There are companies that operate as if each department and division of its organization is its own separate entity when it comes to technology. An accounting department, for example, would have a widely disparate system from its human resources and sales organizations, with different front end applications and database implementations for each. There are other companies who operate much more efficiently than this. These companies streamline their processes and unify their technology through a solution known as ERP.

Image source: MP Computer

What is ERP?

ERP stands for “Enterprise Resource Planning.” ERP implementations promote more efficient use of company data by providing a process in which all departments share common systems and a universal data set. Rather than every department having its own applications and back end database systems, an ERP implementation gives each division its own “module” with a similar look and feel, sharing a common back end. The core idea behind ERP is that with the same database or data warehouse and similar systems, departments can operate more efficiently and thrive.

How Can ERP Help?

Let’s say Company A’s sales force is really working hard this quarter and have increased client orders by 15%. With an ERP system in place, the manufacturing department would have access to sales data right away and would be able to plan for increased production immediately. The accounting department wouldn’t need to be told about increasing their billing. Instead, they’d know by accessing the ERP data. Purchasing departments, human resources, management and more would also need this data right away for their own operations and, with ERP, they’d have it.

What are the Major ERP Divisions?

In an ERP system, the major divisions or departments are known as “modules.” All modules’ data is integrated with the ERP system for better information sharing and increased efficiency. A company’s modules will vary depending on their industry, but these are the basics:

*Accounting: financials, payables, receivables, assets, general ledger, cash.

*Human Resources: payroll, benefits, recruitment, employee management.

*CRM: sales, sales support, customer data, marketing, customer services.

*Manufacturing: management of work flow, resource planning, QA, capacity planning, process descriptions.

*Project Management: planning, billing, cost planning, budgeting.

*Data Warehousing: aggregation of all business data for analysis and planning.

*Supply Chain: procurement, sales support, management of inventory, ordering, distribution.
Each of these key areas have their own needs and inherent ways that they integrate with one, some or all of the others. Analyzing each, it becomes clear how vital information sharing truly is and how crucial a role ERP plays in a large scale business environment.

ERP’s Impact on Infrastructure

Implementing an ERP system is not to be taken lightly. It’s not a weekend IT project. A new ERP system will affect every desktop in an organization and its effect on the data center is even bigger. Old, separate server-side software will need to be removed, replaced with the components of an integrated ERP solution. Before this can happen, though, all the data in each system being replaced will need to be exported, massaged and imported into the new ERP system. Hardware and software aren’t the only systems being affected, though. IT staff will need extensive education and training in the management of the new system. With its single point of data storage and centralized management, a proper ERP solution will take a lot of burden off IT staff, but it takes a lot of effort to get there.

The Need for Extra Help

The design, planning, implementation and ongoing management of an enterprise resource planning system is an intricate process that can prove daunting for many IT organizations. As with other extremely specialized systems, many IT departments will recognize the need for expert support from consultants, such as Syntax’s ERP consulting division.

Experienced consultants understand the complexities of implementing and managing and ERP system, along with the changes in IT department needs and processes that go with it. ERP-specific consultant can help IT administrators plan and execute an ERP solution, extend the capabilities of an existing system and even provide ongoing support. Consultants can help in all areas of ERP, creating a system that will streamline activities in the business organization and greatly simplify IT processes,

HP sent over their latest 8200 Elite Ultra-Slim desktop computer and we put it through our regular battery of tests. We were pretty happy with the performance and form factor.

The most impressive upgrades over the last Ultra-Slim we saw is the Sandy Bridge processor and the lower price tag. It has an Intel Core i5-2500S processor running at 2.7GHz. We see 4 GB of memory which handle day to day business applications with ease. The compact design still has 10 – yes 10 USB ports for all your peripherial needs!

The computer runs pretty quietly and it helps us be a little greener. Check this out from the HP site:

The limited expansion options and smaller size of the chassis allow for a highly efficient 135W external power adapter rated at 87% efficiency. ENERGY STAR^® qualified and EPEAT^® Gold registered,² the HP Compaq 8200 puts customers in control of power settings with HP’s exclusive Power Assistant, which provides an easy-to-use desktop application that lets users control the PC’s energy use by scheduling various power settings throughout the day.

Designed with the environment in mind, the HP Compaq 8200 Elite Ultra-slim Desktop PC is also free of brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC).³

We see it priced at around $924 from Amazon here. It has a 1 TB drive and the 4GB of memory. Add in a Blu-Ray burner, card reader, support for dual monitors out of the box and a starting price of only $739.

Remember you can bump this guy up to 8GB of Ram yourself and load up Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit for a WONDERFUL experience in such a small package. Deploying these in a corporate will help imporve productivity and cut back on electrical prices. We have seen it priced higher with only a 250GB drive and 2GB of memory so beware. Below are the specs:

HP Compaq 8200 Elite Ultra-Slim

• The HP Compaq 8200 Elite Ultra-Slim incorporates business PC technology with HP’s designs, and specific programs and services created for business including stable and lengthy lifecycles,  and security and remote management solutions
• Delivers up to 8GB of DDR3 memory
• Features Intel 2nd Generation Core™ vPro™ processors providing hardware-based remote management solutions that enable a stable, secure and reliable IT infrastructure
• Line in and line out ports and USB ports up front for convenience. Connect dual external monitors via VGA and DisplayPort
• Includes a Blu-ray Writer Drive and Media Card Reader that can accommodate up to 22 formats
• The starting price for the HP Compaq 8200 Elite Ultra-slim is $739

I love this time of year. I live in San Diego, so the weather doesn’t get cold enough to snow, but it’s chilly enough to wear jackets. It’s like the best of both worlds here. I get the cold, but don’t have to do any shoveling or driving on icy roads. Win win!

Let’s be honest though, this time of year is not great because of the weather, it’s great because it is gift giving season. No matter if you are celebrating Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa or Festivus. chances are pretty good that you are shopping for gifts, or someone is shopping for gifts for you. If you are in the market for set top boxes, then you may want to check out the review I did for this month’s Tech Chop!

In this episode I review the Mvix Ultio Pro MX 880HD, WD TV Live Plus, Boxee Box, and the Apple TV. Check it out!

Got any questions about the devices mentioned in the show? Do you own a set top box? Maybe the Roku? Do you like the one you have? Looking to trade up? Let us know in the comments.

