The Definition of Irony
For about a month now I had been suffering through slo-o-ow shutdown speeds on my work computer. It would take roughly 15-45 minutes for my computer to turn off. That's uh... way too fucking long. Anyways, per a colleagues recommendation I removed Window's Internet Explorer 8 feature, then re-enabled it. That is basically the equivalent of uninstalling Internet Explorer 8 and reinstalling. After doing that my shutdown speed has gone back to normal.
I believe that Windows checks to see if any policy settings need to be applied while you are shutting down your computer. I'm fairly certain that this check runs in Internet Explorer 8. Does anyone else find it mildly ironic that Internet Explorer 8 broke my Windows Shutdown process? Has Microsoft really fallen that far behind in browser development..?
Wow.
Poynt; an app for your smartphone
Have you ever wished that you could get directions to local movies, restaurants, and other businesses from your phone? Ever wish you could figure out who the hell keeps calling you at 3 a.m. from a phone number you don't recognize? How about checking your phone to find out which gas station has the cheapest gas in relation to your current position? You can do all of that and more with poynt. I have it installed on my Blackberry and it's one of the most useful free applications that I have. It's simple to use. You search for businesses near your current position using GPS. Then, you map directions to these places using Google Maps or Blackberry Maps. It works as advertised, and is very useful. I had no idea how handy it would be until I started using it. If this sparks your interest check it out here! (I believe this runs on iPhones as well)
Feedly; my new favorite Firefox plug-in
Let's face it. Internet Explorer is out, and Firfox / Chrome is in. Recently I've been on a Firefox kick due to it's ease of use and plentiful plug-ins available. My new favorite plug-in is Feedly. It creates a custom RSS start page for you. Basically, you feed it all of the news web-sites that you usually read and it will condense them down for you in an easy to read magazine like page. The best part for me was that I was able to log-in to my Google account, and it automatically pulled in blogs I had added to my Google reader. I also like how it adds an icon near the firefox URL browser bar for easy access (as shown below). So if you are interested in an awesome RSS reader head here to get it.
GigaTweaker for Windows 7
I was pleasantly surprised with GigaTweaker. It does a nice job of wrapping up system tweaks that are spread all around your system. Rather than look for them all manually, you can use this program which puts them into a few basic groups: Administration, Display, Customization, Communication, and Maintenance. There are too many tweaks available for me to list them all here. All I can really say about the program is that it works well and you should head to download if you are interested in trying it out. Remember, this only works for Windows 7.
One 'tweak' that sparked my interest is under Customization -> System. There you can set Windows to execute the Desktop, Taskbar, and folders to separate Windows processes. That way, if explorer ever freezes up on you performance recovery should be smoother. I've made that tweak, but can't say I've had a noticeable difference in performance. Everything ran smooth before the change and is running smooth after. If it works like advertised though... this may be a valuable tweak that more users should be aware of.
GigaTweaker
Netgear WNR3500L Wireless-N Router Review
Recently, I traveled through the intertubes on over to my favorite online electronic reseller newegg. While I was there I noticed that they had the Netgear WNR3500L on sale so I did some research. I read some decent reviews that spoke to the routers hardware. A few things that stood out for me..
- Four gigabit ports (upgrade over my old 100MB)
- USB port for network sharing (no more leaving a PC on just to share files)
- Wireless-N with up to 300 Mb/s
- Double Firewall
- Support for guest wireless
- WPA/WPA2 supported
- 3 internal antennas
- Total throughput monitoring and logging
All these features made me a bit envious. My old router was an old school wireless g that lacked most of those features. While all these things sounded great, the icing on the cake was the WNR3500L's support of a Linux kernel. Given the fact that it runs on an open-source platform that means a few things. Each component that the router runs is developed by different partner companies (usually making them better) and the router supports DD-WRT, Tomato, OpenWRT, and other linux based open source firmware. Given the full feature set that the router ships with, and the fact that different components are developed by specialized companies, I don't think I'll ever have need to flash the firmware to DD-WRT or anything similar. However, if I wanted to... I could!
Another great thing about the fact that this router is open sourced is that it is backed by a user community. My Open Router has plenty of how-to guides and feed back from other users of the router. If the router interests you, you can check out Netgear's product page here.