If you or a little one flipped your laptop display chances are you are freaking out. Stop… Don’t worry you can flip it right back to where it is supposed to be with the following hot keys:

•  Ctrl-Alt-Up – right side up
• Ctrl-Alt-Right – 90 degrees
• Ctrl-Alt-Down – 180 degrees
• Ctrl-Alt-Left – 270 degrees (If that doesn’t work try Ctrl-Shift-R)

_TheUpsideDownAdmiN_

Image via CrunchBase

A while back I mentioned some applications and or plugins I found that will help boost the views you have on a particular Youtube video on Bauer-Power. These methods might be considered by some as shady. I say, if by shady you mean helpful, then yes… Very shady!

All of these tools are fully automated. You can simply set them, and forget them to earn credits which in turn you can trade in for more views. With some of them, not only can you get more views, but you can also get comments, likes, favorites and subscribers! Basically everything you need to be the next Justin Bieber.

Here’s my list:

• Vagex – Terrible name I know. Sounds like something your girlfriend might use when she’s feeling not so fresh. Trust me though, it’s the best one out there. Not only can you get more views, but you can specify key words that you want to rank for in Youtube’s search. Plus you can get likes, favs, comments and subs as well.
• U2BViews – This is number two on my list. This is available as a desktop application as well as a Firefox extension. They are getting ready to add likes, favs and subs, but they do not have it yet. I’ve also chatted with the developer and talked them into adding Google Plus One’s as well.
• Viewet – This one is pretty much just like U2BViews, except it’s really only good for more views in my opinion. The thing I like about it is you can manage your credits easier. You can withdraw from one video to deposit on another video.
• Enhanceviews – This one runs as a browser plugin only. This one is great for comments and likes. You can even submit your Youtube account to them to use as they see fit, and earn credits that way. The only thing I don’t like about it though is their credit to view ratio. The ones above are all one to one, but Enhanceviews is something like 38 to one. Still, you can rack up credits pretty fast.

So why would you want to use this I hear you mumbling to yourself, all creepy like. This can best be answered from the Viewet page:

YouTube video views benefit your videos in many different ways. Viewet [and the other tools] increase your video’s ranking for your keywords and tags, increases the chances of your video being featured on a Google search for the keywords on your video, and also can get you video honors and even featured on the YouTube homepage.

If you can make it to the front page of Youtube, you are two clicks away from Bieberdom! Woot!

The best thing about these tools is they are 100% free to use. They all have paid features, but the free versions are robust enough that you don’t need to use them. I find it’s best to set these up on a computer in the corner over the weekend with the sound off, and walk away. The next time you have a video of you cats doing something super cute, use your new secret weapons to push them to the front page.

Got questions about these? Know of any other similar tools? Let’s chat in the comments!

-=El Di Pablo=-

Now, today isn’t going to be one of those days though. Today, I am going to post my latest video from my monthly video show Tech Chop. In this episode I show you three ways you can send spoof emails using your iPhone, Android, and also from Linux. Spoiler alert! Sending spoofs from your iPhone or Android phone is way easier than Linux. However, since you are using the terminal to do it in Linux, that automatically boosts your geek cred by +5 and in turn makes you look cooler.

Here’s the video:

Links for the apps and commands used can be found here: (Spoofing Email For Dummies)

Sending out these spoofs is actually a pretty funny prank you can play on someone. In the video I mentioned sending one to the desktop tech that works for me, and he almost had a heart attack. He says he is saving it for blackmail purposes now, so maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. Anyway, still funny if you ask me.

If you want to check out more videos from Tech Chop, visit TechChop.com. If you want to watch the videos on your TV using a set-top box like Boxee, or Roku, you can catch Tech Chop on the Tech Podcast Network!

Know of other tools that will allow you to send spoofs? Are they easier to use? Let us know about them in the comments!

It is called RRT and can be downloaded from here. Once you run it you will see a screen that looks like this:

Simply check Task Manager and hit Remove. That’s it! Happy Hunting Guys!

_TheTaskManagingAdmiN_

OfficeTab gives your office applications tabs like Firefox introduced to the web way back when. (If you haven’t checked out Firefox 4 yet check out this post on where to find it as a portable application.)

Well if you are not into finding the latest and greatest software you probably never heard of it. But I am hear to show you what it is, how it works and how to grab it. Interested?

