Jason McCullough

This neat trick came across on an internal alias.  I hadn't seen this before, but I'm guessing it isn't new. Pretty handy for notetaking (if you're a plain text sort of guy/gal). Open a blank Notepad file Write .LOG (in uppercase) in the first line of the file, followed by Enter. Save the file and close it. Double-click the file to open it and notice that Notepad appends the current date and time to the end of the file and places the cursor on the line after. Type your notes and then save and close the file. Each time you open the file, Notepad repeats the process, appending the time and date to the end of the file and placing the cursor below it.

What are your "just in case" scenarios for your computers? Leave your interesting questions and responses in the comments section below. Fatal error: the system has become unstable or is busy," it says. "Enter to return to Windows or press Control-Alt-Delete to restart your computer. If you do this you will lose any unsaved information in all open applications." You have just been struck by the Blue Screen of Death. Anyone who uses Mcft Windows will be familiar with this. What can you do? More importantly, how can you prevent it happening?

The Registry is a database used to store settings and options for the 32 bit versions of Microsoft Windows including Windows 95, 98, ME and NT/2000. It contains information and settings for all the hardware, software, users, and preferences of the PC. Whenever a user makes changes to a Control Panel settings, or File Associations, System Policies, or installed software, the changes are reflected and stored in the Registry.

Step 1 - Modify Explorer.exe File In order to make the changes, the file explorer.exe located at C:\Windows needs to be edited. Since explorer.exe is a binary file it requires a special editor. For purposes of this article I have used Resource Hacker. Resource HackerTM is a freeware utility to view, modify, rename, add, delete and extract resources in 32bit Windows executables and resource files (*.res). It incorporates an internal resource script compiler and decompiler and works on Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP operating systems.

Google's "Google Mobile" app for iPhone now supports push notifications of emails. Combine this with Google Voice, and you can send/recieve text messages very easily and for free - just set up Google Voice to email you when you get a text message. Replies come instantly in the form of a push notification. You can reply to the email it sends you, and it'll reply as a text message. Just make sure that you remove the quoted reply and your mail signature. * If you only want push notification for texts and not all emails, make a new gmail account just for texts and tie your Google Mobile app and your Google Voice account to that gmail account. * Steps to enable this: make a gmail and a google voice account if you don't have them already download Google Mobile to your phone add your gmail account to Google Mobile enable email alerts set up your gmail to come to your phone if it isn't already (those making separate gmail accounts just for this: you ...

Ask most people how they determine who sent them an email message and the response is almost universally, "By the From line." Unfortunately this symptomatic of the current confusion among internet users as to where particular messages come from and who is spreading spam and viruses. The "From" header is little more than a courtesy to the person receiving the message. People spreading spam and viruses are rarely courteous. In short, if there is any question about where a particular email message came from the safe bet is to assume the "From" header is forged.

I have been writing alot of Apple related articles lately. I do apologize. This Is a an all around tech tips blog. I have been surrounded with alot of apple products and users for the past couple of months. I would like to post a variety of articles. So please leave some suggestions for topics or questions you would like answered. I look forward to hearing your suggestions.

If you have had several different computers over the years that were running iTunes and authorized for your account, you might need to deauthorize them all. In this mini how-to we show you how. If you’ve authorized 5 computers over time to your iTunes account, you will see the following message when you try to download an app or song from the iTunes Store.

So you forgot your Mac password… uh oh. Don’t worry, it happens and you aren’t out of luck. You’ll need to reset the forgotten password and there’s several ways to do this, we’ll focus on the two best methods; one does not require a Mac OS X installer CD and is a great hack, and the other is much more simple if you happen to have a Mac OS X DVD laying around.

People please be careful who you take your computers to. They have unrestricted access to your personal information. Always take your computer to a reputable technician. Below is a true story of a rogue technician that was stealing personal data form his customers. Dont let this happen to you.  A laptop repair man who was caught copying private photos and bank passwords in an undercover investigation has been jailed for nine months

 you get a Blue Screen of Death (BSoD), your first inclincation may be to turn of your computer, turn it back on again and hope if never comes back. Sometimes, this is a good option because the blue screen may have been a freak accident and, because the stars aligned that one time, may not happen again. However, if you receive more than one blue screen, I suggest you take some time to diagnose the issue and try to come to a resolution. In this guide, I’ll show you what each part of the blue screen means, how to diagnose the problem, and where to go for help when you’re not sure what to do it.

