Upgrades that don't require more than plug and play

I'll be honest with you folks, I'm a World of Warcraft player. I play on and off, but even when I'm not playing WoW I'm usually playing something else like Counter-Strike: Source, or Killing Floor. That being said I almost never play solo which means I'm either using in game chat, Ventrilo, or Mumble.

Last December shortly after Christmas I decided it was time to change a few things to make my laptop a little more gaming friendly.

I thought to myself "How can I make this better without spending a bunch of money on internals?" and the answer I came up with was simple: new external parts.

Most people when they hear gaming upgrades think graphics cards, motherboards, RAM etc. when really unless you're trying to build a gaming rig all you need are a couple simple tweaks to make your average PC more gaming friendly.

First on my list was a headset. I cannot stress enough how hard it is to find a decent one that will last more than a couple months. Walmart used to carry some cheaply made ones that worked for a while but would end up losing a connection somewhere in the cord rendering them completely useless. At $20 a pop it wasn't so horrible every couple months to go get a new pair but over time it adds up so instead I decided to go with a higher quality pair made by Plantronics. The Plantronics GameCom 367 Closed-Ear Gaming Headset is a BEASTLY set of headphones let me just say. I was so excited when I cracked these monkey's open I couldn't wait to turn the volume all the way up and listen to some Parkway Drive. The 40mm speakers make for ridiculously amazing volume along with the noise canceling foam around the ear pieces. The mic is hidden in the left side of the connecting band and flips down when you need it. One thing that makes these headphones special is that they're stereo headphones but they have a unique balancing property that lets you hear different things in each speaker depending on how the music is mixed or whats going on in your game of choice.






Second thing on my list was a new mouse. A simple three button mouse is cool... if you like getting your face torn off by zombies or smashed in by some 10 year old kid playing a Paladin. For this reason it was imperative I found something with a few extra buttons and better response. I really didn't want to go with a Logitech or Microsoft mouse because often times they're products while good, are over priced. I went with a relatively cheap solution to my problem, the Gear Head Wireless Optical Tilt-Wheel Mouse. This mouse is good for what it is but I found a couple problems with it. The software that comes with it wouldn't load in windows 7 under compatibility mode or just in general. Tech support on the Gear Head website was practically non-responsive and when they did finally get back to me, they referred me to 1 of 3 posts on their website I had already read to no avail. Another problem I found with it was that when the batteries got low the buttons randomly assigned themselves to opening Firefox and MS Outlook making them entirely useless for the purpose intended when I bought it. A simple change of batteries oddly enough fixed that problem. All in all it's a decent product if you're not concerned with assigning buttons outside of a game.





Outside of those two things I bought a USB hub which has nothing to do with gaming but makes it easier to turn my two port laptop into a 5 port beast. I don't really want to talk about that because to be honest, the thing was kind of a piece of junk.

The good news however is that now my laptop is much more gaming friendly and I'm a much more sane person because of it. Remember kids, kill zombies not real people.

I'm Back!

Winter vacation is over and its time to get back to finding neat stuff in the tech world to bring back to all three of you reading this!So lets start with a neat gadget you might find useful for accessing all of your media on your phone remotely, even if you have a stupid phone(non-smartphone).

Most people now have Droid or iPhones, but what about the rest of us who are stuck with phones who are more closely related to our grandparents? Well the solution isn't entirely simple but if you can bring your self to focus your attention span we'll see about getting you set up with a program called Orb.

First up you'll need to visit the Orb home page to download the orb software and install it. Then it will open a wizard to help you set everything up, just follow the directions.

Now once you have the software installed and set up you still have a few tweaks to make. Go down to the system tray and double click the little green orb icon. This brings up the Orb control panel where you'll need to go to the 'Users' tab to add your media folders and enable your remote access aspect of it. Once you check the box it should bring up a menu that will let you set up your login for this next byte.

Once you have everything set up that way you can now go to any phone or pc and access all of the folders you selected through the wizard. Just go to mycast.orb.com to browse through and stream your media

Log in> browse > stream > enjoy!

Podcasting Q&A With The Host of 4playerfancast

For this edition of geek speak I’m joined by younger, nerdlier brother Dylan. Dylan hosts a podcast called 4playerfancast, which is a spin off of the more popular 4playerpodcast. We sat down and did a Q & A about podcasting and what it takes to host and maintain a project like this.


Would you rather we use your screen name or your actual name?

Either way is fine, I guess. Or both. Whatever. Darknezz, Dylan Spencer respectively.

What is podcasting?

Podcasting is, essentially, a group of people talking into microphones, or into cameras, depending on whether it’s an audio or video show. Podcasts exist for every topic imaginable.

How did you get involved in it?

