A young man of 19 years old, broke into a house in West Virginia recently and stole two diamond rings worth about $3500. This wouldn’t seem like a big news story except before this young criminal left the home, he checked into his Facebook account… and then left the computer screen on and signed into his account, before fleeing.

Needless to say, he was not hard to find and now faces 1 to 10 years in prison.

An important note to our readers, while this story is comical – there are some safety precautions you should take with your Facebook page. The young criminal in this story knew the victim (and their information) through another Facebook friend.

Be careful with what you post on your social networking sites, especially if you will be out of town.

Named “Outbreaks Near Me” – the app is designed to alert users of disease information. The mobile version even allows participation; for example, if a clinic is noticing a high number of similar cases or something unusual, they can submit that information to the system via this app.

The creators, Clark Freifeld and his HealthMap partner, John Brownstein aren’t sure exactly what will happen with this app but figure it’s best to “just put it out there” and let the users decide.

For more information – read the complete article at Wired.com

• Get rid of the “vampires” -vampire power is the energy your appliances and technology use, even when they are not on. Just turning it off is not enough, try unplugging it altogether. Vampire power can create an extra 5%-10% increase in utility bills. The worst offenders are anything with a remote and plasma screen televisions. Interesting..

• Another great idea is to “e-cycle” your old technology. E-cycling is the act of disposing of your old gadgets in an approved and environmentally sound way.  See “Where Old Technology Goes” for more information about the process.

• And finally, don’t forget about good old recycling in the original form of recycling papers, printing on both sides of the paper and sending your used toner bottles back to the manufacturer for proper disposal and reuse.

A good point was made by one of our Now IT Works friends – why isn’t every day Earth Day? Let’s keep that in mind and save our planet!

I’m thrilled to send you to an article written by one of our technicians, Jason, who wrote a great post about Twitter and some of the tools that hare available, such as TwitterFeed and TWhirl.

Click here to be redirected to his website – www.lostoutlaw.net

And once you get your own Twitter account up and running, don’t forget to follow Now IT Works at: http://twitter.com/NowITWorks

Including tips on subjects such as; avoiding email blasting, observing boundaries and networking the smart way – this article has some great tips for setting yourself apart in these tough times.

(Source: Tech News World)

Many of our own users do not log off properly, some keep the same password for years while others have left their computers logged in so long, they have “forgotten” the password. These are dangerous behaviors as they can expose the actual computer, the employee or the entire business open to the evils that lurk when it comes to technology.

Read the article to see more… “Why You Should Always Log Out” by Jeff Rosenberg

(this link is Safe for Work but other links on the website might not be. Please use your own discretion)

According to its website, “SecurAble probes the system’s processor to determine the presence, absence and operational status of three modern processor features:

• 64-bit instruction extensions,
• Hardware support for detecting and preventing
  the execution of code in program data areas, … and
• Hardware support for system resource “virtualization.”

Here is the site to download -  http://www.grc.com/securable.htm

It also goes in-depth about Hardware DEP – fun stuff!

 
So- what’s in the rar?*

Digital Clock – nice clock gadget, with many different options.

Egg Timer – basically, a timer in the shape of an egg. Useful for getting people out of the office, tell them your time is limited and set the egg timer!

EmptySpace – allows you to customize your sidebar by putting empty space between gadgets.

GadgetSpacer – same as above.

iStat battery – this is a useful battery status gadget for laptops.

iStat wireless – also very useful for laptops.

Multimeter – very handy gadget for showing CPU and memory usage. Several versions are available. The Q version is for Quad Core. The 2.10 version is much more advanced than the prior.

NetworkMeterv2.3 – good for network usage. 

PackageMapping-1.3 – find out where your packages are. The site this is pulled from is packagemapping .com. This uses google maps to pinpoint where the item is. Highly recommended.

PaperClip – clipboard collection.

Server-ping – real time ping status for up to 5 machines! Make sure to enable use LED in the options. It’s possible to monitor up to 50  with the pro version.

UptimeMeterV1.5 – self-explanatory

(*Editor’s note – rar is  a proprietary archive file format that supports data compression, error recovery, and file spanning. Source: Wikipedia)

Skyfire has just released their new beta browser and I think I’m in love. It’s fantastic – you can watch videos, listen to music, check your social networking sites or whatever you need from the internet that you couldn’t previously get on your phone. No longer is the IPhone the lone purveyor of  YouTube on the go! No longer is Active X and Flash the bane of your mobile experience!

If you have a Windows or Symbian (Nokia) phone, you owe it to yourself to download this as soon as you have a chance.

http://www.skyfire.com/

I give this 4 out of 4 lightsabers.

(Image source: Wikipedia Lightsaber Collection)

Update: I hate saying something can’t be done so I took 5 minutes and tested the application in a portable context and found that it does not have to be installed on every machine you use it on. Once you install it on your machine, you can take the application folder and move it from machine to machine and use it like that. You won’t get the right click explorer extension, but you can right click on the file in question and choose “open with” and open it with the Unlocker exe. You can also drag the file onto the unlocker exe. Be aware that unlocker deletes and bypasses the recycle  bin, so use it carefully.

I tested further and found that you only need two files out of the install folder for this to work, Unlocker and the Unlocker driver.  Those 2 files are attached. When you run it in this fashion a 3^rd file will auto create for the config. 

I tested this on my user.dat file with is always locked by the system.

Again, the app can be found at : http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

DL Link http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/unlocker1.8.7.exe