As usual I would like to thank the good people at HP for sending over another review machine to check out. This time it is the HP EliteBook 2760p the big brother of the 2710p My daughter and I reviewed way back when. The biggest gripe we had back then was processor power and no real touch screen. The 2760 changes all that with an awesome i5 processor and a full on touch screen. Throw in a USB 3.0 and a eSATA port, with a little display port action and topped off with 4g internal and a 320GB Self Encrypting Drive you have an awesome laptop with a convertible tablet built in (not the other way around!)

I was amazed that the system is MIL-STD 810G standards for vibration, dust, humidity, altitude and warmth.  We have also found the system available on Amazon for ~$1200USD. Not too shabby seeming the MSRP is around $1500. The screen is very responsive, the computer is pretty quick and meets all our HD Video/On-line gaming necessities.

Check out the available Specifications:

• Processor: Intel Core i7/i5
• RAM: upto 16GB DDR3
• Hard Disk: upto 320GB
• Graphics Card: Intel Integrated HD3000 Graphics
• Display: 12.1 inch matte (anti-glare) LED backlit display
• Operating System: Windows 7 Pro
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth, Ethernet LAN, 4G Internal Modem
• Hi-Speed USB, VGA connection, two-in-one combo headphone/microphone jack
• RJ11 and RJ45 modem/LAN ports, SD/SDHC card slot, Smart Card reader, Express Card 34 slot, Memory car reader
• Firewire port
• Webcam
• Weight: ~6 lbs

We absolutely love it!

 I highly recommend a touch screen laptop for learning little ones. It has been a huge help in teaching our wonderful Kayla.

We received an HP ProBook 4430s a few weeks back and have been putting it through the vigirous AtA tests. Long story short – we absolutely love it. Starting with its not plastic – aluminum gun metal type body – it is awesome. It does not feel cheap or look like you are going to break it. Aren’t laptops fragile enough without cheaping out on the case?

The LED backlit display is very nice and bright. The system ships with a USB 3.0 port which we quickly put to use connecting a WD Portable 2TB Hard Drive.

The processor on the laptop is a core i3 running at 2.1 ghz, the system ships with 4gb of ram and a 320gb hard drive. This configuration running Windows 7 runs great. I even tested Photoshop and some other intense applications with pretty good results.

In addition to all these nice new features the device also sports a spill resistant keyboard. Anyone that has spilled coffee on a laptop without this feature knows how important it really is. If you have had an accident with a laptop with “spill protection”  and you spill something on it you will thank yourself!

The way this works is it will drain out the liquid away from the fragile internal components and keep it from frying your lappie. But if you spill gallons of water or submerge the laptop you are still at risk of damaging the system (or destroying the system!!!!)

If you are in the market for a lower end laptop for a student, child or as something you can take around with you this is a lot of bang for your buck. Great laptop and we give it 4 thumbs up! That’s two of mine and two of my partners!

The best part of all is the MSRP which happens to be $519.99 (Can be bought here from Amazon)

_TheDealBreakingAdmiN_

When we bought the first generation iPad for our three year old we thought it was awesome. It is a great learning tool and can keep her busy for extended periods of time in the car. It has replaced our portable DVD player and has given my wife and I some entertainment from slinging Angry Birds. The one thing I thought it was lacking was a front facing camera (or any camera for that matter!) This is 2011 - after all a free cell phone comes with a camera, right?

Why oh why would Steve Jobs hold off on the camera? Especially since he was seen with a iPad with a camera before the first genearation even launched. There has been code discovered in the first generation device pointing to a non-existant camera. The only reason could be to sell more of their next generation iPad 2.

I just finished reading a post titled Hands On With the New Apple iPad 2 By Clayton Morris via Fox News here. You can read the excerpt below and click through to watch the video.  More of my comments follow this excerpt.

“Wicked fast” processor? Check. Lighter and thinner? Check. Over 10 hours of battery life? Check. Front and rear facing camera? Check. With Steve Jobs on medical leave, Apple senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller was widely rumored to be taking to the stage. That didn’t happen. Steve showed up and said “I didn’t want to miss this.” I was at the launch event, where Steve Jobs unveiled the new Apple iPad 2, and got to spend a few minutes hands-on with the iPad. The brand new case, called the Smart Cover, automatically wakes the iPad when you open it up. There are sensors built into the side of the iPad, and magnets on the cover and along the edge of the device combine to create this function. The magnets also mean the case is conveniently removable. Don’t want it on while you’re using the iPad? Just tear it off. In terms of the new features the iPad 2′s iOS 4.3 brings, one of the biggest is GarageBand. With it you can play drums or compose on a full-screen keyboard. I can already imagine my seven-month old sitting here, pounding on the virtual keys. I can record right from the app as well. With iMovie, the other big new addition, you can edit and watch movies right on the iPad. iPad 2 now includes two cameras, a front-facing VGA camera for FaceTime and Photo Booth, and a rear-facing camera that captures 720p HD video, bringing the FaceTime video chat feature to iPad users for the first time. More than a year after igniting the tablet computing craze, Apple’s Steve Jobs surprised the world by taking to the stage in California to unveil this: the second version of its blockbuster iPad

And here is more information on the specs and release information from suite101.com

So what is a guy to do with one of these first generation devices? We would love to use the iPad for iPad to iPhone FaceTime between my daughter and I. Now we will have to take a hit and loose money to upgrade. It really never pays anymore to jump on a products bandwagon until the second generation or after a service pack has been released. What are your thoughts? I would love to hear from you in the comments below.

I am totally finished with Dell at home now. I replaced my Dell laptop with the new HP ProBook 4520s. It is  the latest  offering in the 15 1/2 -inch business notebook from Hewlett-Packard.

The ProBook 4520s features the Intel Core i7-620LM, i5-520M, i5-430M, i3-350M, or i3-330M CPU, the Intel HD integrated graphics or ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4350 512MB dedicated video card, up to 4GB of DDR3 memory, up to 500GB of hard drive space, and a DVD burner or Blu-Ray Combo. The 15.6-inch LED-backlit HD display has a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels and BrightView in some models.

