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Archive for the ‘Tips & Tricks’ Category
Recover Tunes From Your Apple iPod
September 4th, 2008 by Blogging Rock Star
Someday the hard drive on your computer will crash, stranding thousands of songs on your Apple iPod. Here’s how to get them back onto your Windows or Mac based PC.
1. Reinstall iTunes. Launch the app and sign in to your itunes music Store account. Don’t plug in your iPod yet.
2. Install and launch a free trial of Music Rescue or PodUtil from KennettNet software. The app will sit there idling, displaying a Waiting-for-iPods message.
3. Plug in your iPod. Music Rescue will detect it and display a window that shows the files and playlists on your ipod. Click the “Choose” button at the bottom of Music Rescue and select your iTunes music folder.
Next, click the “Copy Settings” button. In the dialog box that appears, select both “Add Tracks to iTunes” and “Rebuild Playlists.” Click “OK.”
4. Read the Don’t-Steal-Music warning in the lower right corner of Music Rescue. Think carefully. Click the “Copy” button below it.
5. Watch as Music Rescue copies your songs, videos, playlists, and podcasts back to your computer and then loads them into iTunes. Reauthorize your iTunes music store tracks. Done!
6. Happy? Hit the “Register now” button and send the site 10 British Pounds (about $18 USD).
For another method, you can do this with a third party application called “iPod to PC transfer“.
When your computer crashed, just recover your iPod video music to your computer or itunes directly. It’s really easy to use!
With iPod to PC transfer, you can transfer iPod/iPhone music, videos to your Windows PC and iTunes.
iPod to iTunes transfer can also transfer between iPod and iPhone, or among several iPods are also supported.
For Mac users there is also a similar one iPod to Mac Transfer which can helps you transfer iPod video, iPod music, podcast and TV shows from your iPod or iPhone to Mac.
Apart from that, it can add all these files from your iPod or iPhone to iTunes library. On the other hand, it is also Mac to iPod transfer, Mac to iPhone transfer software.
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Ways to Minimize Bandwidth Consumption
June 13th, 2008 by Blogging Rock Star
When trying to figure out how much bandwidth your website needs, the rule of thumb is:
[total size of website] x [number of visitors/month] = monthly bandwidth consumption
So, based on this formula, there are only two ways to reduce bandwidth consumption, either by the total size of website or by the number of visitors.
Since the purpose of having a website is to be seen by more people, reducing the number of visitors will not be a good measure for minimizing bandwidth consumption. That leaves reducing total website size.
So what can you do to reduce the size of your website?
1. Keep pages simple, limit rich web content
Rich web content (ie. images, flash, audio, video) is a good way to make your website more attractive, but these files burn out bandwidth fast. If you need to include all those rich content on your website, consider offloading onto different servers (ie. third-party storage sites). Read the rest of this entry »
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What’s With Auto Email Forwarding?
September 28th, 2007 by Blogging Rock Star
Setting up different email accounts to automatically forward your emails from to a centralized email account is quite convenient.
With this type of setup you would only need to check your emails at one single email address.
Sure sounds great, right? I would have to disagree.
There are actually a lot of problems with automatic email forwarding.
Automated email forwarding causes a lot of spam issues.
Because auto email forwarding will forward all emails sent to an email address, it will forward all of its spam emails as well.
The recipient mail server will think that you are spamming them, when in fact, you are just passing the spam emails around.
This spam problem has caused many innocent email service providers to have their mail servers wrongfully listed as spam servers. Read the rest of this entry »
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Port 25 Blocking for Outgoing Email
September 14th, 2007 by Blogging Rock Star
Setting up email programs like Outlook, Eudora, and OSXMail on your computer can be pretty easy as all of these email programs provide wizards that makes configuration a piece of cake. All you need are the POP, SMTP information and few clicks with the Next and Finish buttons.
There are many benefits in using mail programs, one of which is centralizing all your emails into one place and saving them on your local drive. You will be able to access your emails offline and have your own archives of email messages as back-ups.
Email clients also have more formatting options, signatures, and can also be integrated with event calendars and address books and get more plugins for added functionality. You can also enable mail filters to work with your anti-virus application that makes emailing a pleasant experience.
One of the most common problems with email programs is when it fails to send emails out. This problem usually happens if the port used by the email client to send out mails is blocked. Outgoing servers use port 25 by default. However, if this fails, there are other ports available that ISP’s do use as an alternative.
If blocking issues occur, unsent emails would sit in the outbox until a connection to the SMTP server is established. To see if there is a problem, you can test for blockage by running a Telnet test in the Windows prompt.
To do a Telnet test, go to your MS-DOS/Command Prompt and type in:
telnet YourMailServerName 25
Internet service providers typically block port 25 to reduce spam relays going from their servers. If this is the case, then you will need to use your ISP’s SMTP Server instead.
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IT Security 101 Resources
August 4th, 2007 by Blogging Rock Star
Below are many books, websites and other resources that will help you get started in Information Technology security:
Recommended Reading
- CISSP All-in-One Exam Guide by Shon Harris
- TCP/IP Illustrated by Richard Stevens
- Building Internet Firewalls by Elizabeth Zwicky
- Securing Windows NT/2000 Servers for the Internet by Stefan Norberg
- Hardening Windows Systems by Roberta Bragg
Recommended Tools
- WireShark – Examine packets (use with “TCP/IP Illustrated”, above)
- Superscan - Powerful TCP port scanner, pinger, resolver.
- Nessus and/or Nmap – Vulnerability scanners
Additional Tools
- Sysinternals – Variety of utilities
- PGP – Encryption, documentation is highly recommended, basically a primer on encryption.
Regulations and Standards
Vulnerability Lists
Local Chapter Organizations
Training Organizations
While the above list is by no means comprehensive, it should serve to give you some idea of the sorts of things involved with Information Technology Security.
Constructive comments, suggestions and additions are always welcome.
Posted in Internet Security + Reference + Tips & Tricks | No Comments »
