Categories
Add-Ons Information Reference Software Web

Web Toys – Browser Add-Ons

I hit many websites during a day, and I am still looking for “tools” to help me, so if you have any suggestions, please let me know. Here is something that I just caught today… I have NOT tried them yet, but I can and will use IE, Firefox and Chrome to get my “stuff” done, so…

Firefox note-taking add-ons are Web supersavers

– Andrew
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Categories
Adobe Software

Attack on Adobe Illustrator (.eps) files

Rather obscure way to get into a system, but none the less..

If you use Adobe Illustrator (.eps), then you might want to take a look at this…

Apparently, a Bad Person could alter an Illustrator EPS file in such a way that the Bad Person could gain access to your computer.

Adobe is still investigating and plans to have a patch shortly.

– Andrew
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Categories
Reviews Software

First Impressions of WHS (Windows Home Server)

I had been hearing about Windows Home Server (WHS) from various sources for some time, and finally decided to take a look.

In reviewing the Main WHS website, I ordered the DVD media and paid the Shipping & Handling (nothing is free), and got the kit in about a week.

Not having any spare hardware to run a “Full” WHS on, I setup a VMWare VM, and was able to take it for a “Test Drive” for a couple of days.

In general, I was rather impressed with how easy it was to setup. Boot from the disk, and a few questions, sit back and wait.

You will need at least 70GBs of disk space, and once done, that disk will be split into (2) partition: OS and Data.

For any family that is really going to use this, they should seriously consider getting at least 1TB of HD,especially considering the cost of such drives, and if you really want to protect your data, consider getting a second HD to backup the primary.

The main concept of WHS is the ability to connect (wired & wireless) a household of computers to a centralized server for File and Music sharing, then initiate backups of those machines and publish a Family website, which should be a real interest to technically savvy Home SysAdmin.

Acer and HP seem to have embraced this market space, and if you happen to have some extra hardware laying around, you might consider creating your own “Frankenstein” server. The requirements are surprising low.

From what I have been told, if you already happen to have a Active Directory Domain setup at home, in about 45 days, WHS will start to warn you that it has detected your AD, and will start to shut itself down.

So for the price, an OEM (Acer or HP) machine or a “Frankenstein”, and you already do not have a AD,the WHS is worth considering.

– Andrew
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Categories
Add-Ons Reviews Software

LR2/Mogrify – Adobe LightRoom (Plug-in)

LR2/Mogrify by Timothy Armes is easy to use Adobe Lightroom plug-in is for those that want and need some pre-publishing work.

“LR2/Mogrify is a post-process plugin for Lightroom 2 and later that can embellish your images as they are exported from Lightroom. It’s flexible interface allows you to add outer and inner borders, watermarks and text annotations to your images.”

Personally, I use this export utility plug-in for adding Event/Location and Copyright info before posting to various services (Facebook, Flickr, Stock Agencies, etc.).

Basically, this is a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for ImageMagick®, which is a well documented application for processing images:

“ImageMagick® is a software suite to create, edit, and compose bitmap images. It can read, convert and write images in a variety of formats (over 100) including DPX, EXR, GIF, JPEG, JPEG-2000, PDF, PhotoCD, PNG, Postscript, SVG, and TIFF. Use ImageMagick to translate, flip, mirror, rotate, scale, shear and transform images, adjust image colors, apply various special effects, or draw text, lines, polygons, ellipses and Bézier curves.”

– Andrew
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