Raymond.CC Blog

Nero is probably the most famous brand when it comes to burning data to disc. Although I have stopped using Nero because it contains way too much features which I don’t really use, but I still keep an eye on this software. The latest Nero 11 setup installer file is at a whopping 379MB in size. Nero is a shareware but they’ve always provided a free version of Nero for basic burning features which was called BurnLite. BurnLite is now called Nero Kwik Burn and it is an app for Nero Kwik Media which needs to be activated to enable the data burning and disc copying feature. If you don’t activate the Nero Kwik Burn app, you can only access the “burn a music disc” option. Here are some information together with images on how to activate the Nero Kwik Burn app.

TrueCrypt is probably the best encryption tool to hide the existence of any sensitive data on your computer. It is free, open source and 2 years ago FBI even admitted that they failed to crack TrueCrypt. Using TrueCrypt is not that hard but it may be a bit confusing for some people who aren’t good in computers. First you need to create an encrypted file container which is actually an encrypted file but can be virtually mounted to a drive letter so you can access your private data. During creation of TrueCrypt volume, you will get to choose the encryption algorithm, set the space for the volume and also the password. When the volume has been created, use TrueCrypt to mount the file to a drive letter and then copy the data to the new virtual drive that you want to protect and dismount. Now the encrypted volume file contains your file and it is nearly impossible to crack. Finally you will need to delete and wipe the files from your hard drive so that it cannot be recovered.

If you still find it confusing, you can give TruPax a try because it does the same thing but uses a different approach in creating the encrypted container file which may be easier to understand.

One of the fastest method which I have always been using to access a shared folder on a computer in a local network is by pressing Win+R followed by double blackslash and computer, for example \\raymond which will access a computer named Raymond in the network. If the shared folder is not password protected, then anyone is able to access, no problems there. However if the shared folder requires you to enter username and password, entering a valid credential will cache the credentials until you restart or log off Windows. This is a convenience feature that Microsoft has implemented since early versions of Windows. However there may be times when you do not want to log off or restart the computer so that you can use another login to access the shared folder. Although Microsoft did not include a simple button to flush the credentials cache so that you can try a different password, here is how you can do it via a simple command line.

You may have probably heard of the term malware, virus, trojan, keylogger, worm, backdoor, bot, rootkit, ransomware, adware, spyware and dialer but wonder what are the differences as you may probably only know about virus. Basically malware is short for Malicious Software where all of the terms above falls into this category because they are all malicious. The different term being used instead of just plain virus is to categorize what the malicious software is capable of doing. For example, a keylogger steals whatever that is typed on your keyboard and sends it to the hacker, a trojan opens up a backdoor allowing the hacker to gain full access to your computer and etc.

Using “virus” as a catch-all phrase to include all types of malware is no longer accurate. The correct word to use should be malware. However don’t expect the big anti-virus companies to rebrand their products to Kaspersky Anti-Malware or Bitdefender Anti-Malware because doing that may risk losing their brand identity even if they actually a complete anti-malware solution. Here is a complete explanation on every malware terms.

Moving a Firefox profile to another computer may not be a very difficult task for a Windows user that is familiar with navigating around folders. One method to simplify that is by using MozBackup, a free and simple tool that allows you to backup and restore bookmarks, mail, contacts, history, extensions, passwords, cache etc but at the end you will still need to redownload and install Firefox, and use the MozBackup tool to restore the backup. If you have the intention to restore your custom Firefox profile to your computer after reformatting your hard drive and reinstalling Windows, then MozBackup will do just fine. However if you want to deploy the custom Firefox to multiple computers, then it would be best to use Firefox Addon Maker or (FFaM in short) to create a custom Firefox with a silent installer.

Windows Live Messenger comes with a Share something new box at the top of the program so that you can type your status message which will be shown to all of your contacts. You should probably see a few of your contacts showing that he/she is on http://ebuddy.com Messenger which is quite annoying because using the free ebuddy service will automatically embed that status message. However there are times when someone uses a real cute or nice looking status message which you would like to copy and paste it to your share something new box or perhaps someone posted a message with a foreign language and you’d like to copy and paste it to Google Translator to translate it to English so you know what is it all about. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any way to copy the status message from Windows Live Messenger. Copying the name is possible though by selecting the name on the contact list and press F2 to enable editing of the name so you can copy it. After trying a couple of methods, I finally found a simple way to copy the personal status message from your contacts.

There were so much rumors about the new iPad which can be found all over the Internet but no one really guessed the name of the new iPad correctly which is just “The new iPad” instead of iPad 3 or iPad HD. I was actually excited on the announcement of the new iPad yesterday because my wife and I are sharing the first generation of iPad which we both find it a bit heavy and slow. I stayed up until nearly 3AM last night because I wanted to know what is new in the new iPad. If comparing The new iPad with iPad 1, there are definitely a lot of changes and it is worth the upgrade. However if I had the iPad 2, I may just continue using it until the fourth of fifth generation of iPad is out.