 The HP ProBook 4520s also sports a full-sized keyboard with separate numeric keypad, an optional 2MP web camera, stereo speakers and an integrated microphone, 802.11a/b/g/n wireless, the optional HP un2450 EV-DO/HSPA Mobile Broadband Module 2.0 with GPS support, a Gigabit Ethernet port, Bluetooth, and optional 56k modem, as well as VGA and HDMI outputs, three USB ports and a combo eSATA/USB port, an ExpressCard slot, a media card reader, and optionally a fingerprint reader. The laptop starts at around 5.5 pounds with the standard 6-cell battery and runs Windows 7 or SUSE Linux. It can be ordered through HP’s website for a base price of $799.

I have my Verizon broadband wireless card and this monster of a machine and they compliment each other wonderfully. The best part of all is that this machine will last me for several years. I am already running all my virtual machines off of it and have all my tools and applications loaded up on it.

Long story short this machiene is awesome with a full size keyboard for all my admin/writing needs.

Use your Intel core i5-2.5GHz Toshiba satellite laptop for longer sessions with durable laptop batteries.

I helped restore a buddys virus ridden xp laptop yesterday. We could not open system restore, malwarebytes or any other security application. I burned a shortcut to system restore and burned it to a cd. I was able to launch system restore from there and succesfully restore to right before the infection. Take that fake anti-virus!

Lock out viruses as well as unwanted spam files with antivirus and anti spam software.

A commonly asked question among many laptop buyers is “what laptop will be the best one for my money?” This question, however generic or simple it may sound is actually a question one needs to take seriously. Another question that is just as important in the laptop buying decision is, “what will I be using my laptop for?” This question is so important because the last thing you want to do is overpay for features you don’t need or underpay and miss out on necessary components that will hurt you in the long run. Due to the fact that there are so many laptops on the market as well as so many different uses for them, I’m going to break down the components of the “best laptop for the money” for the average user.

First things first, we need to address some of the hardware components that make up a laptop such as the screen size, hard drive space, the RAM, and battery followed by the basic software that come with the computer. When building a laptop online or buying it in a store, they both tend to stress that bigger is better. I respectfully disagree and feel that bigger (unless you have the use for it such as a gamer or programmer) is costly and unnecessary. Let’s get started!

I can say from experience that a screen somewhere in the realms of a 15 inch widescreen display is plenty big (and that’s coming from a guy with terrible eye site) and it also cuts down on space when traveling too. When it comes to hard drive, I say anywhere between 150 GB and 250 GB is plenty when it comes to every day computing but DON’T go above 250 GB if you are using this laptop for everyday use, it will be a waste of money! RAM is important because this allows you to have multiple windows open and operating at once without freezing occurring but you still do not need to go crazy. Around 2 to 3 GB of RAM is plenty. Next we have the battery, the gasoline of your laptop hardware and software components. If you are going to splurge anywhere, this is where to do it. Definitely go with a larger battery if you are going to be on the go because the last thing you want is to be on the road realizing your computer is dying and there is no outlet in sight. Save yourself the hassle!

Lastly we need to discuss software. Go with the standard operating system offered, it is the cheapest and comes with good features for the average user as well. Taking the specifications I have listed above and plugging them into some of the major laptop manufacturers such as Toshiba, Dell, HP and Acer, I have come to the consensus that it is a tossup between the best laptops for the money. The two computers I found to be the best deals for the money are the Dell Inspiron 15 and the Toshiba Satellite L500D-ST2543 laptop; both with slightly modified features come to $469.00 before tax. While both of these computers for the most part have identical features, each one varies slightly from the other. The dell does offer 90 GB more of hard drive space at 250 GB as opposed to the 160 GB offered by the Toshiba. Toshiba however makes up for this shortcoming with a massive 12-cell battery which does offer a longer charge than the 9-cell offered by Dell. All in all both of these computers would be a great value for the everyday computer user and definitely the best laptop for the money.

Michael Blumreich is a contributor for the aptly named laptop review site, LaptopReviews.com. He’s currently a university student and lover of all things tech.

Do you have the urge to create a collage out of your digital photography collection? Maybe you have an upcoming event that you would like to show off your images for or to create a nice sign or banner. Well now we found a very cool, tiny, easy to use application that will make your dream a reality.

Using the program’s built in options and your own images and a background you can create awesome collages in a manner of minutes or seconds.

We can start by visiting their website and downloading the application. The download is 4.79MB and once it gets installed, run it and you will see the screen below.

You can add your images from here as well as setting up your layout options. To start adding images you will need to click on the add button in the bottom left hand corner.

Once you hit that button it will bring up a normal Windows Open dialogue box. Here you can select the items you want to add to the collage. Note: You can use Control + Click or Shift + Click to highlight multiple items in one shot. This should cut down on your setup time – especially if you are using sequential images.

Once you have all your items selected hit the open button and the images will be transferred into Collage It. You will then be able to see your images in the left hand pane. There are buttons to remove one or multiple images as well as the option to clear out all selected items. This is what my photo list looked like after selecting 6 pictures:

Next we will want to configure our other settings to make our collage into our own creation. You can see the options below. They are displayed on the right hand side of the interface. You can choose to use all the photos you have selected or just a specific number of pictures. If you have more than the selected amount the images will be chosen at random.

Spacing tells the application how much room should be between images and the margin is how much space to leave on each side of the collage. You can set the images to auto rotate and to what degree on the auto rotate section.

You can also enable shadows and frames around the images with the checkboxes below.

And then we can set our background by hitting the background button located at the bottom left hand side of the application. That will bring up this screen:

You can set the background to just use a gradient fill, top to bottom or left to right. You can use a solid fill or an image. If you use an image you can set the opacity of it or in layman’s terms the ability to see through the image. When you are finished hit the OK button.

Now we want to see what we made, right? So go ahead and hit the preview button at the bottom of the screen and let’s see what we have:

That was the collage that Collage It spat out at me and you can also save it as a JPG when you are happy with it. There are people’s collages posted on the Collage It website as well for you to check out and get some inspiration from.

In the past I have covered other collage applications including Shape Collage.  But what collage apps do you prefer?  Let us know about them in the comments.

I-Pad Killer? Image courtesy: Engadget.com

Hello Boys and Girls,

It seems other companies aside from Apple are putting their thinking caps on and breaking all kinds of molds. There was a mold. Apple didn’t exactly break the mold for tablets, as shown in this nifty diagram. All they did was scale it up. An overgrown cellphone won’t last very long in today’s market.

