Turn Your Printer and Scanner into a Copier Machine

Got a printer and scanner but no Xerox copy machine? With no effort, you can combine the printer and scanner to build your personal digital photocopier machine and make copies of your documents at the click of a button.

This is possible through iCopy, a free software utility that combines the scanner and printer into a versatile copier that requires no installation - you can even run the iCopy software from a USB drive.

Here's how iCopy works - you insert the document / paper inside the scanner, enter the number of copies that you want and hit the big blue copy button.

iCopy also provides you control over the image settings and quality so that the final document copies consume less ink during print. It works with all printers and any TWAIN-compatible scanner (nearly all scanners are TWAIN compatible).

iCopy Photocopier software is available at sourceforge.net.

When both Domain Name & IP Address are banned, Use Calculator to Access that Website

How to bypass the internet content filtering software of your school or office using just the calculator application (Start->Run. type calc.exe). This unique Mathematics based trick will probably work when websites are blocked in your institution or corporate network based on the host name or their IP address.

The trick is to convert the human readable website address that's blocked (like bebo.com) into an IP address (208.75.184.160) and again translate this value to a decimal address which is probably not blocked by the website filters.

Here's a step by step guide to render www.myspace.com to a decimal address:

1) get its IP address (216.178.39.74), by pinging the name (if you have a direct internet connection) or if you only have access via a web proxy then find it out by using network-tools.com.

2) start your PC's calculator, and change it to scientific mode (using the "View" menu)

3) enter each of the four IP octets, one by one, converting them to binary (enter number and click on the "Bin" radio button)

Thus 216.178.39.74 becomes
216 = 11011000
178 = 10110010
39 = 00100111
74 = 01001010
Notice how any binary numbers less than 8 digits long have had leading zeroes added to pad them out. Reassembled into IP address order, you get 11011000.10110010.00100111.01001010

4) Remove the dots, so you get one huge line of binary, thus: 11011000101100100010011101001010

5) Copy this binary string

6) Go to your scientific calculator, and hit the "Bin" button FIRST (as you are about to enter binary), THEN paste in the binary string.

7) Click on the "Dec" button on your calculator, and you will get the converted value of 3635554122

8) Add the hypertext protocol prefix and paste into your browser's address bar: http://3635554122

I used to be in a place that had websense, where both website names and their corresponding IP addresses were blocked. However was able to get limited access by converting the IP address to decimal, which websense (at the time) did not know about. This might have changed since, or if your school runs an old version it might still work. Note that if you surf away from the page you might hit websense blocks again unless you manually reconstruct the next address you want to get to.

An Effective Home Remedy For Fixing Scratched CDs or DVD disks

It's a three step process -

• apply a layer of banana, then
  
• spread it using the banana peel and finally
  
• wipe the surface using a soft cloth.

This method may bring some of your old but priceless CDs back to life.

Before You Leave the Windows Laptop or MacBook Unattended..

What is the best way to protect your laptop computer against theft? Most would say that treat your laptop (or tablet) like the cash in your wallet and therefore never leave it unattended, even for a minute.

Easier said than done - it's not always practical to carry that heavy notebook with you all the time. For instance when you are in a conference, you won't like to carry the computer to the restroom or to the nearby coffee vending machine but that time maybe more than sufficient for a thief to walk away with your expensive notebook.

So what's the next best option to ensure that your laptop and the extremely important data doesn't disappear ? Either lock the Laptop with security cables or get the free utility called Laptop Alarm.

Laptop Alarm is like an anti-theft siren that only rings (using the in-built speakers of the laptop) when someone tries to logoff or shutdown the machine or removes the charging AC power cord or unplugs the external mouse attached to your laptop.

Laptop Alarm is Windows only but MacBook users can get the free iAlertU utility that will even capture the photo of the thief using the webcam and email it to any specified address.

Get LaptopAlarm (Windows Notebook) | iAlertU (Apple Notebook)

Caution: The Laptop Alarm won't work in the case when the thief is clever enough to turn off the laptop by pressing the power button.

How to Play MP3 Songs Stored on your Home Computer at Work

Problem: You have tons of MP3 music files, podcasts and other Windows Media Audio songs on the hard drive of your home computer neatly organized in playlists. You hat burning this music to CD but still want to listen it while in office or from other computers in your home or want to share the same music with your friends who can be in any part of the world.

Solution: All you need is SimplifyMedia and the popular iTunes media player - both are available for Mac and Windows. It is expected that SimplifyMedia will support WinAmp, Windows Media Player pretty soon.

It works like this - you add the music folders to SimplifyMedia watch-list on your home computer that contain the songs you would like to access or listen from other computers. When you are in office, you again login into SimplifyMedia and start iTunes where you'll find the same home music library under Shared Playlists. Hit play and the music or podcasts stream over the internet. Quite simple.

When you install Simplify Media software on additional computers, you are connected automatically when you log in with the same screen name. To share the music with other friends, you can invite them via email and they too can listen to our iTunes music playlists on their computers.

However, you cannot use this system to copy songs from the home computer to work or transfer them to the iPod.

Free Video Editing Software for Producing Movies

You want so many video editing features for free ? Well, it may be possible as here are some good options for editing that don't cost a dime.

But before you read this list, check the CDs that shipped with your handycam - most camera manufacturers like Sony, Canon and Panasonic generally provide a decent video editing software with the camera. OK, back to the list of free video editing software:

Windows Movie Maker - The best video editing tool for Windows that's absolutely free and chances are you already have it installed on your computer as part of XP SP2. Microsoft Movie Maker has all the basic video editing tools plus a good collection of transitions and video effects.

There's an in-built movie titler that lets add you styles to text titles including ticker taps, zoom and even the scroll effect. And if you are feeling lazy, just hit the AutoMovie command to have the entire video produced for you with intervention.

Avid Free DV - Avid Free DV, poor cousin of Avid Xpress Pro, has all the basic video and audio editing features and allow you to put video in two tracks simultaneously. They have an extensive collection of tutorials online to help you get started quickly.

Support both Mac OS and Windows XP platform. Infact, you can even play with keyframes for generating custom moves and transitions. Ships with the Avid Title tool.

JahShaka - An open source video editing software that is currently in Alpha stage but has features found only in expensive video editing software suites.

Works on Mac, Linux and Windows. The interface might take some time for you to get started otherwise the software is definitely the most powerful one out there. And the price is just right. $0. Also does 3D effects which you won't find in other free video editors.

Jumpcut.com - Jumpcut is a web based video editing software and now it's even part of the Yahoo! family. You upload a video or small clips just like importing inside a desktop software.

There are dozens of transitions and special effects. You can import photographs from your Flickr or Facebook account to mix them with the videos. The jumpcut editor is intuitive enough and there is good title support as well. And your movies are published online automatically. Perfect for quick vlogging and video podcasting.

Finally... While the above video editing software should satisfy the needs of most home movie makers, you can probably consider Adobe Premiere Elements or even Muvee AutoProducer for more features and better control over the final output. They have trial version to help you try out the software before actually buying it.