Cool idea that actually uses the principle of cloud computing effectively. Analysis is done by the cloud, and no more updating required.

Result: light weight virus scanner without all that other junk: webblocker, scriptblocker, firewall, adware filter, network scanner, IM scanner, …

Just virus and rootkit protection is what I need. And preferably at a low system resource cost. And preferably for freez

< currently in beta >

Panda Cloud Antivirus FREE – The first free cloud antivirus against viruses, spyware, rootkits and adware

Very simple: go to your install folder – default = C:\Program Files\Avira\Antivir Desktop\ -, right click the file avnotify.exe -> Properties. Go to the security tab and deny Read & Execute permission for SYSTEM user.

There ya go !

How’s that for a post title !

Seriously though, this might be one of my more important posts, as it concerns privacy in Facebook. I wanted to do a separate post, as the inspiration for it – chapter 4 of quoted source below – was a bit low on clear instructions and screenshots, and might be too advanced for basic Facebook users.

As the article describes, it is a classic Facebook problem. It is the reason why many people stop using FB, or don’t use it like it’s meant to be, just because the user doesn’t understand it or doesn’t want to spend time trying to. Although one might argue that the default settings of FB are too ‘loose’.
So anyway, one of the biggest problems is that people suddenly see themselves appear on a photo uploaded by someone else. Not only that, it got tagged, so depending on your privacy settings, the whole world can see it. And that might be a bad thing if the photo depicts something you would rather have kept hidden, aside from a select group of friends.

People have been fired over stuff like that, and the option is hard to find, so here’s how you do it.

1) Go to your profile privacy page.

2) Click the option “Photos Tagged of You” and select “Customize…”. This box will show.

3) Here is where the magic happens. Depending on what situation you wish to create, you combine the options in this box. For me, I would like all photos tagged of me to be visible to all my friends, but not the friends that are related to me professionally. To do that, I select “Only Friends”, “None of My Networks”, and I exclude the friends list I created in the past to which I added all my professional contacts.

That’s it. You can even check this (and other settings) by viewing your profile as one of your friends ! To do this, follow these simple steps:
1) Go to your profile privacy page (which might still be open from previous action).
2) Click on the “Contact Information” tab.

3) In the text box at the top, type the name of a friend to test it out. For the example above, I can type the name of one of my professional contacts, and I can instantly verify that this friend can no longer see any photos ‘tagged of me’. Only my private albums in which I had photos not tagged of me were visible to this person.

It goes to show that friends lists are a great way of managing privacy in Facebook. It also makes it more practical to keep up to date of your friends of you have a lot of them. Make sure you read the mentioned article below for tips on public visibility (not just inside of Facebook).

___
Inspired by this great article.

My wife pointed me to a site called Elsewares. I’m just now looking through their catalog, and I must say I’m loving it. Lots (if not all) of their products are recycled, and all of them are very creatively designed.
Prices range from under $25 to over $100, ranging from small jewelry to big wall clocks.

A few examples:

* Pine Lumen (oil lamp): very simple in design, but the projected shadow makes for an amazing effect in a dark room.
* Recycled Rubber Coasters: coasters made from recycled car tires. Eco & funny !
* Socktopus (toy): handmade from recycled sweaters.
* Nooka Zub Zot 38 (wristwatch): personal taste, but I love the design.

ELSEWARES // Independent Art & Design

Another great find by said source blog: Ketarin.
Extremely handy if you maintain an emergency USB stick with all sorts of system tools. Click the source link for a detailed description.

Source: Confessions of a Freeware Junkie

Self-explanatory: http://pdfse.com/

Source: Confessions of a Freeware Junkie

This is it, I’m getting married this Saturday !!

Hope all goes well, and we didn’t mess up the invites or forgot anything :s

My next post will be written as a husband :]  – I’ll have to get used to that.

For those of you in the neighbourhoud: the wedding will take place at 11h30 at ‘t Landhuis in Bornem (no church wedding). Feel free to come take a looksie.

Lost some time over the following bug in Visual Studio 2005, so hopefully this post will prevent someone else doing the same.

When you manually create an App_Code folder in a VS2005 project, and you add a class to it, it probably won’t show up in IntelliSense. Don’t worry, it’s not you, it’s MS.

Every class you add to that folder, will have its Build Action property set to ‘Content’. Change this to ‘Compile’ and problem solved.

I suppose MS will think of this as a feature, because of the fact you created the folder manually, and like the Global Resources folder, might contain mostly icons, images, etc… Then ‘Content’ would be right. But then if they recognize the ‘App_Code’ folder automatically (VS even sets the code-icon for it), they might as well put the default Build Action property to ‘Compile’, dang it.

I do not know if this also occurs with a brand new project, to which App_Code was added on the moment of creation.

A handy tip for those of you not yet all too familiar with SQL Server 2005 and getting lost looking for an option to show them the last modified date of -for example- a stored procedure. There is none ! Just execute below T-SQL in the context of your database.

SELECT
[name],
create_date,
modify_date
FROM sys.procedures
WHERE
[type] = 'P'
AND is_ms_shipped = 0
AND [name] NOT LIKE 'sp[_]%diagram%'
ORDER BY
modify_date DESC

Obviously, you can do the same for tables, using sys.tables:

SELECT
[name],
create_date,
modify_date
FROM sys.tables
ORDER BY
modify_date DESC

With thanks to Binary Elves.

For those of you out there using one of the real browsers (among others, I am pointing at Firefox), you might find that version 3 of Firefox, while being a brilliant browser for the rest, built-in virusscan on completed downloads is a bit annoying. In my case, it always freezes for about two seconds while initiating the scan. Plus, having a good virusscanner already active, I don’t really see the point.

You can disable this feature by typing about:config in the address bar, and then filtering on browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone. Double click this line to set the value to false.

Problem solved.