We all hate Vista for some reason or another, but yet most of us still find it cool enough and use it. The most thing that I’m sure that annoys most Vista users is, when they want to open some application an annoying pop up comes up asking you to Allow or Deny that action. Well, here is the end of that annoyance!

Open Control Panel, switch to classic mode open User Accounts and select Turn User Account Control on or off, most probably it’s the last option then un-tick Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer. Press OK and restart if needed.

When it boots again, you will stop receiving that pop up.

Well, I am going to review my own webhost. Well, I’m hosting with Amp Hosted, also known as ToastedPenguin. I blogged a few days ago about my DNS Issue and how I solved it. And I must say that I was very impressed with the customer support, although this is a small company it really cares for the customers. We sent over 30 emails and we solved the problem, every email was responded within a couple of minutes to some hours.

Their plans are pretty cheap for all the upgrades and features that you get!

Their basic plan is only $3.95 $1! Which is great for little traffic websites. Their Business Pro plan has everything that you can imagine, and anything you will ever need.. with many unlimited features like unlimited FTP accounts, unlimited emails, databases and much more, for just $24.95 $24.00!

With a guarantee of 99.9% up-time! I can verify that, because I’ve been hosting with them for over a year, and I have the Business Pro plan. It has even more features than the ones listed on their plans page.

So if you are planning to have a website, or just need a new host, you might want to give it a try!

Amp Hosted

[EDIT] 1st October 2008

They updated their prices and plans, hosting now starts at $1.

We all know that most of the people absolutely love the Vista look, but at the same time they hate it, because it takes up too much resources and it’s slow, buggy and well.. if I start listing all the bad things about Vista, I guess it will be quite a list. So, if you like the Vista look, but prefer to use XP I have the solution for you!

Use Vista Transformation Pack. It will replace some files, install some software and after you restart your PC, you will have a whole new look! I have tried this for over 5 times on my old computer (I always re-installed it after I made a format), it always worked like a charm, and never messed my computer.. but we warned!

Besides that, there is another alternative, which looks quite nice too, it’s called Vista Skin Pack 5.0. I never tried this personally, but from the snapshots I’ve seen it even looks nicer that Vista Transformation Pack.

WARNING: SOME SYSTEM FILES MIGHT BE REPLACED. BACKUP YOUR PC!

Well, I’m sure that you know that you can easily remove adverts from websites by downloading 3rd party software. But, why wasting money and computer resources? When you can easily stop this by using hosts files. We already used hosts files to solve DNS problems now we are going to use them to block annoying adverts from the websites.

Hosts file work in a simple way, you can redirect all the domains you want to the IP address that you want.. so for example if there is an advertising company that have annoying ads.. let’s say www.myadsareveryannoying.com so websites are going to put up those ads, and these ads will be loaded from that domain, not from the website that you are accessing.. so what if we redirect www.myadsareveryannoying.com to 127.0.0.1 (which is our localhost) then of course that domain will loop back to our own computer and as our computer is not hosting those annoying adverts, these will not be displayed. So, all you have to do is download this Hosts File and replace your own hosts file with it.

Your hosts file can be found in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc

After that just restart your browser and most of the annoying adverts will not be shown anymore!

Well, my hosting company changed servers sometime ago (a few months) and I could not access all my websites properly. They would not load sometimes, randomly. I sent an email and they checked if the server was blocking my IP, etc.. but I could easily access the websites through the IP, I could easily access the FTP through the IP, ping worked perfectly.. but when I tried to FTP, ping or access the website through the domain name I could not (most of the time)

So, we determined that it was an ISP Problem, it was not resolving the domain to an IP… therefore it must have been a DNS Problem with my ISP. Of course, I don’t have control over something that isn’t working from my ISP… the customer care is very lazy, then don’t even answer the phone.. so yeah, I was pretty much alone! Because my hosting company could not do anything, the server was running fine, so it was not their fault.

So I started thinking and I remembered of something, the Windows HOSTS File! You can redirect any domain to any IP, even to localhost (127.0.0.1)

So, I thought.. why not redirecting my own domains to the correct IP using HOSTS file?! The DNS would in that case will not be needed, because I would be ‘resolving’ the IP through the HOSTS file.

So, if you are having this same issue.. here are the simple steps to solve it! All you need to know is the IP of the server hosting your website

1. Go to “C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc”
2. Remove the hosts file from Read-only
3. Open it with your favorite Text Editor
4. Write the IP and then the domain, using the following pattern

127.0.0.1          www.thecomputermaster.info

Of course replace 127.0.0.1 with the IP of the server hosting your website, and www.thecomputermaster.info with your own domain, save it and make it read-only again.

Finally restart your browser and write in your domain, voila! You can now access your website!!

