OpenDNS, Free home filtering
I am asked about home web filtering, and my solution of choice is OpenDNS. OpenDNS can be a little tedious to setup, but the benefits are worth it! OpenDNS provides many more incentives other than just web filtering. Recently, there has been a malware outbreak on the Mac called FlashBack, and OpenDNS goes above and beyond the call of duty to help prevent it from spreading to Macs that are using the service. OpenDNS also provides faster DNS lookups that may help improve your home internet connection.
For more information on OpenDNS visit the following links:
OpenDNS website
How to setup OpenDNS and get a free account
Who uses OpenDNS
Just Be
I have almost a four hour drive when I go to my parents’ house, and some of the best memories I have are when I’m in the car listening to the radio and just thinking, or when It’s just me and God. So, it bothers me when I see articles like this. A reporter was commenting on some of the newest innovations for in-car media systems, and how they can connect to the internet through cell phone data connection. We don’t need a fourth screen connected to the internet.. It’s obvious that it will be more distracting while driving, but for most Americans, time in the car is solitude.
Our society is built on being connected 24×7, and I’m as guilty as most people, but I don’t want to be that anymore. I know that I need my phone for work and keeping in touch with my family, but being able to Tweet, get Facebook alerts and be notified of the latest breaking news every moment of everyday is daunting. There are days I feel over stimulated, and lately I have been perfectly happy being in the dark about current events.
It’s healthy to take a break from our smart devices, and just be. Maybe turn off all of the push notifications on your iPhone, or turn off your 3g, and spend some time in thought and prayer.
Clonezilla
I think I found a program that picks up where Norton Ghost left off. It’s called Clonezilla. Clonezilla allows users to make a full backup of a partition or disk just like Ghost did, but this program is free! It also works with the latest hardware. It can backup NTFS, FAT, HFS, and many others. I was able to use it to backup a hard drive that was beginning to fail with bad sectors. I had to throw a switch to tell Clonezilla to skip bad sectors, and I was able to restore the partition on a new drive. I restarted the computer, and Windows 7 booted right up like nothing ever happened!
Check it out at www.clonezilla.org.
I thought WordPress was just for blogs?
FALSE! WordPress makes a really awesome content management system. WordPress has really begun to shift gears over the past couple of years. WordPress 3.x has really shown great improvement over previous versions when it comes to editing and creating content. With WordPress 3.2 there is a new content editing page that not only simplifies the options needed to post content, but allows users to take all available screen space for content development. WordPress continues to be true to its roots in the blogging community. Creating posts has never been better!
WordPress has hundreds, if not thousands, of useful plugins that are regularly update by developers from all over the world. This adds endless functionality to your WordPress site. Give WordPress a try at www.wordpress.com. If you are looking for someone to host your WordPress site check out www.stealthblu.com.
What antivirus pogram do you use?
I use Microsoft Security Essentials, because it’s free and doesn’t use a bunch of system resources. It uses the same scanning engine as Microsoft Forefront.
I have heard that a lot of people like Avast. It’s also a free antivirus program.
If you want a good program that can supplement your existing antivirus solution, you should take a look at Malwarebytes. Malwarebytes is a free tool (with a paid pro version available) that does a really good job at finding rogue antivirus programs and other spyware.