Yesterday I posted a quick little article about Portable Apps, and today I wanted to talk about one of the really handy portable applications that is available.

Have you ever worked on a computer, not yours of course, that you suspect of having been taken over by a pesky virus or today’s most popular spyware? Trust me, I’ve seen my fair share of infected computers.

The one thing I always worry about, because I have seen so many viruses that do it, is that the installed anti-virus has been disabled or corrupted. Worse yet, is finding a machine without any anti-virus! Who knows what filth lurks in those ones and zeroes!

Enter ClamWin Portable. Now you can carry a working anti-virus program with you, either on a flash drive, or a portable hard drive. You can just plug it into the suspected machine, and scan away. No install on the local machine, if you have already installed it on the flash drive.

ClamWin can be updated with the current virus definition files, and it will do everything you would expect from a standalone anti-virus. It doesn’t offer real time protection, but is still a very handy tool to have, especially since it uses less than 20M of disk space.

This is just one of the very neat portable applications that is available from Portable Apps, thanks to Art for pointing their site out.

References:

- ClamWin Portable - Portable Apps

Also on Port 16:

- Bring your Favorite Applications with you - Portable Apps

- How to Manually Download Updated Definitions for Windows Defender

Posted in Utilities, Portable Apps, Anti-Virus 2 Comments »

I’m sure that you have been at a friends house, or tried to show a co-worker something, and they don’t have an application that you need. Or maybe you want to show them how much better your favorite application is at doing something, but of course, they don’t have it installed.

Portable Apps is a suite of applications that can be installed on removable media, such as a flash drive or removable hard drive, and then can be run from the same removable media, but on many machines. All of the program’s settings, files, data and executables are all stored on that drive.

One example that comes to mind is this: At work, your company uses SharePoint team services, Microsoft’s free Portal application. Since some of SharePoint’s features are not supported by FireFox, the IT department has forced Internet Explorer as the default browser. Being a little bit of a rebel, you prefer to surf the net in FireFox.

With portable apps, you can just install FireFox Portable on your flash drive, and then anytime you want to surf the web with it, you can just pop in the flash drive, and run FireFox.

As an added bonus, your cookies, favorites, etc are all right there. Bring the same flash drive home and, you guessed it, all those settings are still there.

You can download the Portable Apps Suite, or just download and install individual applications. Uninstalling individual applications is as easy as deleting the folder that they are installed in, so I would suggest downloading the suite, and then customizing what you have installed.

I have to thank Art for pointing Portable Apps out to me in the first place. Now I’m addicted.

Tomorrow I’m going to post about one of my favorites.

If you like this type of Tech posts, you should check out Two Guys Tech. A friend and I are working on it, and we even have a terrific podcast.

We’re always glad to answer questions, help people out, and help relate what we’ve learned. Get a new perspective on the tech topics and news that you’re interested in, come visit Two Guys Tech.com.

Posted in Applications, Portable Apps 3 Comments »

I heard about Microsoft releasing ShadowRun, and I was interested. I loved the series of books based in the ShadowRun world, and thought the game might be interesting.

I was blown away by the minimum requirements. To the left, you can see them. Maybe I haven’t looked at a set of minimum requirements for a game recently, but I remember they used to be pathetic.

One note though, the minimum requirements are exactly the same as the recommended requirements.

Although I am shocked, I am happy that they have realistic requirements. I always thought it was bad customer service, and bad marketing to list low minimum requirements. If I purchase a game I expect the game play to be decent, and responsive, if my system is at or above the minimum requirements. I think that is a reasonable expectation.

If I start playing, and the quality is bad, or if the game is jerky or unresponsive, then I start to get angry. That is the customer service aspect of it.

I also will tell my friends, which ties in the marketing aspect, since we all know that the best advertisement in word of mouth. This is also the reason I will not buy the “Age of Empires” titles until they are in the bargain bin.

 Back to ShadowRun, one thing that that is pretty neat is that Microsoft released the game for both the Xbox 360 and Windows, I know that isn’t a big deal, but wait, there’s more.