Enter Lenovo.

From the looks of it, Lenovo has broken a mold. They have combined two mainstays of the hardware industry; tablets and netbooks, and combined them into this one nifty unit that has a detachable, wireless touchscreen, full size (by today’s standards) keyboard and a FULL OS!

The Lenovo name, to me at least, suggests some premium price point. But I know for a fact that other companies will follow suit. Maybe they won;t have detachable screens like this Hybrid Lenovo U1 pictured, but I’d be happy enough for a $400 tablet with a full OS. Wouldn’t you?

Let us know in the comments below, and don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS Feed

Commodore64 (the one you used to play Bruce Lee on) ,8,1

Hey Kiddies, Commodore 64 here to bring another tidbit of good advice from all of us to all of you. Along with this tasty piece of techie goodness is a brief admin-ography of the history of AskTheAdmin.com. We’ve come a long way folks, and we think we’ve finally found the true nexus point of our platform needs.

HostGator!

If you’ve been following us throughout the years, you’ve probably experienced the growing pains we’ve had moving from platform to platform, host to host. Our humble beginnings on Blogger dealing with all the limitations and WYSIWYG inconsistencies, then our HUGE fiasco getting our posts, media, and comments migrated, exported, and sometimes even re-written from scratch and re-imported one by tedious one.

Following the imports to our now defunct web host, Bansal-Inc, we were plagued with outages, server errors, php errors, unexpected reboots, files disappearing (wtf?) and older versions re-appearing (seriously now, WTFluck). It was like something out of The Twilight Zone with the title of  “Ghost in the Machine.” It was utter chaos.

On top of all the server-side issues, I’d like to spend a minute to mention how far WordPress has come as a platform as well as an all around user experience from front to back.

Back then, around version 2.5 or 2.6, the WYSIWYG was HORRIBLE. Having already spent many years in the field of front-end web development, the amount of “code rewriting” and “automatic formatting” that went on was horrible. Mixed into that was the advent of Windows Livewriter, which in my opinion, was too good of an editing tool to be justifiably paired with a crappy, built-in, wordpress wysiwyg from back then.

Essentially what would end up happening is that in a writers role, it wasn’t half bad. You said your peace, did a little formatting and published. But from an editor’s perspective – re-opening a post and simply switching from HTML view to Visual view would change the code drastically: replacing massive amounts of tags and flucking up all bullet points and various other elements. Aside from editing issues, plugins we were utilizing were crashing the site here and there. I remember there being a lot of fear associated with running a well-trafficked site in our situation, as it was.

Reaching out to tech support, especially when it’s overseas, was painful at best. Response times, even when they were responding, took days sometimes. We ended having to fish through our emails and find the email address of the company owner. It was only then we could get something done.

Just when we thought our problems were over… the company got sold to a web hosting service then called Inspirit Networks. We had a decent run with Inspirit. At first they were eager to please. But as time went on (we’re talking months, not years) the servers and support’s response times were getting worse and more unresponsive with each passing week. Ultimately we suffered major outages for days at a time which also seemed to strangely roll back our files to older versions. This was the last straw.

After major shopping around and considerations we decided on HostGator. The reviews were all good, and after testing their US based voice support lines, as well as chat lines we were thoroughly impressed.

Enter HostGator…

So far I’ve been personally using them for about a year now with no issues, and so far %100 uptime. Utilizing a free service called aremysitesup.com, I’ve been able to see that we have had NO DOWNTIME. The cpanel has all the options I’ve ever needed or wanted in a LAMP hosting account. We are currently running 8 different well trafficked blogs on one hosting account and see no slowdown and no issues. Truthfully, I’ve never been accustomed to being this fear-free and comfortable with my web server.

These days we can spend our time concentrating on publishing quality content rather than keeping our sites running and healthy.

Edit: We now have our own coupon discount code at Gator, which means we can pass along a savings of $9.94 off of your initial purchase with Gatorhost.
Use discount code “asktheadmin” to get your discount today!

This is commodore64 signing off.

Let us know what your web hosting experiences were in the comments below…

Or subscribe to our RSS FEED here

  This is a Windows 7 only feature don’t be jealous…

Do you want to lock down what applications the kids can run on your shinny new Windows 7 computer? Well they have a little known feature built into the latest and greatest version of Windows. It takes a little know how to get it going but that is what we are here for – right?

First set up the machine in question with the applications you want on it. Install the versions you want to run. Then we will need to open up the Group Policy editor or Local Security Policy Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in.

1. Click Start, type secpol.msc in the Search programs and files box, and then press ENTER.
2. In the console tree, double-click Application Control Policies, and then double-click AppLocker.
3. Right-click Executable Rules, and then click Create Default Rules.
4. AppLocker rules are automatically created .

To get into AppLocker and more advanced setups check out this page from Microsoft entitled AppLocker step by step scenarios http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee791835%28WS.10%29.aspx.

_TheLockedDownAdmiN_

Sure it has been a while since our last giveaway – and they all can’t be $1000+ computers right? Yes you should be kicking your self for not entering that! But I digress…
Today we are giving away a nifty commercial application that normally costs $60. It is called Audials One and it allows you to capture ANY audio that you can hear on your computer. You can rip songs from Blu Ray or DVD’s. It is billed as a professional media converter, organizer & player.

You can grab a track right from a audio stream.  Audials One will save the track to a MP3 that you can then listen to offline, burn it to a cd or throw it on your iPod. The application also has a built in search feature to scour the Internet for specific audio bytes and to top it all off it doesn’t care one bit about DRM or any other SILLY copy protection scheme.

You can actually play a DRM’ed track on your machine and magically strip it off when you are saving it as a MP3 – you can learn more via their tutorials here.

As I said before we have 5 copies to give away so step right up and enter our contest all you need to do is leave a comment on this post as to why we should give it to you. Be funny, be witty and this might just be yours. The publisher also told me if we see a lot of comments and tweets we can up the number to 10 or maybe even 20. Let’s see how much you guys need this..

A comment will get you one entry, tweeting about the contest will get you 2 entries (tag it #AskTheAdmin) and blogging about the contest will get you 3 votes.

The contest will go for one week from today! So get your entries in, starting NOW!