Viruses are our biggest problem when using a computer. There is alot of different removal methods out there. Over the years I have found a method to removing very nasty infections. If you have some suggestions please post them in the comments. I am always open to new methods. Enjoy. For this and future removals ONLY USE A DISK! Put all of these programs on a CD from a clean system before you start. Flash drives can easily become comprimised by the infected PC.

This is a posting from craigslist. I found this on a blog that I frequent. I have ran into this scenario several times as a freelance artist and technician. I felt compelled to post this for my readers so that you may identify. Post from Craigslist: read the article after the break...

When the sender of an email doesn't sign their name, you have options beyond writing back with "Who is this?" or cursing internet anonymity. The Digital Inspiration blog points out four ways to look up your faceless email sender on the web. The post suggests four clever uses of free tools, andd links to good examples of each, including a trace route tool, the  previously mentioned Knowem social media search , and "people search" engines like  Pipl . Our favorite hack, though, is the suggestion to enter an email address into Facebook, grab their profile picture, and upload it to  Tineye  for a similar image search, which in turn finds more profiles and places where the person has posted a pic, and probably named themselves. What's your best reverse-lookup detective story that sprung from your inbox? We want to hear about it in the comments. How to Find the Person behind an Email Address  [Digital Inspiration]

I found this very interesting. I downloaded and have been playing this emulator. I linked this article from OSX Daily. I wanted to share it with my readers. I will post the link to the original article below.  SNES9x is a full featured SNES emulator for Mac that lets you do all sorts of things, including using an external game pad, customized controls, enter cheat codes and Game Genie codes directly into the game, create freeze states (ie: saving anytime anywhere), export movies of gameplay, and so much more.

Most people know that Outlook stores your email in a PST file, but figuring out where that file is located is a lot more tricky. Here’s how to figure out where it is, and how you can move it to another drive to save space on your primary drive.

There are so many myths, misconceptions, and just plain old lies about viruses that it's often hard for anybody to know what to think. Let's examine a few of the biggest myths about viruses, and debunk each of them. A few weeks ago, we explained how to understand the  difference between viruses, trojans, worms, and other malware , and today we'll walk through some of the common myths about malware and debunk them.

Summer has reached its peak, and while working outside can be relaxing, it becomes far less so when your laptop starts overheating. Here’s a quick summary of what outdoor conditions could do harm to your notebook. We all know heat is bad for our computers, but as the weather really starts to get hot out there, it’s important to know just what conditions could potentially cause problems. Technology blog Unplggd has a list of tips for keeping your laptop safe in hot weather, and number one is monitor the weather. Laptops are usually okay in temperatures of 50° to 95° Fahrenheit (or 10° to 35° for you Celsius folks), but anything higher is likely to lower your laptop’s battery life or even make your hard drive expand (and thus cause a whole host of problems). Note that these are outdoor temperatures, not the temperatures inside your computer. In addition, humidity above 80 percent is something you want to stay away from—the last thing you want is moisture condensing inside your machine (a...

There is finally a way to cut and paste files and merge folders in Snow Leopard. A new (shareware) Mac menu bar application, called moveAddict, provides this function, so you can use Cmd+X and Cmd+V in the Finder. First of all, install   moveAddict   from   Kapeli   just like any other application. Follow the on-screen instructions and it will place a menu in the upper right System Menus area of the menu bar. You can set the application's preferences from this menu. The application will function in a limited mode until registered.  

Google Docs Viewer , a service that lets you preview online PDFs, Word documents and PowerPoint presentations, is   now available for iPhone and Android devices . Google added some features that make the service more useful on a touchscreen device: pinch to zoom (only for iPhone and iPad), buttons for zoom and pagination.

