Are the antivirus companies working with the hackers?

I bought my Norton Antivirus software about a year ago from today, and now I’m getting a message that my subscription has expired and need to be renewed. I thought antivirus software was forever after you buy it, and all you have to do is to keep it updated. I know you probably think like me, ‘The Antivirus company must be working with the hackers to stay in business why got so much security treats.’ It just seems like every time I turn my computer on and get on the internet, there is a new treat, so I got to update. What’s up with that? I never really check out the subscription notice, because I know there is a possibility that I might have to come out my pockets. But what can we do, viruses are real and we need protection from them, regardless of what we think. My uncle was having problem logging in to his online account, so he called his ISP and was told that he changed the password a few days ago and that he had order some equipments, which he knew he didn’t. To make along story short, he had a virus (Trojan horse) on his computer that was sending information back to the hacker. He probably got it from a file he downloaded, so I guess I better get my subscription updated.

Photo Retouching, Shadows

Have you ever taken a picture and fogot to use the flash, are even with the flash the picture still have dark shadows? Watch or download this short video to see how I fix that shadow problem using Photoshop.

Photo Retouching

I just can’t get enough of my (Photoshop) image manipulation software. I am looking through my old photo albums for pictures I can fix. I’m using the Adobe Photoshop CS2 for web graphics, T-Shirt design, editing my family’s photos. I tried other programs that were good, but limited. There is another program I like to use also, called the GIMP. The GIMP is open source and is better for web than print. I believe there are graphic programs out that are as good as Photoshop are even better. Check these photos out, I copied it from a website a few years ago, and I just learn how to retouch it. I’ve been searching for the website I copied the picture from for the instruction on how to retouch it to no avail. This video below show how it's done.

Finding your Windows Product Key

A friend of mine has an old computer running Windows Me he was getting ready to get rid of, because he was told that in order for him to solve the problem within Windows, he would have to reformat the hard drive and reinstall Windows. He didn’t consider that to be an option, because he could no longer find the product key and was considering getting a new updated computer.

I believe there is a way to retrieve the product key from the registry without going through the trouble of contacting Microsoft tech support.
Go to start, click on Run. In Run’s Open box type “regedit” (without the quotations) and click OK. In the Registry editor, look in the left pane for the HKEY_Local_Machine line and click on its plus sign.
In the left pane now, look for the Software line and click on the plus sign. Look for the Microsoft reference. Click on the plus sign, and then click on the plus sign next to Windows. A new folder then appear, highlight the reference to CurrentVersion (click on the reference itself and not the plus sign.
In the right-hand pane, find the Product Key entry. That will be the key you want to reinstall Windows. It should look like something this: ProductId REG_SZ D62UV-GHF7Q-QBKY9-QQDH9-VJ2GG.
This will work as long as Windows is still working, you didn’t reformat the hard drive and you can access the registry. Don't even try this with Windows XP. The product id in the photo is not good.

What's up with those phone apps?

I saw an article on PC World's website today call: Five iPhone Apps Developers Should Build Right Now. In that post MacWorld’s editors list their 25 most-wanted programs they would like to see developers develop for the iPhone. Some of the applications are:
#25 Amazon Kindle Client/E-Book Reader
Where people would buy and read books, magazines and newspapers on their iPhones.

#24 Photo Booth
That lets you apply funny filters and effects to snapshots you take with the iPhone's camera. #22.Digital Level
An application that read and display the values from the accelerometers, and you could then see exactly when anything you're trying to hang is level.
#18. Finger-Painting Tool
That can draw a quick diagram for someone, by scribbling away on the iPhone's screen.
#12. Simple Photo Editor
With a simple photo editor that offered color balancing, bare-bones levels control, cropping, straightening, and the ability to convert images to black-and-white you can edit those pictures you snap before you send them away.

I don’t know about most people, but I can speak for myself, I’m not going to buy a phone to read ebooks, surf the internet, edit photos, to draw diagrams or to level a painting on the wall. I thought the purpose of a cell phone was to make calls while on the go, now you got phones taking on the jobs of a computer. I’m just not going to spend the extra money for that, but if a person got the money and that’s what they into, then I say, hey, go for it.
But you know what they say, ‘If you can’t beat them, join them.’ So if you’re going to build applications for the phones, why not build some real useful apps like:
GPS for the blind
A program that help the blinds to get to their destination. Warm him or her of incoming traffic when crossing the street (warn when the light is red or green)
Stress Monitor
A application that monitor a person’s stress level or blood sugar, or able to detect when a person is in a car accident and able to automatically call someone.

