I’m No Electrician | Tech Gadgets & Gizmos

With only a couple of weeks to Halloween, pumpkins are getting chopped already. Just check out this example below. The ultimate Linux powered pumpkin.

Can anyone top the tech geekyness of this one?

PKWARE, the inventor of the .zip standard, is giving away a non-commercial use license of SecureZIP Express and the opportunity to win great prizes in the new “Decrypt and Drive” contest!

With SecureZIP Express you can compress/decompress and encrypt files that you store or send. Compressing files is a great way to save on storage space, especially on thumb drives and CD’s, and we all have files we should be securing! The software also includes a digital certificate so you can exchange files securely with others without using passwords. Only the person the file was encrypted for can open it when you use a digital certificate. The software is fully licensed for non-commercial use and has no toolbars or spyware!

For years, PKWARE has given free .zip software away and wants as many users as possible to receive the benefits of SecureZIP. PKWARE is giving away great prizes including a Honda scooter, bicycles, Wii games, gas cards, and more!

Visit www.DecryptandDrive.com to play the game daily and/or download the free software. You need to have SecureZIP, and the digital certificate it installs, on the computer you play the game from.

You can also get SecureZIP Express at www.securezip.com Good luck!

Earlier this week at Uni we opened up some old PC’s to have a look at what all the parts looked like. Obviously the PC’s were older then the ones on the market today so there were some differences. We looked at the chip and how that it sat in a whole load of cooling devices from the surround, heat sink and then electric fan on the top. We even found an old Pentium2 chip which was encased in what looked like plastic but was more likely something like carbon of some sort.

Taking the cover off a case really made me want to build a PC from scratch but am starting to wonder if I can afford for it all to go wrong. Has anyone here built there own, what should you look into first and what do you need to check when buying your parts?

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could surf the web and not worry about whether a link will take you somewhere you don’t want to be, take you to a site that you didn’t want to see or even worse let loose a virus or malware onto your computer. However nice that seems it is probably never going to happen, but one company are at least trying to make your web experience less dangerous and more enjoyable. Comodo offer to Create Trust Online, a situation that is currently spiraling out of control. Have you ever been told that your computer is infected and that you need to get this certain software to remove it only to receive thousands of pop ups and desktop icons. That is exactly what Comodo want to combat.

How will they do it? Well to start off with they are offer for FREE:

• Firewall
• Anti-Virus
• Secure Email Software

Why not start protecting your PC using these great free tools. I have always used free tools to protect my PC from virus and malware, and then often again to clean it up after an attack has got through. Although I must say these are usually down to errors on my part. Clicking on that one link too many that I know I really shouldn’t. That is why a Trusted Internet would be so much easier to use. Just imagine that if every link that did not lead to where it said it was going had a little icon int he corner or if every click that installed an item had a different icon next to it it would leave a lot of people with an easy decision to make, “Do I know what this is I am about to do?”

Its time for another Gadget of the Week, and this week with a lot of students returning to school, college and uni - including myself its time to look at some gadgets to help us survive the intense classes and lectures we’ll be attending this semester. The one thing that I am really crap at in lectures is making notes that I can read afterwards and that is why I want a Zpen.

What is a Zpen?

The Zpen is like any other pen, it allows you to write on any paper surface, the clever part comes in the infrared receiver that clips to your notebook or paper pad and scans the page to find what you have written. Once you have finished writing or drawing for that matter, you simply un-clip the receiver and plug it into a USB port and you will be left with a scan of your work on the computer screen. That is great but what makes it truly amazing is that you can easily (with the software provided) transform that into a digital version, including any diagrams or drawings you have included.

This would be a great device for any student with handwriting anywhere near as messy as mine, and especially for writing blog posts while on the move, ideal to copy and paste the content you wrote by hand straight into your blog.