I started doing a show because I started listening to a show. The first podcast I started listening to was really entertaining, and I found it interesting to listen to people having intelligent discussions about the video game industry, and then I realized, “I want to do that.” So, some stuff happened with some people on some forums, and then we started doing the Fancast.

What is 4player fancast about?

The 4Player Fancast is a show about video games. Plain and simple, we hop into a Skype call for about two hours every week and talk about some topic for the week, and then what games each of the hosts has been playing.
It doubles as another outlet for an online gaming community, called 4PlayerPodcast, which is how all of the hosts know each other, and we like to bring in a guest host for each show from the 4PP forums, hence the name, Fancast.

How do you develop a following?

This one is tough for me to answer just because the podcast I do has such a niche audience. I got people to listen to the Fancast by associating it with the forums and chat rooms that we all frequent.

For a larger contingent, I think the best way to get a following is to just do it. Just start a show, get it on iTunes, and then ask people to tell other people about it. There’s no more effective marketing than having a friend tell you to go listen to a show. Also, having the show on iTunes makes people more receptive to it, because it’s easy to set up a subscription, and get the show that way.

How much time and energy does it take to start and maintain something like this?
It depends on the level of editing and post production that you want to go into it. This is one of the best things about doing a podcast; it can take as much or as little of your time as you want it to.

For the show I do, it takes about two hours to record, and then there’s a half hour or so of post between hitting the stop button and getting the show up for download. I also don’t edit the show much, so that’s probably why it doesn’t take long; all I do is throw in the into and outro music, occasionally I’ll do a few other things, but for the most part, the music and I’m done. For more professional stuff, like the Giant Bombcast, I’d guess it takes a bit longer.

Do you want to turn this into a career?

It would be great to, but it’s not a realistic expectation. It’s almost impossible to convince someone to sponsor a podcast because, with the way iTunes works, and with the way streaming audio works, there’s no real way to tell how many people are listening to your show, except the raw download number, and that can be fluffed by people downloading the show multiple times or whatever.

Do you intend on keeping everything up to date forever?

I would definitely like to try, but that may not be possible. In relation to the other question, I’m going to have to get into a career eventually, and it may end up to the point where I won’t be able to do the show anymore. Stuff happens. But I’m definitely going to keep going for as long as I can.

What are some of the problems you encounter in doing this kind of thing?

The biggest one, for the show I do, is getting people on the show. We like to have guests come in every week, and we do schedule those well ahead of time, but we do the show over the internet, and sometimes, people just don’t show up.

The other big thing is the site we host of off. It’s an amateur show, so we don’t have any webspace or anything bought for it, so we host from a free podcast hosting service. And they are a bunch of jerks. The service works fine mostly, but the show cannot run more than two hours (or it’ll just reject the file), it has to have very specific encoding options, and sometimes, the site will go down entirely. Come to think of it, they’re the biggest issue.

Other than that, there’s just the courtesies we have to make when we realize it’s an audio show. I like to do a lot of hand and head movements when I talk, but I use a headset, so that’ll cause a whole bunch of noise, so I have to be mindful of that. Then there’s people talking over each other, or awkward silences while we gather ourselves, or whatever. Small stuff that just comes with the territory.

What is your favorite part of it?

It’s fun. We like to crack jokes as much as we can, and talking to people and finding out what makes them like or dislike certain aspects of a game is interesting to me.

There you go folks, Q&A with Dylan Spencer from 4playerfancast. Go check out his show on http://4playerfancast.blogspot.com/ and don’t forget to check out the examiner website http://www.avcexaminer.com.

Encryption made simple

Encryption is a word you may have heard used in the computer world, but what you may not know is that as scary as it is, it really isn’t too complex. Actually way back in early Rome, Caesar used a simple method of encrypting messages he passed along to his soldiers and those who needed top secret information. What he did was used a style of encryption that’s now referred to as a Caesar Shift Cipher which in essence sounds really complex but is relatively simple.

In a caesarian cipher, the encryption is basically just a substitution that looks like this

Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz being the regular alphabet

Defghujklmnopqrstuvwxyzabc with the cipher using a shift of three

Basically what that means is that if you wanted to write something out you would use the 3rd letter over from where it would be in the regular alphabet

For example:

P svol fvn is the encrypted text

I love you is the decrypted text using a shift of eight instead of three

That being said, this method is very useful for manually encrypting passwords, network keys, or even just sending cute messages to your significant other given they’re as nerdly as you.
In modern encryption there are probably about a million different things you can use to encrypt anything and everything from files to messages.

This brings me to my next point of discussion; password security. Your password is not and will not ever be entirely safe. That being said, there are a number of ways to help beef up your security. Passwords can be encrypted using the method above, thus making your security greater, but what’s the use of all that if your password recovery question is something like

“What high school did you graduate from?” That kind of information is easily obtainable from any social networking site such as Facebook or even just Google if you’re a higher profile target.