Good, I thought that would spark some interest!

Feel free to download OfficeTab from this link here http://hi.baidu.com/officecm/ 

BUT WAIT – the catch is that the site is NOT in English.

So you do not have to go through what I went through trying to figure out how to download this bad boy the direct download link lives here:http://files.cnblogs.com/wangminbai/OfficeTabv1.20.zip.

Which incidentally if you scroll down to the bottom of the product page it is the only link there. So no need for Google Translations today. The actual application IS multilingual so there are no issues there. Let’s take a look at how it works.

After downloading the application you have to install it. You will see a screen that looks like this after the initial next…

Simply check the Microsoft Office Applications you want OfficeTab to work with. I left the only three that showed up checked. I guess you wouldn’t have a real need for it in Access or Outlook… (or would you??)

Finish your install and then check out the settings:

These are the Excel settings which start with the check box to enable the Tabs inside Excel. I left the rest of the settings alone until I really get into using the application.

The other tabs include WordTab and PowerPoint Tab they are essentially identical. But peruse them and see if there is something that tickles your fancy like enabling custom colors, changing the hot key to switch labels and more. If you find a particularly helpful option let us know in the comments.

Hit apply if you change anything and let’s see how it looks in Word:

Wow just like Firefox! Very cool and a lot handier than having to hit the task bar to switch between windows. All you need to do is open multiple files and they will each have there very own tab. Sweet!

let’s see how it works in excel:

It works the exact same way in Excel as it does in Word. And guess what? It works the same exact way in PowerPoint as well. It could not be easier and this really helps my work flow.

Now here is a little hint that you Firefoxer’s will love you can open a new tab the same way you would in Firefox by simply double clicking the area where the new tab would appear. Go ahead and try it – we will wait.

See I told you we would wait. Wasn’t that worth it? For me this is going on all my systems where I use Microsoft Office. What do you think? Will this help you work faster? Do you know of other FREE MS Office Plugins? We would love to give them a try. Go ahead and leave them in comments – I dare you :)

It is as simple as booting to the CD, choosing the account and doing the deed. You write your changes back to the drive and reboot.

When you are back at the Windows login screen you will now be able to use the password you enetered or a blank password (just hit enter)

Here are the links to download the image:

• cd100627.zip (~4MB) – Bootable CD image. (md5sum: 6d80cdfbba97457e413f95a3554d9524 cd100627.zip)
• cd080802.zip (~3MB) – Previous version CD image. (md5sum: 33ecd38263f935b82e7b2e3e9f5de563)

and there is even a Floppy Disk release that is no longer updated:

Floppy release (not updated anymore), see below on how to use them

• bd080526.zip (~1.4M) – Bootdisk image (md5sum: 37889e4c540504e59132bdcdfe7f9bb7)
• drivers1-080526.zip (~310K) – Disk drivers (mostly PATA/SATA) (md5sum: 72ac1731c6ba735d0ac2746a30dbc3ee)
• drivers2-080526.zip (~1.2M) – Disk drivers (mostly SCSI) (md5sum: 30172bec657c85a5f1a0b43601452fb7)

This CD has saved my ass a number of times! Do you have another method of recovering lost passwords? We would love to hear about them in the comments! You can also check out their website for FAQ’s and other helpful hints here.

Have you seen this post on opening a command prompt during a windows install? Using this you can start a recovery install jump to a command prompt and run:

control userpasswords2

and bingo bango you can change your passwords!

_TheUnlockedAdmiN_

Hopefully this will save some users grief over getting rid of the extra clicks.

_TheShortcuttingAdmiN_

Check out the post below:

So I get an email from Disqus the other day like I always do when someone comments on a blog post. Often times if someone posts a link in the comment I get an approval email from Disqus. Most of the time if there is a link it is spam and I mark it as spam via email and I’m on my way, but occasionally someone will post a comment to something very useful, and that is how this article begins!

I received a comment from a reader by the name of Tony Jobson on my article on how to setup SSTP VPN in Windows server 2008. In that article I mentioned how you can get an SSL certificate from GoDaddy for $12.99. I thought that was the best deal in town, but I was wrong!