They also introduced new features in Windows Live Messenger, and released Live Messenger for the Xbox 360. This means that PC players and Xbox players can play together. This is the first time I have heard of a game which allows console systems to play with home computers, and I thought it was pretty neat.

Are you going to get it Mike?

To be honest, no. I’m a big cheapskate, and there isn’t a demo to play. Right now retail is about $50, and I would hate to shell that out, and find out I don’t like the game.

I don’t own a Xbox, but my machine at home meets the minimum requirements, so if I hear a lot of good things about the game, and it comes down in price some, then I may buy it. Still, there is the question of time, mainly that I don’t have any to play with.

Questions for you

What is the last game you bought, and how did you like it? Was it worth the money?

My last game was Half Life 2, and I bought it about 4 months ago (yes, it has been out for years). I really like the game, but I don’t have a lot of time to play it. I it was only $20 or $30, so yes, it was worth the money.

Posted in Games, Microsoft 3 Comments »

AKA: Unlimited information, limited horizon.

It was big news when web sites introduced the ability to customize your home page to fit your interests. If you were a sports fan, you could fill the page with all sorts of sports news. Is it gossip that you like, no problem, that’s available too.

Fast-forward to the present, and we have so much to choose from. If I like sports, not only can I see the sports headlines, but I can use RSS to subscribe to 25 blogs about my favorite team.

Still have a couple of free moments? Go subscribe to 1 blog for the rest of the teams, that will take care of it.

I could go on and on about how you can find the news and subject matter that interests you. Let’s just say that today it’s possible to eat up every spare moment of your life reading about your niche subject.

For years now, I have been saying that no matter what you may be interested in, get on the Internet, and you can find someone who bases their entire life around that subject. Star Trek, Star Wars, any celebrity, toenail clippings, the Muppets, you name it. This is actually one of my favorite aspects of the Internet. If I have a passing interest in something, I can quickly learn everything I would want to know about it.

Not long ago Wil Harris posted “Personalised everything“, and I’ve been thinking about it on and off. Wil talks about how this ability to customize everything makes us miss out on other things that are happening in the world. Mostly I agree with Wil, if we don’t experience anything outside of our little niches, then aren’t we really missing out.

To help widen his horizons, Wil started reading magazines and newspapers. I like reading blogs about different topics, so I can get a take on what other people are thinking. My wife is a big fan of the news, so she always brings up things that are going on in the world and in our community.

The Internet is this tool that allows us to interact with people all over the country, and all over the world. We can share our views and opinions, and read the views and opinions of others. It would be truly unfortunate if ultimately a tool that can put us in contact with so much information ends up isolating us in our own niches.

Photo: ”Pile of Old Books” by Sarah Sturtevant

References:

- “Personalised everything” by Wil Harris

Posted in opinion, Internet 2 Comments »

AKA: What Joe can do for you.

Every time that someone mentions to me that I should watch how much coffee I drink, I want to point them to one of the many studies that I have read which conclude that Coffee is good for you.

I never seem to be able to find those studies though.

Until today that is. Phil over at Thought Sparks posted that he was going to give up Caffeine for 35 Days, don’t do it Phil.

Why? Here are some reasons, from the Men’s Health Articles “Know your Joe” and “Memory Upgrade“:

Note: The study suggests keeping your coffee intake to “four 8-ounce cups a day”. I drink 2 cups in the morning, and 3 cups in the morning, and 1 cup in the afternoon, just to get me woken up before I head home.

1. “Generally, drinking 1 to 3 cups a day will increase your overall health”

2. “Coffee is the number one source of antioxidants in the American diet” Joe Vinson Ph.D.

These antioxidants have been shown to:

3. “possibly prevent certain types of cancer, including colorectal”

4. “the neurological impact of caffeine has been shown to retard the aging process”

5. “enhance short-term-memory performance”

6. Enhance your “attention, and concentration”

Photo: Coffee Beans by Sirikri

References:

“The No Caffeine 35 Day Experiment” - Thought Sparks

“Know Your Joe” - Men’s Health

“Memory Upgrade” - Men’s Health

Posted in Coffee 7 Comments »