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I often find myself in situations where I wished I could share out my internet with other users. I have tried programs that turn my Touch Pro into a hot spot but it not only kills my phone’s battery but it also slows it down to a crawl. I could tether my laptop to my phone and share that out but why should I when I found a nifty little device called a travel router. When I paired this up with a mobile internet card I had a match made in heave!

The Cradlepoint CTR350 Cellular Travel Router has found a new home in my laptop bag. Using this router with a Verizon Sierra Mobile Broadband Card (EVDO) I can have an instant network setup… Um anywhere I can rig up power.

Simply insert the card into the router. Log into the router and configure firewall, routing and even dynamic name resolution.

This means at your next outdoor event you can not only provide internet to your geeky pals but you could be running a web server that is resolving to a domain name.

I was not only impressed by it’s simplicity but also by how cheap it is. I found the mobile router online for under $150. Cradlepoint CTR-350 Mobile Router The Verizon card I already had but they are also practically free if you are willing to sign up for a 2 year contract. AT&T USBConnect Mercury Broadband USB Modem (AT&T) I have used this little guy to set up a  DVR in an office without internet. Share out internet in my truck/car to all the others on-board. The sky’s the limit!

Do any of you use mobile internet for something interesting? We would love to hear about it in the comments!

_TheMobileAdmiN_

As a lot of you know I have a baby and I have a full time job. So I do not get to spend as much time with her as I would like to. I have tried setting up Skype Video so that we can see each other.The Tablet that HP hooked me up with also has a built in camera and microphone. But alas little Kayla just want to mash the keyboard… Could it be because of baby Smash? Probably!

So the computer video phone was out of the question, I took a look at stand alone Skype phones like this one but they were too rich for my blood. Then I found something called the OJO Video Phone created by Motorola way back in 2005. They have shown these things on shows like 24 but I never knew what they were.

They used to cost $400 and $20 a month. Now you can find them on eBay for ~$150 and the service is $10 a month.

EDIT I FOUND IT NEW FOR CHEAPER HERE $130:

It is what it says it is – a stand alone video phone that works over broadband. Now i can see my baby whenever I want… She loves it!

Do you have a way to connect with your kids while you are at work? We would love to hear about it in the comments! And those links above are affiliate links so we will see some money if you guys decide to buy anything via our links.

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Did you wait until the last minute to grab your holiday gifts well maybe it wasn’t the worst thing check out these awesome offers from Xbox 360′s to computer parts back to things for the little ones check them out and know that a itty bitty kick back will hit our Commission Junction accout so we can give out some goodies for the holiday season:

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Our buddy over at Bauer-Power was able to install Windows 7 directly from his USB drive. Check out his method below:

I was having some performance issues on my Dell Mini 9 recently and decided to start doing some optimization. One of the things I was going to do was change the Page file settings from system managed, like they are by default, to a static size.

Well, I had filled up my drive, and didn’t have enough room to do that, so I decided to re-build my Dell Mini. Why not? It’s the weekend, and I didn’t have anything important save on it anyway. So like normal, I pull out my external DVD drive that I purchased with my netbook, and began trying to re-install. That is when I started having problems.

This actually happens every time I try to install anything via CD or DVD on the Dell Mini. The external drive that came with it is hit or miss. I looked online, and it appears to be a common issue with the Dell Mini. Let me tell you it is frustrating as hell!

The good news is that I can boot off of a USB stick no problem. In fact, that is how I install my Bauer-Puntu partition on the Dell Mini. What about the Windows half though? Well it turns out it is fairly easy to make a bootable USB Windows 7 install stick!

All you need is a Windows 7 install DVD, and a 4GB USB Flash drive. Don’t have one? You can get a Bauer-Power one here: Bauer-Power 4GB USB

Better yet, you get one for only $10.99 $5.65 from Amazon here: 4GB USB

Once you have your materials, just do the following:

• On another computer, open a command prompt as administrator
• Plug in your 4GB USB thumb drive
• Run DiskPart
• Type List Disk and hit enter (Note the number of your drive, e.g. Disk 1)
• Type Select Disk 1and hit enter (Where 1 is the number of your disk)
• Type Clean and hit enter
• Type Create Partition Primary and hit enter
• Type Select Partition 1 and hit enter
• Type Active and hit enter
• Type Format FS=NTFS and hit enter (This will take a while)
• Type Assign and hit enter
• Type Exit to quit DiskPart

Once that part is complete, keep your command prompt open and pop in your Windows 7 DVD, then do the following from command line:

• Type in F: and hit enter (Where F: is the drive letter of your DVD Drive)
• Type CD Boot and hit enter
• Type Bootsect /NT60 M: (Where M: is the drive letter of your USB Flash drive)

• Now copy the contents of your Windows 7 DVD to your thumb drive and you are ready to install from USB!

After performing the above steps, I recommend creating an image of your install thumb drive so you don’t have to remember all of the above later. To do that just download Roadkil’s Disk Image tool, and save an exact copy of your USB stick to your hard drive some place. If you ever need to use it again, you can re-image your USB stick with the same tool.

Are you a Dell Mini user? Are you having problems with your external DVD drive? Know of an easier tool to create a Windows 7 install USB thumb drive? Hit me up in the comments!

[via Bauer-power ]

Do you use Firefox? Most of our readers do and we all know that 10 open tabs can be highly problematic for our system memory. There have been times I have seen my Firefox get close to 1.5 gigs of memory. That is just unacceptable!

So what do you do? Do you stop using Firefox? Absolutely not!  Will you use Internet Explorer? It is just as big of a resource hog and it causes system crashes as well (well it depends on what version you are using).

I have found a much needed extension to control memory usage in Firefox called Memory Fox. You can grab the installer over here.

So to start, I took a look at my 4 open tabs in Firefox. They are using 256 Megs of memory. No big deal right. But a few hours from now that can balloon up to 4 times what it is. You can see my task manager open below with the Firefox process at the top hogging up my resources.

And that is on a good day! What about my Vista machine at home that ONLY runs Firefox? Take a look at the 1.4 gigs of used memory below. Sheeesh! Apps should not be allowed to do that!!

Read the rest of my post on MakeUseOf.com

Hey they Twitter fans! How do you keep up with all your tweets and what not while you are on the go? Do you use the mobile version of their website? How last year!