You can get a FREE, fully functional SSL certificate from StartSSL! Yes, I said free, and it works with most browsers and services! I signed up for a free account, and tested it on my home SSTP VPN, and it worked without issue! I even setup a StartSSL cert on my personal start page for the hell of it! It’s free, why not?

From their page:

What?

Security and encryption is getting ever more important in today’s computer networks, being it SSL secured web sites, encryption of data or mail, secure logon to mention just a few. But security is expensive, right? Not anymore….

StartCom, the vendor and distributor of StartCom Linux Operating Systems, also operates MediaHost™, a hosting company, which offered its clients, SSL secured web sites with certificates signed by StartCom for many years. That’s where the idea originated: Free SSL certificates!

How?

Most web servers, such as Apache and IIS are capable of running the 128/256-bit secured and encrypted SSL protocol. Most mail clients can encrypt and sign your electronic mail messages. All you need, in most cases, is a SSL or S/MIME certificate to make it work. StartCom provides certificates through an easy web based interface wizard and sign up process – free of charge. With our installation instructions, you’ll have your secured web site running or your email exchange secured within minutes.

Why?

Because we believe in the right to protect and secure information between two entities without discrimination of race, origin and financial capabilities. By applying a completely different and new business model compared to traditional certification authorities, we are able to prove here, that digital certificates can cost much less or may be even free of charge! Instantly! Furthermore, every certificate from StartCom is insured up to US$ 10,000 if your customers were to suffer financial loss as a direct result of relying on a certificate that was issued through our negligence! This and other measures permits the visitors and customers of your site to fully rely and trust in StartCom.

Where, when?

The StartCom Certification Authority is today supported by most important platforms like Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh OS X and many Linux operating systems and browsers like Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari and Google’s Chrome provide built-in support. Should you be using an older or unsupported browser you may import our CA certificate.

The next time you or your company are looking to secure a website, create an SSL VPN, setup a simple secure mail server, etc. You don’t have to waste gobs of money when you can get it for free!

Do you or your company use StartSSL? How do you like it so far? Any reason why you wouldn’t want to use them? Let me know in the comments!

This should have been easy. Macs are supposed to be easier to use than Windows machines right? Well no dice. You could not do it with out modifying they system. I tried over and over using VNC, Logmein, PcAnywhere and more…  Everyone of them would open my screen right on up, so anyone walking by could not only watch me work but also move the mouse or type on the keyboard! It was the end of the road when someone type hello into a spread sheet of a Production manager… Sonofabitch!

I found a hack courtesy of ArtOfGeek and added my Vine VNC server and a new port for the win!  My favorite quote from the article has to be:

I know, enough with the chatter, get on with the tutorial! Just follow these steps and you’ll be locking your Mac running Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard like it’s running Windows XP! Wait, did I just write that? Shudder. Sorry, I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.

Here is the nitty gritty for ya:

1. Open Automator (in your Applications folder) and choose Service from the list of templates provided and click the Choose button.
2. In the left hand column under Library, select Utilities.
3. In the second column, drag “Run Shell Script” to the right hand pane.
4. At the top of the right hand pane where you dragged the Run Shell Script action, click on the menu next to “Service receives” and choose “no input”.
5. Copy and paste the following Terminal command into the empty text area of the Run Shell Script action:
   

   /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend

   The entire command should be entered on a single line and note there is a space after “/Menu\”.

   

   Completed Automator action, ready to save (click to enlarge)

6. Choose File–>Save, and give the new service a meaningful name like “Lock Computer” that will appear in the Services menu. Once you’ve done that, you can go to the Services menu (located in the current application menu, next to the Apple menu) and your newly created service should appear there.
7. Next open System Preferences –> Keyboard –> Keyboard Shortcuts and select Services in the left column.

   

   Setting the keyboard shortcut (click to enlarge)

8. Scroll down to the bottom and under the General category, you should see your newly created service listed there. Select it, then Double-click close to the right side of the selected line to reveal a field where you can enter a custom keyboard shortcut. Enter an easy to remember but unique keyboard shortcut (I decided to go with ctrl+option+command+L), and then quit System Preferences.