Actually there is even a website that can randomly generate passwords for you here https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm

On top of that, you can even encrypt your files using a program called truecrypt which can be found at http://www.truecrypt.org/

Hackers

Being online or even just near a computer is a gift and a pleasure but as with all things there are people who abuse the might they’re given. Specifically in these terms I’m talking about those referred to as “hackers,” however the thing that you may not understand is that the term hacker doesn’t imply anything malicious at all and can actually be a positive term.

Hackers are typically divided into 3 subcategories and a couple of variances that aren’t necessarily hackers but more so the leeches that feed off hackers’ designs and tools. The three main groups are black hat, grey hat, and white hat.



Let’s start with the most infamous subclass of hacker, the black hat. Black hats are most commonly seen as crackers or those would break into systems to corrupt or steal data. For example, the 2008 election was a huge target for hackers and one managed to break into Sarah Palin’s yahoo account by guessing the security question and exposed her personal e-mails to the world via WikiLeaks. That would be considered black hat hacking even though what was found in the e-mails may or may not have been official business being done through personal accounts.

A grey hat hacker is essentially just your average hacker who may or may not at some point in his or her hacking career crossed a legal or ethical boundary. These are the kind of people who break into systems just to do it. While they may not be looking for anything specific, often times a grey hat will hack into a system and leave it alone. This is because they aren’t looking to corrupt files or steal data; they’re simply broadening their knowledge of system structures and testing new techniques.

A white hat hacker is one who understands system security and uses hacking/cracking techniques to better improve system security. In some cases white hat hackers will break into systems to reverse effects of a black hat intrusion. We’ll use the election 2008 as an example once again. After the black hat gained control of the account and had already leaked the documents, a white hat or sometimes called “white knight” re-hacked the account to restore its security. He couldn’t undo the leaked documents because once they’re out there it’s almost impossible to contain their replication and keep them from going viral.

So what do we see in these three sub classes? Personally I see a misunderstanding perpetrated by the general population in regards to the term “hacker.” Then there must be some kind of definition that encompasses all three sub classes right? The answer is yes and no. People too often just plug in solutions that have already been established without coming up with something themselves, these are the leeches mentioned above. Everyone encounters problems in their lives; hackers are just regular people who create solutions to the problems presented to them.

- Art by Avi Ithier

Java Anonymity

So a few years ago I stumbled across a java based program that lets you hide your identity on the web. Back then it was still pretty glitchy and not really useful for the average person. Now its fairly stable and incredibly useful.

You might be saying to yourself "Ok... get to the point..." Well here it is; in recent years Google has started a new trend of tracking everything you do online.

How? With tracking cookies, search history, and your gmail account. Ever notice those suspiciously placed ads on your search page? Yeah well it's no coincidence.

Anywho, thats just the tip of the iceberg, it's not just Google, all of your favorite social media sites do it too. And that is why I'd like to take the time to tell you about JonDo.

Taken directly from the website "JonDo is a free, open-source and highly portable (Java-based) client software for accessing the JonDonym services. Its primary use is the anonymisation of web site requests against web site operators, internet providers and the anonymisation service Operators."

Translation: This little guy will let you use java to tap into internet anonymity and rid yourself of all those pesky little tracking bastards.

The interesting thing about this software is that its free and open source but has a paid for service if you so choose. I don't understand why you would want to pay for something that's free unless you're helping fund the research but even then I'm not entirely sure it goes to the founders of this service (if I had any clue who they were I'd mention them).

Another excerpt from the website "Moreover, the system provides so-called forwarding functionality. Users can connect to the service even if it is blocked by their provider. This is often the case in countries that are known for heavy censorship. Unblocked users of the service (Forwarding servers) may voluntarily forward other JonDonauts (Forwarding clients) to the Mix Cascades."

Translation: Even if something is blocked by your service provider, state, or country you can get access to it. Say you're in china and you want to use Google, this will aid you in your quest for por-... I mean legitimate searching of the interwebs.

All in all, this is a must have for your computer savvy tool kit. If you didn't catch the link above, you can read more about the program and get yourself a copy at http://www.jondos.org/en/jondonym

SkyDrive Returns

It's back with a vengeance. The office live team and the SkyDrive team decided to make a brain child and what came out was the upgrade to SkyDrive that lets you view and edit documents online IN REAL TIME.


Did I mention this service is free? Oh yes, I did way back in April or May when I talked about SkyDrive which by the way HAS ALWAYS BEEN FREE. Google Docs and Office Live used to be comparable, but this upgrade steamrolls the competition into a digital dust bunny. To those that designed and worked on this project: I tip my hat to you sir's and madame's of the world, thank you for this coded metaphysically disruptively awesome creation.