Robin Paardekam : Vista

Some general tips for safe computer use

Robin Paardekam — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 06:41:00 GMT

Everytime I go over to friends or family to fix some kind of "computer problem" that they experience, I start telling the same tips 'n tricks over and over again about how to avoid spyware, how to keep your PC as tidy as possible, how to clean up your internet history, etc. Ofcourse many of them appreciate those tips but as soon as I'm gone, they forgot at least half of it.

This morning I ran into this article on wired.com in which a list of security tips, tricks and apps are mentioned. Let me give a short summary of some nice items in that list here.

Get a Firewall, Learn How to Use It
Install anti-spyware software
Turn on automatic updates in Windows XP
Secure your Wireless AP
Remove as many programs as possible
Tweak your PC's security, then back up the disk image

Just to name a few... I think this list can be very helpful, even for somewhat more experienced PC-users. Click this link to get the full list and read about the underlying thoughts and howto's. I have bookmarked it and will print it out as soon as I have another "PC-fix-appointment"... :)

Vista Sidebar Gadget - Countdown to "2008 Global Launch Wave"

Robin Paardekam — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 06:37:00 GMT

I just came across this nice little gadget that Microsoft offers to be used on your Vista desktop. It counts down the number of days until the "2008 Global Launch Wave" which will start on wednesday February 27th 2008. Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 will then all be launched. Considering the fact that they came up with this gadget themselves, they must be pretty sure about this date. :)

You can download this gadget here. Note that the actual gadget will indeed refresh the counter, as the image in this blogpost will not.

Vista Sidebar - Webcam gadget

Robin Paardekam — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 01:42:00 GMT

Now that I am using Vista for several months, I got used to the sidebar gadgets quite fast. It's nice to have those small applications within reach and visible instantly. I thought it would be nice to play with gadget-development a little bit and found that no real configurable webcam gadgets were available yet so that would be a fun little project to experiment with. I found it is very easy to create these gadgets, as they are just tiny HTML-pages with some Javascript functionality. After developing a first version of my Webcam gadget I uploaded it to the Microsoft Live Gallery and within a week I got an email that it was actually published! It's nice to see that people actually want to view a webcam directly in their Vista sidebar, I know that I'd appreciate the functionality, but I was not sure if other people would like it as well.

If you use Vista and like to view a webcam of your choice in your sidebar, then you could view the Windows Live Gallery (category Miscellaneous) and download my webcam gadget. It is attached to this blog-post as well. In the settings-flyout you can define a live stream that you'd like to view, or an image-feed that gets refreshed at regular intervals. Any comments about the gadget are welcome ofcourse and if you like it, don't forget to rate 5 stars!

More info:	http://gallery.live.com/
	http://www.aeroxp.org/
	http://www.codeproject.com/