VLC is a feature rich media players that plays EVERYTHING. No matter what type of file I have thrown at VLC it has handled it without an issue. VLC does not require the installation of additional codecs. It plays most every file immediately after installation. VLC is also skinable so you can customize the way VLC looks.

VLC media Player is a free and open source cross platform (Windows/Mac/Linux)  media player. I highly recommend it.

You can grab VLC from http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Say you are looking for a camera and you go to Amazon and find the camera you want. While on the page a little yellow bar will appear and tell you if the same product is cheaper elsewhere or if this is the best price. Automatically.

I love this extension. It has saved me a nice chunk of change so far and the best part is that you don’t have to remember to launch it. The invisible hand just appears and tells you the relevant information.

The invisible hand is available for Firefox 3.5+, Google Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer. You can get it at http://www.getinvisiblehand.com/

What extensions are you using? Let me know if the comments.

Identity theft is a serious problem and it does not look like it is getting any better. People are starting to use strong passwords but they use the same one for all sites they visit. This is VERY risky. Suppose your twitter account information gets stolen. If you use the same username and password on all you sites the hacker now has access to ALL your sites (E-mail/Amazon/PayPal/Facebook …). This happened to a colleague of mine. His Facebook account was hacked and from there the hacker took control of several other accounts including his E-mail. In the age of on-line banking this also can mean unfettered access to your money.

There are published guides on how to minimize the chances of identity theft and minimize the impact if your accounts get hacked. One of the strategies is to use long and complex passwords that are unique per site. That means that your password should be something like 4rtR0!fp<kl for webmail and a different set of random mixed characters for amazon. The obvious problem is remembering all that gibberish. So how do you manage all those passwords?

One solution is to use a password manager that has all the passwords stored in an internal encrypted database. KeePass is a great product for doing that. But that means that you have to have your KeePass database where ever you go, which is not always practical.

The better approach is to use a password hash. This means you use a mathematical formula to combine two strings to generate a unique third string. In plain English  this means you need to remember one master password and the site name and you still get a really strong password.

For example lets say my master password was ‘arisblog’, which is pretty easy to remember. if I use the hasher for the site Amazon I would get a password hash of ‘OQe7ppddC/pfwp1r’ every time. I never need to remember that mess. I just need to remember my master password. If I use the same master password  for the google sites I would get a password of ‘bl78nulbR/Grgcxy’. Those are some pretty hard to guess or hack passwords.

Password Hasher Plus builds this functionality into Chrome. You can set the length and type of your hashed password. I recommend at least 16 characters of both Alphanumeric and Special characters.

This is a port of the firefox extension from the wijjo site written by Steve Cooper. The wijjo site also has an online password hasher that works in any browser. You can use the online version if you are away from home on a public computer to generate the password hash to login to your sites. This is really the simple way of keeping site secure.

What methods do you use to keep your passwords secure? Tell me in the comments.

Also did I mention it was FAST? Chrome is fast at initial startup and fast at loading pages. Chrome has one annoying lack of feature on the Windows version (it is ok on OSX – I have not checked this one on Linux). When you are in full screen mode (which looks great!) you cannot get to the address bar to navigate to a new page!!! This is really annoying.  There is a bug for this issue (http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=8022) and no fix is in site. If you are annoyed by this lack of feature please leave your 2 cents on the bug page.

In addition to the extensions you can install themes which allow you to change the look of the Chrome interface.

Chrome is free from Google.  It runs on Windows, OSX and Linux. You can get it at http://www.google.com/chrome

Let me know what browser or plugins you use in the comments!

As soon as I get the invite I will write up a review. My buddy Hillel has already written up an article about his “Eight Google Wave Annoyances“, but I am not letting that influence my judgment. Now I just have to wait.

I hate waiting.

UPDATE: Ugh -  I just found out it can take a week from the time I am invited until the invite shows up in my inbox.

Did I mention I hate waiting.

Filezilla allows you to keep a customized database of FTP sites. The database can store site addresses, login credentials, server type and notes.

Filezilla also has a free open source FTP server available for download.

You can download Filezilla FTP client and server  from the website http://filezilla-project.org/index.php

sample personal font

You download a PDF template file that you need to print out. You then fill in the letters in your handwrting. After you finish filling out the template you need to scan it in and upload the file to the site.

Wait a few moments and the site will return to you a TTF file which you can use on a Windows, Mac, or Linux system.

You can access the free service at http://www.yourfonts.com/

PuTTY Connection Manager lets you manage PuTTY connections in multiple tabs and allows you to maintain a database of PuTTY connections. The database of conenctions can be encrypted. PuTTY connection manager also integrated your existing PuTTY connection database.

You can download PuTTY Connection Manager at http://puttycm.free.fr/#

You need PuTTY installed http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

PuTTY Connection manager also requires Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0

PocketMod is a free online application that creates a CUSTOMIZED single piece of paper – that when folded makes a nifty little pocket sized PAA (Personal Analog Assistant).

PocketMod: http://www.pocketmod.com/

One of the things that sets TCE apart is the fact that in game play has no cross hairs (unless your weapon has a scope) – You have to use the sight on the gun you are using. You also only have one life in Objective mode. This means no Rambo style game play.

Game play requires you to use your head and communicate with your team. It is an awesome and addictive game. TCE .49 is due out right after Duke Nukem Forever eventually. The .49 release will add (among other improvements) CTF, and new weapons to the game. Team Terminator, the TCE development team, has released very little accurate information regarding the .49 release.

Both Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and True Combat Elite are free (as in beer) games.

