Reality Bites
Last Friday night, California’s Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team entered editor Jason Chen’s home without him present, seizing four computers and two servers. They did so using a warrant by Judge of Superior Court of San Mateo. According to Gaby Darbyshire, COO of Gawker Media LLC, the search warrant to remove these computers was invalid under section 1524(g) of the California Penal Code. More »
A Regina man who sexually abused nine teenaged boys at a local youth correctional facility over a 15-year period has been sentenced to spend 4½ years in prison.
There’s nothing worse than buying new gear that malfunctions shortly after you purchase it. If you’re in the market for a new laptop, check out warranty-provider SquareTrade’s detailed laptop-reliability report to find the most dependable hardware. More »
Microsoft Security Essentials is a free anti-malware and anti-virus package, designed to compete with both commercial and free offerings like AVG and Norton.
First, and most obviously, we like the price point; it’s hard to argue with free. But no matter how free an app is, if it sucks, there’s no reason to install it. Thankfully, there is plenty more to like about Security Essentials.
Unlike some other anti-virus suites, MSE (as it will be known from here on out) is light on its feet. In addition to using very little RAM, saving precious CPU power for more important things (like watching the Switched Video feature). MSE is fast; scans take significantly less time than they do with many free or paid options.
Continue reading Microsoft Security Essentials Offers Fast, Powerful and Free Malware Protection
Filed under: Computers, Windows Software
Microsoft Security Essentials Offers Fast, Powerful and Free Malware Protection originally appeared on Switched on Mon, 26 Apr 2010 13:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Would you like to start your own blog or website? With a free WordPress account, it’s free and easy to get started creating your own professional quality blog site.
This is the first part in a series on how to create your own professional quality blog site. No, we’re not talking about some cheapo looking blog from Blogger or something on Facebook, but creating a quality blog you can be proud of and present to millions of readers online.
WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms, powering hundreds of high-profile websites and blogs around the world. It’s both powerful and easy to use, which makes it great whether you’re just starting out or are a blogging pro. To start out with your blogging project WordPress is completely free, and you can use the online interface or install the WordPress software on your own server and blog from there.
Getting Started
You can start a blog in just a few minutes. Head over to WordPress.com and click Sign up now on the right-hand side of the main page.
![sshot-2010-04-25-[02-09-18]](http://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/sshot20100425020918.png)
Enter a username and password, check that you agree with the legal terms, select the “Gimme a blog” bullet, and click Next.
WordPress may inform you that your username is already taken, simply choose a new one and try again.
Next, choose a domain for your blog. This will be the address for your site, and cannot be changed, so be sure to choose exactly what you want. If you’d prefer your address to be yourname.com instead of yourname.wordpress.com, you can add your own domain for a fee after your blog is setup…but we’ll cover that later.
Once you click signup, you will be sent a confirmation email. While you wait for the email to arrive you can go ahead and enter in your name and a short bio about yourself.
When you receive your confirmation email, click the link. Congratulations; you now have your own blog!
You can view your new blog immediately, though the default theme isn’t very interesting without your content and pictures.
Back on the page you opened from the email, click Login to access your blog’s administration page and to start adding stuff to your blog. You can also access your blog’s admin page anytime by from yourname.wordpress.com/admin, substituting your own blog name for yourname.
Enter your username and password, then click Log in to get started.
Adding Content to your WordPress.com Blog
When you sign in to your WordPress blog, you’ll first see the WordPress Admin page. Here you can see recent posts and comments, and you can see stats of how many people have visited your site. You can also access all of your blog tools and settings right from this page.
To add a new post to your blog, click the Posts link on the left, then click “Add New” either on the left menu or on the top of the Edit Posts page. Or, if you want to edit the default first post, hover over it and select Edit.
Or click the New Posts button on the top of the page. This menu bar is always visible whenever you’re logged in, so it’s an easy way to add a post.
The editor lets you easily write anything you want in a Microsoft Word-style editor. You can format your text, add lists, links, quotes, and more. When you’re ready to share your content with the world, click Publish on the right side.
To add pictures or other files, click the picture icon beside “Upload/Insert”. Your free blog account can store up to 3Gb of pictures and documents which will definitely give you a good start.
Click Select Files, and then choose the pictures or documents you want to add to your post.
When the pictures have uploaded, you can add a caption and choose how to position the picture. When you’re finished, select “Insert into Post”.
Or, if you want to add a video, click the video button. You have to add a paid upgrade to upload videos directly, but you can add YouTube and other online videos for free.
Click the “From URL” tab, and then paste the link to the YouTube video and click Insert into post.
If you’re a code geek, click the HTML tab in the editor and edit the HTML of your blog post the geeky way.