That’s it! Go ahead and test your keyboard shortcut!  That locked your screen right? Now you can install Vine VNC Server on your machine change the port that it is listening on to 1111 or something other than 5900. Connect to your Vine server using UltraVNC using the IP address and the port like this 192.168.1.1:1111. That will keep your Mac locked and allow you to log into your machine keeping the screen locked. If you try to lock the screen and log in on port 5900 (built in screen sharing) you will arrive at the login screen and defeat the purpose of this hack!

You can read the full post at ArtOfGeek here

_TheMacinAdmiN_

Most people don’t realize that a well formed web query is just as good as asking the right person the right question at the right time. Google, for most people, is just that person. Some of the more complicated queries actually do warrant your newb friends to ask you for a good set of query terms, even using the more advanced search modifiers.

But most of the questions I have to field during my day to day are questions that could have been easily answered, had the person asking put some thought or effort into it. Questions such as “what’s the url for ask the admin?”

We all know that’s a stupid question. Ask The Admin prides itself on being very search engine friendly, especially when looking for the site itself!

Enter Let Me Google That For You, or more easily LMGTFY.com. This nifty little service allows you to perform the search for your friend or colleague who just cant form the words together themselves. But instead of giving your dear friend a fish, so to speak, you’re actually giving your friend a fishing pole. You’re basically telling them, “You could have googled this yourself, look how simple it could have been for you. You could have completely avoided bothering me during my busy day.”

So, to answer the question above “What’s the url for Ask The Admin?”

browsing over to http://lmgtfy.com/?q=asktheadmin.com yields a search page resembling googles.

Except now, when you search , it provides you a tinyurl, which you can send back to your inquisitive friend rather than the url of the actual search result.

Click to see sample results here

Nifty right?

-enjoy

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

Don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS Feed here.

I read this yesterday via Slashdot regarding an Australian man who leaked the latest Super Mario Brothers game for the Nintendo Wii to the interwebs before the game was released. Check it out:

“A Queensland man will have to pay Nintendo $1.5 million in damages after illegally copying and uploading one of its recent games to the internet ahead of its release, the gaming giant says. Nintendo said the loss was caused when James Burt made New Super Mario Bros Wii available for illegal download a week ahead of its official Australian release in November of last year. Nintendo applied for and was granted a search order by the Federal Court, forcing Burt to disclose the whereabouts of all his computers, disks and electronic storage devices in November. He was also ordered to allow access, including passwords, to his social networking sites, email accounts and websites.”

So now that Nintendo did this publicly what do they hope to accomplish? Do they think they will actually see the 1.5 million dollars that this normal dude has to pay? Or did they alert THE WORLD to the fact that you do not have to pay for Nintendo WII games? The system has been hacked a long while ago but I did not think that was common knowledge – guess what?

It is now! What do you think? We would love to hear your opinion in the comments. Does this make you scared to download torrents or hack your hardware? Not Us over here!

_TheWiiPlayingAdmiN_

You ever have a conversation with someone, or perhaps stood in front of a group of people and in the middle of whatever you are talking about, someone gets up and walks out. It hurts a little, and is rather rude. Well, unfollowing people is sort of like that.

Granted, sometimes it is warranted. I mean, I have posted about tools to do mass unfollows to keeps your Twitter stream nice and fresh, but you don’t want people unfollowing you right? I mean, you are not a spam bot, so people should stick around to hear what you have to say right? Double standard much? That is besides the point.

Well, here are two tools that will snitch when someone unfollows you so you know who the jerks are:

• Goodbyebuddy: Goodbyebuddy will DM you when someone unfollows you. So far they claim to have busted over 2759413 unfollowers. To use this service, all you have to do is follow @GoodByeBuddy.
• Twitterless.com: Twitterless tells you who stops following you and graphs your follower history over time, making this info available in a variety of useful views. Once again, all you have to do is follow them to get started. @tless.

Know of any other Twitter tools to give you the goods on those walking out on you? Let us know in the comments!

