Archive for ◊ 2009 ◊

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 | Author: msauers

After a little dust-up with some open source people (Microsoft reused some os code without giving credit, whoops!) the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool has been re-released:

“The Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool allows you to create a copy of your Windows 7 ISO file on a USB flash drive or a DVD. To create a bootable DVD or USB flash drive, download the ISO file and then run the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool. Once this is done, you can install Windows 7 directly from the USB flash drive or DVD.

“The ISO file contains all the Windows 7 installation files combined into a single uncompressed file. When you download the ISO file, you need to copy it to some medium in order to install Windows 7. This tool allows you to create a copy of the ISO file to a USB flash drive or a DVD. To install Windows 7 from your USB flash drive or DVD, all you need to do is insert the USB flash drive into your USB port or insert your DVD into your DVD drive and run Setup.exe from the root folder on the drive.

“Note: You cannot install Windows 7 from the ISO file until you copy it to a USB flash drive or DVD with the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool and install from there.

“The copy of the ISO file that the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool creates is bootable. Bootable media allows you to install Windows 7 without having to first run an existing operating system on your machine. If you change the boot order of drives in your computer’s BIOS, you can run the Windows 7 installation directly from your USB flash drive or DVD when you turn on your computer. Please see the documentation for your computer for information on how to change the BIOS boot order of drives.”

Category: usb, windows7 | Leave a Comment

A Day in the Life of the Internet

Monday, December 14th, 2009 | Author: msauers

via Online Education

Category: data visualization, Internet | Leave a Comment

Download all your Google Docs

Friday, December 11th, 2009 | Author: msauers

It’s always been possible to download individual Google Docs or select a few to download at a time, but what if you’ve got dozens or even hundreds of documents and you want to backup all of them off-line. Now you can.

Log in to your Google Docs account, check at least one file, then select Export under the More actions tab. Look to the bottom of the Convert and Download File that opens up. There you’ll find a checkbox labeled Export all your files (up to 2GB). As long as you’re within that limit, you’ll get all of it.

Category: google | Leave a Comment

Free my PDF!

Thursday, December 10th, 2009 | Author: msauers

Got a document that requires a password to print or copy text? Hey, you’re the one that set the password and forgot what it was right? Send it on over to FreeMyPDF.com and it will unlock it for you. However: “This only works for PDFs that you can open and read without any 3rd party plugins. PDFs that require a password to be viewed cannot be unlocked by this service.”

Category: pdf | Leave a Comment

An interview with Leo Laporte

Wednesday, December 09th, 2009 | Author: msauers

Category: twit, video, youtube | Leave a Comment

Alternate YouTube Views

Monday, December 07th, 2009 | Author: msauers

I’m sure that you’re familiar with YouTube by now. But did you know there are now two alternative interfaces to YouTube available designed for different on-screen experiences? The first is YouTube XL which is “optimized for watching YouTube videos on any large screen” such as a television. (It will still work on computer monitors just fine.) The other, announced just last week is called Feather and is “intended to serve YouTube video watch pages with the lowest latency possible. It achieves this by severely limiting the features available to the viewer and making use of advanced web techniques for reducing the total amount of bytes downloaded by the browser.” In Feather’s case you need to opt-in via the previously-linked page. (You can always opt-out later via the same page.)

Category: youtube | Leave a Comment

Google does DNS

Friday, December 04th, 2009 | Author: msauers

Yesterday Google announced the Google Public DNS. They claim that using their DNS will make your surfing faster. I tested it on my office laptop yesterday and I think I noticed a speed difference but I’m telling myself that if could be all psychological at this point. It doesn’t offer all the services that OpenDNS does but it is another alternative to your ISP’s crummy DNS. If you’d like more information read this post on the Google blog.