Maybe I’m just too old school, but if they are going to make apps that don't have any business being on a phone then at least build some like that. But after all that, I do like the iPhone, I just can't see myself spending all that money at this time to get it.

Add memory to avoid PC crashes

I always hear people say, “My computer is so slow, I can turn it on, go take a shower and come back and it will still be booting up.”One of the single best things you can do to improve performance is increase the amount of memory inside your computer.There is always confusion among some people with the relationship between memory and storage. Even though the two are physically different, there are still some similarities.Storage can come in various forms, like that of a hard drive, floppy and flash drive.Your programs, word documents and those mp3 files you illegally downloaded are permanently stored on your hard drive, or until you delete them.
Random Access Memory (RAM) or memory as we call it, stores all the running programs. What is a running program? When programs and data are not in use, they are held in mass storage, which usually means a hard drive, flash drive, or some other device that can hold data when the computer is turned off. When you click an icon to load a program (say windows media player), the program is copied from the mass storage device to RAM and then run, its then remove from RAM when you close that program.RAM is composed of small silicon chips plugged into a slot on the motherboard of your computer.More memory is better to boost your PC’s performance, but before buying more RAM, it’s important to check the documentation that come with the computer to find the maximum amount of ram the motherboard supports.
I had a desktop computer running at 1GHz Pentium chip, and 128MB RAM and a laptop running 700MHz and 512MB RAM. Even though the desktop had a faster CPU the laptop would sometime run faster because it had more memory.
Some stores always encourage you to buy the latest and fastest CPU, but I think that without the right amount of RAM the CPU won’t run at its full potential.

Should I buy a computer running Windows Vista?

I’ve gotten quite a few complaints from people who had bought a desktop or laptop computer running Windows Vista. The problem they’re having is that their old programs won’t work under Vista, so they decided to remove vista and install Windows XP and their systems and get another problem with hardware compatibility (like the built in wireless adapter won’t work, because XP doesn’t have a driver for it). My cousin had the same problem when he bought that Compaq laptop on sale, after he took vista off and replace it with XP, his wireless wouldn’t work, so he called customer service and was told that they could not help him if he went back to Windows XP.

I’m almost sure that they might be updated for some of those old programs if you go to the software company’s website, or you can just go out and buy the new version for them. Don’t get me wrong, Windows Vista is a very good operating system, running on the right hardware (that matches system requirements) and using the software that was designed for it. I got a lot of programs that were designed for 98 up to XP that are valuable to me, and I’m not going to go out and buy new ones at this time or neither do I have the time nor energy to search for updates online. My solution is simple, when I decide to go buy that new computer, I’m getting one that’s running Windows XP but is Vista ready (compatible with vista) so I can go out and buy vista when or if I choose to.
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Add an external monitor,keyboard and mouse to your laptop

If you’re like me, sometimes you want to sit at your desk with your laptop, using a bigger keyboard and larger monitor. Well you might already know you can do just that. I usually
Plug in an external keyboard and monitor and leave the laptop sitting to the side. See the picture up top; monitor connected to the DB Connector (the blue 15 pin connector.), mouse connected to the USB port and keyboard at the end right-side (purple thing).
Or sometime you might be struggling with tiling or overlapping windows on your laptop’s LCD screen; you can just hook up a second monitor and extend your windows desktop work space so you can run multiple applications on separate screens. Whenever I’m using my graphic program, I usually have the images on one screen and the toolbars on another. I have a Dell inspiron 5000 laptop (and a inspiron 8000 too) running Windows XP, all I got to do is just plug the monitor up to it and then boot it up. Windows XP automatically recognize the second mother and set it up, all I might have to do is change the resolution on one of the screens.
Most laptops already have two video adapters-one for the built-in LCD and one for an external monitor, you don’t even have buy anything.
If you’re running a older operating systems like Windows 98, me… You might have to go to the Display Properties to choose the option to enable the second monitor.