Internet

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Orisinal - Gorgeous Flash animation, perfect for kids

Child Safe Searches

In the ever expanding integration of the Internet and kids lives, filtering out non age appropriate information from searches is often overlooked by parents.

Find drivers for unknown devices

Have you ever been given a com­pu­ter, or bought an old fixer upper PC that didn’t have all the discs or infor­ma­tion for the components?

I know this is frus­tra­ting since I too have had this pro­blem.  Espe­cially when it invol­ves key equip­ment (Net­work card).  There is nothing more irri­ta­ting then loo­king at your device list and seeing the yellow ques­tion mark.  Well tech­ni­cians, as with almost everything com­pu­ter rela­ted, there is a site setup to help with this.  PCIDatabase.com

So how does this work?

You will want to go to the ques­tion mark in the device mana­ger and right click on the entry (there maybe more then one on a rei­mage or a cus­tom built machine).  For those that may not be fami­liar on how to get to the device mana­ger here are some sim­ple steps.  Find the My Com­pu­ter icon on your desk­top (upper left by default).  You will want to Right click on the icon and you will get a menu like this:

After you left click on the pro­per­ties entry a new win­dow will pop up:
If you do not have the tab shown, you will want to click on the Hard­ware tab.  Once here, click on the device mana­ger and you will see a list of ins­ta­lled devi­ces.  You will scroll down for the yellow ques­tion mark.  In my exam­ple there are none, but I am sure you will find them rather quickly.

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Great Tutorials

So in my daily stumbles today I came across this website: In Pictures: Online Computer Tutorials.

How Fast is your Internet Connection

I have compiled a few links for you to use to test your broadband speed.  I do this once or twice a week.

Access your passwords anywhere

I am not sure about everyone here, but I follow the recommendation of not using the same passwords on multiple sites.  Particularly the very confidential information: Banking information, Insurance information and email.

Automating Amazon S3 Backup on Windows with CloudBerry S3 Backup

This post is courtesy of Nadya

Thank God for Hulu

I admit I am a couch potato.  So much so, that I tend to work on the computer while watching TV.  Have a game on the TV and watch the stats for that game or others that interest me streaming on the laptop.  All I can say is thank goodness for broadband.

Online Backup

A few days ago, I discussed a backup tool named Cobian and I promised to look into online space for offsite storage.

Kidzui

When you think of trus­ted names in pro­ducts for kids, some of that come to the top of the list inc­lude: Bar­bie, Mat­tel, and Hot Wheels.  Now ima­gine the three of them com­bi­ning to create a safe way for kids to access the inter­net and parents to check and con­trol that access.  What you would be left with is Kid­Zui.

What is Kid­zui?  Well let me try and help with that.  Kid­zui is a brow­ser that has parents in mind.  With a cen­trally mana­ged list of web­si­tes that are allo­wed, not allo­wed, abi­lity to be noti­fied when your child adds a new friend, as well as many other cus­to­mi­za­ble secu­rity fea­tu­res, Kid­zui is all about allo­wing super­vi­sed independence.

With two ins­tall options (Fire­fox Add-in or Stan­da­lone down­load) the setup is inc­re­dibly easy.  Follo­wing the setup you will be then promp­ted to do the ini­tial regis­tra­tion of your parent account.  During this phase, you will be set­ting up your first “Zui” or child account.  You can create an account for all mem­bers of your family.  Please note, keep your pass­word and email address you set this up with away from the child so they can not login and undo wha­te­ver set­tings you choose.

Some of the paren­tal options in the brow­ser itself are: full screen (kiosk) only mode and require a pass­word to exit.  This would be a great fea­ture to keep anyone from being able to close Kid­zui and just launch IE or Firefox.

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KidRex — Kid Safe Search

As many parents know, kids are getting using the internet at a much younger age now.  They are using it for research, for games, even Nickeloden channel advertises for kid friendly games.

OpenDNS — Review and Recommendation

For those of you that have children and want to block out specific types of sites, OpenDNS is for you.