Gmail can now open all Microsoft Word files (both DOC and DOCX formats) in Google Docs Viewer with the click of a link—a new feature accompanied by an equally simple route to editing the file in Google Docs. It may not seem like a new feature, but previously Word documents  were only viewable as HTML , and DOCX for Microsoft Word 2007 was not supported. As Google points out, "If you decide you want to edit the file, clicking "Edit online" will open it in Google Docs, or you can download it to your desktop from there." That certainly makes it a bit easier to send docs to other Gmail users, whether they've got Word installed or not. View .doc attachments right in your browser  [The Official Gmail Blog]

Did you know that you can customize the backgrounds of any Finder windows in Mac OS X? In the screenshot above, the Finder windows are set to match the color of the Finder window sidebar. Changing the window background color is a somewhat unknown feature even to frequent Mac users, as reader Karim S reminded us when he wrote in asking:  “I was wondering if you have any tips to change the background color of the finder’s windows. I would like to see the white turned into a light grey.”  Setting the Finder window background to something is easy once you learn how, and here’s how to do it:

I was talking to a friend the other day who just bought a new iMac. They were asking me what software should they download and install first. The first thing that came to my mind was Quicksilver. I have used this app for years. It definitely speeds up anything I do on all my Macs. I can open apps quicker, access files quicker, get to folders alot faster. It really helps out alot. Below you will find detailed information on how to install and use Quicksilver. I have grabbed screenshots from various sources on the internet. Some I have taken on my own Mac. Please read and enjoy.  You can download Quicksilver here:  go to  Blacktree.com , click on Quicksilver and download the .dmg that belongs to you OS X version. Getting Started After you have downloaded Quicksilver and placed the icon into you Applications, open it up. At that point you will be presented with this introduction. Click continue and enjoy the animation change to the next screen.

A few days ago I have been given the task to  empty the family camera's memory card  (this is my job to do since I'm the computer guy in the house). I took the card out of the camera, put it in a card reader and plugged the reader in my laptop. A red light turned on it but it turned off immediately which was not a good sign at all. My OS X complained that the disk was not properly dismounted. I tried the reader on other two laptops (two other OSes) but with no luck. I put the memory card back in to the camera and a few more photos were taken since then.

Most of us use a word processor on a daily basis. In this article, I share five of the best word processors available and why you should consider each one for use. There are so many word processing programs out there that it would be ridiculous to say these are the only five you should consider; however, these are five of the best. Which ones did I miss? OpenOffice.org Writer OpenOffice.org is an open-source office suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases, and more. Writer, the word-processing application that comes with the suite, is the result of user feedback and constant improvements over the years. I really like OpenOffice.org and would switch to it if I didn’t already have a Microsoft Office license. Download OpenOffice.org Google Docs Google Docs is an online suite that comes with all the features you’d expect from an office suite. I use Google Docs mainly for online web forms to collect survey responses etc. Here’s a video  that does a gre...

With iTunes 9.2 and iOS 4, the iBooks 1.1 app for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch can store and view PDF files, together with EPUB files.   If you want to quickly add a document or a web page to your 'Books' collection in iTunes, all you need to do is to create an alias of iTunes and drag it to   ~/Library/PDF Services . Now, when you're browsing the web or viewing documents and you decide that you want to read them later on a portable Apple device just hit Print, click the PDF button on the bottom left corner of the window and choose iTunes. iTunes will launch and receive the PDF. Next, sync your device and you're ready to go.   [ I tested this, and it works as described. This idea will work with any application that can read a PDF, not just iTunes 9.2.]

The internet changes very quickly; for that reason, stepping back to the basics is very important. As you may know, the internet is no more than a collection of interconnected networks. In this post I will show a list of basic network commands. Even if you haven’t used any of these before, it is useful to know they exist. As always, increasing your knowledge is the better way to achieve your goals. To run these commands, open a command prompt:

Keeping your computer running within safe temperatures is important, especially as the temperature rises outside. Here's how to make sure your computer's not overheating—and how to fix it if it is. Photo by  Alfo23 . The cooling system of your computer is one of the most important features of the device. Without the cooling system, the electrical components of your computer wouldn't be able to function; overheating would damage the integral parts of what makes your computer work. The heat has to be dissipated in order to keep everything working within safe operating temperatures.