[Via  Bauer-Power.net]

Here you go little Johnny Command Line:

• Computer Management – compmgmt.msc
• Component Services – comexp.msc
• Disk Managment – diskmgmt.msc
• Device Manager – devmgmt.msc
• Disk Defrag – dfrg.msc
• Event Viewer – eventvwr.msc
• Group Policies – gpedit.msc
• Local Security Settings – secpol.msc
• Local Users and Groups – lusrmgr.msc
• Performance Monitor – perfmon.msc
• Resultant Set of Policies – rsop.msc
• Shared Folders – fsmgmt.msc
• Services – services.msc

And for the n00bs hit Start—Run—type anyone of these commands (include the .msc extension) and viola… Console Magic

_TheConsoleLovinAdmiN_

Ok, so it really doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen.  Yeah, drat, your mouse has broken after you used it by accident on top of that peanut butter smudge on your desk.  Here’s an obscure yet real windows tool you can use to make your keyboard act as a mouse until you get that replacement.   To do this, you push at the same time, Alt+Left shift key + NumLock . You’ll get a pop-up window saying to

1) Use Mouse Keys, click OK

2) Cancel MouseKeys, click CANCEL

3) Deactivate, click settings….blah, blah blah.

When you get the popup you can click the settings button and customize the feature as well.

How many of you knew about this? We all knew about the OSK I wrote about here but not this one!

Kerry is a wanna-be geek who periodically writes on the the AskTheAdmin website.  Her favorite website is callcatalog.com which is a reverse phone lookup website that allows you to do a reverse phone number lookup.

One item that Windows XP users will have to understand is the location of the Startup folder in Windows 7. For you Vista veterans, you can go about your day, because it is in the same place in Vista as Windows 7. For you XP folks, who haven’t played with Vista or Windows 7 Beta, I’ll give you the low down.

In Windows 7 the location of your personal startup folder is:

%systemdrive%\users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

For all users, you will find the startup folder in:

%systemdrive%\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

I hope this little tid-bit of info helps in your transition!

Know of any other good Windows 7 tips/tricks? Hit us up in the comments!

Written by El Di Pablo of Bauer-Power.

Thanks El Di Pablo!

_TheNeedSleepAdmin_

I get a lot of questions about how to “lock down” workstations.

So, in the next series of tips, I’m going to give you some little strategic “base hits” for doing that.

Indeed, there’s s not a “magic bullet” toward true desktop lockdown. And, well, I also know SOME people tend to go “overboard” once they start tasting the sweet, sweet taste of “users not bothering them anymore.”

But, let’s (collectively) try not to go bananas as we implement some of these strategies. (What? People dealing with ‘Policy Control’ can sometimes go bananas once they start locking things down? Never!)

The Tip: Replacing your shell

So, in this first tip, I want to share a neat secret. Did you know you can “replace the shell” ? It’s true. You don’t NEED to use Explorer as your shell. How about “Calc” ?

Yep.. Login, and… Calc. Or Solitaire. Or, DogFoodMaker. That’s it. The only app running. Nothing else.

It’s possible.

Step 1: Choosing your shell

The policy is found under:

User | Policies | Administrative Templates | System | Custom User Interface

Enter in “c:\windows\system32\calc.exe” to try.

(I’m using hard coded paths, but you might want to use variables.)

Step 1A: A more useful shell

A more useful thing to do would be Internet Explorer, say, for cafeteria, library machines, and others.

Try entering in this (using quotes)
“C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe”

Step 2: Locking down your desktop a little bit

We want to make it so users cannot use task manager, or lock out the machine. Thankfully those options are located under:

User | Policies | Administrative Templates | System | CTL+ALT+DEL Options

You might also want to Turn off Windows hotkeys:

User | Administrative Templates | Windows Comp | Windows Explorer | ?Turn off Windows+X hotkeys?

Step 3: Lock down IE to your liking

There are a zillion options here. But some of my top favorites are

User | Administrative Templates | Windows Components | Internet Exp. | Browser Menus |

“File Menu: Disable open menu option”

and

“File menu: Disable closing the browser and Explorer windows”

Other areas to explore and control are the: Toolbars and Internet Control Panel sections.

Now, you’ve quickly taken a machine, and made it “IE only” and “pretty well locked down.”

It’s not perfect. Users could still get to, say, the command prompt by typing in
“c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe” into the browser window.

But you’re almost home now, and that’s a pretty good start. Do you have group policy tips, tricks and how to’s to share? Well then hit up the comments and make yourself heard!

Written by Jeremy Moskowitz of GPanswers.com

I don’t know how I never found this one before… Check it out you have your quick launch buttons displayed next to your start menu for easy access.

By default you have Show Desktop, IE and whatever other applications you installed. Now you obviously know that if you single click on any of these icons the appropriate app launches.