Well, we all know how what a tedious work it is to rename files one by one. Sometimes we have images taken with our camera named like DC5897 etc.. for sure that does not mean anything to us. When you are on vacation and you take several pictures of that place you would like to rename them something like

Hawaii 1, Hawaii 2, Hawaii 3 etc..

And I’m sure you are not interested in renaming all those pictures one by one. All you have to do is select all the files you want to rename, and press right click on the first image that you want to start the count with, and press rename, give it an adequate name and press enter. All the selected files will be renamed and given a number.

This is the result:

Before Rename

After Rename

Hope this saves you a lot of time!

I’m sure that most of you heard about Joost. It’s a free software that brings high quality, free TV on your desktop. With a free application that is easy to use and to browse through the tons of channels that they offer, for free. They offer comedy, cartoons, sports, music and much more. You just download and install the application, login, and you are ready to navigate through the different channels and shows. It’s very fast and does not lag much.

It’s pretty worth it, the client is not big to download and all you need is just an invite. So, here, I am offering FREE invites. Just post a comment below and in the email field write a valid email. I will send you invites to that email address.

How to Change the Regional Settings of the computer to be able to write in foreign languages and input special characters without having to know the ASCII codes.

For Vista Users:

1.    Open the Control Panel from the Start Menu located in the Task Bar
2.    Open ‘Regional and Language Options’ if you don’t see it click ‘Classic View’ from the left bar
3.    Open the ‘Keyboards and Languages’ tab
4.    Click ‘Change Keyboards…’
5.     Click ‘Add’
6.    Select your Language
7.    Click the ‘+’ sign and select a keyboard layout
8.    Click ‘Preview’ to view the keyboard layout
9.    Press Alt + Print Screen button on your keyboard
10.    Open Paint and paste it
11.    Get back to the previous dialog
12.    Press Ok
13.    And Apply
14.    Now open word or any application you need and press Left Alt + Shift to change languages, or enable the language bar, and then press right click on it and change the language you want
15.    Print the Preview Dialog for your own reference.

For XP Users:
1.    Open the Control Panel from the Start Menu located in the Task Bar
2.    Open ‘Regional and Language Options’ if you don’t see it click ‘Switch to Classic View’ from the left bar
3.    Click ‘Languages’ tab
4.    Click ‘Details’
5.    Click ‘Add’
6.    Under ‘Input Language’
7.    Under ‘Keyboard Layout’ select a layout (default on is good)
8.    Press ‘OK’
9.    Press ‘Apply’
10.    Open the start menu browse to ‘All Programs/Accessories/Accessibility/On-Screen Keyboard’
11.    Change the language by pressing Left Alt + Shit on your keyboard and it should change to Russian or enable the language bar, and then press right click on it and change the language you want
12.    Select the on-screen keyboard window with your mouse and press Alt + Print Screen on your keyboard
13.    Open paint and paste it
14.    Print it for your reference.

This is a simple method that many people don’t know about. Just because explorer.exe is crashing, or is infected by a virus they end up formatting the whole system all over again, because they think that they cannot replace explorer.exe, that is wrong. Some people, might know that you can use the CD and use the Repair Console to EXPAND or REPLACE the file.

Well, you don’t need to go through the hassle just to replace a file! All you need to do is:

• Find the version of your explorer.exe by going to the Windows, find explorer.exe, press right-click, properties, details tab and you can see the version

Explorer Properties

• Then find another computer with the same OS, and preferably with the same version of explorer.exe (depending on your CD of Windows, you might have this file)
• Then just copy it (copy it now, or you will not be able to copy it later)
• Open Task Manager
• Select explorer.exe
• Press ‘End Task’
• Don’t Panic.
• Press File / New Task (Run…)

File / New Task (Run...)

• Press ‘Browse’
• Browse to your Windows Folder, rename explorer.exe to explorer.bak
• Paste the previously copied explorer.exe into your Windows folder.
• Select explorer.exe and press Open
• Then press Ok
• Congratulate yourself.. and me

Hope this simple method was useful.

Well… it’s very simple for the user. You just click the Stumble! Button, and you are taken to a ‘random’ website. Then you can press the Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down… it’s your call!

But, what is really happening in the background? Well, the diagram below is a simple way to explain it. But, keep in mind, that if you submit a website in a certain category, and in that category there are 99 other websites, so that’s 100 in all, that does not mean that your website will have a 1/100 probability of being shown to users. Because you can pay StumbleUpon and your website will have much more chance of being displayed to a user than any other website. So for example your FREE website will have 1/120 probability of being shown to a user, besides the paid option, it even depends from the users feedback, if the like it or not.. and from their friends, friends of friends and so on.

The Advantages? Simple, you will have 100% targeted users! Because when a user signs up he/she will have to select the categories he will be interested in.

For a Graphical Illustration on how all this works, take a look at the diagram below (click for a larger image)

StumbleUpon