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Media Center Service Receiver

I sure hate it when things don't work and you don't have an easy fix. Just like this WMC 7 service failure.

v450 nano lowest price

Costco beats them all!

My Favorite iPod Twitter App

Even though I'm not constantly tweeting on Twitter, my favorite app on my iPod Touch for tweets is called Twittelator Pro.  It's well worth the five bucks I paid for it.  So many useful tools, but in particular if you find out you ran out of room on a tweet, one that auto-abbreviates!

Using eSata for the first time not AHCI

When you start messing around with hard drives, it becomes apparent at some point that you will need an external one.  These days of terabyte (TB) storage you begin to realize that USB 2.0 just won't cut it for drive copying.  Thank goodness for the eSata option, but read on for a recap of my first time.

My Favorite TV Remote Control

One terrible side effect of having a home theater system are the remote controls for the various components.  Typically there's one for the TV, the AV Receiver, DVD player, and perhaps a Cable/Satellite box;  Instead of the last item, it's an HTPC for me.  If only there could be one remote to rule them all...

Stop annoying ads on Websites!

While any website has a right to earn revenue by serving ads, I feel that the companies who are ad-servers shouldn't be allowed to take over your computer.  For example, when I'm reading an article on the Internet, then the next thing I know is I'm looking at another website (or the alert from my web app Firefox) because of a redirect from an advert.  How is that a good thing and what can you do to prevent it?

iPod Touch Movie Poster frames w Adobe PSE

 
If you've ever transferred a video, perhaps a ripped movie, to your iPod Touch or iPhone (and own Adobe Photoshop Elements 7) then this post may be useful to you.  Attached will be a PSE 7 template file to use for creating poster frames, those little pictures you see for mp3's and movies, but here especially for 16x9 videos.

Organizing Your Photos TIP

Over the years, I have tried to keep my collection of images -- downloaded, scanned, or taken with digicam, organized on my computer.  The method I will describe here is what has worked best for me so far.

View a mobile version of any website using Google

This morning I was drinking my coffee and surfing the web via my iPod Touch.  Out of curiosity, I launched the Google mobile APP and put in my website name in the search bar.  In the results next to my listing was a "more" option.  Under that was "cached, similar, mobile formatted".  Choosing "mobile formatted", I was looking at my website without squinting as much.

Labor Day Printer Deals

It's back to school time, and looks like stores need to make room for new inventory.  Fry's Electronics had (one day only) the Canon Pixma MP620 on sale for $79.99.  It includes a USB cable, scans to PDF, does wi-fi and wired networking, so already a bargain.  If it could only do duplex printing (print both sides) too it would be a steal.  For that either look at the Epson Stylus NX415 or wait for the newer model Canon MP640 which goes full auto duplex printing.