Common knowledge right?

So instead of installing launcher programs if you just need easy access to a few apps put them in your quick launch menu and make sure it is being displayed because if you can’t see it you sure can’t launch it!

UPDATE: It works even when the toolbar is hidden!

Here’s the simple trick:

1) Open the calculator (or any microsoft program)

2) Push F1 or the “help topics” button

3) Select the icon on the top, left corner.  Its the one that has a magnifying glass on it.

4) Select the “Jump to URL” link

5) Enter the link you want in the field, eg “http://www.cnn.com”

Any other cool ways to surf that you can think of?

Kerry enjoys writing about a variety of topics.  Her favorite website is CallCatalog.com which is a reverse phone number directory website that allows you to lookup and report unwanted phone calls.  You can also read her blog which discusses phone number privacy issues.

Fortunately, windows has an option that allows you to get one step closer to avoiding those very annoying lockups.  This isn’t a cure-all, but can be helpful.  This only requires a simple tweak to your registry. Here’s how….  (note: I always make a backup of my registry before making changes, so I recommend you do this first but not required).

1) Go To Regedit: Start -> Run ->  Type: Regedit

2) Find the correct directory: HKey_Current_User -> Control Panel -> Desktop

3) Find the correct file: Look on the right side and scroll down to find WaitToKillAppTimeout.  You’ll notice that this likely says 20000 today.  That’s the time in miliseconds that it waits before it stops an application that has locked up.  That’s 20 seconds!  But we’ll change that…..

4)  Modify the File: Double click on WaitToKillAppTimeout.  You’ll then get a new window that allows you to edit the “Value Data”.  I changed mine to 1000 (1 second).  Then click “OK” to complete the modification.

5) Close out of the registry. Click the big x on the top upper right.

6) You’re done….

One step closer to a finely tuned machine.

Kerry enjoys writing about a variety of topics.  Her favorite website is CallCatalog.com which is a reverse phone directory website that allows you to lookup and report unwanted phone calls.  You can also read her blog which discusses phone number privacy issues.

Hit F7 and you will get a complete list of commands that you executed. Use the arrow keys to highlight the command you want to run again or just hit the number key corresponding to the command that you want to execute.

History keys

Use F1 to paste the previous command one character at a time, F2 (followed by a number) to paste the previous command up to the said number and F3 to paste the previous command.

Run multiple commands

You can run multiple command by separating them with &&. Note that this doesn’t run the commands simultaneously. Instead, the command towards the left is run first and if it completes successfully then the second command will run. If the first command fails, then the second command will not run

Check out these and other great Command Line Tips from Varun over at MakeUseOf.com here:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-windows-command-line-tips-tricks-you-should-definitely-check-out/

_TheRunningOutOfTimeAdmiN_

How can you create a good, well written, and secure password that you can remember — yet avoids the situation above?  Here’s a simple, cool password trick.

1) Find a password you like, for example my dog’s name Barkie

2) Replace one or two letters with a number or character. In this case Barkie becomes B@rk1e <– here’s your primary password.  I used the replacement characters @=a and 1=i, but you can do any other combination.

3) Make your custom password. Any time you visit a new website where you need to register and create a password, use the website’s name as a prefix to your password.  My preference is the first 5 characters of the website name is its easy to remember, but you can use any number of characters.  For example, if I register at AskTheAdmin.com, I would use as a password askth_B@rk1e.

And so you have it, a custom password for every website.

Kerry enjoys writing about a variety of topics.  Her favorite website is CallCatalog.com which is a reverse phone directory website.  You can also read her blog which discusses personal privacy issues.

Around my network we don’t have ANY user accounts called Administrator or Admin – Period.

Why you might ask?

Well for starters it’s a HUGE security risk!  Let’s look at it like this. If a hacker wants to try and gain access to your machine the first thing they will do after a port scan is try and find your administrator password.

Most of the time automated scans search for weak passwords on commonly named administrator accounts including: Root, Administrator, Admin and foreign variations on them. If the potential attacker does not know what the account is called then they will have a MUCH harder time gaining admin access.

I learned way back when in school to not only rename my real administrator account but to create another account called Administrator with limited access.

This creates Honeypot of sorts. For a great example of Honeypot’s and snooping on the snoops check out this article on using Spector.

