Tipcast.org - Your daily tips and tricks podcast!

Some of you may have noticed but our feed isnt working at the moment. We are trying to get this resolved, but its particularly difficult because Thom is out of town on vacation this week, and according to feedburner everything is a-ok. Suck.

In the meantime, all of the tips are still able to be accessed via the website (well, you can download them… the player is currently only working in FF and Opera — IE users must actually download the episodes).

We are very sorry about all the problems; we consider them growing pains, and hopefully you do too — thanks for sticking with us.

It’s hard to imagine that anyone who is listening to this podcast has never heard of the term “spyware”. Spyware, sometimes thrown under the broad category of malware is similar to a virus but generally isn’t picked up by your run-of-the-mill virus scanner.

Additional Links

• Ad-Aware
• Spybot S&D
• Spy Sweeper

Listen Now:

 #010 The Evils of Spyware [3:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1085)

Many of you are probably familiar with something called a VPN. VPN stands for virtual private network – basically, it’s a method of connecting computers to each other over the internet in such a way that they think they are on the same local network, such as being in the same building.

This allows one to use file and print sharing services, get access to files, or run LAN based applications across a much larger geographic area.

Additional Links

• Hamachi
• Security Now
• Gibson Research

Listen Now:

 #009 Say Hello to Hamachi [2:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (629)

Thanks for sticking with us for the second week of Tipcast. Things are ramping up, and the variety of tips increasing. Hopefully you’re enjoying what we have going on over here — don’t forget to tell a friend!

This week’s recap:

• We went over the wireless security checklist
• We learned about some of the cool things Google can do
• We slashed our startup times by unloading unneeded items
• We got a cool tool to count calories so we stay in shape
• We got back control of our life with a bit of scheduling

Again, we would like to thank you for visiting us here at Tipcast. One of the things we really want to push is a sense of community. We have built many features into the site (ratings, comments, submit-a-tip) to allow everyone to participate and interact with each other. I would like to encourage everyone reading this to take a moment or two to rate a tip, or leave a comment. It doesn’t take long, and it will make the experience for you, and your fellow listener that much more entertaining.

Stay tuned for week number three!

If you’re like me, there are certain times of the year where your social calendar seems to get a bit out of control. With family outings, trips to water parks, sporting events, and seasonal festivals, getting a group of people together, and keeping track of who is coming can be a bit tricky.

For this, I like to use Google Calendar.

Additional Links

• Google Calendar

Listen Now:

 #008 Google Calendar [2:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1070)

I know this isn’t strictly a tech related tip, but as a card carrying geek, I know that most of us don’t take the best care of our bodies – both in what we eat, and the frequency which we exercise.

Additional Links

• Fitday.com

Listen Now:

 #007 Keeping Fit [2:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1215)

Is your machine running slow from the get-go? Does your series of tray icons stretch clear across your screen all the way to your start menu? Try removing some unneeded programs from startup – it’s a great, easy, and FREE way of getting back bit of lost performance.

Additional Links

• Windows 2000 Users Click Here!

Listen Now:

 #006 Speedy Startup [3:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (657)

As many of you probably know Google is an awesome source of information for more than just finding web pages. No, im not talking about their email or calendar features, even though those are pretty cool, no, im talking about the functions built right into the search bar of the Google.com homepage.

Additional Links:

• Google
• Google Images
• All Google Services

Listen Now:

 #005 Google Goodness [2:48m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (449)

Recently, I was asked how to secure a wireless internet connection. So I thought that for todays tip, I would give you a quick checklist of the steps needed to secure a wireless connection.

Listen Now:

 #004 Wireless Security [2:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (612)

This segment is something that will appear every now and again on the “off days” that Tipcast experiences each week.

This week’s recap:

• We disabled indexing to save space on our hard drives
• We reduced pagefile fragmentation
• We had an overview of online shopping

Thom, Sean and Myself would like to sincerely thank everyone that has been participating in the tipcast experience since we launced. I just wanted to point out a couple things to make your visit to tipcast.org that much better…

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