Sony PSP

Today, tons of Americans will be enjoying there brand new Sony PSP....good to see they waited instead of buying the brick look-a-like, the Nintendo DS.

I was going to give a detailed indication of what the PSP is like, but I found this site much better then anything I could write:

http://www.pspworld.com/playstation-portable/2005/03/23/sony-psp-101

Not entirely sure when it comes out in the UK...but expect it to be in the region of £150-£200

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ephPod ..ification!

I've been meaning to update the songs on my iPod for ages now, but have always been put off because of how crap iTunes really is. iTunes makes it sooooo tediously difficult to just copy over the songs you want. I hate the way it doesn't keep your windows directory structure...what the frig's that about?!!

Anyway, today I thought I would give iTunes another shot, but after 10 minutes I knew I was in for a very long process. So, I googled to find an alternative. I didn't think there would be so many, but there are roughly 10 or so programs that bypass the whole iTunes philosophy of doing things. For no real reason, I decided to try out ephPod.

Having used it for only half an hour, I can honestly say I'm never going to open iTunes up again. ephPod makes it so easy to just add a directory/song from your hard drive to your iPod. The only drawback I can see is that it takes slightly longer to copy over the files....roughly 1 minute per 100mb transferred. I don't mind waiting, as I know it would take just as long to locate some of my music files in iTunes.

The download is only 3.7mb and I think that 99% of people will prefer it (the other 1% being Mac owners!!)

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The Gym, Air Conditioning and a Sore throat

Thought I'd let you all know of my findings after going to the gym numerous times in the past 3 weeks. Everytime I go, I develop a very bad sore throat and a bad headache. The headache isn't so bad as it only lasts an hour or so...but my sore throat seems to never heal!!

The conclusion I've come to is that the air conditioning in the gym to too cold for my hot body to cope with. The membranes in my throat must be getting irritated from this. This is so annoying because I'm locked into the membership for 3 months!! Am I doomed to have a sore throat for the foreseeable future?!? Someone help.......!

The hype about Skype

Ladies and gents, I present to you the MSN Messenger destroyer! Big claims, but I honestly think Skype has what it takes to defeat microsoft's annoying chat program.

About a year and a half ago, I told a buddy of mine (Mandip) to download and install Skype so that we could talk over the internet instead of using our mobiles. We were both suitably impressed, but we knew that it would take more to suade people from using messenger.

Well, I recently decided to give it another go and I have to say, the improvements have been immense!! Skype has progressed so much since in such a short space of time. Instead of telling you how much I like it, I'm going to tell you the features it provides in addition to those provided by messenger:

1) Real-time, telephone quality voice communication
2) Call landlines accross the world with SkypeOut for 1.7 Euro cents per minute
3) Send text messages (SMS) to mobiles around the world for free
4) Converse with numerous people at the same time (Conferencing)
5) Use less system resources then messenger--very important!

Skype it! www.skype.com

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Dodge..it!

Possibly one of the most useful sites ever conceived, www.dodgeit.com allows you to check a made up email address!! You may be thinking, what on earth would I want that for? Well let me go through a step by step example:

1) You want to sign up for a particular forum which requires activation via a email link sent to you.
2) You don't want to give your real email address because it will get spammed the hell out of if you do
3) Enter in any dodgeit.com email address when filling out the forum form (let's use nikhilswebsiteisthebest@dodgeit.com
4) Finish completing the forum form
5) Go to www.dodgeit.com and enter in nikhilswebsiteisthebest@dodgeit.com as the email address to check
6) Find the forum activation link in your "mailbox"!

It's quick, easy and there are no need for passwords!!

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Secure Your Wireless Network!

First off….it’s been ages since I last blogged. I’d like to say I’ve been busy, but the truth is I’ve just been bumming around. I’m now a year older by the way, so I should definitely know better.

I was talking to friend only a couple of days ago and I realised that the majority of people leave their wireless network wide open for anyone to use! A few months ago, I went wardriving down my road with my sister’s Ipaq and found 5 access points, 3 of which were completely insecure! That meant I was fully able to access their internet connection and worse still, able to change their wireless router’s access privileges (i.e. make it only accept my set password). This has prompted me to write an article on the simple steps you need to take in order to secure you network. These also apply to wired networks, but as computers need a physical link to the network, it is not as important.

Step 1: Change your SSID

Your SSID (Service Set Identifier) is fundamentally the name that you give your router. By default, this will be set to the manufacturer’s name (e.g Netgear, Belkin, Linksys, etc). If you continue to allow your default SSID, potential hackers will know all the router’s security flaws. By changing it, hackers are obviously oblivious to what router you have, thus making it much more difficult to hack. It also means that hackers will not know your default username and password set by the manufacturer to control all of your internet settings.

Step 2: Change your default username and password

As mentioned, your router username and password ships with the manufacturer’s default values. This can easily be found out by using this list for example. So, in order to save your internet connection from being “stolen” change these default values!

Step 3: Apply MAC address filtering

A MAC (Media Access Control) address is a unique string of characters that every network card in the world has. In order to find out your own MAC address, simply type ipconfig/all in a command prompt window (brought about by going to Start, Run and then typing cmd.exe). The MAC address will be referred to as the Physical Address and is made up of 12 characters e.g. 00-D1-AB-F2-G3-89.

Find out the MAC address for each computer on your network and plug these characters into your router’s settings. This will ensure that only the computers you own/use will be able to access the internet/network.

Step 4: Limit the number of IPs your router assigns

If you only have 3 computers using your wireless network, then ensure that your router can only ever assign 3 IP addresses at any one time. This will make sure that countless other people cannot access your network. Although this point is nullified if you have MAC address filtering enabled, it is still a good backup measure.

All of these settings can be applied by accessing the router’s settings (usually done by accessing the router’s homepage via your internet browser). If you are unsure of how to access your router’s settings, then read the manual that came with it, as they all vary!! (Although many are just http://192.168.0.1 )

Read, learn and most importantly…apply!!

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