Why is it called a honey pot? Good question read this answer below:

Winnie the Pooh is a big fan of honey. In fact, he loves it so much that he will often get his paws and even his face stuck in the honey pot! In the computer world, a Honey Pot is a computer (or network of computers) designed to detect and monitor hackers. The idea is that the hacker will be lured in and trapped by the honey pot.

Now I don’t go crazy and give this sudo admin account  an easy password either, after all the unauthorized user gains a small bit of access to your network that they did not have before. This is not what want. We want them to spend their time and resources looking for information that really doesn’t help them. And in the process your intrusion prevention services should catch them in the act.

So really password protect your fake administrator account. Let them spin their gears getting something that is no where near as critical as if they got your real account – you know the one you just renamed honeyp0t :)

This works on any operating system where you can rename your administrator account. Do you have other tips or tricks for securing your servers? Let us know in the comments! Put your fellow admin’s on!

_TheHoneyLovingAdmiN_

Now that I have jumped deep into the pool that is Apple I have discovered some tricks that those fan boys don’t want you to know.

I am going to combine two of them into one tip for you out there in AtA land.

The two tricks are - reading ANY MAC disk on your PC or from within BootCamp. And the other is to use Mac’s fancy smancy ultra insecure target disk mode to turn a MAC of your choosing into nothing more than a glorified firewire drive sans security!

First we start with simple image of a leaf:Double click the “Background” and then hit enter when the dialog pops up. You should now have a transparency capable layer which is ready to have it’s fat trimmed, the layer name should change from “Background” to “Layer 0″:We then take out our trusty magic wand tool and select the white around the leaf by clicking the white part around the leaf. In this cased I’ve used a tolerance of 80 to produce a decent result. You can play around with the tolerance depending on the image you choose to work with to get the selection border where you need it. In this case, our subject image has a dark shadow. Our tolerance of 80 has allowed the selection form to come in closer to the leaf, eliminating most of the shadow from the inside of the selection border as shown in the following image:Hit delete to produce the following:

At this point you have a choice of filling in your own background color, in Photoshop and saving for web as a jpeg, or you can save for web as a transparent gif and apply matting in the intended target’s background color of your choice. In the following example I want to put the leaf on a blue background on my intended destination for this graphic. I do this buy removing the selection I already have by clicking anywhere in the work window with a marquee tool, or pressing ctrl-D for “deselect.” I then go to File menu, Save For Web and save with the following options:

Hit the save button, name your file and give it a home. That’s It. Now this isn’t the most professional or precise way of doing this, but if you need a quick easy design flow control with image backgrounds, this is the 5-step, 5-minute move to get you on your way.

Enjoy!
Commodore64 (The one you used to play Bruce Lee on)

Speedup Your PC 2 – video powered by Metacafe

They include TweakVI (http://www.totalidea.com/) , TweakVista (www.tweakvista.com/tweakvistautility), and VistaBootPRO (http://www.vistabootpro.org/). And don’t forget about Windows ReadyBoost, which lets you use a removable flash memory drive to boost system memory.

Are you using any of these apps or Ready Boost on your Vista Machine? Let us know in the comments!

Boys and Girls Thank The Gizmodo:

Richard Baguley, chief cellular ninja over at WirelessInfo.com, just
published a number that, when called, turns your iPhone into a mobile field testing
station. Suddenly, up pops a new menu (as you can see on our own iPhone at left)
that provides detailed reporting on strengths and characteristics of the cell
towers in your area, plus a load of other nerdy networky factoids. In other
words, you can see things that AT&T might not want you to
see.

What’s cool is that you can even enter field test mode during a
call just by tapping the iPhone’s “Add Call” icon, then the field test number.
But before I give you this magic number, it is my duty to share Richard’s
warning.

NOTE: Although it seems that most of the information is read-only
(so you can’t change anything), field modes like this have the potential to
damage your phone and possibly interfere with the phone network. We are
providing this information as-is; we cannot be held responsible if anything you
do in this field mode damages your phone or the phone network.

There, now that the warning is out of the way, here you
go:

*3001#12345#*

Dial that, and have fun fiddling. If you do discover anything
freaky, please report back to us, and, of course, to Richard. If you whack out
your iPhone in the process, don’t come crying to me