I have recently become addicted to The Twitter. Don’t laugh it can happen to you! And now I am using a mobile application to keep up with tweets on the go. That special something is called Twikini which can be found and downloaded from here http://twikini.en.softonic.com/windowsmobile/download. It might be a strange name, but it is an awesome application. Easy to use and master.

Install the application to your phone / device in whatever manner floats your boat

Next up you will see a new icon on your start menu. See mine at the bottom of this screen shot below:

Once you start up the application it will build your time line and depending on your preferences it will display the appropriate amount of tweets on your screen. You can see my recent activity below categorized by how long ago it was tweeted. These tweets are from my account (in case you want to follow me) http://www.twitter.com/karlgechlik

You can click on Menu and My Info to see your information including how many followers you have as well as how many people you are following. You can see your website and description you entered in your twitter profile.

You can see the people you are following and their stats. Click on one of them to bring up their profile.

Looking at Twikini’s options you can control not only how many tweets you see but what you want to see on start up. You can see replies, tweets with @yourusername and much more. You have the option to use Skweezer for web pages that you click on from within Twikini. There is a check box to download images – tip: if you are not on an unlimited data connection you should uncheck this check box and save some bytes and money!

You can see what Twikini caches by clicking on the cache option. You see the directory where the cache data is stored. For me it is in my phones memory so I can keep a close eye on it. You can clear the directory from this screen if your memory is hurting you!

You will also find advanced options like tweeting your current playing song or your GPS location. I tried out these features and do not think I am ready to bombard my readers with them – at least not just yet! If you give them a go let us know in the comments.

All in all I have just gotten into Twitter in the last 3 months. All I can say is if you find the right people to follow you will be addicted. No seriously 3 months ago I would have told you that you were plain out nuts if you said I would be looking for and reviewing a mobile Twitter client! I didn’t even know what a re-tweet was.

Adam Pash from Lifehacker has just put us on that Boxee’s new Beta is available on the interwebs! Don’t go trampling your siblings on the way to grab that torrent!

If you liked what you saw when Boxee previewed their new private beta release and don’t quite have the patience to wait for the beta to officially open up to the public in January, you can now grab Boxee Beta from BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay.

Let us know what you think of it – if you download it!

[Boxee Beta BitTorrent Download via LifeHacker]

We were lucky enough to have HP send us a HP Mini 5101 net book to play with. It has followed me around everywhere for the last month. I used a Mobile Broadband Card provided by Verizon for my Internet access and connectivity. I have been able to remote desktop into all of my servers, surf the web, connect via VPN to my corporate network, easily use Skype for speaking to my daughter via the built in Camera and Microphone.

This little guy weighs about 3 pounds putting my 4.3 pound tablet in it’s place (Docked at home). But some of the features of this 1.66 ghz Atom Processor toting machine are very impressive.

The machine is made from metal and not plastic meaning it is rugged. It is scratch proof and has a water resistant keyboard (which is almost full sized), it has a hard drive protection scheme which allows for the hard drive to be locked if it falls – protecting your data (Not the computer!)

So a ruggedized net book in a home with a 2 year old how did it hold up you ask?

Very well! She absolutely loved it. She did try to touch the screen a lot but she has gotten used to touch screens so she can not be faulted! She drooled on it without any issues – she also could not pick off the keys which are recessed making them more resistant to dust and what not which is great for many reasons. This thing is very durable and I didn’t put a scratch or dent in my adventures with it.

As an added bonus it looks like my day job is going to be grabbing a few of these guys for our sales reps being so cheap and all…

Here are the specs of the mini I had:

Price as reviewed
$425 (Can be found for ~350 now.)

Processor
1.66GHz Intel Atom N280

Memory
1GB, 800MHz DDR2

Hard drive
160GB 5,400rpm

Chipset
Mobile Intel 945GM Express

Graphics
Intel GMA 950 (integrated)

Operating System
Windows XP

Dimensions (WD)
10.2×7.1 inches

Height
.95-1.1 inches

Screen size

10.1 inches

System weight

2.9

_ThePortableAdmiN_

My coworker showed me something interesting today. Before I break it down to you, let me give you a little background of Antivirus. The way it is now, you have Antivirus software, and so do many other people on the internet. If one of them gets infected, a sample of the infection goes back to the Antivirus company’s lab where they reverse engineer it, see what makes it tick, then they release an update for everyone else to remove the infection. Sometimes this process can take a month or two to get out.

Well to remedy the problem, Panda Labs is releasing a free Cloud Antivirus. First of all, why free? Because the more people that have this Antivirus, the better. Why is that? Because Panda has essentially done away with the lab portion of it, and made us the users, the virtual lab. If one of us gets infected, all other users get notified and protected in a matter of minutes rather than waiting for an update from a software company lab. Here is a video from Panda that explains it way better than I can:

So what do you think? The idea sounds like a good one to me. I think I will run it on my laptop for a while to test it out. Will any of you try it? Are you trying it now? How well do you like it? Hit us up in the comments!

Post written by El Di Pablo of Bauer-Power.Net

Happy Veterans Day Loyal Readers! Today I have 20 Google Wave invites for the taking. Just leave a comment on this post as to why you deserve an invite and the top 20 will receive our invites. The only limitation is that one user can not win more than once.

Our winner of the Touch Smart PC from HP was notified today – Michael get back to me with your shipping address, your application just won you a freaking computer! Congratulations go to you and your family. My little daughter loved this machine so much (touching the sesame street characters and watching videos, painting drawing and just click click clicking around! I can’t wait for you to send in some pictures with the machine.

The HTML application with a little bit of flash was awesome and has actually been incorporated in a store in NYC! We have also purchased 2 more touch smarts for my home and office! These things are the wave of the future. I cant wait to get a 50" incher to match! Talk about interactive television. I am sure we will be seeing more incarnations of this and similar products from HP in the future. We will keep you posted.

And on that front I just received a HP Mini Net book yesterday and might I say it is sleek and awesome. Full reviews and pictures coming – stay tuned boys and girls!

_TheChillingAdmiN_

Hey Hey Hey! This Touch Smart contest opened my eyes to a whole new platform – the large touch screen computer platform. We have been running a contest sponsored by Hewlett Packard. We are giving away a FREE Touch Smart machine to a lucky individual or company.