Once you’ve added all your content and edited it the way you want, click the Publish button on the right of the editor. Or, you can click Preview to make sure it looks right, and then click Publish.
Here’s our blog with the new blog post containing a picture and video. While you’re getting to know you’re way around the controls in WordPress, the Preview feature will be your best friend while you try to organize the content to your liking.
Conclusion
It only takes a couple minutes to get started blogging at WordPress.com. Whether you want to write about your daily life, share pictures of your children, or review the latest books and gadgets, WordPress.com is a great place to get started for free. But we’ve only covered a small portion of the WordPress features…but this should get you started. Check back for more WordPress and blogging coverage coming up soon!
Links
Signup for a free WordPress.com account
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Everyone’s favorite apartheid allegory is back for seconds, or so it seems! Read on for more details!
“Avatar” is a hit on the small screen too!
Ford vehicles are now 85 percent recyclable by weight. In 2009, Ford saved approximately $4.5 million by using recycled materials, and diverted between 25 and 30 million pounds of plastic from landfills in North America alone.
Don’t count on friendly aliens, like ET, says Hawking; they’re likely looking to conquer, colonize, and exploit
Who uses 3.5-inch floppy disks anymore? No one. So it is a mainly symbolic announcement that Sony will no longer be producing the disks in Japan, officially putting the last death knell on the format.
Bribes, prosecutors on the take, tax evasion and slush funds. It sounds like organized crime, but if we’re to believe Kim Yong-chul, author of Think Samsung, all these terrible things happen at popular electronics company Samsung. All the time. More »
With KFC’s Double Down “sandwich” now threatening to slap quadruple chins across much of America, people may soon begin chomping at the bit for equally extreme diet solutions to counteract the havoc wreaked by the Colonel. Gelesis, a Boston-based drug company, has apparently read the grease-stained handwriting on the wall, and has just concocted a new pill aimed at helping plus-sized Americans shed some pounds — by convincing them that they’re full.
As Xconomy reports, Gelesis’ newest pill, Attiva, contains a bunch of super-absorbent hydrogel beads that swell up when introduced to water, meaning all you have to do is swallow one and you’re full. Of course, Gelesis doesn’t want to make anyone look like Lara Flynn Boyle, which is why the drug developers designed Attiva to fully blend with any ingested food. The hydrogel keeps whatever you eat in your stomach for a longer period, thus allowing your stomach more time to digest while the beads release the water they’ve absorbed. Once the train moves down to the low intestine, the beads begin to re-expand a bit, slowing the absorption of fat and sugar.
Continue reading Diet Pill Swells in Your Belly, Making You Feel Instantly Full
Diet Pill Swells in Your Belly, Making You Feel Instantly Full originally appeared on Switched on Sat, 24 Apr 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Two people were arrested and four to five pounds of marijuana were seized Friday following a search of a home in Preeceville, Sask., RCMP say.
Reevu’s MSX1 helmet has been around in one form or another for years now, but the company has apparently be busily working on improving it all this time, and it’s now finally let an actual production unit loose for an early review. As before, the helmet relies on an entirely mechanical mechanism rather than rear-view cameras, which webBikeworld says ends up functioning much like a car’s rear-view mirror in practise, with the small mirror in front resting just outside the rider’s line of sight. Most importantly, however, the site says that the helmet itself is “built like a tank,” and is “good enough to stand on its own even if it didn’t have the rear view system.” Head on past the break for a quick video overview, and hit up the source link below for the site’s complete review.
Continue reading Reevu lets loose updated MSX1 helmet with built-in rear-view system
Reevu lets loose updated MSX1 helmet with built-in rear-view system originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 24 Apr 2010 10:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
We have all speculated that ASUS would be releasing a line of tablet computers, it was just a matter of when. Now with news out Taiwan, Asustek Computer Chairman Jerry Shen announced a new Android based tablet that will be called the Eee Pad. The Eee series of netbooks is probably the most well known line of netbooks. ASUS was the company that made netbooks popular and put them on the map. They will now use the Eee branding to sell their upcoming Android powered tablet. Shen says that his company will soon begin production on a tablet computer running the Android, and hopes to compete with Apple’s iPad. ASUS will introduce the Eee Pad, at Computex 2010, a popular computer expo, in June. They then have plans to make the Eee Pad available for purchase by the end of July.
There are no real spec sheet released yet, but we know the Eee Pad will have an Nvidia Tegra processor. Also to compete with the iPad it will have some features that the iPad doesn’t, like USB, integrated webcam, and Adobe Flash. ASUS also has a marketing plan that will involve a carefully timed release of the Eee Pad that will not be affected by the current tablet PC and e-book reader markets. Sources say that the new Eee Pad will cost around US$479-510. If anyone has the means to make Android based tablets mainstream, it definitely would be ASUS.
[via c/net]
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