Monthly Archives: August 2006
DBAN
My business partner at our webdesign company Refresh Creations recently started talking to me about wiping all data from a computer that I was set to sell on eBay.The computer in question had a fair amount of sensitive information on it and he seemed horrified that I was just going to wipe the hard disk using a Windows format and then sell it on.
For all intensive purposes what I was about to do would have been fine but to be on the safe side he introduced me to a piece of software which does a much more thorough job.I thought it might be prudent for him to talk my Click readers through this program as it could certainly come in useful for anyone looking to sell their computer or hard drive on the second hand market.
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With data security becoming a greater issue on a daily basis it’s … Read the rest
Firefox Extensions
Many of my Click articles end up with me banging on about how good Firefox is and how all my readers should consider using it as their main browser over Internet Explorer which is bundled free with Microsoft Windows.Since one of the main arguments I use is the large amount of third party add-ons that are available I thought this week I should probably corroborate that thinking by naming a few of them.
Add-ons (otherwise known as extensions or plug-ins) aren’t pieces of software in their own right but rather small bits of code designed to integrate with an existing application in order to extend its capabilities in one way or another.Firefox like many other browsers on the market encourage users to take advantage of this facility so that they can extend their browser in a way that suits them.
I’ve picked a few of the most popular plug-ins available, … Read the rest
Internet Archive
The Internet is an ever changing medium and this is of course one of the primary reasons for its huge popularity – Websites can be radically altered at the drop of a hat for a complete redesign or simply to include new or revised information.Whilst no one can argue that this is a predominantly good thing the fact that the old version of a website is quickly forgotten once updated is a cause for concern.
Hard copies of books and magazines cannot change and as long as they are stored safely you will always be able to dip back in time but once a website has been altered there usually is no looking back.
The well established Way Back Machine (www.archive.org) website sets to redress the balance by regularly storing copies of old websites so that at any point in the future you can look back at how a site … Read the rest
