to smaller independent sites to find legal downloads of the music.
http://www.amazon.com (my favorite)
http://www.rhapsody.com
http://www.itunes.com

This article sums small business IT security up very well. It is very scary that I may have some place mishandling my personal and financial information. all of the issues which I try to fight to make better in the world of small business IT. – Thanks to the writer for the great info and useful statistics.

The National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) and Symantec have partnered together to conduct a survey on the cyber security awareness practices and habits of roughly 1,500 small businesses in the United States.

The results showed that while 65 percent of those surveyed believe that Internet security is critical to their business, only 28 percent have formal Internet security policies.

Other notable stats from the article:

Only 38 percent of small businesses provide training to their employees about Internet safety and security.

More than 33 percent of small businesses do not have the most basic protection of all—antivirus.

More than 66 percent of employees take computers or PDAs containing sensitive information off-site.

62 percent of the companies surveyed have a wireless network but 25 percent of them do not password protect their wireless networks.

65 percent store customer data, 43 percent store financial record and reports, and 33 percent store credit card information and a 20 percent have intellectual property and other sensitive corporate property.

Only 53 percent of small businesses have someone check company’s computers to ensure that their operating systems and security software are up-to-date.

The last one is the worst and should be the biggest wake up call for small business owners. If you own or work for a small business with 50 employees or less, I can do a free company IT security analysis of a few of your PC’s for free. (Because if one is infected or has a risk, then all of them do!)

Give me an initial trial, we can meet at your office. I’ll work on making sure you’re up to safe computing standards, so you don’t have to worry about losing all of the negative aspects of technology, possibly losing customer data, or worse, losing all the  hard work you have done in building your business.

The Frugal PC Builder’s Toolbox: 100 Tools and Resources for Finding Cheap Parts

Give it a try today if you need to “un-delete” some stuff.

Recuva

Normally 12dec07, when entered becomes 12-Dec-07
Just add an apostrophe like this ‘12dec07, and the apostrophe disappears in the cell, and the text doesn’t change automatically.

Some nice tips on saving power consumption on your computer

Windowssecrets.com

Restart the computer to ensure that these changes take effect.
The result was a much shorter login time.

http://www.duhcorp.com/ Motto : You’re not smart.
http://www.huhcorp.com/ Motto: We do stuff.

Start the Registry Editor
(Search for Regedt32.exe or Click start, then Run, then type regedit).

Locate the following key in the registry via the tree on the left side of the window: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings

On the Edit menu, point to New click DWORD Value, and then add the following registry values:
Value name: MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server
Value data: 10
Base: Decimal

Value Name: MaxConnectionsPerServer
Value data: 10
Base: Decimal

Quit Registry Editor.
Enjoy downloading your goodies all at once.