My chance at throwing together a TWIS (this week in skinning). I.D.'s off somewhere playing hooky AND I got his lovely wife to disable all interwebz connections on his devices. So.... here are some skins deserving of your interest:                 Tanger Master Suite                                       Hollyday Docks    ...

  The key to productivity is organization, prioritization and this tool does it, and does it very well. It also has the plus that it uses your browser as the center point and there’s a free extension to use for Android, iPhone, Chrome, Firefox, Outlook, Thunderbird and Mac. Your reasons for being disorganized are really fading… I’d strongly recommend tis to anyone seeking a fantastic, free tool! Take a look at it here:  http://todoist.com/web You can cli...

    A real quicky for you all…. MS has some wonderful themepacks for the holidays. The wallpapers are stunning examples of what folks who have photographic talent can do. If you don’t want the theme, and only want the walls (in 1920 x 1200 res) you can use the free 7-zip utility (download here: http://free7zip.com/ ) to unzip the theme to the wallpapers and theme separately and save the walls to a different location as I explained in this article: http://d...

    This is nothing but an end run around the Fourth Amendment and Habaeus Corpus. c|net has discovered this marked departure from Leahy’s prior approach: “Leahy's rewritten bill would allow more than 22 agencies -- including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission -- to access Americans' e-mail, Google Docs files, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter direct messages without a search warrant. It also would give the FBI...

  One of the best teachers ever (if you like my shops, she’s the guilty party) is doing a 6 hour tutorial on “Blending Modes” on creativeLive at noon EST, today. She’s really the best, and teaches the fundamentals as well as the practical. Today she’ll review 27 blending techniques which are all useful in your art. You can enroll for free here: http://www.creativelive.com/instructor/lesa-snider The “enroll” button is right next to the course description and doesn’t cos...

  Opswat is a small .exe tool which does not install on your system and operates as an “as needed” app. It was developed by Bobby Czarny who owns “Opswat”, a San Francisco based company. It evaluates the general security of your computer, but in my examination, it fell a bit short. It also does a tolerable amount of self promotion. After downloading and initiating the tool, which collects anonymous data from your system about app usage, it generates a report...

  The first of MS’s IE10 Previews for W7 has arrived and is available for download here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/downloads/ie-10/worldwide-languages I’m doing the x64 download, and I’ll keep you updated with impressions and screenshots as we go along. First impression is that the installation is taking a long time because of the “Language Package”. I don’t like the idea that disc space is being wasted on language...

  With Windows 8 barely out of the womb, this isn’t the best of news. He was the driving force behind the newest MS OS. Julie Larson-Green who was a lead engineer of Windows 7 has been promoted to lead all Windows software and hardware engineering. Tami Reller will take on managing the business side of Windows. Good luck with that, Ms. Reller. Business hasn’t been embracing Windows 8. MS hasn’t revealed Sinofsky’s reason for leaving and stated it was a &ldqu...

  You folks know that I update you about “Patch Tuesday”. November’s MS security update day is special because it will be the first patch day for Windows 8 and RT, so expect a patch, you folks with W8. “Happy 1st Patchday”, Windows 8. Here’s the Executive Summary of the usual patches:     Sources: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms12-nov http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2411987,00.asp

  TrendLabs has reported the Pixsteal-A-Trojan . It ’ s a new type of malware which targets image files to expose those infected to identity theft, blackmail and fraud. This Trojan finds image files on your drives and transfers these images to a remote server. The affected file types are .jpg, .jpeg and .dmp  (dmp's are created by computer or program crashes). While AutoCAD files have been targeted in the past by industrial espionage spyware, most Trojans concentrat...

  This is why I tell folks that I don’t the “security” of the Cloud… physical or electronic. According to an article on neowin.net , The Electronic Freedom Foundation filed a brief on behalf of one person (the only person) who wants what he uploaded to Megaupload back. The Government responded with a process so convoluted that it could never work…. from sheer bureaucracy, making hurdles a person or small business would find almost insurmountable. Clearly, the government has...

  For folks in the path of Sandy and for those concerned about them Google has launched its Crisis map. You can find it here:  http://google.org/crisismap/2012-sandy It’s built on the base of Google Maps, but has a ton of info and additional deeper menus in the right side bar. Hope all in the affected areas are doing what they should, and are safe. Google… good for you on this one!

  Every camera introduces “noise” in varying degrees at different ISO and lighting settings. Generally, the higher the ISO, the higher the noise. Topaz labs makes various Photoshop plugins for various tasks. Topaz DeNoise reduces the noise of all types in your photos, but the nice thing about it is that it preserves the detail (and image quality) while doing so. Usually the plugin costs $79.99 . For the next 20 (or so) hours, it’s $47.99 at BitsduJour (link below)...

  Ross and many others use Ps 7 to do their graphics work. So… here’s a cheat sheet for Ps 7. It’s in pdf format, so no excuses. This is just the first page:   Link:  http://planetozh.com/download/refcards/Photoshop.pdf

  For tens of millions of diabetics who use insulin to help balance their sugar levels, there might be some wonderful news on the horizon. Every diabetic using insulin must test his/her blood sugar and some have to test it often. Advances in that technology have been made, but the actual treatment of self administration of insulin with syringes hasn’t changed since its onset of usage as a treatment, until possibly now. This is because insulin is a large molecule and not absor...