All of our submissions are in and the we are leading towards a submission that automates a front desk at a Computer Shop and the entry of a reception area machine that can take the place of a secretary!

We still have about 30 more entries to review but we are really pleasantly surprised with all of your creativity. Strangely enough the two submissions that we are mulling over are both written in HTML and Flash! This shows what a awesome platform this is and how it can be leveraged for your business.

In addition we ran out and bought two of the Touch Smart DX9000’s for the office.

Stay tuned loyal AtA fans and find out who will win!

Have you been browsing around YouTube from your Media Center connected to your TV or some other web enabled device that is shown on your big screen?

If you have you have noticed that the site is far from optimized for your huge display. Google has heard all your belly aching and have super sized YouTube for you TV.!

So if you got an itching to play some YouTube videos on your TV now is as good a time as any to try it out. YouTube XL is another interface for accessing YouTube. You can find it here: http://www.youtube.com/xl

As you can see above the site’s format gives you a much easier time to click on icons or links that actually fill up the entire screen. When I tried this out on my tablet connected to my Toshiba 52” flat panel it was a breeze to navigate and play videos. It was love at first site!

I did a quick search by selecting the search box in the upper right hand corner away from all the other links and typed in Eminem.

My results were shown in an easy to choose format and playing a video was just as easy. I selected the top result and I was on to watching my video…

The controls are easy to use as they are also large and in charge

You can do anything here you can do on YouTube and it is a great user experience for us big screen YouTube watchers! Thanks for listening Google/YouTube! Any one have any other requests? Shout us out in the comments!

I was fortunate enough to receive an invitation into Google Wave shortly after the initial 100,000 invititations went out last month. Initially, I was a bit overwhelmed and did not really know where to begin or what to do. Bwana was kind enough to engage in a real-time wave with me, and show me around a bit. Afterwards, I began to see the potential. However, I think there are many reasons why Google Wave still is not ready for prime-time.

Lack of Access Control

Google Wave does not have any sort of access control for managing waves and wave participants:

• Anyone can be added to a wave by a participant in the wave.
• Any wave participant can add a bot to the wave (because bots are simply treated as participants).
• It is not possible to remove participants (except for bots) from a wave.
• Anyone can modify any part of the wave.

Here is what I think Google Wave needs to implement to resolve the access control issues:

• Allow the wave creator do add/remove any participant from a wave.
• Allow the wave creator to assign/modify the following permissions that can be set at the wave and participant level:
  • Permission to add bots to the wave.
  • Permission to invite other participants to the wave.
  • Permission to remove participants from the wave.
  • Read-only or read/write access to the wave.
  • Permission to grant/modify each (or all) permissions for other participants and/or the entire wave.

Without access control, things can quickly get out of hand if you are trying to work on a collaborative project that is only intended for certain people. Even if you do manage to maintain control as to who has access to a wave, you may only want to allow certain people permission to perform certain functions.

Image Credit: Brandon Lowery

Poor Contact Management

When you click on the Manage contacts link in Google Wave, you are taken to Google Contacts. Unfortunately there is hardly any correlation between what you see in your Google Contacts and what you see in your Google Wave contact list. Although everyone in your Google Wave contacts list has a @googlewave.com “address” (it is not an email address although it looks like one), within Google Contacts you’ll see no addresses with googlewave.com.

If you want to remove someone from your Google Wave contacts, you have to remove them from your Google Contacts. This may not be something you want to do, as you may wish to keep them in your Google Contacts and remove them from your Google Wave contacts or vice versa. Either Google Wave needs its own contact management, or Google Contacts needs to incorporate functionality for managing Google Wave contacts.

Image Credit: Hannes Grobe

Lack of Groups

If you deal with multiple groups of people when you communicate via email, mailing lists are absolutely essential. Google Wave has no way to group your contacts together to build the equivalent of mailing lists. Without such a function, you have to manually add each and every participant you want on a wave. Not only is this a major inconvenience, but you may omit someone that needs to be a wave participant or add someone that should not be a participant.

Google Wave needs to implement groups. Perhaps it can be incorporated as part of the improved contact management I’ve suggested, or implemented as a separate feature. Regardless, it should also become a part of access control. That way access control can be set and modified at a wave, group, and participant level.

Image Credit: lumaxart

Lack of “Legacy Support”

You cannot expect someone to abandon a very well-established legacy technology (email) without providing reverse compatibility and legacy support. The world cannot and will not just drop email in favor of Google Wave without an interim solution that supports both technologies. The fact that Google Wave addresses do have the same appearance as email addresses does seem to indicate there may be plans to allow Google Wave accounts to receive email.

It is very inconvenient having to check communications from multiple sources rather than having it all in one place. This is the reason why I have all my email forwarded to one single Gmail account. I also take advantage of the Gmail feature that allows you to send email from other accounts.

Google Wave needs to incorporate features to allow users to send and receive email if it is to receive the kind of wide-scale adoption Google seems to believe it is capable of achieving. If I could just forward all of my email to my Google Wave account, receive all my communication in one place, and send emails from Google Wave as well, I would seriously consider using solely Google Wave.

Image Credit: ePublicist

Lack of Revision Control

Revision control is absolutely essential for working in a collaborative environment. The need eventually arises where it is necessary to revert to a previous version of a document. Wikis provide this capability as do a variety of software development source control solutions. Google Wave needs revision control.

Google Wave does have something resembling revision control with the Playback functionality. However, you can only see the progression of a wave from start to finish, and you cannot revert to any of the frames in between. It would appear that some of the plumbing is already there for revision control, it just needs to be implemented.

I’ve seen many situations in public waves where revision control was needed. Sometimes someone unwittingly adds a bot that overwrites the initial blip, wiping away hours of hard work in the blink of an eye. Someone may also intentionally sabotage a wave, removing a lot of valid and important information that must subsequently be manually recovered or rewritten.

It would be best to have revision control in Google Wave at a blip level, rather than at a wave level. One may wish to revert to a previous version of a blip within a wave, without losing the changes that have taken place within other blips and the rest of the wave.

Image Credit: VisualPharm

Final Thoughts

Google Wave is a good tool for communication and collaboration. It has many impressive features and capabilities. However, as you can see by the headings in this article, the problem is that it is lacking many key features for wide-scale adoption. Given that the current Google Wave is just a preview, it is likely that these missing features and others will eventually make it into the final product.