You can download both TCE and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory from the True Combat Elite Home page. There are Windows and Linux versions of both games

http://www.truecombat.com/intro.php

The world of MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) is filled with graphically intense games like the World of Warcraft and Star Wars Galaxies. Enter the Kingdom of Loathing (KoL). KoL is a MMORPG that has great game play and low end graphics. How low end you ask – Stick figures low. Do not be fooled by the low end graphics – This game is entertaining, complex and incredibly creative.

There are six classes of player each with different abilities. Two examples are the Seal Clubber and the Accordion Thief
Seal Clubber: Seal Clubbers hail from the frigid Northlands, because one character class always hails from the frigid Northlands. They rely on their Muscle to survive.
Accordion Thief: The scourge of mariachis and polka bands, the Accordion Thieves have plied their malign craft since time out of mind. Their Moxie serves them well in both their adventures and their interactions with “the ladies.”

The game is a delight of pun and humor. It is a free and it is funny. You can play at

http://www.kingdomofloathing.com

To create a new character go to:

http://www2.kingdomofloathing.com/createplayer.php

Answers.com is a free web based knowledge retrieval system. It is not search. It Far Far superior to simple web searching. Web Searching always give you a page that contains the search terms – Answers gives you, well, Answers. For example – lets say you wanted to know about Bluetooth and what it does. With search you would put “bluetooth” into google and get 212,000,0000 results. Many of them selling bluetooth devices. Granted – you could probably find what you were looking for in the first ten results – but it is still a pain to get a basic understanding of a concept (Search – Sort – Read) With Answers you get the information you were looking for in one step. You enter the topic “bluetooth” and you get the following page:

It has a definition, examples, pictures, the wikipedia entry and more.

Now with the Windows client – things got even better! – Answers.com has truly provided information at the user’s fingertips.

The windows client gives you answers in any program in a small window on your screen. You can alt+click (press the alt key while clicking on a word) and you are greeted with a pop-up with the most relevant information for the word you clicked on. If you need more information you can click on the more button at the top. This opens a browser window with ALL the relevant information for the topic you selected.

This latest release of the answers client is very impressive. It is a fastest way to get relevant information I have ever seen. It truly solves the problem of information overload and delivers concise and informative answers.

You can use answers on line at http://www.answers.com

You can download the windows client at http://www.answers.com/main/product_info.jsp

They are

• Tab Mix Plus
• AdBlock
• IE Tab

Tab Mix Plus – This adds control over the tabs. Tab Mix adds a great feature – “Undo Close Tab”. This lets you re-open a tab you closed by mistake

You can download Tab Mix Plus at:
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=1122&application=firefox

AdBlock – This extension lets you block ads from various web sites. It removes the annoying noise that surrounds actual content. AdBlock makes surfing nice again. You can download adblock at:

https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=10&application=firefox

IE Tab- This is a great extension for when you HAVE to use IE. This lets you open an IE browser as a tab in firefox. You can also manage a list of sites that will always open in IE. A must have for those nasty Active X sites. You can download IETab at:

https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=1419&application=firefox

You can open the thumb nail window by clicking on the foXpose icon in the status bar or by pressing F8 (which is of course customizable). This is a great way to manage tabs in Firefox and I highly recommend it.

You can download it at: http://viamatic.com/index.php/firefox�

My solution is virtual PC’s. I use VMWare’s Player to run virtual machines. VMware Player is a free utility that emulates a PC on your PC. VMWare allows you to run a virtual computer (Down to the boot and BIOS) as software under your existing Operating System.

VMWare Player runs on Windows and Linux. You could have Windows running in a virtual machine that is running on Linux. You could have Windows running on a virtual machine that is running on Windows.

VMware Player is great – but it has one major limitation – You can not create a new image with it. You can download ready made images of Linux systems to run – but you are out of luck as far as windows goes. So how do we get a windows virtual PC? There are 2 ways I know of how to do this for free. One is to use Qemu. Qemu is a cool software but not very user friendly. If you would like to use QEMU – there is an in depth article here -
http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2005/10/26/vmware-player-windows-xp.html

The second way is to use Microsoft Virtual PC. Virtual PC is commercial software BUT there is a fully functional 45 day Eval that you can use to create a windows image. Once you create your image you can import it into VMWare Player and use it as long as you like for free.

You can download MS Virtual PC from:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx

Of course to install windows you will need a windows license.

Now once you have your Image setup – It is critical you make a copy of it. This will allow you to use the image as a virtual playground. When it gets messed up you just erase the Virtual Machine you are using and copy over the original image from your backup.

Of course there are other uses for Virtual Machines. Some use it for QA work, others for secure browsing. I like it as an isolated sand box.

Remember – Next time you download some neat looking software Install on a Virtual Machine before you try it on your real environment.

Here are a few of the extensions I use and highly recommend:

* Spellbound – This is a great for the spellingly challenged among us. This plug in checks spelling in a text box. Just right click on the text box and choose check spelling. You can get it at: http://spellbound.sourceforge.net/

* Greasemonkey – The most powerful plugin I have ever seen. It allows the user to define the way a page looks and behaves. You can add or remove functions or content to any web page. For example you can add a delete button to Gmail. Remove adds from blogs. Whatever you want. There are hundreds of scripts available for greasemonkey. You can get Greasemonkey and scripts at http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/

* Platypus – Is a visual way to create Greasemonkey scripts. You can change font sizes for pages, remove content, move content around on pages -All with a few clicks. No code. No mess.
You can get Platypus at: http://platypus.mozdev.org/

And of course it is all open source and free.

You can download it from http://dban.sourceforge.net/

It is done very well. The hosts are knowledgeable and fun to watch. You can download the show from http://hak5.org

I have learned some really cool tricks from the show. Did you know you can get a command prompt during windows XP setup?If you are interested in cool tips, tricks, hacks and mods – check out the show.

http://hak5.org