There are many issues that would cause a computer not to connect to the Internet. In this article I will try to cover some common ones and some you probably never thought of. Some of these issues include Winsock corruption, router signal issues, network configuration issues, browser issues and internet provider issues. Some issues are more common than others, however, the list is not organized in any particular order. If you are currently having internet connection issues, I suggest you read the whole list and make an educated guess before proceeding.

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Want to setup a CCTV Security Camera system in your house but don’t want to spend the time or effort to do it? I got just the perfect solution for you. How about using your webcam for this purpose? This is one of those cool projects I always thought about doing but never got around to it. Now there is software that will not only do this for you, but also do it in a professional way, implementing new technology used by professional CCTV security camera systems, like motion detection, human body detection, email alerts, etc. The name of the program is “Vitamin D” and it offers a free version for use at home. It finally gives a chance to put those unutilized, dust gathering webcams to good use.

There are many different causes that can prevent a Windows XP computer from connecting to the Internet. Some are easily identifiable however some are not. In this article I will be covering how to fix corrupt Winsock registry keys in Windows XP, Vista and 7. If you are getting an IP of the type 169.254.x.x, there is a good chance that you have a corrupt Winsock. If some of you are wondering why I am including Windows XP in this article in the year 2011, I will tell you that even though Windows XP is an old and outdated operating system, many business are still clinging to it due to the bad publicity generated by Windows Vista.

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Windows 7 Search not working as it should? Ever since Windows introduced its indexed search, obtaining reliable search results has been an odyssey.  The big problem with Windows indexed search results is that not everything gets indexed. Windows only indexes folders it thinks are important, and when we have a computer deciding what we need, we start getting into many problems.

In the beginning of the web, tracing an email address was practically impossible. Nowadays a bunch of free tools for this purpose have sprung up all over the web. Availability of these tools combined with an improvement in tracking geographic locations of world IP addresses, have made the job a lot easier.  In this article I will explain how to trace an email address back to its original sender using freely available tools.

When I started this project I was surprised of how poor documentation and software was on this subject. My goal was to create a custom Ubuntu liveCD for a group of public computers, change the start-up and background to make it look professional, remove unnecessary programs and add some icons to the desktop for ease of use, that’s it. None of the software packages allowed me to do all of these very simple tasks; they allowed some but now all. I had to the rest of the research myself, gathering hard to find information on the web. Please do not be scared by the shell commands on this article, this is a walkthrough and it is very easy to follow.

Sometimes you can encounter difficult data recovery jobs where you need all the help you can get; this is the reason why I have decided to compile this list. As you can see, almost all of the utilities in this list are free and open source with only two exceptions Spinrite and Recover My Files. Not all software in this list is dedicated specifically to recover data but all of them are essential in the data recovery process. The list is done according to importance and usefulness. I must point out that most of the programs are free, however, that does not mean that they are lower quality; they are as good and some of them better than similar commercial products. These are the tools I use whenever I have to perform a data recovery job.

I could not believe it when I saw it. World Lens, an application made by Quest Visual translates anything it sees through the iphone camera. Pretty cool and useful. See for yourselves…

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DVDStyler is a simple but powerful DVD authoring software. It lets you create DVDs and add menus, sub-menus, closed captions, buttons, video thumbnails and even background music. This makes DVD Styler the perfect solution to port your home movies to DVDs, make them look less boring and more professional. DVDStyler comes in Windows, Linux and Mac versions.

Wouldn’t it be nice to store all your home videos in DVDs so they can be easily accessible and even share them with friends and family? All this can all be accomplished with free and open source software. In the end, you can have a professional looking DVD with menus, buttons, thumbnails and even background music. In this article we would be focusing on editing your home videos and transcoding them to DVD format. If you want to learn how to make a DVD with menus using free software, read my next article.