[Jorge Sierra via GeekLad]

If you are looking for an invite drop us a line and when we get some more we will pass them around like a good old 40 ounce :)

A friend of mine was going on a trip and asked me if he could borrow my dusty PSP. I said sure thing. I got it and a 8GB Memory Stick for him along with my car charger and speakers. I handed him the package and he looked at me like a deer caught in headlights and said:

“What you don’t have any videos for me to watch? I have about an hour and a half to kill each way hook me up!

I did have a crap load of new video files but nothing that was converted to play on the PSP. Yeah that sucks. But I remembered a little application I had seen that would allow my friend to convert these videos himself – and easily.

This application is so simple anyone can use it that can click a mouse!

I burned the video files for him and a little program called EncodeHD. I downloaded the 5.5MB Zip file, Extracted and ran the EncodeHD.exe file.. He was almost ready to rock and roll.

I decided to show him how to use the application before he left and took screenshots of my actions for everyone to follow along. Before we get started I should tell you guys how it works. This awesomely easy front end launched these 3 great tools without you having to know how they work:

1. FFmpeg
2. Atomic Parsley
3. MP4Box from the GPAC Project

With that said let’s see how she works!

The application is totally portable so there is no installation necessary. After launching the exe you will see a window like the one below. Select what type of device you have and want to convert your media for.

Drag and drop your media files into the window below like so:

If your computer can play it – EncodeHD can convert it! The advanced options are pretty simple but this is also where you can find the log file – if something goes wrong.

Check the box to specify an output folder if you do not want to write it to your source folder. You can select your PSP drive if it is connected to write the videos directly to your device so you do not have to copy them later. In this instance I am writing to a folder called EncodeHD on my D:\ drive.

Then simply hit start and you are on your way!

It seemed to take about half as long as the video to convert. So for example a hour episode of something took about 26 minutes to convert. Mileage will vary depending on your hardware!

EncodeHD will batch run each file and when it is complete you can happily watch your media anywhere you want it!

How do you convert your media? Do you have something that is even easier than this? We would love to hear about it in the comments!

We have all see those expensive keyboards with keys on them that launch your email, favorite websites, applications and can even tweak volume controls. Now we aren’t going to run out and drop some duckets on a new keyboard to get some hotkeys… But what if I told you that you can duplicate that functionality and designate keys that are not frequently used on your machine as hotkeys for specific actions?

Sounds awesome right? And it is! Let’s take a look at Keyboard Tweaker from Buturga Alex.

I started by downloading the 732kb zip file containing the installer. I know everything has been portable lately but this needs to be installed. We can see that the install will only use 1.5 mb of space on your hard drive and it’s memory footprint is also very small. But we will take a look at that in a little bit.

Once the install is complete you can check a check box to have it launched automatically or load it up from your start menu. Once it is launched you will see this screen and a new System Tray icon.

That is the system tray icon it looks like a cross between a bowling ball and a smiley face. When the bowling ball starts winking at you – it will become apparent that it is a smiley face! Right clicking on the icon will give you two options to either show or exit the application.

Once you have the console open you can start tweaking your keyboard. I first tried to modify some of the commands the author included. The first example is Control + Shift + E – this will open and email message in your default email client to the recipient in the hotkey. I changed his address to mine by highlighting the line and modifying it below:

Now when I hit Control + Shift + E – it does this:

Cool so you can test your shortcut by hitting the test button and you apply the changes by hitting the APLLY button. Now what I really wanted to do was to use my function keys as hotkeys. Let’s see how that worked out.

I went back to my console and scrolled down until I found Volume Up. I then modified it to just use F2 like this:

Hitting Test or F2 after clicking APLLY now not only brings up my volume but it also shows it on screen like so:

The possibilities are endless! You can have your machine doing anything at a push of a button. And if you write scripts, batch files or AutoIT scripts – this can launch those as well.

We would love to hear what you are using this or another hot key application for. Put us on in the comments!

When ever I start to think about not remembering a song I think back to that episode of Married With Children, way back when, when Al was trying to remember that song that starts hmmm hmmm himmmm…

Well this service might not have helped him but it can help you!

The way Lyric Rat works is simple you either visit their website – located at http://www.lyricRat.com or if you are a twitter head you can tweet right at LyricRat.

For the scope of this article we will be walking through using the website but according to the Lyric Rat website’s instructions here is how you can use it via twitter:

@LyricRat

Lyric Rat is naming that tune in 140 characters or less on Twitter.

Send a tweet to @LyricRat with some lyrics and the Rat will reply with the song title and artist and a link with more info. Just make sure “@LyricRat” is the first thing in your tweet.

Back to the website. Once you are on the Lyric Rat site you can type in as much of the song as you remember. I started off with an old favorite of mine. A little Jay Z tune from back in the day. I picked PART of a line out of the song and typed it into the query box on the home page. Once I was done I hit the Find The Song button and the rat when out and found my song!

I waited patiently for about 45 seconds as I stared at this spinning flash graphic. It was scouring Amazon I can only imagine utilizing the Bing search engine for lyrics and returning the best hit.

Then it returned what I was looking for… The song is called Dead Presidents (back then it wasn’t called part 1!) . Then after a moment a Amazon MP3 player popped up and let me play the song I was looking for. This is awesome. The only thing it was lacking was the full lyrics of the song. But hey it did find what I was looking for so beggars shouldn’t be choosey!

I decided to try some other songs from other genres like an old song called blister in the sun… This search was quick and returned the correct song, artist and a Amazon MP3 player again allowing me to get my listen on right there in my browser without clicking around.

You can see the MP3 player below. All you have to do is click on the play button or the right arrow and it will start playing. You can also click buy to be sent to Amazon to cop that song. I am sure the software’s author is using affiliate links to make money as the site is FREE. Free as in Free beer!

I was having such a good time I decided to throw a stranger less known song at it from the Spin Doctors. But it had NO PROBLEM finding the song in a jiffy.

Are you stumped? Are you in a bar and fighting about what song that is? Well if so feel free to browse on over to Lyric Rat and solve your problems! Do you have another application that does what Lyric Rat does? Do you know of an off-line solution? We would love to hear about it in the comments!